deaden
(v): 1.
To make something or somebody less sensitive to pain or other stimuli. 2. To
become dead.
After getting numerous
e-mails asking me about this, now is the time to go public as to why our little
straightforward vigilante movie formerly known as PAIN KILLER is now
known as DEADEN.
Well, it started and ended
with a company called DreamCatcher Interactive (a Canadian company of all
people) who claimed to have the title PAINKILLER trademarked for their video
game and according to them, they also have dibs on the movie angle.
Considering the fact that
we’ve been running with the PAIN KILLER title for almost three years now, it
took these clowns that amount of time to hit us, and they just did. First they
wanted us to change the font of our title PAIN KILLER (as per a recorded
conversation with one of their employees) on our poster as it looked a
lot like theirs.
Both Director Christian
Viel and I had never heard of the game. Ben Templesmith, our Teaser
Poster artist also had never heard of the game. And I quote
"Damn man, that sucks about the type. It’s weird though as if I
remember right, I picked one of the most generic free to use fonts I could find
and just roughed it up a bit. Sorry about the legal hassles…and no…never
knew there was a game either.
Granted, they were right,
the title fonts were similar! A dire coincidence that had me and my team
changing all PK title fonts on everything that we had within a days time of
receiving their notice. So we complied fast and thought that would be that on
that. But that was just the jab. The font was the set-up. They then came
back with the one-two and the sucker punch. I might go into the
very dirty details
later down the road about what went down afterwards. We’ll see! Which leaves us
here.
DEADEN STATUS:
Its Official
Site (www.deaden-movie.com)
has been re-worked and is now online. The Trailers and Interviews
will only go up once the Titling on them are changed. That might take
some time as we have to find the time to have it done. DEADEN will still
premiere at the Sitges Film Festival. Deaden will still be shopped around
at this year’s AFM, we will have our own booth.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
I would like to alert MARVEL COMICS that the PAINKILLER game not only
SEEMS to rip-off THE PUNISHER in terms of the lead characters’ likeness
to FRANK CASTLE but having since played it, it definitely rips off (in my
opinion of course) the Punisher: Purgatory
comic (Nov. 1998 – Feb. 1999) that sees a deceased Punisher resurrected as an
Angelic Agent to fight demons.
It also rips off elements
from Ghost Rider and DC’s Constantine aka Hellblazer (again in my humble opinion
of course). Maybe you want to get your lawyers on that one Mr. Marvel (and Mr.
DC)… Just a thought. After all, if those bullshit trademarks laws are good
enough for Dreamcatcher Interactive, they should also be good enough for Marvel
and DC of all people who seem to be ripped off in what appears to be a really
indecent way.
