The Artful Jurist

An email announcement caught my attention recently.  A duo have created a stage musical based on the old 1960s cult horror film, Night of the Living Dead.  I've seen people try this sort of adaptation thing plenty of times before, oftentimes without their realizing that one can't just adapt a copyright protected work without the permission of the copyright holder.  But this announcement seemed like it had a bit more professionalism to it than some of the others I've seen.  So I wrote one of the collaborators to ask how they went about getting the right to adapt the film.  Turns out, I was told in the response, the creators of the original motion picture loused up the copyright application (this being at a time when official registration was a prerequisite to copyright) and never got it corrected.  According to one of the musical's creators, the original Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain.

Seemed like a longshot, but I did a search in the U.S. Copyright Office's online database.  Sure enough, while there appear to be plenty of later copyrights of later versions, there seems to be a notable absence in the database of a copyright listing for the original film.

Does that mean the musical's authors are correct that the original film truly is in the public domain?  Well, I didn't do an exhaustive search for a conclusive answer.  So don't hold me to anything on this.  But the cursory research seems to indicate they might be right.