Authors taking their rights back: 202 books, plays and films, 2025 to 2031

American law lets authors, and their heirs, end a grant of rights decades after they signed it. They serve a notice on whoever holds the grant and record a copy with the US Copyright Office, and the Office publishes what it has recorded as a data file (US Copyright Office).

We went through it for books, plays and films. It names 202 titles in 109 notices with an effective date between 1 January 2025 and 2 March 2031. Eighty-eight of those dates have passed. The other 114 are still to come, the next on 2 December 2026.

The file stops at notices recorded by May 2021, so the real list is longer. And a date here is a lead to check, not a cleared right. Both points are set out below.

Counted on 13 November 2026 from the Copyright Office’s January 2026 release.

What the file shows

Seven titles carry a notice that names a studio or a producer. Six of those dates have passed.

• Waterworld, 27 March 2025. Filed by Peter Rader; names Gordon Company, Largo Entertainment and Universal.
• The Stand, 1 May 2025. Filed by Stephen King; names Doubleday and CBS Films.
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, 21 September 2025. Filed by Fannie Flagg; names Avnet/Kerner, Act III Productions, Fried Green Productions and Electric Shadow Productions.
• The Tommyknockers, 17 April 2026. Two notices filed by King; they name K&S Partnership and the Konigsberg/Sanitsky companies.
• Time and Again, 1 June 2026. Filed by Jack Finney’s heirs; names Universal Television.
• “The Forbidden”, the Clive Barker story behind Candyman, 3 November 2026. Filed by Barker; names Candyman Films, TriStar Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and MGM.
• Deep Throat, 1 January 2028. Filed by the children of Gerard Damiano; names Arrow Productions.

Most of the rest are publishing grants, and a few houses hold nearly all of them. Penguin Random House or one of its imprints is named for 87 titles, Harlequin for 68, HarperCollins for 14 and Scholastic for 12.

Series fiction makes up the bulk. Francine Pascal, who created Sweet Valley High, accounts for 55 titles. Debbie Macomber has 34, Barbara Delinsky 18, Lindsay McKenna 13 and Ann M. Martin 12, all from The Baby-Sitters Club. The single titles include Good Omens (24 September 2025), The Piano Lesson (1 October 2025), Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall (1 November 2025), My Name Is Asher Lev (21 March 2028), four Junie B. Jones books (2027 to 2029) and Naked in Death, written as J.D. Robb (5 August 2030).

Living authors file most of them. The author is the filer for 175 of the 202 titles. Heirs or estates filed for 26, among them the families of Chaim Potok, Leo Lionni, Barbara Park, Paula Danziger and August Wilson. One, Good Omens, was filed by Neil Gaiman together with Terry Pratchett’s widow and daughter.

Songs outnumber stories by 32 to one. Across every kind of work, the file holds 8,821 title entries with an effective date from 2025 onward. The Office types 8,555 of them as music and 266 as books, drama or film. Music has made a routine of this. Books and film have not, which is why each one is worth a look.

The dates are known years ahead. A notice has to be served between two and ten years before it takes effect. In this table the median gap between service and the effective date is 8.6 years. That is how a file that stops in 2021 already reaches 2031.

The later years are incomplete. The file stops at notices recorded by May 2021; it does not show fewer authors filing.

The table

Every title, earliest date first. The first 25 show; the button under the table opens the rest. Search or filter it, and on a wider screen sort by any column. The grant type is our reading of who the notice names: a publisher, a studio or producer, or a stage licensor.

Download the data (CSV)

202 rows, with the parties as the Office recorded them, the dates each notice was served and recorded, and the document numbers.

How termination works

Three provisions of the US Copyright Act do the work (US Copyright Office).

• Grants made from 1978 onward. The author can end the grant during a five-year window that opens 35 years after it was signed. Where the grant covers publication, the window opens 35 years after publication or 40 years after signing, whichever comes first (section 203).
• Older works. Where a work was already in copyright on 1 January 1978 and the grant was made before that date, the window opens 56 years after copyright was secured. Some works whose first window had closed get a second one at 75 years (section 304).
• Notice. It must be served between two and ten years before the effective date, and a copy recorded with the Office before that date.
• Limits. Works made for hire are excluded, and so are grants made by will. The right survives any agreement to the contrary.

What a date here does not tell you

• That the notice is valid. The Office records notices; it does not rule on them. Its own rule says recording one “is not a determination by the Office of the notice’s validity or legal effect” (37 CFR 201.10(f)(4)). Grantees sometimes contest them.
• Which rights are covered. A notice ends one grant. Ending a publisher’s grant does not by itself free the screen rights, which often sit in a separate contract. We have not read the notices themselves.
• That existing adaptations stop. A film or series made under the old grant can go on being exploited on its original terms. What ends is the right to make new ones (section 203(b)(1)).
• Anything outside the United States. Termination reaches only rights under US copyright law (section 203(b)(5)).
• That the rights are on the market. Once a notice has been served, the original grantee is the one party allowed to agree a new deal before the effective date (section 203(b)(4)). A passed date can mean a quiet renegotiation, not a vacancy.
• What happened next. We have not checked each title for a later agreement or dispute. The same file holds 168 counter-notice and withdrawal entries for works other than music; none matches a title in this table.

Method and limits

The source is the Copyright Office’s public terminations data, January 2026 release, downloaded on 13 November 2026 (data file, read-me). It holds 204,362 title entries in 14,607 recorded documents.

We kept notices of termination that the Office types as books and drama or as motion pictures, with an effective date from 1 January 2025. We merged entries that repeat a title and date, which is why some rows carry more than one document number. We left out two documents typed as books or film that turned out to list songs. Titles are capitalised by us. In the download, the parties appear exactly as the Office recorded them, misspellings included.

Three limits matter. The most recent recordation in the file is dated 24 May 2021, although the release is dated January 2026, so notices recorded since then are missing and the later years are incomplete. The work type is the Office’s inference, not a verified category. And the grant type in our table is our reading of who the notice names, not a reading of the contract. Each row carries its document number so that it can be looked up in the Office’s catalogue (Copyright Public Records System). We checked the Waterworld, Stand, Fried Green Tomatoes and Candyman notices there on 13 November 2026; all four match the file.

Corrections to bradley@projectbrazen.com. Last updated 13 November 2026.

Where this started

The 3 November date on “The Forbidden” led our 6 November edition, alongside Clive Barker’s stated wish to make a Candyman set in Liverpool. Time and Again was in the same edition. IP Surveillance goes out every Friday with stories worth developing and the rights reporting behind them.