Richard Adams’ rabbits have found their way home.
An English court has ruled in favor of Adams’ estate and family in a lawsuit regarding the film rights to his bestselling 1972 novel, Watership Down, as reported by Variety.
In 1976, the English author (who died in 2016) sold the book’s movie rights to American filmmaker Martin Rosen, who wrote, directed, and produced a 1978 animated feature based on it. In the suit, the estate and family (as Watership Down Enterprises) accused Rosen of entering into more than $500,000 worth of agreements, including an audiobook contract, under the premise that he held all rights to the novel—not just film rights. They also held that Rosen had failed to pay them fees related to a 2018 Netflix/BBC animated miniseries based on the book. On May 27, the court ruled in Watership Down Enterprises’ favor, awarding it nearly $100,000 in damages and canceling the film-rights contract, among other remedies.
The novel tells the tale of a small group of wild rabbits in Sandleford, England, who leave their warren after one of their number, named Fiver, has a vision of impending doom. The group, led by a rabbit named Hazel, encounter various dangers during their travels, including other animals with deadly intentions, such as a dictator rabbit named General Woundwort and his cohort. Finally, the group, which picks up new members along the way, makes it to idyllic Watership Down.
In 1974, Kirkus said the book was “very special, but who knows—it might just hippity hop off to Jonathan Livingston’s marsh-land”—a reference to Richard Bach’s 1970 bestseller, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, about a bird on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Adams published a short story collection, Tales of Watership Down, which included several characters from the original novel.
Rosen also wrote, directed, and produced a 1982 animated-film version of Adams’ unrelated 1977 book, The Plague Dogs, which doesn’t appear to have been part of the suit. In 1985, he produced the live-action film Smooth Talk with Laura Dern; it was based on Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” which appeared in her 1970 collection, The Wheel of Love and Other Stories.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
