Academy Chicago will launch (bring back) Charlie Chan in the fall of 2008! The books, 6 total by Earl Derr Biggers about the legendary Chinese-Hawaiian Police Inspector, still are compelling to read. A list of the titles is below. ACP will do two each for the next three seasons in paperback at $14.95.
An interesting back story: -- considerable research went into finding the rights to the books. Biggers wrote them in the mid-1920s to early 1930s after a trip to Hawaii. They were renewed by his widow, Eleanor Biggers, in the mid 1950s, and assigned to a company called Leisure Concepts. LC were the ones that sold the rights to all the movies you still see on television, primarily with Warner Orland playing the dimunitive detective. CC became a Hollywood icon. The last movie was made in 1971. However, Twentieth Century Fox, a News Group Company, and the owners of Harper Collins are the license holders for all things CC. They renewed their last option to make a movie in 1996 (or 1997). Since the mid 1980s, LC became a mega-licensing company called 4 Kids Entertainment (type "4 Kids Entertainment" into Google or Yahoo and you will see the have a ton of cartoon-like characters). They are located on Ave. of the Americas in NYC and do a land-office business.
ACP (that is, me) called 4 Kids (once I found out they owned the rights) and said we were interested in publishing the 6 CC mysteries by Biggers. Because of the late Rep Sonny Bono (R-CA), copyrights were extended another 90 years beyond the life of the author, that's life + 90 years. 4 Kids didn't even know they owned the rights (as a trademark) to CC until I called them! They had to get the contract out of a cold storage vault! They were required to ask Twentieth Century Fox if they wanted to do the books, and they declined! So 4 Kids was free to sign a contract with ACP, and now we are doing the first two in September 08.
It gets better. Two English companies had Biggers CC books that they published in 1996 and 1997, figuring they were in the public domain. Leonaur and Echo Library are selling POD editions of the first two CC titles, primamrily on Amazon.com, Amazon has since promised to yank those titles from their site, since they violate 4 Kids as the copyright holder to the books.
Charlie Chan books by Earl Derr Biggers:
Academy Chicago has already issued the first two books in the series, The House without a Key and The Chinese Parrot. In Spring 2009 they will issue three and four in the series, Behind that Curtain and The Black Camel. In Fall 2009, Academy Chicago will complete the series by publishing numbers five and six, Charlie Chan Carries On and The Keeper of the Keys.
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