Legalwatch: ‘Halo’ Lawsuit– Composers Suing For Royalties Could Delay Upcoming TV Show
Combat Evolved composers are suing to collect 20 years of unpaid royalties for their music. Here’s what we know about the Halo lawsuit.
Composers Marty O’Donnell and Mike Salvatori claim that even 20 years after having created the music for Halo: Combat Evolved and licensing it to Bungie, they are still owed royalties. Lawyers representing the pair filed suit in Washington state in June 2020.
via Paramount
Halo Lawsuit Claims
After Microsoft’s acquired Bungie in 2000, the royalties deal should have remained in place. However, in trying to figure out why they had stopped receiving royalties for their work, the pair claimed in an interview with Eurogamer they “could never get much clarity on it.”
Microsoft’s counterclaim is the pair produced as work-for-hire, meaning there would be no royalties paid for the work. O’Donnell has a different point of view on the matter.
“[I]t was always a license deal. So that’s what we did with Halo. With the first Halo music ever, that was written and recorded in 1999 for the first time. It was licensed to Bungie. Bungie didn’t get bought by Microsoft for over a year.”
Marty O’Donnell and Mike Salvatori
However, the case is not as clear as it might seem. It seems like there’s no clear cut answer over who is in the right, from lack of defining the deal one way or another when it was initially set.
“We’re just trying to get them to do this thing that we thought everybody agreed to 20 years ago,”
O’Donnell said. The pair have received some royalties over the years, but it was never itemized so they had no way of knowing if the payment was fair and accurate. O’Donnell is not claiming to own the musical works, but rather the Halo composers are suing only for unpaid royalties.
“We started getting kind of suspicious because we were like, ‘I think the Halo 2 soundtrack really sold a lot, but we don’t have any numbers that show how many units were sold.’
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There is a mediation scheduled for this week. But with this Halo lawsuit, there’s no certainty any resolution will be found. If not, the dispute will likely go to court.
Effects On The Upcoming Show
O’Donnell and Salvatori have advised their lawyers to look into blocking the release of the upcoming Halo TV show through injunction. The show is scheduled to air on Paramount+ on March 24th. However, if successful, this could cause the iconic music to be removed from the series, or could delay the initial release.
