A dispute over the rights to the Ghostface mask has sparked a legal battle, with Spyglass and Paramount Pictures suing a Los Angeles-based special effects studio claiming ownership of the droopy-eyed horror visage.
In a lawsuit filed on Friday in California federal, the companies say that the Alterian Ghost Factory is threatening copyright infringement litigation ahead of Scream 7‘s release later this month. The suit seeks a court order, which would bar the special effects studio from suing, establishing that it’s on solid legal ground.
Alterian “intentionally slept on its purported rights in the iconic ‘Ghostface’ mask used throughout the Scream franchise for thirty years,” states the complaint.
Brian Wheeler, a lawyer for Alterian, said that the company intends to sue. “We will be filing our complaint later today, which speaks for itself,” he wrote in an email.
The appearance of Ghostface in the Scream franchise can be traced back to one of the film’s producers discovering the mask inside a Northern California home being scouted as a filming location. The production team subsequently licensed it from Fun World, a costume company that had been manufacturing and selling it since the early 1990s. The mask has been licensed for use in each installment for 30 years.
Alterian argues that Fun World had no right to license the mask, saying that it created the underlying design first, the suit says.
But by Paramount’s thinking, the underlying dispute is one between Fun World and Alterian. It’s also of the thinking that Alterian surrendered any potential right to claim ownership of Ghostface since it hasn’t taken action despite knowing of Fun World’s licensing deals for decades.
Alterian in July 2024 asserted rights to the mask, sending demand letters claiming that Fun World had infringed on its copyright to its designs, according to the complaint. Fun World responded that it engaged a Hong Kong-based sculptor decades ago under a work-made-for-hire agreement to create a new line of Halloween masks.
In the suit, Paramount and Spyglass say they’ve maintained in correspondence with Alterian that any claims asserting ownership of the mask are barred by the statute of limitations, among other things. Last month, Alterian escalated its demands and threatened to file a lawsuit unless it was paid millions of dollars, the suit claims.
In a 2020 case involving rights to the mask, a federal court found that Gardner is time-barred from asserting a claim since he knew of Fun World’s licensing as early as 1996 and no later than 2003.
“Alterian has never legally established that it owns the rights to the Ghostface mask, and it will not be able to prove it now in this litigation,” writes Aaron Moss, whose team includes Joshua Geller and Hannah Shepherd, in the complaint. “And seeking to disrupt the release of a completed motion picture mere weeks before its release—the seventh installment of a franchise that Alterian watched grow in silence for three decades—is an outrageous attempt to shake down” Spyglass and Paramount.
Alterian’s work can be seen in The Return of the Living Dead, Zombieland and Hocus Pocus. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
