The Adjustment Bureau grossed $128 million worldwide. It was based on Philip K. Dick’s story “Adjustment Team,” optioned by a filmmaker in 2001. But the Dick estate has been forced to sue for $500,000 in bonus payments because the company that financed the movie, Media Rights Capital, declared a month after the film’s release that the story is in the public domain:

…Media Rights Capital, which financed the film, told the estate it had discovered the story to be in the public domain, partly as a result of its publication in 1954 in a magazine called Orbit.

In its suit, the Dick estate says that Orbit’s use of the story was unauthorized, and had been unknown to Mr. Dick, who, after his death in 1982, would become famous as the writer of stories on which the movies “Blade Runner,” “Total Recall” and “Minority Report” were based.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]