Yet apparently, it never made any money.
Fans were surprised when pleas appeared on the internet, asking them not to buy the 25th anniversary special edition. We discovered that Peter S. Beagle had not been paid any royalties since Granada International, the company which released the movie, claimed it had never had any profits.
The sheer ballsiness of this claim is astounding. The company kept releasing more and more copies despite the fact that no one was apparently buying them? It was beyond ridiculous.
The company used a variety of accounting tricks, shell corporations and multiple ledgers, to hide the fact that The Last Unicorn was doing quite well, thank you. They sold it for a pittance to a subsidiary, who could then release it without paying any royalties to the author. Foreign sales weren’t being tabulated properly. It was a mess and the paperwork was almost impenetrable.
Luckily, there is a happy ending to this tale. In 2011 (and remember the original movie was released in 1982), the new CEO of Granada agreed to pay Beagle back royalties. When the new CEO, Adam Crozier, came in, Beagle and his representatives took a chance. They knew he would have no reason to continue to perpetuate a cover up since he had been hired with a mandate to clean house.
Crozier quickly agreed that Beagle had not been paid his due and wanted to work together to increase profits from this very successful story.
It took a lot of persistence and if the film had only been a moderate success instead of a decades-long favourite, it might have been far more difficult. But I give full credit for Crozier doing the right thing.
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