Beatty seeks to renew Dick Tracy fight with Trib

Actor Warren Beatty asked a Delaware court to let him renew a four-year fight with Tribune Co., the bankrupt newspaper publisher, over the television and movie rights to comic-strip detective Dick Tracy.

Beatty, 72, who produced Walt Disney Co.'s 1990 "Dick Tracy" movie with himself playing the yellow-raincoated detective, said in a June 9 court filing that he met the terms of a 1985 contract with Tribune by making that movie and a Tracy television special scheduled to air next month.

Chicago-based Tribune, owner of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune newspapers, filed for bankruptcy in December to restructure $13 billion in debt. It first sued Beatty in 2005 to try to recover rights to Tracy, which it calls "one of the most-recognized detectives in American fiction." In that and more recent court battles, Beatty has said Tribune has no legal grounds to reclaim the rights to Tracy.

The TV and movie rights are worth "tens of millions of dollars," Tribune said in court papers filed in March.

Beatty's November suit against Tribune in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles was automatically put on hold when Tribune filed for bankruptcy. The New York law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP is handling Beatty's case, according to this week's filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Beatty's lawyers said the case should be resolved in the Los Angeles district court.

Gary Weitman, a Tribune spokesman, declined to comment.

The bankruptcy case is In re Tribune Co., 08-13141, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington)