Even though The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix was a big hit, it faced many challenges regarding the rights of an important character. This adaptation of the books of Michael Connelly follows the story of defense attorney Mickey Haller who solves different cases in his Lincoln car. In the TV series, Haller is given the cases of a lawyer who was killed, which includes a high-profile case of a billionaire who is suspected of a double murder.
With the popularity of streaming services, the competition has grown extremely fierce, which leads to many rights issues as every streaming platform wants to gain control over popular literary works. As a result, studios are investing heavily in securing the rights to popular books and franchises to create profitable content. This has created problems for Netflix as they were unable to gain rights to an important character for The Lincoln Lawyer.
Why Bosch’s Rights Issue Is A Problem For Netflix
Netflix has gained the rights of The Lincoln Lawyer, but it has become a huge problem for them to introduce Bosch in this series. Titus Welliver plays Harry Bosch in Bosch, which is a TV series by Amazon Studios which means that Netflix would have to gain permission from Amazon to use this character. Both of the series are set in the same universe, but again, due to the complex rights issues, both characters cannot make a crossover as the author Michael Connelly said in an interview with AARP, “If we got Amazon and Netflix working together, we could also solve world peace.”
Bosch is known to be the half-brother of Mickey Haller in the books of Michael Connelly. He is also a homicide detective who interacts a lot with Mickey, who is a defense lawyer. In the book, “The Crossing”, Haller asks Bosch to become his detective when Collins gets injured in an accident. There are several other occasions in many books where both of these characters interact and help each other in solving the cases, which means that The Lincoln Lawyer would have been closer to the books if Netflix could show both of these characters.
Can Griggs Really Replace The Lincoln Lawyer’s Bosch?
Raymond Griggs is a new addition to The Lincoln Lawyer (TV series), as he was not included in Michael Connelly’s book. Since Netflix could not introduce the character of Bosch, they had to replace him with the detective Raymond Griggs and Cisco, whose rights are not owned by Amazon or other studios. Cisco is an investigator who also appears in the books and is the fiancé of Lorna, who is the second ex-wife of Mickey Haller.
Griggs cannot fully replace the character of Bosch, so Netflix had to introduce two characters to compensate for that. Books have detailed the relationship between Haller and Bosch and shown them as half-brothers, but Netflix can not even reference the character due to rights issues. Although Netflix has improved the working relationship of Haller with these characters in The Lincoln Lawyer, they can never replace Bosch.
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