Question about licensing
My question is about Sam & Max legal licensing of the game - the original Hit the Road 1993 licensing.
Who owns the recordings of Bill and Nick -- Telltale, Double Fine, Lucasfilm and/or Disney? Or is the license expired? Or themselves?
Who own's rights to the (original, 1993) game? Is the license for this game expired?
Are the artworks expired, or does Steve Purcell still own them? If so, would a 'reimagining' of them by another artist be legal or illegal?
Just wondering, as we all wonder if and when Telltale will make a Remastered version of Sam & Max: Hit the Road. I mean, come on - they did it for Full Throttle, it wouldn't be that hard for Sam and Max.
Are they in Development Hell, because of multiple conflicting licenses and opinions? Or have they just not thought of it, and think Sam & Max are 'done'? Are the recordings - which were 11k/16bit, very staticy and not being remade or edited -
not due anytime soon?
If anyone could get Steve Purcell, Sean Clark, Michael Stemmle, Tim Shafer, anyone to comment on this? That would be greeeeat 
I've already got Bill Farmer's agent and email (well, his probably disused email as of, like, 10 years ago, haven't actually tried writing him because of general fear I'll be ignored); though naturally I've got none of the others, they're comment, their time.
Please, please, please.
Thank you, thank you, thankyou.
Comments
I am not Telltale Staff, but I think that it goes like this in a nutshell:
Steve Purcell owns the Sam and Max IP (including the comics)
LucasArts owns the Intellectual Property for Hit The Road
Telltale Games owns the Intellectual Property for Season 1, Season 2, Devil's Playhouse
You mentioned the Full Throttle Remaster, but that was actually done by the folks at Double Fine Games. Double Fine Games has a bunch of LucasArts alumni and they've been the studio remastering classic Point and Click games in past years, such as Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle.
They would probably be the ones to ask about a potential Hit the Road remake.
Telltale's current focus for the last several years has been to make interactive cinema games based off of popular IP like Batman, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, etc. They aren't currently focusing on classic point and click adventure games like they used to, and most of the LucasArts alumni in the earlier days of Telltale have since probably moved on.
It... doesn't look good.
The rights to Hit The Road are owned by Disney. Their studio, Disney Interactive, no longer make full games. They gave Kingdom Hearts to Square Enix, so I guess there's a possibility they could let someone do it, but I don't think anyone is that interested.
As for the remasters you mentioned, they were done by Double Fine because they were all Tim's games. Hit The Road wasn't, so I don't think he's interested.
I would love a remastered version, but... yeah... I'm not holding my breath.