Richard the Lion-Hearted

The film identified is the 1923 production 'Richard the Lion-Hearted', directed by Chester Withey and starring Wallace Beery. While the user suggested 1912, there were no major US feature films by this title in that specific year (a Vitagraph short titled 'Richard III' was released in 1912, but 'Richard the Lion-Hearted' is the prominent early feature of the title). This 1923 film was a sequel to the 1922 film 'Robin Hood'. Under US copyright law, works published between 1923 and 1963 required a renewal of copyright in their 28th year to maintain protection. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) shows no renewal registration for this title. According to Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (1894-1939), the copyright on this film was never renewed, causing it to fall into the public domain in 1951. Because it was published before 1928, it would now be in the public domain regardless of renewal status due to the expiration of the maximum 95-year term.