Activison or MS ?

Lionhead, therefore Microsoft as far as I am aware.

Depends on the Contract that Lionhead signed with Activision. If the contract is still in effect, then Microsoft has to honor it. If you take over a company you also take over it's legal and contractual obligations unless bankruptcy is involved.That is standard law.

The scary side of licensing could mean neither own it outright.

Where it gets messy is where the IP has content licensed from third parties. This happens with in-game music, for example. The third-party license may be restrictive or require payment of royalties. Even if you as the IP holder have clear title, terms like that may make it difficult or unprofitable to grant an off-price dealer like GOG permission to sell.

Microsoft were publishing the cancelled Xbox port of The Movies so at the very most Activision only have the publishing rights to the PC version and the IP is still with Lionhead. Like you said it depends on the contract but it looks like The Movies IP itself belongs to Lionhead.

I hope Lionhead still have it, because I'd love to see a sequel to this. Or else a standalone program based solely on making machinima, I'd have hours of fun with that.

And i would like to see this game on GOG.

It's a great game, and one of the ones I managed to save from the PC-purge :)

Glad to have it in my shelf :)

Indeed. That's why we may never see games like Bladerunner here.

This might explain why only the Mac version is sold at GamersGate.

LIonhead still has the IP rights, but they might be limited by the deal they made with Activision for publication.
It's like Marvel comics.They own the IP for Spiderman and X Men, but Marvel Studios cannot make a movie from them because the film rights are still owned by Sony and Fox because by the contract Marvel signed with those studios. When the contract expieres, Marvel regains the film rights. Until then, unless Marvel buys out the contract, only Sony and Fox can do a live action Spidey or X Men film.

I want to play this game so bad! It's a shame that such a brilliant and unique title is not available anywhere for download.

I don't think we'll see that game here anytime soon, if ever.

It used to be on STEAM, and was taken down after a domain that was linked to inside of the game expired and got bought by a porn company. Since they only had binaries, and apparently the source code isn't available, they couldn't take said link out of the game, so they had to pull it from steam.

Or at least that's the story that's been making the rounds for years regarding its retirement from there.

I guess hexediting the distributed binary is too much work. >:P