Everybody Comes To Rick's

Everybody Comes to Rick's is an American play that was bought unproduced by Warner Brothers for a record figure of $20,000. It was adapted for the movie Casablanca (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Written by the Americans Murray Burnett and Joan Alison in 1940, prior to the United States' entry into World War II, the play was anti-Nazi and pro-French Resistance. The film became an American classic, highly successful and ranking on many top lists.

Feeling they had not gotten full recognition for their contributions, Burnett and Alison tried to regain control of their property, but the New York Court of Appeals ruled in 1986 that they had signed away their rights in their agreement with Warner Brothers. Under their threat not to renew the agreement when the copyright reverted to them, the film company paid them each $100,000 and the right to produce the original play. It was produced in 1991 at the Whitehall Theatre in London, where it ran for six weeks.