That is not dead which can eternal lie… The Lovecraft collection, free online.
Is there still any actual verification that Lovecraft’s works are now out of copyright?
I can give some info on this one. My agent represents one of the groups that claims copyright to Lovecraft’s work.
According to what I’ve been told (and this is from memory, so it might be a little off) Lovecraft himself didn’t leave anything in the form of a solid will. After his death, two different people came forward with arguments that they’d been granted ownership. Both claims were rather flimsy legally—I think one might ACTUALLY have a napkin with a scribbled promise on it. (That sounds too cliched to be true, but it is what I’ve been told.)
Either way, both groups know they have shaky legal ground, and neither one wants to take it to court to force the issue. If they sued each other, or anyone infringing, the courts could very well decide that all of the claims are legally null. Therefore, everybody treads very softly, and nobody seeks to shake the boat by being aggressive with infringement. Hence, lots of derivative works (some by some very popular authors, like Neil Gaiman) and some low-budget films, songs, graphic novels, etc.
So far, I’ve heard that nobody has been willing to finance a major film because the legal issues are so uncertain that investors are skittish. But there are several screenplays that have drawn some notice.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.