The Movies is a wonderful piece of gaming history and one of the few games I have as a retail copy. But does anyone have a clue who owns the rights for it currently? Activision? Lionhead, the devs, have been closed (or are closing, not sure what their current status is), so I guess they have no say anymore. Maybe Microsoft?

Probably this one.

Yeah, that's the most likely scenario. The weird thing is that the game is not sold anywhere digitally, so that got me curious about who owns the rights.

Or is it still sold somewhere?

The rights Activision had expired and it was pulled from sale on Steam around that time. Microsoft probably has the rights but likely see no profit in selling it - in fact selling it might be a liability since it links to the old The Movies Online website which could be malware central by now.

Changing any strings so that the URL points elsewhere would likely take about an hour or two of work though, the cost of which should easily be reclaimed and then turned into pure profit.

I'd totally buy a a digital copy as a back-up.