Screenwriting : G.I Joe writers sue Paramount-MGM... by Marvin Willson

That's the way the ball bounces sometimes. Hope they get something out of it besides having their annual wages for screenwriting drop significantly. Does irk me just a tad they are suing for $23 million dollars with less of a case than I have.

At least I can say mine was the more successful movie with a bigger box office gross. So there is that.

I'm sorry Don, what box office or yours are you talking about?

Refer back to my first comment Marvin.

Okay. I'm confused. I read your first comment and I still don't understand what your case/movie is.

Imagine this. That is an article about two screenwriters suing two major studios right?

What were thy suing for?

The case they have for suing the studios who made G.I. Joe Retaliation.

Something similar happened to me with another film.

I get that. Hence I'm asking what is your story?

Yea I am equally confused as to what you are referring to Don. While it's great they are suing for their claim, do they not believe studios will not want to work with them in the future for fear of being sued?

@ Hardy. Did you read the actual compliant?

You can register a pitch. They actually did. There is a copy of the LOC submission attached to the complaint.

As long a there was proof give the writer's what's do them.

The moment you put pen to paper, it's copyright. What's different in this case, is the fact that the writers were credited as writers on the first G.I Joe movie and where asked to submit ideas for a sequel, on the promise that if selected, they would write the sequel. I think, in this case, the burden of proof is on the Production company, to show they didn't steal.

I would imagine that they've set such a high claim amount so that they may do a fraction settlement out of court, knowing full well the studio won't want the case to go to trial in case they're successful as that could open up a whole can of worms for the future. That is, if they have a valid case. All the best, Mark -------- http://www.moviedraft.com

idiots

I'm pitching JEM Live, I just hope they are less shady towards me.

Jem Live?

Good luck David and Paul. May you be successful - not just gaining redress for the blatant theft of your intellectual property - and deliver a little bit of ambient justice for the hundreds of thousands of others who have been ripped off by the machine over the decades. Don't settle out of court, take them all the way, let the story run in the media, encourage others to do the same and maximise the damages you receive, that's my personal advice as someone who has walked similar ground

Now this one really was a shock to me when I read it.... Buchwald v. Paramount (1990) 1990 Cal. App. LEXIS 634, was a breach of contract lawsuit filed and decided in California in which humorist and writer Art Buchwald alleged that Paramount Pictures stole his script idea and turned it into the 1988 movie Coming to America. Buchwald won the lawsuit and was awarded damages, and then accepted a settlement from Paramount before any appeal took place. The decision was important mainly for the court's determination in the damages phase of the trial that Paramount used "unconscionable" means of determining how much to pay authors, which is widely called "Hollywood Accounting." Paramount claimed, and provided accounting evidence to support the claim, that despite the movie's $288 million in revenues, it had earned no net profit, according to the definition of "net profit" in Buchwald's contract, and hence Buchwald was owed nothing: a classic example of Hollywood accounting. The court agreed with Buchwald's argument that this was "unconscionable", and therefore invalid. Fearing a loss if it appealed, and the subsequent implications of the unconscionability decision across all its other contracts, Paramount settled for undisclosed terms. The case was the subject of a 1992 book, Fatal Subtraction: The Inside Story of Buchwald v. Paramount by Pierce O'Donnell, the lawyer who represented Buchwald, and Los Angeles Times reporter Dennis McDougal.

I guess before learning how to pitch or the correct format of your script, what you need to learn is how to hire a good lawyer, when you decide to write a screenplay :-(

Yes Marvin. Why should all of the boy films become flesh? Jem, Kimber, Aja, and Shana are about to hit the big screen...along with the Misfits of course.

@Wayne Smith Jr. What are you talking about? LOL

@chris Johnson - The sequel is a different project. The writers and the studio have zero right to the characters as they are owned by Hasbro. The complaint is that an agreement was made that if they presented a story for the sequel and it was used, they would be employed to write it. Paramount, told the writers, they were going in a different direction and then used almost every story beat created by Elliot and Lovett. (if you read the side by side comparison in the complaint, it's 99% the same). Droit Moral would not stand up in this case as the studio had not paid the writers for the work, therefore transferring the assignment of rights.

I'm implying the writers don't own the G.I Joe, characters.

It won't go to Jury. As stated earlier, they'll settle and probably never work again.

@Marvin... Jem and the Holograms is Hasbro's call to the female fans. I'm presenting my live adaptation to them soon.

I disagree my learned friend. I think in this case, the legal dept of paramount did not know what was going on. Had they known, I'm sure they would have had paperwork in place and paid them a fee for their work, to avoid, exactly this kind of shenanigans, (As WGA members and signatories, they should have been paid anyway).

That's Hollywood; if you don't know this by now, why are you in the business?

Are they talking about ideas or actual script? Ideas can't be copyrighted, scripts can. Everyone has ideas and many could have the same idea. If a script that is a different animal and go after them. An idea or ideas? Good luck! Won't get to first base.

Well, that won't be the first time Paramount has been sued. But Paramount sues smaller producers and others all the time, so it's a case of the shoe being on the other foot for a change.

You need to read the complaint to understand it. They allegedly did a detailed treatment as requested by the producers. The producers passed, stating they were going in another direction. The final movie, according to the side by side, copied virtually every beat and character. They were not some schmo's, these guys wrote the first G.I. Joe.

Is it me or doesn't it seem like any American kid could have wrote this movie? I mean this was the toy in the 80's and all us youngens put our imagination in over drive to kill Cobra and his men lol. Gosh I did things to Cobra that are unthinkable. Now these guys are suieing for $23 million! Got to love America..

I found that the exec's that I dealt with, who were usually in the 20's got off stealing your script rather than paying a few grand to just buy the damn thing. I think it became the joke at the coke parties on the weekends, and do not get me started on Goan & Globus, who got my script from my attorney, went to Israel and filmed it, because there is an exemption in place preventing a lawsuit. People get their kicks in many ways. I can see these guys being in the next SAW movie, maybe gutting off their greedy little claw-like hands?

Boy that sucks, where is the love? these people are already rich as sh*t but to them ripping of a hard working writer is a game?

@ Michael, Historically, it is alleged that Playwright's are to blame for the treatment of screenwriters.

Hi Marvin, I have a pal who was an off Broadway playwright and even he when he went to films was astonished. I made the huge mistake of telling a former HBO producer who produced my friends series , Laurel Ave., of that and not knowing his wife is a theater producer and playwright. Foot in mouth disease. I rallied back by saying it's a different crowd, movie peeps pay 10 bucks, theater peeps pay 100 bucks, different socio economic strata and the whole nine yards. Nothing wrong with rich, hell I'd like to be one day, but the mindset of the people is different, a little more arrogance, a tad more rarefied air breathing, you know the deal...lol :-)

Re-reading your comment, I'm curious for further explanation, Marvin. Are playwrights more arrogant as well?

I heard the original idea and script for VALKYRIE was ripped off from an Australian guy. He didn't bother pursuing it because he thought he would have no chance.

Playwrights have the ultimate control of their material. They hire/fire and can close down production if someone changes a single word of their written words. Jack Warner, (guess the studio), didn't want screenwriters to exercise the same level of control over film production, so he made it his ambition to relegate screenwriters to the lowest level people in film. (Most screenwriters are not even allowed on film sets). Yet, without screenwriters, there is no film industry, nobody works.