3 Unexpected Movies That Got Sued For Plagiarism
You wouldn't ever think that these movies are a copy of someone else's work.
Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish whether the author was inspired by someone else's work, copied it directly, or simply took one of the mentioned standards.
In these cases, the issue is resolved by the court.
The Terminator
The plot of the movie that was destined to glorify James Cameron in the future allegedly came to the director in a dream.
Cameron made no secret of the fact that he was partly inspired by the classics of fantasy literature. But according to Harlan Ellison, Terminator plagiarised his writings.
In fact, in his story Soldier there is a similar plot: a soldier from the future finds himself in 1964, where no one believes him.
Then an enemy soldier comes after him, and the protagonist sacrifices himself to save his family from the past.
Ellison accused Cameron of plagiarizing this particular work. The director denied it, but the similarities were too obvious.
The lawsuit was settled in a pretrial order, and a line appeared in the credits of Terminator: "acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison."
A Fistful of Dollars
Director Sergio Leone, as he claimed, collected in his movie many references to the classics of cinema and literature. But Akira Kurosawa disagreed.
The great director felt that Leone had simply made an unofficial remake of his Bodyguard. In both films, a lone hero saves a city caught in the crossfire between two gangs.
The Japanese production company Toho sued Leon. He ignored the accusations for a long time, but then agreed to pay compensation.
The exact amount was not disclosed, but rumors say it was around $100,000 plus a percentage of profits.
Monsters, Inc.
The creators of Monsters Inc. have twice been accused of plagiarism. The first one to sue was Lori Madrid, the author of the children's poem There's a Boy in My Closet, which she published in 1999.
Madrid even demanded that Monsters, Inc. not be released until the lawsuit was over. However, the court dismissed the suit, finding no similarity between the works.
The artist Stanley Mouse said that the main characters of the story are copied from his work Excuse My Dust, which he offered to Hollywood studios in the late nineties.
This is how one of Mouse's characters looked. He also worked for the Monster Corporation of America, located in Monster City.
Pixar representatives said that the artists and screenwriters themselves came up with all the designs. The lawsuit was settled in a pretrial order, but the conditions remain unknown.