First Art Buchwald, now this:
DreamWorks hit with another "Kung Fu Panda" suit
... An artist named Jayme Gordon on Wednesday filed a colorfully illustrated 28-page complaint in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, alleging that Dreamworks and distributor Paramount copied the film from Gordon's copyrighted works, collectively titled "Kung Fu Panda Power." ... The lawsuit comes as Dreamworks is battling another writer, Terence Dunn, who also claims to have pitched the story of a "spiritual kung-fu fighting panda bear" to studio executives during a series of phone conversations in November 2001. ...
Plagiarism lawsuits are one of Hollywood's favorite sports. As I note above, humorist Art Buchwald sued Paramount over a story he claimed it had stolen and turned into Coming to America. Buchwald ultimately prevailed. (Former Paramount exec Jeffrey Katzenberg was called to the stand but had trouble recalling details about story development on the picture.)
But this stuff is nothing new. As mystery novelist Raymond Chandler wrote in the 1940s:
"The law recognizes no plagiarism except that of basic plots. It is far behind the times in its concept of these things. My ideas have been plagiarized in Hollywood and I have been accused of plagiarism myself, by a guy who said The Blue Dahlia [which Chandler wrote] was lifted from an original of his. Luckily Paramount was in a position to show that his story never left the story department ...
Throughout the play The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O'Neill uses the expression "the big sleep" as a synonym for death. He is apparently under the impression that this is a current underworld or half-world usage, whereas it is a pure invention on my part. If I am remembered long enough, I shall probably be accused of stealing the phrase from O'Neill, since he is a big shot ...
No doubt the lawsuits will still be flying in 2211.
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6 comments:
I'd sure like to see some of Gordon's pictures of HIS Kung Fu Panda. Might be very revealing. The plot thickens...
Anyway, those pictures would have to be pretty explicit, methinks, for Gordon to have a case. A kung fu panda bear isn't that original an idea. I remember reading a comic book back in the '80's called Panda Khan. It had pandas living in a monastery, and I think it had them practicing martial arts as well. Twinning a panda with Chinese martial arts is hardly a brilliant idea. It's an easy idea. It'll be interesting to see how these lawsuits work out. Neither seem to have the mojo of the suits filed against J.K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter). They seem to have a legitimate gripe. They'll be interesting to follow too...
The movie came out 3 years ago and this guy just realized that his idea was stolen?
here's a link to some pics - very interesting:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/02/illustrator-sues-dreamworks-animation-over-fun-loving-panda-character.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsandbuzz+%28News+%26+Buzz%29
lol...this guy should be sued for calling himself an illustrator!
He'll never survive in court unless he can prove they took actual story elements from him and that's extremely unlikely. Just because he came up with a fat panda (aren't all pandas fat?) that does Kung Fu he thinks DW stole from him. Good luck wit that one!
He'll have to prove DW actually looked at his unsolicited materials - which is very unlikely. They probably sent it back with a form rejection letter without even looking at what he had.
Then he'll have to prove he has something more than a Jr. High school kid's drawings of a Panda in a KungFu pose. Like story elements they stole.
Not likely.
Yeesh, bad art, but still, there's a weird resemblance there...
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