A Canadian author has sued NBC Universal and director Judd Apatow claiming they ripped off the premise of the hit movie "Knocked Up" from her book of the same name. CNN.com
I don't know the details of this case, but I am going to guess that this sort of thing happens fairly often. If you have a great idea, it is probably safe to assume that at least a dozen people have had the same great idea. Today I read David Anaxagoras' post about shelving a script upon the discovery of several similar scripts in development. After working on one of my scripts I discovered that there were at least four other writers within my small realm of knowledge working on projects with basically the same premise. Truly unique concepts are precious and few.
4 comments:
Well, even if you got a premise that is similar to five other screenwriters concepts out there, you still know you are going to sell and make the movie based on the quality of your writing and script.
So, I actually don't worry or think about that anymore.
Perhaps the situation doesn't reflect your assumption that all great minds think alike.
Maybe it's more a case of everyone chasing after the same low denominator, a display of less original thinking vs. more original thinking.
There are a lot of people around, many in position to buy things, who think they want something truly original and different. Then when it's offered to them, they don't find it so appealing after all. What they really want is something not that much different than what they are accustomed to. This is the source of the idea of "mass" in mass media. Add in the complication of pushing a truly large amount of money, scores of millions, out onto the green baize of some unknown gamble, and you have a perfect confluence of elements designed to come up with not originality, but "something that works."
Don't know about the book, but "Knocked Up" the movie has about the same level of originality as "Snakes on a Plane."
The title is an exact summary of the plot. The advantage of this, one of the latest trends in the "industry," is that the audience knows just from the title what they are going to get so it makes the marketing much simpler and probably (from that perspective) more efficient.
Oh, and by the way, in case you haven't seen it, Knocked Up the movie is pretty much a study in the cliches that tug at the funnybone and the heartstrings, especially if you're still in eighth through 12th grade.
Terry Rossio said something to the effect that Hollywood really wants something that is the same, but different. That seems to be what most movies are - the same, but different.
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