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EXCLUSIVE: CBS’ drama pilot Quean has become the victim of a legal standoff between two media congloms. I have learned that Warner Bros TV, which produces the project with Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures, yesterday decided to pull the plug upon the advice of an outside legal firm.
When it was announced, Quean, written by The L Word creator Ilene Chaiken, sounded like a typical CBS procedural: It centers on an edgy and independent Millennial hacker girl who teams up with an Oakland police detective to solve crimes. The pilot secured Jaume Collet-Serra as director and was moving to the casting stage when Warner Bros. TV received a letter from Sony Pictures threatening a lawsuit over alleged similarities to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which Sony has the rights to and is adapting as a movie trilogy. (The first movie, directed by David Fincher, was released last year; the other two have been greenlighted).
Chaiken proceeded with an extensive p.1 rewrite of the pilot, changing most key plot elements, including the lead’s employer from a PI to a law firm, her boss from a white male private investigator to a black female lawyer, and the protagonist herself from a loner to a girl with a boyfriend. I hear CBS brass got the rewrite on Saturday and liked it. But it was also sent by Warner Bros TV to an outside law firm retained for the case. With Sony still threatening legal action, the firm recommended that the project doesn’t go forward over one major similarity: the lead character being a hacker. And yesterday, Warner Bros pulled the plug.
This is a rare legal battle in a business where most new ideas are well forgotten old ones. For instance, the CW pilot The Selection draws parallels to The Hunger Games, the network’s First Cut to Grey’s Anatomy. Sony TV’s CBS drama Baby Big Shot sounds on paper like a male Suits; NBC’s ensemble firefighter drama Chicago Fire is being compared to Rescue Me; and CBS has the modern Sherlock Holmes pilot from CBS TV Studios while Warner Bros has been doing Holmes movies and the BBC has a 21st century Holmes series on the air. The list goes on and on.
There have been attempts at legal action in the past, but I can’t think of of an outcome similar to this one in television, where the premise is important but key for each project is execution. For example, ABC’s comedy Less Then Perfect was an unofficial U.S. version of Betty La Fea, which didn’t prevent ABC from doing a successful adaptation of the Colombian telenovela several years later in Ugly Betty as the two shows took the original premise of an unattractive female assistant in different directions. Similarly, TNT’s The Closer had been referred to as an unofficial U.S. take on Prime Suspect, but it was very different from NBC’s official remake earlier this season. Maybe Sony is considering doing a Girl With The Dragon Tattoo TV series down the road and wouldn’t want a similar concept in the marketplace.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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So now no one can do a show or movie that has the lead character as a computer hacker?
Exactly. What the hell, Sony?
I guess the people behind the old Sandra Bullock movie “The Net” should sue everyone involved in the Dragon Tatoo books and movies then…
I look forward to Sandra Bullock suing Sony now for stealing her “female hacker” character from The Net. This is a ridiculous case of chickenshit lawyers not wanting to earn their paychecks. Your job is to defend the company’s products from all lawsuits… do your jobs. Winner gets his legal bills paid for, so what do you have to lose?
Did all of you read the article? “It centers on an edgy and independent Millennial hacker girl who teams up with an Oakland police detective to solve crimes. ” Well, TGWTDT has an edgy and independent Millennial hacker girl who teams up with a journalist to solve crimes. Sony just doesn’t want a similar plot while they are still developing the Millennium trilogy.
And that without mentioning that Lisbeth Salander also has a white male private investigator as her boss. Oh, and that she also works at a PI. There are just too many similarities.
Yeah, well they kinda reworked pretty much all the key aspects, and they still said no saying that the reason was that it centers around a hacker. did YOU read the article?
Exactly. Sony HAD a case pre-rewrite but NOW they don’t
All the key aspects? Like changing PI to a law firm? Changing the race and sex of her boss? Oh, by adding a boyfriend to the mix? Those are minor changes as long as the plot is still similar to TGWDT. If the female hacker is the only similarity, then I doubt CBS lawyers would back down. My guess is that the characterization of this female hacker is the exact duplicate of Lisbeth Salander. And the crime that they supposed to solve is almost similar to the ones in TGWDT.
What about New Amsterdam? It was a COMPLETE, OBVIOUS, AND TOTAL ripoff of Pete Hamill’s book Forever. No lawsuits filed there that I can remember.
I read the script last week and couldn’t get over the similarities to TGWTDT. I auditioned for a CBS pilot The Eastmans two or three years ago. The next year I auditioned for Blue Bloods. Same pilot as The Eastmans but cops and not as well written.
CBS does this stuff all the time.
I remember when some clueless “Dragon Girl” fans were accusing the girl on “NCIS” of ripping off their precious Salander character, despite the fact that the “NCIS” character had been around years before the books/movies.
Sounds like a shameless rip-off.
Looking forward/hoping Sony will move forward on the next two “Millennium” adaptations soon.
CBS and The Mentalist people owe a lot of money to USA and the Psych guys then.
The Mentalist is WB too. WBTV is known for stealing oops I mean “reworking” ideas that are hits elsewhere.
Chaiken is not a nice person to work with and likes to take credit for more than her fair share.
Plagiarism usually has a history behind it. There is a previous pattern of behavior. WBTV certainly has a lot of shows that are inspired by others and movies. Chaiken loves to sit on original writers and rewrite their pilots.
Those are the fact.
Peter Roth and his team at WBTV have ripped off many shows in their day along with Les Moonves and Nina Tasler at CBS. The Mentalist was one. Chaiken had their full support. “We want to do a show that focuses on the personal life of the Girl in TGWTDT. Set it in SF and go for it.”
The script is a total rip off. Who did they think they were fooling? That’s the hilarity of all of this. Sociopaths think no one notices when they steal and frankly Roth and Moonves fit this bill.
And Psych owes an apology to Monk.
The Sony movies aren’t original anyway…they are (will be) pretty much remakes of better Scandinavian movies which are based on books by a dead author who can’t reap the rewards of HIS hard work.
None of the Americans involved “created” anything.
but they bought the rights so they are allowed to do so. im sure cbs didn’t buy the rights to dragon tattoo
This isn’t about originality, this is about the rights that Sony bought from the Millennium Trilogy. If this new pilot sounds too similar to the trilogy, then Sony has every right to sue.
Legally, Sony must actively defend a copyright in order to keep it. So if WB had an obviously similar derivative-clone under development, Sony had to sue WB to mark its territory.
Where do you get that? Copyright isn’t like trademark–you don’t lose your rights if you allow others to infringe.
I got “that”, as you put it, by studying, by reading law books (some as thick as my fist, about 60% footnotes) explaining the ins-&-outs of intellectual property case law. I do that so when I discuss those issues with my attorney I won’t come off as the perfect ignoramus that he (and everybody else) assumes me to be (you as well, by the tone of your comment).
Wake up and die right! If you’re going to work in this business you must understand how the laws underpinning it work. It’s like someone trespassing on your property. It’s against the law to trespass. Hooray! That and $2 will buy me a cup of coffee. If you own a piece of property, and discover someone trespassing on it, you must take action to prevent it. It’s called “upholding your rights”. If you don’t take any action, courts might regard your inaction as ceding your rights. In real property law, if someone trespasses on your property repeatedly for a certain number of years, and you do nothing, they either get an easement or outright ownership because courts might conclude you abandoned your property rights. And what’s the point of buying the rights to a property if you aren’t willing to defend it, defined by those rights, and that purchase?
Rights must be upheld to have any power, any real-world value. Otherwise, you’ll be robbed blind.
Sony had a property to protect. If its executives fail to aggressively protect Sony’s property, Sony’s board of directors either fires them or Sony’s shareholders sue the board — or Sony gets picked clean by its competitors and goes out of business.
When another media conglomerate’s executives (who understand a thing or two about this, too) decided to infringe, Sony marked out its territory by filing notice.
Since these matters are usually litigated by insurance companies (E&O insurance), the infringer was informed by its carrier that their case was weak. End of story.
Understand?
That is what confused me… But is it because they don’t want this coming out at the same time as the final two Millennium Trilogy films?
This is not a case of Sony overreacting. The original draft was such a blatant ripoff it was hilarious. The lead had a badass motorcycle, a mohawk, crazy clothes and worked for a high-end PI firm. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
But the second draft didn’t. That’s the point. Sony is now just being greedy rather than protective
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was not even a hit movie and this beared so similarities. The Girl With The Dragon was a girl being tortured.
Over $220,000 in worldwide box office it sounds like a decent hit to me.
Not compared to production and marketing costs. At those numbers, the film doesn’t break even much less become a hit.
Well, guess what, according to boxoffice.com, the total budget (Production + Marketing) is $135M. The world wide gross for the film was $225M. TGWDT is in the green zone.
No it’s not. $225 million doesn’t = $90 million of profit. The studio gets back what? 55%-60% of that?
Not to mention, making a sequel would cost a lot more.
Why would studio only get 55-60% of that? The $135M already cover all of the cost and that includes the marketing. When you make a sequel, the balance sheet starts anew.
When you factor in how much Sony spent on the film (ie. trilogy rights, budget, promotion), the worldwide gross is a disappointment. It has not been a very profitable film.
Wish I owned 5%. It’s a $2-billion + franchise. Give it time.
Innumerate, meet illiterate.
That’s on the low end, Johnny…
Sony was banking on ‘Girl’ and she didn’t put out. Why do you think Fincher wants out now?
All tv shows are essentially a rehash of some prior tv show or shows.
Body of Proof = CSI with prettier female lead
CSI = Quincy with prettier, younger leads
Greys Anatomy = Season1 of ER
ER Season1 = St Elsewhere + Paper Chase
and the list goes on.
G-W-Dragon Tattoo is herself a rehash of the “Oracle” character (minus wheelchair) from CW/WB’ “Birds of Prey” …which was based on DC comics’ “Batman” characters…bringing us right back to CBS and Warner!
It’s the new Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game!
Speaking of Kevin Bacon, that serial killer show he’s in better watch out or they’ll be hearing from Hannibal Lecter’s lawyers…
“They want the same, but different …”, as William Goldman (“Adventures of the Screen Trade”) wrote; why you can’t sell a brutally original story or concept to a major media producer. First of all, there is no such animal (unless you consider “The Simpsons” brutally original). Second: their business model doesn’t encompass breaking new cultural ground, what brutal originality does and is supposed to do; why they are so risk averse. All-of-the-above makes them hard of hearing.
That means the only open road is indie micro-budget production. But if you choose to follow in John Cassavetes footsteps it makes no sense to pitch the story to an established producer. You should make and market it yourself — running all the risks, and suffering all the setbacks and disappointments, that the Big-Boys run and suffer.
CW is currently making a dead, flat out rip off of Grey’s.
It makes no sense whatsoever that Warners would back down on this based solely on a threat from Sony over this one similarity, especially given, as Smell The Panic points out, that The Mentalist, produced by Warners TV, was a blatant rip-off of USA’s Psych. They got away with it then so why would they back down now? I mean, at least make Sony actually go through with their threat.
Answer: clearly there are other issues with this pilot, which I have not read, or with the parties involved – Ilene and Joel are hardly shrinking violets – or with CBS’ enthusiasm level for the project. Because as Nellie points out, so many shows are already derivative so why would this one be singled out?
No, something else is going on here…
“The Mentalist” wasn’t a rip-off of “Psych”
Happy to see one of the many tv show rip offs of popular movies shut down.
Terrified to see how it was able to be shut down.
S
The people who defending CBS clearly have not read the script. There’s a reason they shut this thing down — it was not a normal case of one show being kinda like another.
Even if the original script was similar to Dragon Tattoo, the clearly made enough changes that it shouldn’t matter. A female hacker is now off limits because of Lisbeth? Really?
Then why did CBS backed out? There is more similarity that just the female hacker factor. Sony has the right to sue if the basic plot is following the TGWDT.
Because almost no one has been cast, it would get into significant legal battles over a show that might not even make it to the air, and what’s the point if they also have a dozen other potential dramas?
It sucks, because this is a totally idiotic move by Sony, but CBS backing out isn’t because Sony’s in the right. It’s a pilot, not a film.
Idiotic move by Sony or CBS is stupid enough that they already hired a director for the pilot. Before re-write, the script almost sound like a direct copy of TGWDT. CBS should never paid any attention to this in the first place. Sony paid good money for the rights and they have the rights to sue.
Meanwhile, CBS is moving forward with two of its most anticipated pilots – “The MentlArtist,” a heartwarming and nostalgic tale of a Hollywood psychic in the days of the Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema; and “Hugh”, a coming of age fantasy set in a Paris train station and starring Hugh Grant.
No way! Those actually sound interesting and good (well except for the Hugh Grant part). They would be drastically out of place on CBS.
Ok, it’s a rewrite. HUGH is now starring Hugh Jackman.
The very concept of Intellectual Property is ridiculous and a huge waste of time and efforts. Only lawyers profit from it. No movie/tv show would ever get made if we were to track down similarities, no matter how shocking and blatant they are. Ideas belong to everyone, copyright is a crime against nature and artistic freedom.
Tell that to Jobs, Gates, Spielberg, The Beatles, Lucas, Edison, Marconi, Tesla, Steinbeck, Hemmingway, O’Neill, Proust, Franklin, Fitzgerald, Grant, Twain, Miller, Oates, Rowling … etc, etc … . They wouldn’t have been rewarded for their insight and genius were it not for those laws you dismiss so casually.
And the rest of us would be vastly poorer today.
The legal concept of “intellectual property” marks the dividing line between our modern civilization — whose main economic engine is technical innovation — and classical civilizations powered by slavery.
“Ideas belong to everyone, copyright is a crime against nature and artistic freedom” – it’s also what allows creative people to make a living off their work.
Is patent law a crime against innovative freedom? Without it many of the most successful businesses we have today who have to shutter due to rip offs…
Yes, if you want the entire creative opus of civilization to be a bunch of You Tube videos of teenage garage bands and a handful of ignorant bloggers…
WB and CBS should tell Sony to take a hike this is a ridiculous legal threat with no precedent for success. They should go ahead with the pilot and let Sony sue.
How is it ridiculous? Sony paid good money for the trilogy so they have the rights to sue. Just from that brief description, it reminds me of TGWDT. If the script is quite different, then CBS wouldn’t back out.
What does it cost to develop and produce a pilot, a million or more? Add in another couple hundred grand in legal costs and the risk factor suddenly outweighs the earnings forecast. I know of an MOW that got made years ago but never got released because an inmate filed a handwritten lawsuit and the studio decided it was too much hassle to deal with the legal expenses. So if a convicted killer with a bic pen can stop a picture from getting released, a studio can stop a show from getting made. Even if it is ridiculous, it’ll be interesting to see if this becomes a trend.
Seriously, when was the last time CBS did anything original.
That’s the silver lining here, that it’s CBS. Nothing CBS has cookin’ is interesting in the least. They could pull the plug on all their pilots plus their entire current lineup and I wouldn’t even notice.
But, I hope this doesn’t impact The Selection. Yes, it’s obviously a ripoff of The Hunger Games, but that story told on TV would be notably different from books or movies, so why not have all three?
Why is “The Selection” a rip-off? Because it is set in a future dystopia featuring teens as the protagonists? The details are completely different. There are less differences between “Selection” and “Game” than there are between “The Vampire Diaries” and “Twilight”
so there’s only one female hacker in the world? sounds like some serious male thinking went into the meetings that produced this result. hilarious.
Let’s be honest folks… the minute this was announced everyone called it like they saw it… a rip-off.
It’s nice to see not everything can be stolen — even if Fincher’s ‘Tattoo’ was dull as shit.
The american version of this movie was awful! Sony should be sued for making Lazy Americans think they saw an original movie or even a good film!
I don’t understand why Warners reacts this way on this one yet goes ahead with a Vampire Diaries – which was blatantly Twilight on the small screen.
Whatever the case, I hope Collett-Serra gets something else soon. I really enjoyed what he did with Unknown.
Vampire Diaries = Twilight, but 50% less annoying and stupid.
It’s unclear what to do about ripoffs that improve on the original. I’m sure the lawyers will crush them, too.
you’re being sarcastic right? RIGHT?! Vampire Diaries is based on a book that was written YEARS before Twilight.
Because “The Vampire Diaries” is based on a book series that long predates “Twilight.” And beyond the pilot, there are no blatant similarities between the two screen properties
The US Dragon Tattoo cost well over $100 million to make and market. Well over. It isn’t a soaraway hit with $225 million box office yet (kudos to Sony logic. Spend ten times as much the 2009 version for only twice the box office in return).
It’ll need the ancillary streams for profit.
However there must indeed be something else in the background as a show featuring a hacker alone could not possibly be enough to scupper said show.
i auditioned for this pilot last week. i have to say that my first reaction to reading the script was that it was VERY similar to GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. so i’m not surprised by this news.
Doesn’t matter if it’s original, it only matters if you’re #1…and The Eye is #1.
Sorry, you misspelled the phrase “number 2″.
Hey Sony!
Lookie behind you and there’s an uncannily similar Swedish movie called “Män som hatar kvinnor” (trans. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).
So… You remake someone else’s film… then claim all rights to stories centering on young female hackers…?
Um… way to go?!
Hey LS, Sony paid for the rights to remake The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. How much did CBS paid to Sony for that right?
technically the translation is, Men Who Hate Women, just sayin
Somebody already posted this above, you should really try to read the thread to see if your comment has already been rendered moot. Sony PAID for the remake rights. CBS/Warners didn’t pay anybody, that’s the issue.
So, let me get this straight …
… were I to write a techno-thriller genre story based upon a world-wide computer hacking group that calls itself “Anonymous” — something that actually exists in the real world — and,
… one of the fact-based characters just happens to be a north German, Danish or Scandinavia Goth girl who is a crazy wilde-childe messed up in the head in more ways than anyone can even guess or imagine (Steig Larson’s fictional Lizbeth Salander character in a nutshell, or case, if you will …) — then,
… Sony will sue me for copyright infringement because it now owns the rights to that fictional character-type, and in near perpetuity?
I don’t think so — unless corporations have grown so powerful that they can, at will and through bullying, rewrite copyright law, dispensing with encumbrances like the U.S. Congress.
“…unless corporations have grown so powerful that they can, at will and through bullying, rewrite copyright law, dispensing with encumbrances like the U.S. Congress.”
Isn’t this exactly what the mega-media corps have been doing? This is what SOPA and PIPA were about. This is what ACTA is about. This is International bullying.
In Canada, we have a bill (C-11) on the verge of becoming law that will literally rewrite our copyright laws, “sponsored” by US mega-media corps. When (not if) passed, this new legislation will allow media companies to do a lot of things currently illegal, such as limit how long a PVR will keep a recorded program (24 hours…if you don’t watch it before then, it will be removed remotely), remove Fair Use by putting “digital locks” on anything electronic (such as music CD’s) so people buying them will not be able to legally create personal copies for their own use on other devices (MP3 players for example…you will have to
buyrent a copy for each device), and entrench the Corporate copyright holder as supreme over actual content creators.The difference between what is happening in Canada right now and what happened in the US in January is you Americans are in an election year and no politician wants to lose their job…our next election isn’t for another 3 years.
Don’t worry CBS, just change the hacker to a male. Sure it may not make any sense given the original story you were trying to tell, but it will help protect you from legal problems!
By the way how is your “Sherlock” rip off…oh sorry, reimagining coming along?