Remember all the sniggering jokes about how Michael Bay’s The Island is just a rip-off of schlock scifi classic Parts: The Clonus Horror?
The producers of Clonus weren’t laughing. Now they’re suing Warner Bros/Dreamworks and asking that the film be pulled from theaters and barred from future release. Which, looking at the box office, was going to happen anyway. The damages being sought are unknown.
The producers in question are Myrl A. Schreibman and Robert S. Fiveson, who also directed the film about a colony of clones who are raised believing in a promised land called "America" where they may one day go to live, but it turns out that they’re just being raised for spare parts. One of the clones escapes and is chased. Come on, where are the similarities?
Actually, many reviewers spotted the similarities, and I bet CHUD.com would have included some withering and snarky commentary about it had we run a review of the film.
What does Dreamworks say? "The Island was independently created and does not infringe anyone’s copyrights." Of course, considering the way that Bay and producer Walter Parkes are battling it out to see who can blame outside forces for the film’s failure fastest, I expect that we will soon learn the movie bombed because of the suit.