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> The book "Gravity" is a medical techno-thriller about a doctor in space fighting a disease outbreak on a space station.

Remember that sometime between 1999 and 2002[1], Gerritsen wrote and submitted a third act re-write including "scenes of satellite debris destroying ISS and the lone surviving female astronaut adrift in her spacesuit." (core suspense of Cuaron's script).

[1]http://www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-2014/

Screenwriters re-write portions of scripts all the time, yet are rarely granted writing credit on the script. Every hollywood script has had at least 4-5 writers on it, yet only one of them gets the credit and the royalties. How that's decided, I honestly don't know, but there were stories about the producer's girlfriends getting more writing credits than screenwriters in the 50s and 60s.

> The court found that even if all allegations in her complaint were taken to be true, they still would not establish that Warner Brothers was bound by that contract.

So it is possible that: 1) X sells rights to Y, having Y commit to obligations in exchange. 2) Z acquires Y. 3) Z now has the rights but not the obligations.

WTF?

I'd guess they either don't have the rights, or don't have the obligations. If you're suing for breech of contract, you'd have to show they have the obligations; if you're suing for infridgement, you have to show they don't have the right.

money baby, money, loooots of money

Yes, but that is not really the point here.

Her attorney didn't describe with enough detail why WB was on the hook. The court dismissed it, but they are allowed to fix it and go on.

This is a really standard litigation issue. It isn't a big deal.

>The lawsuit was not regarding plagiarism

I didn't see the word plagiarism mentioned anywhere. That's overused, and means presenting someone else's work as your own, not ripping someone off by basing something on their work. If someone else had made the Gravity movie, then the studio took it and released it as theirs, that would be plagiarism, but not stealing plot ideas.

I guess I'm wandering away from the topic here (since the current issue seems more related to contract law than to the ethics of plagiarism)... but I'm not sure it's so cut-and-dried a definition. Plenty of people and academic authorities include the uncredited appropriation of ideas in their definition of plagiarism, not just the wholesale lifting of entire passages/works word-for-word.

e.g. Harvard's "What constitutes plagiarism" at http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=i... says:

"[I]t is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source ... When you use your own language to describe someone else's idea, that idea still belongs to the author of the original material. Whenever you use ideas that you did not think up yourself, you need to give credit to the source in which you found them, whether you quote directly from that material or provide a responsible paraphrase."

Wikipedia and the dictionary on my Mac also make reference to the taking of ideas as plagiarism, so it doesn't seem uncommon to include ideas in the definition.

EDIT: markdown fail.

Did you miss the part about the person who wrote the script for the movie being involved in the original project, based on the book?

Did you miss the part where this was a contract issue? Where the author of the book said, literally, "Yeah, Gravity is a great film, but it's not based on my book"? She's trying to argue that a contract she made with one company would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company that made a movie she admits wasn't based on her book. And that's why it comes down to contract law, and contracts do not represent an easy, straightforward, intuitive body of law.

You don't particularly have to like the way that stuff works, but the simple truth is that changing it to make it work the intuitive and desired way in this particular case would probably result in many more other types of cases suddenly coming out in ways you wouldn't like.

I think it's completely rational to assume that mergers and acquisitions would assign all assets, liabilities, and obligations to the purchasing entity. Given the history of Hollywood Accounting, I think it's also rational to assume that WB is trying to use legal loopholes to weasel their way out of obligations.

That being said, I thought the bulk of WBs case wasn't that they weren't beholden to her contract, but that the movie GRAVITY is a derivative of a different work entirely.

> I think it's completely rational to assume that mergers and acquisitions would assign all assets, liabilities, and obligations to the purchasing entity. Given the history of Hollywood Accounting, I think it's also rational to assume that WB is trying to use legal loopholes to weasel their way out of obligations.

Absolutely. To argue otherwise would be anarchy. Can you imagine if some company bought Microsoft and decided to start fresh? Like discard all the responsibilities it has to support its software and such. I know this is far fetched but my point is that this is what due diligence is supposed to discover and the acquirer's inability to find it does not mean they are absolved of the responsibility.

Bad example; Microsoft supports its software because it wouldn't be able to maintain market share if it didn't, not because of contractual obligations.

Does that mean that the end of life on [1] mean that date or an earlier date as Microsoft chooses?

[1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

Not necessarily.

Pretty sure we still have a (outrageously expensive) support contract for NT4 on alpha for some godawful legacy system.

> would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company

"Somehow"? They would do so via a completely standard clause that enjoins any acquiring entity to honour the terms of the contract. I have never negotiated a contract that did not have a such a clause. Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing.

Maybe she had incompetent representation. Maybe the arcana of this specific acquisition were such that any contractual obligations were effectively terminated.

But don't pretend for a moment that this isn't bog-standard, boiler-plate-level stuff. We know exactly how such contractual obligations would be conveyed across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes because we are used to writing contracts that specifically say "If you're acquired, the obligations under this contract are on the acquirer."

Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing.

I don't know the details of the contract, but I know that apparently it gave her a percentage of net, rather than gross, on the resulting film.

Which, when dealing with Hollywood, ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel on the part of whatever attorney represented/advised her during the negotiations :)

> ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel

A much more likely explanation is that the writer and her lawyer know perfectly well the difference between gross and net, but this was the best deal they could get, and it was better than nothing.

Writer and her lawyer: "We demand 3% of the gross."

Studio head: "I'm not offering any percentage of the gross."

Writer and her lawyer: "OK, we'll settle for 2.5% of the gross."

Studio head: "I told you: nothing on the gross. Zero. If you don't like that, get lost. I'll hire another writer."

Writer and her lawyer: "Well, OK, how about 3% of the net."

Studio head: "I think we can agree to that."

I wouldn't mind how studios did this if they were simply up front about it instead of being weasels about it.

They aren't being weasels. Everyone in Hollywood already knows there isn't any net. It's rare to get gross -- generally the only time that happens is when the star power is such that it would make a significant difference in the box office. Bradley Cooper gets net, no name writer from Pfugerville gets net, if any points at all.

That doesn't make any sense, though. 3% of the net is not better than nothing. Why would you bother to ask for it? That just makes your contract legally valid, in the sense that consideration is offered, without getting you any benefits.

> Maybe she had incompetent representation.

She talks of "net profit", not "gross profit", so that's a possibility.

Exactly. There's no such thing as net. Even blockbusters rarely achieve 'net.' It's the mark of a Hollywood rookie to have net points. Gross is the only way to go. Eddie Murphy famously called net points as "monkey points." Obviously she didn't have an agent who understood Hollywood Accounting. Of course, a new writer or someone without much bargaining power generally takes what they can get.

"I, Robot" was a great movie, but not based on the book.

"Starship Troopers" was, as I like to repeat a quip, "based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein".

"Frozen", while not involving a contract to the long-deceased author, is allegedly based on "The Snow Queen" though I fail to see the connection.

There are numerous other examples of a movie being almost entirely unlike the book for which rights were purchased at significant cost. Producers seem to often go to great lengths to ensure an even tangentially involved author is at least satisfactorily paid. Sure, there are famous examples where the reverse is true ("Forrest Gump", IIRC), but it seems in everyone's interests to err on the side of generosity where due, lest a case like this one codify outright screwing of the sources of ideas - and their eventual defense in substantially less profitable ways.

> "Starship Troopers" was, as I like to repeat a quip, "based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein".

ST was actually written as a script completely unrelated to the book, and the rights to the book later purchased and superficial changes (character names, etc.) made to align with the book.

Uh? The story is not the same, but the whole universe and political system are exactly the ones of the book, they just basically removed the mech-armors stuff.

The original script was called "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine". It's possible that the writing team was influenced by the book, but there's no clear indication of that, and in fact the claim is that they were not really aware of the book until well into the process.

The universe and political system are depicted the way those critical of Heinlein likes to depict them, but largely because Verhoeven decided to make a "perfect fascist world" to satirise and criticise it, and Heinlein is often criticised for militarist viewpoints close to fascism.

The absence of the mech-armors stuff reflects this: He's mimicked nazism (the opening has shot-for-shop parallels to a scene from Riefenstahls "Triump of the Will"; the uniforms are modelled on the Gestapo; the architecture is modelled on Speer; the weapons are WWII inspired; the newsreel clips are mimicking WWII era propaganda movies) as he saw it growing up in nazi-occupied Netherlands.

Verhoeven is quoted as saying this about the book:

> I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring,...It is really quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book.

Yeah. That is basically what happened with "I, Robot", but not, AFAIK what happened with Starship Troopers.

Its what happened with ST as well. The Wikipedia page for the movie covers it pretty well, with sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_%28film%29

I'd like to add "The Running Man" to your list.

The notion of an "original" product causally linked to the WB-produced film _Gravity_ assumes facts not in evidence.

Gerritsen alleges that the film she worked with Katja on formed a basis for WB's film by dint of Cuaron's involvement in both projects. In the earlier project, Cuaron is alleged to have been "attached" to the project. In the WB production, Cuaron and his son wrote the entire screenplay.

The film term of art "attached" doesn't have a precise meaning. "Attached" can be an indicator of someone's commitment to a project --- a spectrum from "aware of" through "interested in" through "attached" through "committed". It could also mean that the person is sponsoring the project and shepherding it through the development process.

At no point does Gerritsen allege that Cuaron's screenplay included any of Gerritsen's writing. At best, her claim is to the storyline --- the ideas --- of the WB film.

What Gerritsen is saying --- informally, in explaining her reason for deciding to pursue the case, and also in rebutting WB's claim that Gerritsen had already conceded the film wasn't based on her work --- is that she had always felt that the WB project had an uncanny resemblance to her own story, but that she didn't have a smoking gun until she discovered Cuaron has been "attached" to the earlier project without her knowledge.

The fact that the author of the book and a contributor to the punch-up of the screenplay was unaware that one of the most famous directors in Hollywood was "attached" to the project suggests that the word "attached" was meant in its more casual meaning.

But the fact that Cuaron and his son wrote a screenplay involving a novice astronaut marooned on the ISS after being made aware of a project with a similar story suggests that there's some link.

Which is what the lawsuit is based upon really - that's said, the title is the same, the story is very similar, and it seems extremely likely that the author is accurate, even thus it may be difficult to prove (and easy to disprove, WB can just delete all the files where she's mentioned during the acquisition and then she just has her own word for it, emails being easy to fake and all)

The stories are not similar at all. The similarity is the title, that both are sci-fi, and that there is a female lead. Judge for yourself:

Book: Dr. Emma Watson has been training for the adventure of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. But her mission aboard the International Space Station turns into a nightmare beyond imagining when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control -- and infects the space station crew with agonizing and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the outbreak while back on Earth her estranged husband, Jack McCallum, works frantically with NASA to bring her home. But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth's population, and the astronauts are stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station -- where they are dying one by one...

Movie: Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone - tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.

Are you intentionally ignoring this claim by the author?

While my film was in development, I re-wrote the third act of the film script with scenes of satellite debris destroying ISS and the lone surviving female astronaut adrift in her spacesuit.

Probably. Their account was created 9 days ago and has only a few comments under it, none of which are meaningful in any sense. They're either a troll or an account owned by an Astroturf network.

Those are some bold accusations. I don't see how their comment history supports them being anything but a new member.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=WillPostForFood

Cuaron wasn't super-famous in 2000. He basically had one mid-budget feature under his belt. Add in the fact that writers usually get left out of the loop on that part of the dealmaking and it's not hard to imagine he was more attached than not.

The important part to me is why WB says it owes Gerritsen nothing. If the case is "We admit the movie had a relationship to her work, but that doesn't matter because it was New Line's contract not WB's", there is a very big problem here.

On the other hand, if they convince a judge/jury that there was no connection between her book and the movie then fine. Case closed, go home, no worries.

The key problem here is that if a studio can do a neat little legal dance to avoid contract obligations then that is a big deal. If this is simply a matter of evidence not supporting the claims in this instance then not a big deal.

For one, the title is the same...

Well I guess that settles it, then.