Men sue Studio Saying they came up with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen first

[Ares]

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMovies/sep25_lxg-ap.html

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Two moviemakers say they were ripped off by a studio over an idea to rip off characters from classic literature for the movie "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

 

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, producer Martin Poll and screenwriter Larry Cohen accused 20th Century Fox of stealing their ideas for the summer action flick, which starred Sean Connery.

 

The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $100 million. "Gentlemen" only earned about $66.1 million at the box office and hasn't yet debuted on home video or DVD.

 

"We have not yet seen the complaint. However, this is absurd nonsense," 20th Century Fox spokeswoman Flo Grace said Thursday.

 

The movie is based on a comic book created by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill in which the main characters were lifted from the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Bram Stoker and other writers whose copyrights have entered the public domain.

 

Among the Victorian-era literary figures was Connery as adventurer Allan Quatermain, teamed with a crew that includes Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Capt. Nemo and "Dracula" vampire Mina Harker.

 

Cohen, who wrote the thriller "Phone Booth," and Poll, whose credits include 1968's "The Lion in Winter" and Woody Allen's "Love and Death," say in the lawsuit that they had discussed a similar idea with Fox executives in 1993, only then the movie was called "Cast of Characters."

 

The "Gentlemen" comic was published in 1999. The comic writers, Moore and O'Neill, are not named in the lawsuit.

 

[supapimp]

i wonder if they would've done a better job with the movie than this crock of ?