We Are Marshall is not a Ripoff

With a billion movie ideas floating around out there sooner or later someone is going to come up with an idea that might sound a lot like yours. Thats why there is a lot of suing going on in Hollywood over copyrights and ripoffs.

The latest conflict revolves around We Are Marshall. A filmmakers has decided that We Are Marshall was a ripoff of theirhis documentary on the same subject.

Cinematical says:

That film, Ashes to Glory: The Tragedy and Triumph of Marshall Football (which IMDB has never heard of), was a documentary about the real-life events depicted in We Are Marshall. The doc’s producers, Deborah Novak and John Witek, sued Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, fraud, and breach of contract, but a U.S. district court judge has ruled against them.

“Though the two works tell the story of the Nov. 14, 1970, airplane crash, that event, and the events that preceded and followed, are all matters of public record which cannot be copyrighted,” the judge wrote in his decision, as reported by Variety.

The funny thing is that AS I read the article the very first thing that hopped in my head is that something stinks about this.

How can they sue for similiarity of story when both movies are based on public record? OF COURSE THEY ARE SIMILAR!! Its based on real life events! Futhermore, its not like this detail escaped the accusers. Their film was a documentary. They are well aware that it was public record. We Are Marshall is a dramatic film which being based on a true story had to take some artistic liberties to tell it. Not the same at all.

Now if my joe plumber brain can figure all that out, what rocket scientist encouraged them to take this before a judge?

Their reasoning was that they approached Thunder Road (Producers of We Are Marshall) about turning their doc into a feature film. Thunder Road declined then made the movie anyways. I am pretty sure someone in their legal department said “These guys want us to make a movie. Its a good story. But we don’t require their involvement to make a movie on events of public record”

Its simple business sense. I’d like to cheer on the screwed over “little guy” as they stick it to the big bad studio. But I can’t. Thunder Road agreed that it was a great story but didn’t agree that they should pay these documentarians for it.

Apparently a Judge thinks so too.

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6 thoughts on “We Are Marshall is not a Ripoff

  1. Rodney, while I will not say the folks behind the doc have a case (they don’t) I would not call the story itself “public domain”. The story is not “public domain”. Only the public record is.

    One would still have to obtain story rights and pursue other related legal issues when dealing with real living people and (in this instance) the deaths of their friends and family.

    That said, the filmmakers behind the narrative film directed by McG would have done that. They may have also done additional research on their own.

    Did the doc filmmakers meet with McG and the Marshall prod’s? It’s possible. But you can’t “rip off” a documentary.

  2. Elizabeth, it would be hard for the tone being anything other than triumph over tragedy. That’s the story. And you can’t “rip off” a documentary that is based on events in the public domain.

    They are not anything alike aside from the source material (which neither of them own) being the same.

    This would be like assuming every story about a presidential race is a ripoff. Or every story about 9-11. It happened in the public eye. It was news. It is fair game to make a movie out of it.

  3. There are other ways it could be considered a rip-off, but they’re difficult and would require me to have seen both movies and neither look my style.

    But it is possible. Just very unlikely. They’d have to be similar in tone, have similar phrases and writing, and similar shot composition, etc.

    It would have to be much more than just being about the same thing.

  4. Could be a coincidence Gutpunch.

    I used to play the Champions RPG back in higschool and one of my friends made up a character that could shapeshift into anything he came into physical contact with. He could also shape his limbs into weapons (spikes, hooks, hammers etc) and he could recover from physical damage by reshaping.

    His natural “unshifted” form was that of a featureless humanoid made of mercury. Sound familiar?

    5 years later Terminator 2 comes out and we all saw Domino (the character’s name) as the new Terminator model.

    It happens.

  5. Yes he did.

    OK, here’s a little story. Many years ago I worked for this 3D animation studio. I come up with an idea for a cartoon series called Space Monkey, later changed to A.P.E since there was already a character called Space Monkey I later found out. Anyway. The story went like this. A monkey called Ham is shot in to space to investigate a phenomena near earth. When he gets up there a worm hole opens up and he’s sucked in to it and crash lands on a planet where he has to help out its inhabitants fight against a ruthless tyrant. That was the basic story, it also involved a russian dog and a lounge singing platypus. I made a trailer for it and the company promoted it abroad with other production companies. Fast forward a few years later and I’m watching the trailer for Space Chimps, something looked familiar in it and when I read the synopses I thought “Wait a minute. Haven’t I seen this before”.
    Space Chimps revolves around a group of monkeys, the leader is called Ham III, who are shot in to space to investigate a strange phenomena only to be sucked through a wormhole and crash land on a planet where they have to help its inhabitants fight off an evil tyrant.
    And to top it all off one of the guys who worked at my company back in the day works for Fox who distribute the film.
    Coinkidink?

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