Writer/director Judd Apatow and Universal Pictures are being sued by a Canadian journalist claiming to be the rightful parent of the tale behind the flick.
- Jun 8, 2007
AceShowbiz - Just enjoying their initial success of "Knocked Up", director and the studio behind the new hit comedy are now facing a lawsuit placed by a Canadian journalist who alleged them for stealing her story in making the movie.
In her legal action against writer-director Judd Apatow and Universal Pictures, Rebecca Eckler strongly claims many similarities were found between the flick and her book "Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-Be", published in the U.S. two years ago, that it is impossible to consider it a coincidence.
Both works present the story of an up-and-coming reporter who gets drunk and pregnant as well as depict the man impregnating her as Jewish-Canadian while describing a huge number of pregnancy tests the lead character takes to confirm a baby was on the way.
"I don't doubt, purely based on the screenplay, that he (Apatow) had a copy in his office somehow of the book," the Calgary-based woman said to Reuters. "A lot of people, I'm sure, will say, 'Well, getting drunk and knocked up, it could happen to everybody.' Well, the fact is, it doesn't happen to everybody, and no one had written about it before I did. And he (Apatow) didn't sell the screenplay until after I did."
Demanding credit and compensation, Eckler further informed that she filed her copyright infringement lawsuit in January with the trial being set to begin in March 2008.
On the opposite side, Apatow calmly showed his respond by arguing the two stories to be different materials indeed.
"The book is about a woman who gets pregnant by the fiance that she loves on the night of her engagement party," so he remarked in a statement. "The film is about a one-night stand between a pot smoking slacker and an ambitious young woman that leads to a pregnancy and their attempts to get to know each other."
The man went on to add, "Anyone who reads the book and sees the movie will instantly know that they are two very different stories about a common experience."
