A lawyer for the Ethan Hunt depicter believes the suit filed by Timothy Patrick McLanahan, who claims his script idea was stolen for 'Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol', 'will be quickly dismissed.'
- Feb 6, 2014
AceShowbiz - Tom Cruise, who recently settled his $50 million defamation lawsuit against Bauer Media, now finds himself on the other side of the law. The actor has been hit with $1 billion lawsuit for alleged copyright infringement.
Timothy Patrick McLanahan, who filed the suit in December, claims his script idea was stolen for 2011's film "Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol". He named Cruise, Brad Grey, Paramount Pictures and 10 others as defendants.
In the document obtained by Entertainment Tonight, screenwriter McLanahan claims he wrote a script titled "Head On" in 1998 and pitched it to the William Morris Agency, but he was told "that they could not use the script as a movie." He alleges that his script was passed to Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which represents Cruise, and that was how they stole his idea.
"I immediately recognized that the scripts for this movie had been illegally written and produced from Head On's 1998 copyright," he claims. "Because the 'Ghost Protocol' film generated close to $1 billion, I am asking for this amount in damages," he adds. McLanahan, however, does not provide any examples of similarities in his lawsuit.
Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields has quickly denied the accusation. To AFP, the lawyer says, "Tom Cruise has never stolen anything from anyone. This bizarre lawsuit against 13 people... will be quickly dismissed by the court."
