Uh-oh. Here is some unwanted legal trouble for Disney and Pixar just in time for their upcoming release of the sequel to their animated hit Cars.
U.K. screenwriter Jake Mandeville-Anthony is suing Disney and Pixar because he claims the animated hit Cars and its forthcoming sequel are based in part on work he submitted in the early 1990s.
If his suit works according to plan, we won’t be seeing Cars 2 on its scheduled June 24th release because he is is seeking an injunction to stop the release of the film!
Oh no! What about the children? Somebody think of the children!
According to the claim he filed this week, the screenwriter created a three-part screenplay titled “Cookie & Co.,” about the true-life adventure race-car driver Michael Owen Perkins and a second work titled “Cars,” which included a treatment, sample screenplay, 46 animated car character descriptions, 10 cars character sketches, and a marketing and merchandising plan.
He says he sent copies of his work to Disney and met in person with a Lucasfilm executive named Jim Morris in 1993 to deliver copies of his work. In 2005, Morris joined Pixar and is currently general manager of the company.
There are more than a few striking similarities among the characters in each of the works too.
Both have characters named “Stanley” modeled after a Model T Ford, lead characters modeled
after a “James Aston-Martin” sports car, feature the broken down truck character, and a handful of other similarities.
Hmm…inneresting. Why is this guy coming out of the wood work now when Cars was already a ginourmous hit?
Maybe he heard about the guy suing Dreamworks for clearly “allegedly” stealing the idea for Kung Fu Panda.
We’re looking forward to hear how this case pans out.
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