Sorry, the review for Arrow has been pushed back to tomorrow because this news story is worth talking about. Joss Whedon and Lionsgate are being sued for $10 Million by author Peter Gallagher for the claim that Joss's film Cabin in the Woods is a rip-off of his book The Little White Trip: A Night in the Pines. The book follows the story of a group of young adults travelling to a cabin in the middle of the woods where the previous inhabitants were a family, murdered by the father who have returned from the dead to kill the new tenants, In the end, it is revealed that the friends are being filmed and manipulated by persons behind the scenes, thus becoming inadvertent characters in a real-life horror show for the enjoyment of others. Now from a first glance, there are definitely similarities between the two, Cabin in the Woods has a group of young adults go into the woods and gets attacked by a family of zombies, except the major difference being that we (the audience) know about it being a giant sham and being controlled by an organisation from the start. But even with those similarities, I still find this claim to be bullshit.
Let's look at the case, it was a self-published book that according to news sources only ran 7,500 copies, making the chances that Joss Whedon and co-writer Drew Goddard reading it, highly unlikely to have ever read the book. Also the film is a satire of typical Hollywood tropes in horror films, the heavy emphasis on gore, stereotypical characters making poor decisions, over-sexualization of female characters, etc. Also the idea of characters going to a cabin in the woods, serious or satire, is not an original story (Evil Dead anyone?). Finally, look at the timing of this lawsuit, the film started production in 2009 and was released in 2012, yet the author waits until now to file a lawsuit? Now it is possible that he only just saw the film recently but to sue them just as Joss Whedon is in the spotlight again with Avengers: Age of Ultron coming out, doesn't that seem a bit coincidental to anyone? It's like last year when Bryan Singer, director of X-Men Days of Future Past was taken to court just as the film was being released over claims of him molesting someone over a decade prior, and surprise-surprise, the case was dismissed. And again, the lawsuit is for Joss Whedon & Lionsgate, not Drew Goddard, probably because he's not in the spotlight right now to be taken advantage of.
Now while I don't know him personally, but looking at his work prior, this doesn't seem like the type of this for Joss Whedon to do. He has made some of the most creative and entertaining work of the 21st century, why steal someone else's idea at the height of his career? And the similarities seem...too similar to be serious, and i know that may seem stupid to say, but let's look at it closely. The book has two characters named Julie and Dura, the film has two characters named Jules and Dana. Joss is not an idiot, and i don't know anyone who would be stupid enough to rip-off a story and keep the names that similar, it really does feel like a coincidence.
And no this isn't me being a Whedon fanboy coming to defend his honour, nor is it me intentionally slandering this author...well maybe a little bit, but hey, this is why i'm not a lawyer, but from my perspective, this seems a little too fishy for me to think this is a serious case of intellectual infringement.
-Danny
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