Paramount will not have to face parts of a lawsuit from the cousin of a writer for Top Gun: Maverick, who alleged he co-wrote the screenplay.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Wednesday rebuffed Shaun Gray’s bid for court order that he was a joint author of the screenplay, which could’ve entitled him to a share of profits form the blockbuster sequel. Still, the court left the door open for him to pursue damages for copyright infringement.
In a lawsuit filed in April, Shaun Gray alleged he penned key scenes after screenwriter Eric Warren Singer and director Joseph Kosinski enlisted his help to craft the story behind the movie. An active participant in story meetings, he said he wrote 15 pivotal sequences. This includes the opening in which Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, pushes a high-tech prototype fighter jet past its limits, breaking speed records before the aircraft fails, and another scene in which he repeatedly outmaneuvers elite pilots during a training exercise, culminating in a dogfight with a trainee.
Gray argued he’s a co-author of the screenplay since he never reached a work-made-for-hire deal, which governs a production company’s employment relationship with a writer and gives it the copyright to a script, with Paramount, unlike other writers for Top Gun: Maverick. Under the arrangement, the studio is the sole author and owner of the screenplay.
Paramount brought on three waves of screenwriters for the movie, according to court documents. Singer — and by association, Gray — were recruited in the middle of the writing process, with two scribes penning drafts before and after the American Hustle writer submitted his own. The company called assertions that Gray’s limited contributions entitled him to be a co-owner of the movie a “delusion.”
“Gray lacked decisionmaking authority over the works to which he lays claim; he received no billing on them, let alone as a joint author; and he had no agreements with third parties suggesting his authorship,” wrote Molly Lens, a lawyer for Paramount, in a bid to dismiss the lawsuit.
While he won’t be able to obtain a court order that he’s a co-author of the screenplay, Gray can still get damages if he wins his copyright infringement claim, which wasn’t dismissed. He stressed that Kosinski found the scenes he wrote compelling so compelling that the director included them in the final cut of the movie.
The court said it’d issue an opinion explaining its decision soon.
Gray’s credits show that he was a staff writer on an episode of Shantaram and was Singer’s writer’s assistant for The International. He’s mostly worked as a digital artist, including on The Magicians, Defiance and Two and a Half Men.
Gray’s lawsuit marked the second legal battle over the rights to Top Gun: Maverick. In 2023, the heirs to the author of a 1983 magazine story that inspired the original film accused Paramount of forging ahead with the project without renegotiating a new license. The plaintiff in the since-dismissed case was also represented by copyright termination heavyweight Marc Toberoff.
