\n<\/p>\n
\n\tParamount will not have to face parts of a lawsuit from the cousin of a writer for Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>, who alleged he co-wrote the screenplay.<\/p>\n \n\tU.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Wednesday rebuffed Shaun Gray\u2019s bid for court order that he was a joint author of the screenplay, which could\u2019ve 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. <\/p>\n \n\tIn 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.<\/p>\n \n\tGray argued he\u2019s a co-author of the screenplay since he never reached a work-made-for-hire deal, which governs a production company\u2019s employment relationship with a writer and gives it the copyright to a script, with Paramount, unlike other writers for Top Gun: Maverick. <\/em>Under the arrangement, the studio is the sole author and owner of the screenplay.<\/p>\n \n\tParamount brought on three waves of screenwriters for the movie, according to court documents. Singer \u2014 and by association, Gray \u2014 were recruited in the middle of the writing process, with two scribes penning drafts before and after the American Hustle<\/em> writer submitted his own. The company called assertions that Gray\u2019s limited contributions entitled him to be a co-owner of the movie a \u201cdelusion.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cGray 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,\u201d wrote Molly Lens, a lawyer for Paramount, in a bid to dismiss the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile he won\u2019t be able to obtain a court order that he\u2019s a co-author of the screenplay, Gray can still get damages if he wins his copyright infringement claim, which wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \n\tThe court said it\u2019d issue an opinion explaining its decision soon.<\/p>\n \n\tGray\u2019s credits show that he was a staff writer on an episode of Shantaram<\/em> and was Singer\u2019s writer\u2019s assistant for The International<\/em>. He\u2019s mostly worked as a digital artist, including on The Magicians, Defiance<\/em> and Two and a Half Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tGray\u2019s lawsuit marked the second legal battle over the rights to Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s bid for court order that he was a joint author of the screenplay, which could\u2019ve entitled him to a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[5547,2575,6883,3289,7001,7002],"class_list":{"0":"post-13308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-copyright","9":"tag-credit","10":"tag-dismissed","11":"tag-lawsuit","12":"tag-maverick","13":"tag-screenplay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}