According to Deadline, a man named Jamye Gordon has been sentenced to two years in prison and fined $3 million for trying to defraud DreamWorks with a phony copyright infringement scheme. This all goes back to 2008, when Gordon saw a trailer for Kung Fu Panda and decided to alter a story he had previously written called Panda Power so it would seem more like the movie. He also revised some drawings and renamed his work Kung Fu Panda Power, and after suing DreamWorks for copyright infringement, he proposed that he’d be willing to settle if the studio would give him $12 million. DreamWorks wisely declined, the case went to court, and Gordon was convicted of fraud and perjury back in November.
In addition to altering his work to seem more like Kung Fu Panda, Gordon also purposefully deleted relevant evidence from his computer, lied during his deposition, and created fake backdated sketches to further support his made-up claims. Deadline says “the full nature of Gordon’s scheme came to light” when DreamWorks found out that some of his panda drawings were traced from a Lion King coloring book, which will probably make for a very exciting scene if this ever becomes a movie for some reason.
Here’s a trailer for Kung Fu Panda, but remember that you’ll get in trouble if you decide to start telling everyone that DreamWorks stole it from you:
WaldoWal on May 11st, 2017 at 12:13 UTC »
One of the images showing what he was claiming was his own work next to the original coloring book image he copied it from
badillustrations on May 11st, 2017 at 11:32 UTC »
Wow, this case has been going on for a long time. I was actually at Dreamworks when this happened. It's actually a really interesting topic because the whole process of pitching movies is really non-intuitive. A lot of ideas in production come from people with an industry story teller track record or a small group of execute-level friends that are on the inside. I can't tell you how many times I'd hear about a movie that was discussed over drinks.
When I heard about this case, it was quickly dismissed because the stories were different enough. I think that's just a Hollywood thing. If a movie is even slightly different, it's fair game. I think both of those facts lead to things like Happy Feet and Surfs Up coming up around the same time. A guy goes around pitching penguin movies and a few people decide to go make their own. It seems really messed up, but at the same time I think ideas at that level are cheap and its the implementation that's the true value. If I had the idea for Toy Story at the pitch level, it's practically worthless. Taking that and turning it into an amazing film is the real challenge.
magimack on May 11st, 2017 at 10:40 UTC »
"What are you in for?" "Kung Fu Panda."