When producers steal scripts.

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sean90291

Veteran
There's a few things new writers get told when they start out. 1) Don't keep your "brilliant" scripts to yourself for fear someone will steal it. Because it might not be that great to begin with, and if it is, the only way you can advance your career is for people to see your great work. 2) Producers won't steal your work because it's just as easy for them to avoid the risk of a lawsuit and option it or buy it off of you.

I'm not a new writer. I've had a lot of produced scripts on television and a couple of scripts very nearly produced as feature films. One script I wrote and fell in love with was something I just knew I could sell. I had some really positive reactions from industry pros. It ranked in the top 25 scripts in two competitions with over 2000 script submissions. And I asked my agent to send it to a company that had done the same genre (horror) in the past.

The company never got back to us. Just went silent. But two years later, they have a very, very similar project in pre-production. A few elements are changed (they'd be fools not to). But the key ingredients are the same. You can't copyright an idea. I'm probably legally hooped. But sadly, when someone beats you into production with a similar idea, your own production has that much less chance of ever getting made. "Oh, I loved the script, but X Company is already making one that's really similar starring Val Kilmer. Sorry we can't go forward with this one."

The lesson learned? Well, other than the lesson that people are bad and indifferent and it's a dog-eat-dog world, I guess I learned that you should be careful about who you get to read something WHEN YOU KNOW IT REALLY HAS MERIT. Try to send it to people who have a relationship with you and have an interest in who you are as an artist or writer. That can be hard in a business when you're breaking in because you might not have anyone invested in your potential. But I wish I had been more selective. This company is a bit under-handed by reputation, and they had no relationship with me or my agent particularly. Why shouldn't they steal a good idea.

Another lesson learned is that as a director (at the time I wrote the script I was only beginning to come out as a filmmaker in my own right), you shouldn't shop a script to people who won't also meet you as a director. Once people meet you, it's much less likely that someone would have the nerve to steal the idea from under you.

Yes, there's a chance it's coincidence. It happens all the time: people submit similar projects. I don't buy it though. The timing is bizarre. The similarities are shocking. My script is really solid and the concept was begging to be made.

It breaks my heart. Guess I'll be smarter, stronger, faster next time. And maybe you can gain something from my mistakes. Producers do steal ideas. All the time--I've seen it. It's a balancing act between getting your work out there and protecting it at the same time. You can't protect an idea, legally. But you can do other, strategic things to protect yourself. Starting with getting the script into the hands of people who know you. With a face attached to the name on the script, the chances diminish that they'll try to cut you out. And those trusted people in the industry might help guide your project in such a way that it gets passed to the right people, or adapted in such a way that it makes it much more likely to sell with you attached. (In my case, my script could have had a couple more commercial choices that I deliberately avoided, but which are sort of obvious, and if I"d made those choices, maybe I would have sold the script faster).
 
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I've had similar circumstances with my own work, welcome to the business man. Did you sign a release form? Always vital to protect both of you (usually them). In any case if you did not sign a release form, they are a little more vulnerable to legal action so it may benefit you. Have you contacted an attorney? Keep in mind writers sue all the time and they just about never win. The last guy that won one of these was like five years ago I think. It really depends on the similarities and the dates you registered the work. There are several variables to take into consideration if you plan to pursue this, more than you may think, but there are avenues you can take. I can put you in touch with my attorney if you'd like. My personal opinion is, move one, let it go and write a better script than theres and go sell it. This happens every day out here man. It sucks, but it's part of the slimy business we chose.

Good luck!
 
Sorry to hear this Sean.

I'd be angry and devasted at the same time. Also, it's big of you not to "name names" - but I'm dying to know the name of the movie in pre-pro...
 
I won't name names. There's no point.

I probably won't sue. A couple ingredients are changed and that is probably enough. But the uniqe location, style, key concept is robbed. And as Alveraz mentions, writers almost never win. Plus, writers usually can't afford the kind of lawyer fees that a lawsuit would entail, and producers know that.

Many writers can't prove the "connection" and that is the downfall in their case (ie., it's really hard to prove that so-and-so read the script in question). In my case, I could pretty much prove the company read the script.

The moral of the story is that no paper can protect you. It's about relationships. Be careful of the relationships you seek to enter. That's all.
 
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Did you try to follow up at all?
Not suggesting legal action necessarily, as that will probably get you nowhere - but diplomatically making the company aware that you have a could cause some problems could possibly lead to something.

I once had a friend that submitted a script to a studio which was turned down - lo and behold shortly after that it was made by the same studio with A list actors, and a very well known director (who also had writing credit on the movie that was released). There was no question it was based on his script - pages and pages of dialogue were completely unchanged. Long story short, in a "read between the lines" agreement he was offered a writing job with the studio, and had one of his other scripts produced as well. Of course the studio always claimed that they had the other movie in development long before they saw his script, and that was why they turned his original script down. But they thought he had talent, etc etc, so they offered him other work.

There was never any talk of suing - but it was pretty clear why he got the work he got.
Granted, he's a damn good writer (which is why his script was stolen in the first place).

Either way - that's a really underhanded thing they did to you, which unfortunately it not at all uncommon.
 
It's not uncommon, you're right Luis. One guy I counted as a friend, pitched a series and got it into development at a network, which was the very same series I had pitched to the writer the week before. He then told me he'd been developing his for months. But strangely he never mentioned that to me when I pitched the exact same series to him the week before. It was obvious he was lying. So writers do it to writers, producers do it to writers, studios do it to writers. The fact is people are hungry to get ahead. You could make a huge advance in your career, not to mention make a lot of money. Another situation was a series I was freelancing for. They hired me to write several episodes, and then rejected one pitch I made in writing. I saw a year later that they'd gone and made the pitch into an episode after all. No money or credit attributed to me at all. It was an inconsequential series, so I wasn't gonna folllow that one up either. Just serves as an example of what can happen. Writers are very vulnerable, and the law really doesn't do much for us at all. The fact that ideas are so valuable in our business and yet it's the very thing that you cannot protect under copyright law--the only law available to us as artists.

Then again, it is often a matter of how rich and powerful you are. Disney was happy to sue Dreamworks for making an animated bug movie. That was the basis of their entire lawsuit, and it was a big serious lawsuit: we're making a bug movie and one of your execs (Jeff Katzenberg) used to work here, so he must have taken the IDEA to Dreamworks. So people DO sue for the stealing of ideas (is an animated bug movie even an idea?). But they're rich and powerful people. And isn't that what makes our business go round?

Anyhow, I've mentioned it to my agent, and I'm going to discuss the possibilities with her of "bringing it up with them." That will be about the extent of it. We'll see. I'm a writer, not a fighter.
 
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Terry Lasater has been stealing my jokes on dvxuser for years, but i doubt i will sue him either. sure some misspellings were corrected and grammatical mistakes fixed, and the occasionl word was replaced to make it slighty funnier, but i can still recognize my own material. :2vrolijk_08:
 
My friend made a film where a girl crawls through a slimy cave and finds a frog creature; two years later Pan's Labyrinth came out. Don't be so sure it's not just a coincidence.
 
sean90291, how come you only sent your script to one company? If you'd sold your script to a different company, they would not have dared to steal it. How come you didn't for 2 years? Also, the longer you hold on to a script, the more likely it becomes that someone else will come up with the same idea - or steal yours.
 
seunosewa said:
Also, the longer you hold on to a script, the more likely it becomes that someone else will come up with the same idea - or steal yours.
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Which is why I can't believe that TWO Sherlock Holmes movies are going into production, at the same time. That's so strange to me.
 
And how about two capote movies????

This may sound a little harsh, but Sean, I think YOU are the problem here. Your script was stolen. Then your buddy pitched your idea. How is it possible that you came up with all these great ideas and they come to fruition by someone else's hand?

Either you or your agent is not doing a good enough job to target buyers for your work.

In regards to your friend's idea - why pitch such a great idea to anyone not able to purchase it....much less someone with network contacts who could go on to pitch it himself? The easiest way to keep a secret is to shut your mouth.

I'd tell that dipshit agent that you have two major works now being produced that you came up with and for him to get out there ans start pounding the pavement. Then I would try and do followup on the stuff I sent out in a time period shorter than 24 months.
 
I ended up not sending it to more companies because I got the notion I was going to direct it myself, and I was building my director's reel towards that end.

And yeah, two Capote movies, two Sherlock Holmes movies, two movies about meteors striking Earth. So it can happen, and until I see their result I won't know how much it really impacts mine. My point was more about being careful who you send it to, if you can--writers don't often have a lot of choice in how careful they can be, however! Worth thinking about, rather than throwing things out their willy nilly though.
 
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taormina said:
And how about two capote movies????

This may sound a little harsh, but Sean, I think YOU are the problem here. Your script was stolen. Then your buddy pitched your idea. How is it possible that you came up with all these great ideas and they come to fruition by someone else's hand?

Either you or your agent is not doing a good enough job to target buyers for your work.

In regards to your friend's idea - why pitch such a great idea to anyone not able to purchase it....much less someone with network contacts who could go on to pitch it himself? The easiest way to keep a secret is to shut your mouth.

I'd tell that dipshi* agent that you have two major works now being produced that you came up with and for him to get out there ans start pounding the pavement. Then I would try and do followup on the stuff I sent out in a time period shorter than 24 months.
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As a writer in the industry, you try ideas out with associates and "friends" all the time. Again, it's that balance between letting the world know how great your ideas are, and keeping control on who hears it so that you can protect it. Big agencies are very good at controlling the speed and flow of pitching. If you're so lucky to be at a big agency...

I trusted this guy. Just one example. I as shocked after learning what happened, but I also actually felt bad for him. He was talented but floundering. He had a chance to pitch something to a big network. He didn't have anything of his own to wow them with. And they weren't asking me to pitch so...I sorta understand, even though it was underhanded and it certainly changed how I saw him.

By the way, his series never went anywhere after the pilot script he'd written for the network. And so I've seriously considered re-visiting mine. It's a project I still love.
 
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DerrickTempleton said:
My friend made a film where a girl crawls through a slimy cave and finds a frog creature; two years later Pan's Labyrinth came out. Don't be so sure it's not just a coincidence.
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The similarities are far more extensive than that. If the guy you speak of had written a story about a girl in the Spanish Civil War captured by an evil general and she must lose herself in a world of fantasy, including a cave with a frog creature in it, would you be more sure of something untoward? How about if he'd sent it to one company that only receives a hundred submissions a year and that same company made Pan's Labyrinth. Anyhow, Pan's Labyrinth is hardly high concept. It's more about execution, and Del Toro nailed that. NOt quite the same scenario if you'd written a script about a guy who's trying to help a boy who "sees dead people" and in the course of helping that boy, the man learns that he himself is dead. Execution is a big part of the success of Sixth Sense, but another film that lifted that great concept would have beaten Sixth Sense to the punch.

I'm also speaking of ethically quesitonable practices, rather than illegal ones. Theft is probably not the right word, because that implies a crime. I use the word theft as in artistic theft, rather than legal theft. I'd rather speak about how writers can protect themselves and their work (registering it is not as important as being strategic, and that's not something I've read about on this forum very much. Everyone says "register your script." There's way more to it than that, and it's worth discussing.). Look, Anne Rice was very dismayed to see her Vampire chronicles "cannibilized" by movies and TV and books over the years. Various ideas and notions were lifted or "inspired" by her very original creations, without ever crossing a legal line. She knew it was not something she could act on legally, but it broke her heart to see it happening. Fortunately, she was rich by that point and also her books eventually made their way into a couple movies on their own.

We can never know how much is coincidence. It doesn't change the fact that sometimes theft happens, and it's worth thinking about how to best strategically protect your work, whether it indeed happened in this case or not. Theft also happens more often, I believe, because we've all bought the notion that it's probably just coincidence (which usually it is...and sometimes it isn't).

I also know a guy who wrote a script years and years ago about a guy named John Doe who was seeking out a serial killer who murdered people in sick ways that reflected the seven deadly sins. It made some rounds in Hollywood. Coincidence? Probably. According to the odds, and the millions of scripts written and pitched, probably. But he'll never know for sure. He was super talented too. I think he's dropped out of the business.
 
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Obviously, not knowing your particular situation, I can't speak to it. What I've often seen is how ideas spread and get appropriated through "false memories". People talk. In groups. Then the idea keeps spreading. People read treatments, pitches, synopses. Very often someone later - months, sometimes years later - will "have" an idea and be totally convinced in their own mind that they originated the idea, while the truth was that they heard it, or read it before, and no longer remember that.

I witnessed this process close up - it was quite comical in fact. Some years ago I worked with a writer on an original idea I had. We were co-writing the screenplay. I mentioned a certain plot development which my co-writer rejected. I went ahead and wrote a few scenes with this development, and sent it to him. Months later he brought up this exact plot development - and was totally, 100% convinced that he generated it. Knowing him, I knew he was sincere - he truly didn't remember. I looked at him in amazement. It was a good lesson on how things like that can happen.

People talk. People read. People absorb. And people don't always remember the origin of their "original" ideas.

Again, I'm not talking about your case. All I'm saying is that this town lives on ideas - they are discussed, thought about, written about and lived and breathed 24/7. It's only natural that people are unable to keep track of who came up with what when. Then again, the ancient Greeks told us there were only a handful original stories to begin with - all the rest are re-treads :) The truly "original", that has no antecedents anywhere is vanishingly rare - everything can be traced to something else. Which is why you can't copyright ideas.
 
Sean, the good news is you are capable of coming up with commercial, sellable ideas. In the face of your troubles, always remember this.
 
Hey, maybe being robbed really is flattering; second only to being paid. Thanks Taormina. :-)

Old Corpse, you're right about how people "absorb" things. I've worked in TV, and the TV writing room is a fascinating study in exactly what you describe. Some people have extremely flawed memories for who came up with what, while the rest of us only have "somewhat flawed" memories. I've seen instances where it's the loudest guy in the room who came up with the idea, no matter who said it first.

I've also witnessed how we all magnify in our own mind how much we contributed to a story/idea. It's a really interesting phenomenon. I pride myself on having a good memory for who came up with what, and giving credit where it's due. But human nature, such as it is, means we all put ourselves at the centre of the universe, right? Seems like the dumber someone is, the more they see themselves as the centre though.
 
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