2. First-Time Writers Having Their Work Stolen
We've all heard stories of blockbuster movies coming out, and then someone piping up weeks later - after the film has inevitably blown up at the box office - that the ideas was theirs, and crass Hollywood executives essentially just ripped the idea off. One of the more famous examples in recent years is that of Reed Martin, who wrote a film script about an older man who revisits his old girlfriends, and began passing it around Hollywood. Some time later, the Jim Jarmusch movie Broken Flowers entered production by way of some of the folks he had passed the script to... Reed sued the filmmakers but lost, as it is of course
extremely difficult to prove that a first-time writer who hasn't copyrighted their script had their idea stolen by an established creative hot-shot. Though many of these cases settle quietly out of court, often Hollywood's elite will be able to freely profit from a writer's blood, sweat and tears, while the writer gets no credit for their work and no way into the industry. Terrible.