9. Somebody Sued Them For Ripping Him Off
Dubious lawsuits are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. Joss Whedon recently got a motion filed against him for apparently stealing the plot for his horror-trope-subverting Cabin In The Woods from...a guy who wrote a book that he self-published and sold on a Californian beach. In that case the issue is more that Whedon and the crackpot were drawing from the same scary movie cliches, not Whedon ripping him off. The guy who sued the makers of Orphan Black, however? He might have more of a leg to stand on. Last year writer Stephen Hendricks filed a lawsuit against BBC America and the Temple Street production company who actually make the show, claiming that the core concept of the series is nabbed from a screenplay he wrote called Double Double...
along with a lot of other stuff. The leads in both are very similar, there's a Felix analogue, and familiar plot beats. Most damning of all is that he submitted that script to Temple Street in 2004, where it was passed on. He's looking for $5 million which, to be honest, he probably won't get. And whilst Graeme Manson and John Fawcett apparently first came up with the concept years ago, Hendricks wrote his take in 1999...