Luc Besson Guilty of Plagiarizing Escape from New York; Ordered to Pay Up!
You know, we’ve all seen similarities in movies and wondered, “Wow, did they just rip off ______?” and sometimes we’re right! Case in point: Yahoo is reporting that French filmmaker Luc Besson has been ordered to pay Hollywood’s self-styled “Master of Horror” John Carpenter nearly half a million dollars for plagiarizing his classic 1981 movie Escape from New York.
The director of The Fifth Element and La Femme Nikita had denied that his 2012 film Lockout copied the cult futuristic thriller, in which New York’s Manhattan island is a giant prison that has been overrun by its inmates.
In Carpenter’s film, Kurt Russell plays a government agent-turned-convict who goes inside to rescue the US President after his plane crash-lands there.
In Lockout, Guy Pearce plays a wrongly convicted man who is offered his freedom if he can free the US President’s daughter from a jail in outer space which its violent prisoners have taken over.
The heroes of both “got into the prison by flying in a glider/space shuttle, had to confront inmates led by a chief with a strange right arm, found hugely important briefcases, and meet a former sidekick who then dies.”
“And at the end (of both films the heroes) keep secret documents recovered during their mission,” the judgement added.
An appeals court in Paris ruled that Lockout had “massively borrowed key elements” of the earlier movie, according to a judgement put online Friday by BFMTV.
A spokesman for Besson told AFP they were “very surprised by the ruling but the judges have spoken and we will accept their judgment.”
Have you seen both? If so, tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Lockout
Escape from New York
Categorized:News
