Paramount Pictures is being sued for copyright infringement over the sequel to the 1986 Top Gun movie.
The family of the Israeli writer whose magazine article inspired the original Tom Cruise movie claims the film studio’s rights to Ehud Yonay’s 1983 story ‘Top Guns’ expired in 2020.
A lawsuit filed on Monday at the Los Angeles federal court by Yonay’s widow and son said Paramount did not reacquire the rights under the US Copyright Act following termination in January 2020.
The Israeli family want unspecified damages from Paramount, as well as profits from the new film, Top Gun: Maverick.
"Much as Paramount wants to pretend otherwise, they made a sequel to Top Gun after they lost their copyright," lawyer Marc Toberoff, the Yonays representative, told the BBC.
The family claimed to have told the film studio in 2018 that its rights to the article would be terminated two years later.
Paramount’s Top Gun franchise would have never existed without Yonay’s "literary efforts and evocative prose and narrative," the lawsuit said.
Paramount hit back and said: "These claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously."
Maverick, which earned £438mln within its first 10 days, had the fourth largest opening weekend of pandemic-era films, behind Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Batman.