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My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

tessgerritsen.com

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Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#81

Post by ubernostrum »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #70
ubernostrum wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part where this was a contract issue? Where the author of the book said, literally, "Yeah, Gravity is a great film, but it's not based on my book"? She's trying to argue that a contract she made with one company would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company that made a movie she admits wasn't based on her book. And that's why…

> would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company "Somehow"? They would do so via a completely standard clause that enjoins any acquiring entity to honour the terms of the contract. I have never negotiated a contract that did not have a such a clause. Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing. Maybe she had incompetent representatio…

Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing.

I don't know the details of the contract, but I know that apparently it gave her a percentage of net, rather than gross, on the resulting film.

Which, when dealing with Hollywood, ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel on the part of whatever attorney represented/advised her during the negotiations :)

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#82

Post by clay_to_n »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #80
zobzu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what the lawsuit is based upon really - that's said, the title is the same, the story is very similar, and it seems extremely likely that the author is accurate, even thus it may be difficult to prove (and easy to disprove, WB can just delete all the files where she's mentioned during the acquisition and then she just has her own word for it, emails being easy to fake and all)

The stories are not similar at all. The similarity is the title, that both are sci-fi, and that there is a female lead. Judge for yourself: Book: Dr. Emma Watson has been training for the adventure of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. But her mission aboard the International Space Station turns into a nightmare beyond imagining when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control -…

Are you intentionally ignoring this claim by the author?

While my film was in development, I re-wrote the third act of the film script with scenes of satellite debris destroying ISS and the lone surviving female astronaut adrift in her spacesuit.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#83

Post by dragonwriter »

ctdonath wrote: post #77
ubernostrum wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part where this was a contract issue? Where the author of the book said, literally, "Yeah, Gravity is a great film, but it's not based on my book"? She's trying to argue that a contract she made with one company would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company that made a movie she admits wasn't based on her book. And that's why…

"I, Robot" was a great movie, but not based on the book. "Starship Troopers" was, as I like to repeat a quip, "based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein". "Frozen", while not involving a contract to the long-deceased author, is allegedly based on "The Snow Queen" though I fail to see the connection. There are numerous other examples of a movie being almost entirely unlike the book for which rights were pu…

> "Starship Troopers" was, as I like to repeat a quip, "based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein".

ST was actually written as a script completely unrelated to the book, and the rights to the book later purchased and superficial changes (character names, etc.) made to align with the book.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#84

Post by spiritplumber »

konceptz wrote: post #76
spiritplumber wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because large corporations without a public figure at the helm think like paperclip maximizers. There is a process that counts cost vs. reward for various strategies, and the most efficient one is selected. TW is big enough that they don't have to worry about their reputation taking a big hit from doing this once, or even a dozen times - people will still pitch scripts to them. What puzzles me is why we…

I'm confused,and intrigued, what a "military reprisal" would be.

In this case I guess it would be "You've ripped me off to the tune of a million dollars, so I'm going to cause you a million and one dollars in property damage, this way you'll learn next time".

This is considered acceptable in some cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#85

Post by chii »

a3n wrote: post #32
thret wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unreal: "A WB receipt was leaked online, showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended up with a $167 million loss on paper. This is especially unusual, given that the Harry Potter film series is the highest-grossing film series of all time."

And these are the people who are trying to police our moral profiles wrt file downloading. It works because they can. They do it because they've figured that out. It's that simple.

piracy prevention has not once been about morals, even their very thinly disguised propaganda (ala the "you wouldn't download a car" ads) is basically not about morals, but about profits.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#86

Post by sgift »

thanksgiving wrote: post #56
comrade1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that does happen, in way. The most well-known was Zynga - when they were getting ready to go public they did a claw-back on their outstanding options and shares. They screwed over a friend of mine that was one of the early employees. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702046219045770183...

Marcus Pincus is a piece of shit by his own admission. We should make a six degrees of separation where anyone who does any partnership or collaboration with that piece of shit immediately deserves a boycott as well. Yes, HN this includes even your god and lord Paul Graham... Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues" http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pink…

Just because he admits to common practices instead of hiding behind the usual bullshit doesn't make him any worse than other CEOs. And just to make it clear which way to read that: That's not a defense of Pincus. That's a shot at the other CEOs. Business and moral don't go together, you can read that on HN all the time.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#87

Post by decisiveness »

ubernostrum wrote: post #38
dxhdr wrote: post #3

What's wrong with these people? Why couldn't Warner Brothers reach out to Tess and say "Hey, we're going to produce a sci-fi film based on GRAVITY. We'd like to work with you and are interested in re-negotiating your contract for a new version of the story." You know, acting in good faith. Instead they just screw her, no recognition, no money? How is that the default thought process for a company? This may be vindict…

Well, some of the issues seem to be: 1. The movie "Gravity" is primarily an action/special-effects pageant about an astronaut trying to get safely back to Earth after an accident destroys the space station she was on. The book "Gravity" is a medical techno-thriller about a doctor in space fighting a disease outbreak on a space station. Reasonable people can probably disagree about whether the movie, given its signifi…

> The book "Gravity" is a medical techno-thriller about a doctor in space fighting a disease outbreak on a space station.

Remember that sometime between 1999 and 2002[1], Gerritsen wrote and submitted a third act re-write including "scenes of satellite debris destroying ISS and the lone surviving female astronaut adrift in her spacesuit." (core suspense of Cuaron's script).

[1]http://www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-2014/

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#88

Post by chriscub »

tptacek wrote: post #47
ricardobeat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part about the person who wrote the script for the movie being involved in the original project, based on the book?

The notion of an "original" product causally linked to the WB-produced film _Gravity_ assumes facts not in evidence. Gerritsen alleges that the film she worked with Katja on formed a basis for WB's film by dint of Cuaron's involvement in both projects. In the earlier project, Cuaron is alleged to have been "attached" to the project. In the WB production, Cuaron and his son wrote the entire screenplay. The film term o…

The important part to me is why WB says it owes Gerritsen nothing. If the case is "We admit the movie had a relationship to her work, but that doesn't matter because it was New Line's contract not WB's", there is a very big problem here.

On the other hand, if they convince a judge/jury that there was no connection between her book and the movie then fine. Case closed, go home, no worries.

The key problem here is that if a studio can do a neat little legal dance to avoid contract obligations then that is a big deal. If this is simply a matter of evidence not supporting the claims in this instance then not a big deal.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#89

Post by shutupalready »

ubernostrum wrote: post #81
tjradcliffe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company "Somehow"? They would do so via a completely standard clause that enjoins any acquiring entity to honour the terms of the contract. I have never negotiated a contract that did not have a such a clause. Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing. Maybe she had incompetent representatio…

Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing. I don't know the details of the contract, but I know that apparently it gave her a percentage of net, rather than gross, on the resulting film. Which, when dealing with Hollywood, ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel on the part of whatever attorney represented/advised her during the negotiations :)

> ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel

A much more likely explanation is that the writer and her lawyer know perfectly well the difference between gross and net, but this was the best deal they could get, and it was better than nothing.

Writer and her lawyer: "We demand 3% of the gross."

Studio head: "I'm not offering any percentage of the gross."

Writer and her lawyer: "OK, we'll settle for 2.5% of the gross."

Studio head: "I told you: nothing on the gross. Zero. If you don't like that, get lost. I'll hire another writer."

Writer and her lawyer: "Well, OK, how about 3% of the net."

Studio head: "I think we can agree to that."

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#90

Post by TwoBit »

shutupalready wrote: post #89
ubernostrum wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither has anyone else who knows what they are doing. I don't know the details of the contract, but I know that apparently it gave her a percentage of net, rather than gross, on the resulting film. Which, when dealing with Hollywood, ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel on the part of whatever attorney represented/advised her during the negotiations :)

> ought to be prima facie evidence of ineffective/incompetent counsel A much more likely explanation is that the writer and her lawyer know perfectly well the difference between gross and net, but this was the best deal they could get, and it was better than nothing. Writer and her lawyer: "We demand 3% of the gross ." Studio head: "I'm not offering any percentage of the gross." Writer and her lawyer: "OK, we'll sett…

I wouldn't mind how studios did this if they were simply up front about it instead of being weasels about it.
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