Extra, Extra!: Joss Whedon, Drew Godard and Lionsgate Sued for Copyright Infringement for The Cabin in the Woods

In which I report on the latest entertainment news.

The Cabin in the Woods has been praised as one of the most original movies - let alone horror movies - to come out in decades.  It singlehandedly re-invented the horror-comedy proved that intelligent, skillfully made films could come from any genre, even traditionally maligned ones.  This is why news of a new lawsuit against writer Joss Whedon, writer-director Drew Godard and producers Lionsgate for copyright infringement comes as such a genuine shocker.

Author Peter Gallagher claims in a $10 million lawsuit filed on Monday that The Cabin in the Woods is a blatant ripoff of his self-published 2006 novel The Little White Trip: A Night in the Pines.  According to Gallagher,

“Comparing the Book to the Film, the plots, stories, characters, sequence of events, themes, dialogue, and incidents portrayed in the two works are fictional and, in many respects, the elements in the two works are virtually identical,

 The alleged similarities include the number of characters (5), their sexual distribution (3 men, 2 women), their age range (between 17 and 22) and even their names (Jules and Dana instead of Julie and Dura).  The novel's plot involves a group of friends that travel to a remote cabin in the woods whose previous tenants were murdered by their father.  The family comes back as zombies to terrorize the protagonists, only to have it revealed that they're being filmed and have become the "inadvertent characters in a real-life horror show for the enjoyment of others."

While I have to agree that there are a striking number of superficial similarities between the two stories, they're really only just that: superficial similarities.  From my understanding about the novel and allegedly copied details, it lacks the plethora of horror icons (ranging from "Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain" to "Kevin"), its third act reveal of human sacrifice to ancient gods and any number of other details that made the movie the cultural phenomenon that it is.  All it has are a similar group of protagonists in a similar second act scenario.  That's it.

Just because two (or in this case three) people have a somewhat novel idea - deeply based on genre tropes and conventions, mind you - doesn't mean that it's copyright infringement.  The similarities are far from systematic and far from particular enough to warrant intellectual theft.  They're not even as similar as the annual pair of obviously poached movies between rival studios (Volcano vs Dante's Peak, Armageddon vs Deep Impact, Antz vs A Bug's Life).

What's more, is that the novel's distribution casts very reasonable doubt that Whedon, Godard or anybody at Lionsgate could have ever read it - let alone known about it - before production on the film began.  It was self-published and self-distributed at only a few locations across California.  There are only 7,500 copies of the novel in question, so they would have had to be in the exact right place at the exact right time to get one of the absurdly few copies of it in order to pluck a few mildly similar details and scenarios from it.  This lawsuit isn't adding up to anything more than a desperate author trying to make a few (million) bucks off of a novel that didn't take off like he thought it would.

So do you believe that The Cabin in the Woods is the product of copyright infringement?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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