19-year-old Kaavya Viswanthan had it all figured out. She’d just had her first novel published and found herself sitting on a mountain of cash after Hollywood snatched up the film rights to her book. Who needs college right? Whoops.
According to Variety, Screenwriter Kara Holden has handed in her script adaptation of Kaavya’s book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life to DreamWorks just in time for the project to plummet towards a legal death. Kaavya’s book is under attack, facing serious plagiarism charges from a multitude of sources. There are reportedly 40 points of similarity between her book and two previously published books by Megan McCafferty (note: no she doesn’t write about dragons) called Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings.
Kaavya has been quick to charge out on a publicity blitz pronouncing those similarities as nothing more than coincidence, but her self-defense isn’t enough to stop the impending McCafferty lawyer onslaught. Viswanthan is ready to pull the book from shelves until things get sorted out, and you can bet that if her publisher lacks confidence in her work that DreamWorks won’t risk their own tidal wave of lawsuits by making a movie out of it. If you were hoping to see Opal Mehta get wild in theaters, forget it.
It’ll take a miracle for Kaavya’s book to make it to film now, I hope she wasn’t counting on Kung-Fu Opal Mehta action figure residuals.
