This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who has seen Disturbia. Steven Spielberg is being sued for ripping off Alfred Hitchcock. According to Reuters, Spielberg’s company DreamWorks and its parent companies are accused of copyright infringement and breach of contract.
The lawsuit alleges that DreamWorks never properly obtained the rights to the story Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is based on, before making Disturbia, and the lawsuit points our rather correctly that both Disturbia and Rear Window are essentially the same. Even reviewers who liked the film were at the time, unable to avoid the comparisons, and the movie seemed almost to embrace the notion that it was Rear Window for MySpace teens and tweeners.
The basic structure of the plot does unfold in much the same manner, though many of the specifics, like the reasons for our lead character’s home-incarceration, are changed. Yet the similarities are hard to ignore. When the film was first released, the best star Shia LaBeouf could come up with in defending his version was to say that he believed there was room in the genre for more than one film. An odd statement when you think of it… since when did Rear Window become an entire genre?
Disturbia is obviously at the least, influenced by Rear Window. I’ve always thought it was more similar to The Burbs. In my review I called it “The 'Burbs and cross-bred it with the career of Freddie Prinze Jr.” I stand by that statement. Of course maybe The Burbs is Rear Window ripoff as well, and I’m sure no one would be surprised to learn that Freddie Prinze Jr. is a ripoff of something. Nobody gets that good looking naturally. Spielberg may have to pay. I doubt it’ll hurt him, he has the money.
