It’s everywhere, so I suppose we should chime in on it. In case you haven’t heard, 20th Century Fox is suing Sony over what they perceive as copyright infringement. Basically, they think Sony is trying to rip off the X-Men. Here’s what IMDB has to say about it, because I don’t feel like going through the trouble to try and summarize all this legalese.
”Hollywood studio Twentieth Century Fox and comic book company Marvel Enterprises filed a lawsuit on Monday against Sony Pictures and Revolution Studios to delay the release of Zoom - a movie they believe is too similar to their X-Men films. Both projects center on children who possess special powers and are shunned by normal society before they enroll in a special to school to learn how to harness their abilities. Twentieth Century Fox and Marvel Enterprises allege Sony Pictures and Revolution Studios deliberately brought forward the release date of their movie in an attempt to attract cinema-goers before X-Men 3 is released on May 26, 2006. Legal papers filed in a California federal court state: "Just days after Fox announced X3 would be released on May 26, 2006, Sony and Revolution deliberately moved up Zoom's release so that it would come two weeks before, instead of 11 weeks after the release of X3." Fox and Marvel have also asked the court to force Sony and Revolution to remove material from their movie which is similar to X-Men content. Fox also allege Revolution ignored a written warning to leave out X-Men references in Zoom's Academy - even though some script changes were made. The lawsuit continues: "Although Revolution changed some parts of Zoom's Academy script... those few cosmetic changes cannot cover up the fact that Zoom continues to copy key elements, concepts, themes, characters and story lines from X-Men." Zoom, a comedy satire set to star Tim Allen, has not yet gone into production.”
Really, I don’t think there’s much of a story here except perhaps more confirmation of the stupidity of Fox. If you’ve followed any of the coverage we’ve given Zoom here on Cinema Blend, it’s obviously not the same caliber of movie as X-Men. At best it’s a wacky comedy and if it is truly that similar to X-Men, then it’s a parody… and parody is protected from these sorts of infringement lawsuits. What’s most interesting though is that they mention there being actual X-Men references in the film. But how many movies reference Superman? That alone isn’t enough to bring a case.
To me, it seems most likely that this is more a scare tactic on the part of Fox, to scare Sony away from X3’s release date, a release date as we all know they are bound and determined to have their film out on no matter what the cost to the product, it’s fans, or apparently Sony. What a waste of time. Does Fox seriously think a crappy Tim Allen kid’s superhero academy movie that will by then already have been done at least once by Kurt Russell is any sort of competition for X3? Sounds like they have even less confidence in their movie than we do. If Sony’s smart, they’ll just move it and forget about the whole mess. Moving their movie away from X3 will probably only help it anyway.
