Deadline; Paramount Flies High As ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Copyright Suit Against Studio Dismissed

Story from Deadline:

The nearly two-year old dogfight between Paramount and the family of the writer of the 1983 article that inspired the franchise is over, at least for now.

In an order released late on April 5, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson grounded the copyright infringement, breach of contract, and declaratory relief action by the Israeli-based widow and son of Ehud Yonay.

“Defendant is entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay’s (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) claims for breach of contract, declaratory relief, and copyright infringement,” he wrote in a the one-page judgment in favor of Paramount Pictures (read it here). “Plaintiffs shall take nothing and Defendant shall have its costs of suit.”

“Plaintiffs contend that the Article and Sequel (collectively, “the Works”) are substantially similar because they have similar plots, sequences of events, pacing, themes, moods, dialogue, characters, and settings,” the judge said in a separate 14-page minutes in chambers document also made public last Friday. “Defendant contends that the similarities identified by Plaintiffs are either not similarities at all, or are similarities based on unprotected elements of the Works. The Court concludes that the Article and Sequel are not substantially similar under the extrinsic test.”

In that context, the case, first filed in June 2022 and amended two months later, has been through almost as many twists and turns as a F-14 in combat.

The Ehud Yonay penned “Top Guns” from the now-defunct California magazine’s May 1983 edition, about the pilots and program “located in a second-floor cubby of offices at the east end of Hangar One at Miramar” saw its author credited in the iconic 1986 film. However, when it came to Maverick, Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay asserted the rights reverted to them in January 2020 under copyright statutes. The complaint claims the 2022 $1.5 billion box office hit violated termination rights and Paramount, Cruise and the producers had no right to make the long awaited sequel.

With Tom Cruise and Maverick EPs Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison undoubtedly grinning over Judge Anderson’s order, Paramount today told Deadline: “We are pleased that the court recognized that plaintiffs’ claims were completely without merit.”

The Yonays’ lawyers obviously were not so pleased.

“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling, particularly on summary judgment, and will exercise our right of appeal to the 9th Circuit,” attorneys Marc Toberoff and Alex Kozinski told Deadline today. “Paramount’s action speak much louder than its counsel’s words.

“In 1983, soon after Ehud Yonay’s cinematic Top Guns Story appeared in California Magazine, Paramount raced to lock up the copyright to the exclusion of other Studios,” they added. “In the words of Top Gun’s producers Simpson/Bruckheimer in a interview on the origins of Top Gun: ‘We got to get this. We got to buy this,’ ‘Get on the phone with California Magazine. We want this right away.’ And unsurprisingly Yonay received credit on the resulting derivative film, Top Gun, spawning a franchise. Yet once Yonay’s widow and son exercised their rights under the Copyright Act to reclaim Yonay’s exhilarating Story, Paramount hand waived them away exclaiming “What copyright?” It’s not a good look.

Judge Anderson clearly disagreed.

“The Court concludes that Defendant was not required to credit Yonay because the Sequel was not ‘produced under’ the Assignment of Rights,” he wrote on April 5. “As an initial matter, the production of the Sequel continued after Plaintiffs terminated Defendant’s rights, and the Sequel was released in 2022. Additionally, the Sequel could not have been produced under the Assignment of Rights because it does not infringe on the Articles’ copyright. That is, the Sequel was produced independently of the rights conveyed to Defendant by the contract.”

Quite the shift from last June, when the judge set a trial date of May 7, 2024.

While Judge Anderson had denied Paramount’s initial motion to dismiss back in November 2022, in the fall of 2023 he took in new summary judgment filings from both the Yonay family (November 6, 2023) and the perhaps soon to be Skydance purchased Paramount a few weeks later (November 22, 2023). With a beat for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the court announced on December 26 that it was taking the pending Motions under submission.

The judgment last week came with no oral argument before the court from Paramount’s outside counsel Daniel Petrocelli and his O’Melveny & Myers associates nor the Yonays’ attorneys Toberoff and Kozinski.

Appeal or not, r]the decision certainly eases the immediate stress surrounding one of its biggest stars and biggest pieces of IP for Paramount in a delicate time for the studio.

Ellison’s Skydance Media is currently in an exclusive negotiating window with Shari Redstone‘s National Amusements, which controls the voting shares of Paramount Global. The transaction is seen as a step toward a more complete combination of Skydance and Paramount, though the exact shape of the newly configured entity remains under discussion. One sticking point is the fact that while National Amusements owns more than three-quarters of Paramount’s voting shares, it only has about 10% of the company’s total equity, so other prominent shareholders are concerned about getting diluted.

So, not quite cleared for takeoff.

© 2024 Deadline.