14 DAY TRIAL // “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” did not make Jeremy Renner the lead in the rebooted franchise, but it did reaffirm Tom Cruise’s status as an action movie star, while also breathing new life into a franchise that had been around for so many years that many assumed it dead.
Though the film came out in 2011, it is just now that one screenwriter is taking legal action against Tom Cruise and all associates (Paramount Pictures and “various” production companies) over claims that they took his own idea and shamelessly ripped it off to make a killer profit.
And make no mistake, a profit it did make: as of now, sales for the film rank close to $1 billion (€739.7 million), which is precisely the amount Timothy Patrick McLanahan is asking as damages in court documents filed just recently and obtained by Radar Online.
“In 1998, I had written a screenplay called Head On. After submitting it to the U.S. Copyright Office, Head On received a copyright certificate protecting its material and author from unauthorized use,” McLanahan alleges in the documents.
Once that out of the way, he proceeded to shopping the script around in the hope that someone might pick it up and turn it into a movie. Never did he imagine that his idea would end up being used in a new “Mission Impossible” installment and he wouldn’t be credited (and paid) for it.
“McLanahan said that he sent the script to William Morris Agency, only to have them pass. However, he claimed, they then sent it on — without his permission — to another agency, CAA. William Morris ‘then shopped the script around the world,’ the court documents claimed, ‘including Tom Cruise’s Rick Nicita, top agent with Creative Artist Agency.’ Nicita’s wife, Paula Wagner, is one of Cruise’s production partners,” Radar explains.
Nothing happened right then, the screenwriter further alleges in the documents. However, when he saw “Ghost Protocol,” he instantly noticed the similarities.
“I immediately recognized that the scripts for this movie had been illegally written and produced from Head On’s 1998 copyright,” he says.
The $1 billion (€739.7 million) he is asking in damages in the lawsuit represents the sum of the film’s box office gross, Blu-ray and DVD sales, rentals and subscriptions, and budget. In other words, he wants every cent ever made on “Ghost Protocol.”
As of now, neither Paramount Pictures nor Tom Cruise has been available for comment on the allegations made in the court documents.