14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that this is a month of lawsuits in the video games industry: Tecmo is having all sorts of trouble with its development team and now we have news about a lawsuit filed by Mario Puzo's son, Anthony Puzo, demanding money for The Godfather: The Game released in 2006 by Electronic Arts.
Mario Puzo, the creator of "The Godfather" had a deal with Paramount Pictures to receive "a significant share of the revenue of any audio-visual products sold or rented with elements of the Godfather movies". Puzo died in 1999, leaving his estate to his children but it seems that no money resulted from the video game left to the producers.
"In material breach of the audio-visual products agreement, Paramount has failed and refused to pay the Puzo Estate the sums due it in respect of the Godfather game," said the court filing, according to Reuters. Anthony Puzo is now asking for at least one million in damages for the breach of contract.
Nobody from Paramount was available for comment, but everybody is expecting an official answer to come in the following days. Stick with Softpedia and we'll update you on the matter.
Now... hearing all these just makes us wonder what will happen with the recently announced Godfather game. Electronic Arts boss John Riccitiello said that it can be played "both at the street level, much like a GTA-style game, but you can also play it top-down, almost like you're in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs you can see what's going on".
Of course, he probably had no idea about the upcoming lawsuit. Will this thing change the strategy of the developers or will they reach a deal, as they should, and continue the game development? It will most likely be the latter option, but it's still something worth keeping an eye on.