Top Gun: Maverick Is Being Sued By The Family Of Top Guns Author
I feel the need for lawyers!
This article is more than 2 years old
While Top Gun: Maverick may be soaring high, those behind it are preparing for a crash landing. As the sequel to the 1986 film Top Gun continues to see record breaking sales, the family of the author who wrote the piece that inspired it all is taking Paramount Pictures to court, meaning those behind the Top Gun follow up are being sued. The news, which is coming to us from Reuters, reveals that the family is claiming “copyright infringement” as the basis of their case.
Taking their complaint all the way to the Los Angeles federal court, the family behind the franchise is claiming that Paramount Global didn’t take the steps necessary to gain access to the rights of the original 1983 article. The article in question, which was written by Ehud Yonay, followed an F-14 pilot and Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) as they went through the Navy Fighter Weapons School training program. The story was then adapted for the big screen by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. and directed by Tony Scott. And it seems that while the team behind the first film did everything in their power to obtain the story’s rights, that wasn’t the case for the folks behind the next chapter in the world of Top Gun who are now being sued.
Hoping to win big, the legal battle will take place between Paramount and Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay, the late Ehud’s widow and son, respectively. And while their claims hold some weight, it will be an uphill battle for the family. With their global hit Top Gun: Maverick being sued, the film studio is bound to strike back with everything they have – and they have a lot. In fact, the movie making company was quoted as saying that they would fight “vigorously” to shut the lawsuit down, meaning it’s an all hands on deck situation with lots of money to throw overboard. Considering the probable chance that the Yonay’s aren’t as financially well off as Paramount, the family will need to come prepared with excellent evidence if they want to battle it out in court.
Not only does the claim see the franchise of Top Gun being sued, but the family is also asking that the distribution of the film be halted immediately. Furthermore, they’re hoping to strike out any hopes of making the franchise into an even bigger juggernaut by putting the kibosh on any further projects surrounding the world of Maverick and his high flying students. And for Paramount, this just can’t happen. A hit from the very beginning, Top Gun: Maverick took flight and opened to a whopping $548.6 million in sales during the first 10 days of its release. Not only that, but it soared higher than any other film to come out this year, crushing the competition of movies like The Batman and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Not too shabby for a sequel over thirty years in the making.
This massive success spells both trouble and possibility for the Yonay’s in their journey to see the team behind Top Gun successfully sued. While the Yonay’s stand to win an exorbitant amount of money, Paramount will fight tooth and nail to keep their hard earned cash and make even more where that came from.
