White Wolf sues Sony over the movie "Underworld"

[Welverin]

No....and your knowledge of it frightens me.

So did I, but only because of the lawsuit Villano mentioned.

 

[Mark Chance]

The list of 'points of similarity' I just read (on the PDF) looks pretty weak to me.

Quite weak. Every point of similiarity is either something that is from the "well duh" category (i.e., silver hurts werewolves), has been done before (i.e., werewolves changing form at will and fighting in hybrid form), has ample precedent in literature and other movies (i.e., vampires having the strength of 10 men [c.f., Bram Stoker] or a vampire's bite being linked to sensuality [c.f., just about everything other than Stoker]). The points of similiarity between the movie and Collins's work are easily explained by the fact that they both decided to rip-off the Bard.

It's copycats bringing suit against copycats. If I were Sony, I'd bury WW in years of legal tie-ups, crushing them into the ground with my millions and millions of dollars. Of course, I'm a bit mean-spirited at times.

But, at most, Sony will settle out of court. The settlement will be sealed from the public. Nothing will come from this other than that. No one will prove anything. WW will trumpet about their "victory" while continuing the point away from the fact that their own products are equally derivative and just as open to criticism via long lists of points of similiarity.

 

[DMScott]

BTW: Did any other writer before WW envision vampires as a "secretive clan of modern, aristocratic sophisticates"? along with clans that had certain characteristics, etc? Clans being the major aspect I'm wondering about, not the secretive part.

A role-playing game called Chill, originally by a company called Pacesetter (which I believe went belly up several years before White Wolf were formed), had different types of vampires with different abilities and social structures dependent on type. I don't know if any Chill products called them clans, but I certainly did when I played. I doubt Chill was the first to do so, just one I remember off the top of my head.

Only had time to read the first thirty or so pages of the complaint this morning, but I didn't see anything that changes my opinion that it's a pretty frivolous lawsuit. Maybe there's a smoking gun in the last half of the complaint, I'll give the rest a read tonight. I wouldn't be at all shocked if Sony settles in order to get the movie out as advertised, but that's more a function of the timing than anything else.

 

[jdavis]

The World of Darkness stuff is pretty weak but the the movie storyline and the book storyline are pretty much exactly the same thing and that is where they will get them, and don't give me the Romeo and & Juliet stuff as there was so much more going on in this that matches exactly. I mean you could go down the list and and the plot points for the movie matched the plot points for the book, they used several distinctive World of Darkness ideas such as the vampire coming out of torpor and the vampire/werewolf abomination (come on "a vampire/werewolf called a abomination which is hated by both sides" that's pretty much a sure give away it's been lifted from the book). I mean they pretty much went through and lifted the whole storyline from the book and just changed the genders of the two main characters.

I know that a lot of people seem to have some sort of grudge against White Wolf here by all the "I hope they get whats coming to them" type post but this really isn't something frivolous they have a pretty solid case as far as the book storyline goes, yes it's all a Romeo and Juliet spin but you could say the same for every movie ever made and every book ever written where two people fall in love but are not allowed to be with each other. And yes you can go into the fact that the whole World of Darkness is cobbled together with lots of previously existing material, but good grief what gaming system isn't. Just because they got bits and pieces from here and there doesn't take away from the fact that they put all these bits and pieces together and made a very compley vision out of it, it also doesn't take away the fact that it looks like every major plot point in the movie was taken from somebody elses published story.

The people who wrote the movie were not established screenwriters, this is their first script, it's a first time director and first time writers and they are also producing the movie and are also acting in the movie. This isn't some big budget Sony production, it's some under the radar production that Sony is involved in. Heck Kate Beckinsale is engaged to the director (whose past credits are: assistant props director for Independence Day and property assistant for Stargate). So these relatively unknown people show up with their first movie idea and want to write, direct, produce and act in the movie. Then the movie gets sued for stealing the storyline of a book as soon as ads for the movie start airing on TV, you got to wonder what exactly Sony's position on this will be?

 

[reapersaurus]

jdavis - good points, but I'd caution against going too far with it - It seems like you're pre-judging the case, the other way: you can't say they lifted "every plot point", because we've only read a sub-set of the plot points that happen to all be lifted from WW's material.

As for others: I can't believe that an intelligent fan of gaming and movies would look at that list, and go "eh - WW copied it all in the first place" or "there's nothing particularly there". I'd like to get some time to copy-paste some choice entries from the list (WITH SPOLIERS).
Basically, there are MANY dead-on copies and it's not even close to coincidental, or same-genre stuff.
Just one, for example - a childe pining for her Sire, who happens to be in something like "torpor"... IS NOT A COINCIDENCE. That is a blatant rip-off. It's never been done in movies before, and is not a hallmark of any material other than WW. And that's just one example. Anyone not seeing the ripoffs is actively trying not to for some personal reason or another.

About the WW "copying everything" issue:
Give me a break, and drop your prejudice against WW when posting about this, please.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen the obscure 70's movies you mentioned (I seriously doubt Captain Kronon and Vampire Hunter had clans recognizable as V:tM clans. I just don't believe it without more than anecdotal evidence, sorry), nor have I seen or heard of the obscure RPG reference to Chill. However, after a google search, the FAQ is here : http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/wilhelm/148/chfaq.html
and it doesn't look similar at all. Chill is about a secret group of hunters going after supernatural (demonic) beasts.
That's not all WoD brought to the genre, please.

I also searched for any site that talked about V:tM copying from Chill, but couldn't find anyplace on the internet that suggested a connection at all.

But I thank you 2 for trying to find influences on WW in creating WoD.
But just because something's been somewhere before, doesn't mean WW stole WoD from anyone. They might have used some elements from classic literature, etc, but what they created went far beyond just using "werewolves vs vampires". (<--edited)

And it's this World they made that was lifted, point after point, by Underworld. But it's worse - even the character relationships, conflicts, motivations, and actions were apparently copied, as well. Or at least it strongly appears that is the case.
But I'm reserving my final judgement until I see the movie myself.

That's a good point about the Carrie Anne Moss ripoff.
I thought she looked more like that girl from the Birds of Prey series, myself.

 

[DMScott]

I also searched for any site that talked about V:tM copying from Chill, but couldn't find anyplace on the internet that suggested a connection at all.

I don't doubt it, because I doubt there's any connection. The question wasn't "Did White Wolf copy these ideas", it was "did White Wolf initiate these ideas". They'd have to do the latter to claim ownership.

You seem to have this weird idea that if any two products express the same idea, one must have copied from the other. That just ain't the way the world works. Lots of people have ideas, and quite often the same idea at the same time. When you're dealing with elements as basic as the ones here - Vampires, Werewolves, and star-crossed lovers from feuding factions - it's hard to imagine a treatment that wouldn't have substantial areas of similarity with what White Wolf has done.

 

[Pielorinho]

I agree with jdavis: Collins's case looks stronger than White Wolf's. Are they claiming with a straight face that, because Underworld's vampires and werewolves fight with teeth and claws, they're copying White Wolf's vampires? That because Underworld werewolves don't use stakes, there's copying going on? That because both worlds have kickass women assassins, Underworld must have gotten the idea from WW? They're absurd.

Collins's claims look marginally better. Some of her claims are also goofy: there's only so many ways to have an R&J story between vampires and werewolves go down. But other elements look pretty similar.

It'll be interesting to see how it falls out. I sort of expect to see a repeat of the Franken-Fox debacle, personally.

Daniel

 

[Vocenoctum]

Didn't Scooby Doo have a village of werewolf-vampires?

 

[Villano]

Didn't Scooby Doo have a village of werewolf-vampires?

I think your thinking of The Real Ghostbusters. In the end, the wolves and the vamps fought. Each time a vamp bit a wolf and vice versa, they infected each other, turning into bat-winged vampwolves. Then the Ghostbusters blew up the dam or bridge of something which caused the town to be surrounded by running water, trapping all the vampwolves.

On the subject of werewolves and vamps being mortal enemies, you should check out the werewolf films of Paul Naschy. He's a Spanish actor (and sometimes writer and director) who's done a series of movies (beginning in the '60s) based on his character Waldermar Daninsky, the werewolf. In nearly all of them, his werewolf fights some kind of creature or another, most of them vampires.

Other monsters he's fought include other werewolves, a Frankenstein-like creature, a mummy, and a yeti.

 

[Umbran]

That being said, I'm sure that the end to all this will be Sony tossing some "go away" money at White Wolf and we'll never here anything else about it. Why fight a suit, even if you can win, if your legal fees will be more than the settlement?

More importantly - that's probably all WW wants. If Sony had come to them, and asked to use some WW material in the movie, WW would probably have written up a license, set a price, and it would have been done.

The issue at hand isn't whether or not Sony took someone else's material. The real question is whether Sony took material without paying for it. I know I sound the cynic on corporations these days, but it's true. If Sony ponies up some cash, WW will quiet down, of course.

At best, it's a case of WW wanting reasonable payment for their material. At worst, it's a case of WW taking advantage of Sony's stupidity in making a movie close enough to WW property to be vulnerable.