User comments on this story

• eazyeazy said...

  Did your wife copyright, date, register, file with attorney, prohibit use of any ideas, receive releases of use from Kip Thorne, write and send a limited treatment with a completed script withheld, require Dreamworks to sign boilerplate non-disclosure documents and restrictions? NO!!!! Oh my gosh please don't blame an industry whose sole purpose is to locate and produce stories no matter what the source within their legal bounds. This stuff can be found in books like screenwriting for idiots" etc. No more whining and I'm sorry your wifes film won't be able to be made after Spielbergs: he'll sue for copyright infringement. Posted on Aug 17 2009 23:33

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• Mike said...

  Spielberg and Dreamworks have long had a history of plagerism (ET, Amistad, Poltergeist, Twister, AI, War of the Worlds etc). You will be absolutely crushed by their lawyers and silenced if you take them on. The best you can hope for is an out of court settlement. Nevertheless, I wish you well. Stir up noise in the press and don't let Spielberg get away with this again. Posted on Jan 06 2009 09:09

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• ashok said...

  Why cant you take a legal action before they just start the film ? You can put a case and u can atleast check your script with theirs. Posted on Feb 23 2008 01:35

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• RM said...

  This is actually very sad news for me. As my wife submitted a script to DreamWorks, which centered around interstellar travel, and directly mentioned Kip Thorne’s traversable wormhole theory and his contribution to Carl Sagan’s movie CONTACT (within the script itself, as an homage).
  DreamWorks held my wife’s script for several months, and then sent her a letter stating that “they had decided to go in another direction”.
  Naturally my wife was a bit disappointed, but when she read about Spielberg’s intention to make INTERSTELLAR a few months later, and learned that he had contacted Kip Thorne and Lynda Obst to write the treatment, she was inconsolable.
  Granted the actual film might wind up being different from hers, particularly since my wife’s script is quite original in theme and structure, and deals with more than just interstellar travel. BUT, she still feels justifiably slighted.
  The good news in all of this is that she has proof and documentation of all of her contact with DreamWorks, her script has placed in several prestigious screenwriting contests, and she both copyrighted it and registered it with the WGA long before ever submitting it to Spielberg.
  My wife has no desire to pursue legal action, at least not until she learns more about the storyline/plot and theme of Spielberg’s project. It’s just a very hard situation to deal with because my wife’s script was a labor of love that was inspired by her desire to make a difference in the world, if only in some small way. And she naively believed that Hollywood is always searching for new writers and great scripts.
  If you knew my wife, how special and gifted she is, and how much adversity she has had to face and overcome just to survive you’d know why this is a very sad turn of events. She poured herself into that script, as a way to deal with a horrific tragedy, and turn her pain into something positive, instead of wallowing in it like so many lesser mortals would’ve done under the circumstances.
  …So I’m worried about what will happen to her spirits if Mr. Spielberg, one of the people she truly admires, steals her story. I’m not saying he will, but I decided to write this as another form of documentation, just in case.
  My wife is a lovely and unselfish person, who dedicated most of her childhood and nearly all of her adulthood to being a caregiver to someone she loved dearly who would have been institutionalized were it not for my her devotion and care. – My wife chose to put her dreams and her passion for writing on the backburner, only indulging it whenever she could steal a few hours for herself every week. So no one deserves to be successful more than her, and if there is any justice in this world her script will become a film long before Spielberg’s does.
  RM
  P.S. - She is also brilliant, and a closeted science geek with a genius IQ. So if anyone can tackle quantum theory and weave it into an interesting interstellar yet very human tale it’s JB, my wife. Posted on May 19 2007 09:15

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