Quentin Tarantino, Oscar winning screenwriter for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained, is out for revenge. No games this time.
After publically announcing that he would shelve his upcoming western The Hateful Eight due to a script leak, Tarantino has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing the leaked script. The paperwork was filed in the U.S. District Courts today where it states: "Jury trial demanded."
The suit, signed by famed entertainment attory Martin Singer, sounds an awful lot like Tarantino himself. "Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people's rights to make a buck. This time they went too far," it says. "Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff's screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed thejournalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally. Their headline boasts "˜Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script' "“ "˜Here,' not someplace else, but "˜Here' on the Gawker website."
The famed filmmaker goes on to allege that the script could have been kept out of the public eye, staying within the world of Hollywood, but the unneeded promotion by Gawker sealed its fate.
Tarantino is seeking an injunction against the websites that would stop them from further disseminating the screenplay. He asks the court for unspecified damages exceeding $1 million.
