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| Quentin Tarantino: "I steal from every single movie ever made." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
Quentin Tarantino, The Weinstein Company and Columbia Pictures are facing a copyright lawsuit over Django Unchained, it has emerged. The film is not being challenged over any resemblance to the original Django film, any of its 31 sequels, A Fistful Of Dollars (which inspired it) or Yojimbo (which inspired that), but over alleged similarities to an undeveloped script called Freedom written by Oscar Colvin Jr. and his son Torrance J. Colvin.
Freedom is understood to have been circulating in Hollywood in 2004, prior to the development of Tarantino's film. It too follows the story of an emancipated slave who wants to by his family's freedom, and there are said to be strong similarities in the plot, including some very similar individual scenes. The writers, who filed suit in federal court in Washington, insist that this can't be coincidence.
The accused have yet to comment on the lawsuit, though Tarantino himself in quoted in it, based on a rather unfortunate remark he made to Empire in an interview: "I steal from every single movie ever made." He has previously said that his ambition is to break the record for winning the most Best Original Screenplay Oscars.
