Sounds Like Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is Pro-IP

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has filed a copyright lawsuit against bosses at Gawker Media after they allegedly leaked copies of his “The Hateful Eight” script online.

The director axed plans to shoot the new western after the script was released without his permission earlier this month.

He told Deadline.com at the time, “I’m very, very depressed. I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today…

“I’m going to publish it, and that’s it for now. I give it out to six people, and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done…”


Following his statement, editors at Gawker.com posted the leaked script on their site and now Tarantino is pursuing legal action against them for uploading the screenplay illegally.

The lawsuit papers, which were filed in California, read, “Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck. This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally[...]”

According to the lawsuit, bosses at the media company have refused “repeat demands for the removal of the posted URL links,” and now Tarantino is seeking actual and statutory damages, as well as at least $1 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.