Paramount Pictures has been hit with a lawsuit claiming that the movie studio lost the rights to Top Gun and the recently released sequel is therefore a copyright infringement.
The original 1986 flick was inspired by an article in the April 1983 issue of California magazine titled ‘Top Guns’.
This article was penned by Ehud Yonay and his widow and son, Shosh and Yuval Yonay, who live in Israel. They are now suing the studio for failing to acquire the rights to the article once again before the recent release of the sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.
According to Reuters, a complaint was filed in Los Angeles federal court on Monday (6 June). The family is seeking unspecified damages, including profits from Maverick, which has become one of the biggest box office hits of the year so far.
Puck News reports the Yonays are “exploiting a provision of copyright law that allows authors and their heirs to reclaim rights granted to publishers and studios after waiting 35 years”.
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A termination notice may have recovered rights to the Top Gun story in January 2020, according to copyright records reviewed by the publication.
The sequel, released in May 2022, has been a huge hit with critics and audiences alike. Tom Cruise, who returned as Maverick, had his first ever $100 million+ (£79m) opening weekend.
ComicBook reports the sequel to the 1986 classic had an opening weekend of $124 million (£98m) in the US and a take of $248 million (£196m) at the worldwide box office.
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The sequel brings us a Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Cruise) who we see training the latest crop of Top Gun pilots for a dangerous mission, among the new recruits is the son of Maverick's late friend Nick Bradshaw, who is known to fans colloquially as Goose.
Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw, played by Miles Teller, soon enters the picture, whose call sign Rooster pays homage to his late father.
Cruise served as a producer on the film said he'd been thinking about the sequel for decades, but he only wanted to do it if it was done right.
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He told Inside Total Film: "I'd thought about a sequel to Top Gun for all these years. People had asked for a sequel for decades. Decades. And the thing I said to the studio from the beginning was: 'If I'm ever going to entertain this, we're shooting everything practically".
UNILAD has reached out to Paramount Pictures for comment.
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Topics: Film and TV
Gregory Robinson