John Carpenter Wins Plagiarism Lawsuit Against 'Lockout' Filmmakers

Published Oct 15, 2015

As one Escape from New York-minded empire is being built , another begins to crumble. John Carpenter has just won his plagiarism lawsuit against the makers of Snake Plissken plot-biting 2012 action flick, Lockout As The Playlist reports, a French court has ruled that EuropaCorp andwriters — Stephen St. Leger, James Mather and Luc Besson — were guilty of lifting plot elements from Carpenter's 1981 flick,. Directed by St. Leger and Mather, the film starred Guy Pearce an ex-con trying to rescue the president's daughter from a space prison.Despite its interstellar setting, this apparently hedged too closely towards Carpenter's flick, which found Kurt Russell (as "Snake") trying to save the president from a post-apocalyptic, prison system-styled Manhattan. Even in our review , we wrote this of: It'sin space, liberally borrowing the plot of the clumsyThe French court noted that the pacing differed betweenand(released asin Europe), but it chalked this up to 30 years of filmmaking changing the visual landscape. It wasn't as forgiving when it came to the plot points.The ruling stated:The defendants were ordered to pay Carpenter 20,000 euros, co-scripter Nick Castle 10,000 euros to the screenwriter, and 50,000 euros to the rights-holders of. You can read more details about the ruling here As for the forthcoming, completely Carpenter-backed remake, it was recently revealed thatcreator Neil Cross will be delivering a screenplay. A due date for the release has not yet been delivered.