The parent company of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is threatening to sue Warner Bros. over the portrayal of a reporter in the Clint Eastwood film "Richard Jewell."

Eastwood's film includes a plot line in which Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, offers a federal agent sex in exchange for a scoop.

That depiction of Scruggs and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she worked at the time, has drawn criticism, particularly from the current staff at the newspaper.

Cox Enterprises, the AJC's parent company, sent a letter Monday to Warner Bros., Eastwood and several other people associated with the film, threatening legal action unless a disclaimer was added to the film and a public statement was made by the studio acknowledging that "some events were imagined for dramatic purposes."

The paper claims that the film is inflammatory against Scruggs' legacy and purposefully altered details in order to show the AJC in a poor light.

"It is highly ironic that a film purporting to tell a tragic story of how the reputation of an F.B.I. suspect was grievously tarnished appears bent on a path to severely tarnish the reputation of The A.J.C., a newspaper with a respected 150-year-old publishing legacy," attorney Martin Singer said in the letter.

"Richard Jewell," which arrives in theaters Friday, is about how the media reported on a bombing that took place during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and how the FBI investigated the attack, which killed one person and injured scores of people.

Jewell was the security guard who discovered the bomb. He was questioned by the FBI, who considered him a suspect for a brief period. Scruggs was the first to report that the FBI considered Jewell a suspect.

The AJC was one of several media outlets that were sued after Jewell was deemed not a suspect. However, over a decade later, it was determined that the articles were true at the time they were published, and the case was dropped.

"Richard Jewell" currently has this disclaimer at the end of the film: "The film is based on actual historical events. Dialogue and certain events and characters contained in the film were created for the purposes of dramatization."

Eastwood, an Oscar-winning actor and director, is a prominent conservative and has taken aim at the FBI and the news media with "Richard Jewell." Both groups are among President Donald Trump's most criticized targets.