I know a lot of people (including me) are looking forward to May 19th, the release date of The Da Vinci Code. However, it looks like there could be a legitimate threat to its coming out party. According to the great folks over at FilmRot, the project is caught up in a huge legal battle from authors of another book that claim Dan Brown’s project plagiarized their own. This could cause MAJOR problems.
The 10 million claim by co-authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who wrote the book (Holy Blood and The Holy Grail) in 1984, is for breach of copyright on the grounds that the structure of their book was plagiarised by author Dan Brown for The Da Vinci Code. If the judge upholds the claim, there could be a lengthy delay or even ban on the film, which is expected to be the biggest British film of the year.
THere have been other court battle stories this year that have threatened release dates… but this one looks like it could have some teeth to it.
In the end though… the studios themselves will put up settlement money if they have to. They don’t want they’re $100 million+ investment to get hurt over $10 million in court actions. Still… it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.
