INTERNATIONAL NEWS - Walt Disney Co was sued on Tuesday by a longtime Hollywood screenwriter and producer who accused the studio of copying its blockbuster, Oscar-winning animated film Zootopia from his work without permission.
Gary Goldman, whose credits include the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall and Tom Cruise film Minority Report, filed his copyright infringement lawsuit in the US District Court in Los Angeles.
He said Disney replicated, sometimes "virtually verbatim," the themes, settings, plot, characters and dialogue, as well as the title, of his Zootopia concept, which he had pitched to the studio in 2000 and 2009.
Disney and its affiliates embrace "a culture that not only accepts the unauthorised copying of others' original material, but encourages it," the lawsuit said. "They did it with Zootopia, too, when they copied Gary L. Goldman's Zootopia."
