Friday, April 16, 2010

It's Not Movie Piracy When Hollywood Does It

So if you've got a couple of minutes, watch these two movie trailers and spot the similarities. It's not too hard. First, an Australian movie called Freedom Deep :



And next, one of Warner Bros. mega-budget box office monoliths (or so they hoped), The Book Of Eli :



Yeah. Amazing, isn't it?

So how does an Australian movie get away with blatantly ripping off a big budget American flick?

Well they don't. Because they didn't.

Freedom Deep was made in 1995. The Book Of Eli was made in 2009-2010.

Think about that the next time you hear Warner Bros. executives whinning about movie piracy and how it's "destroying the movie business".

More from Encore Magazine :
(Australian writer/director Aaron) Stevenson claims The Book of Eli is “virtually identical” to his film Freedom Deep.

“It’s not just the premise of the prophet getting the book back to the remnants of civilisation; that plot point is the same, but there are lots of visual references as well,” said Stevenson. “The last 10 minutes make it a little different, but up to that point, it’s pretty much the same.”

“We’re independent and we don’t have the money to go to the US and start a legal case. It’s a David and Goliath story and we need the publicity first. We’re looking at the possibility at the moment,” said Stevenson.
It will be a long and ugly and expensive fight, unfortunately. Hollywood studios don't give in easily to such lawsuits, even when it's obvious blatant plagiarism has occurred.

The Full Story Is Here