Cinematical

I love when judges throw out cases that are completely ridiculous. (It always reminds me of when a judge threw out the "hit and run" charges I was facing for accidentally putting a ding in a co-worker's prized Camarro.) Not so similar, but not that dissimilar either, is the case just thrown out by a French court. Screenwriter Stephanie Vergniault was attempting to sue Warner Bros., writer-director Stephen Gaghan and Section Eight, the production company of George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, because she claimed Gaghan's film Syriana had plagiarized her own script about the CIA and the Persian Gulf oil industry, written in 2002.

The judge called the scripts "obviously different," and declared the similarity in focus between the two "coincidental". Vergniault had absolutely no case, it seems, and couldn't even provide requested proof of her claim that she had sent the script to a Canadian company linked to Warner Bros. Let this be a lesson to you fledgling screenwriters so you don't waste precious court time and, more importantly, also make fools of yourselves: Not only did Vergniault not get her desired $2.5 million, but now she will likely never get a legitimate deal, either.