Fox Sues Struggling Screenwriter Over Deadpool Script Leak
Posted on November 29, 2010
20th Century Fox is suing Patricia (P.J.) McIlvaine, a struggling screenwriter and mom who uploaded a number of scripts to a website that she founded to help other screenwriters. McIlvaine uploaded 100 scripts, including Wall Street and Deadpool (which is still in development at Fox). Fox is suing for copyright infringement. In the lawsuit it alleges that uploading the scripts harms fans who don't want spoilers for movies they haven't seen yet.
Fox is also suing "John Does" as stand ins for whoever gave her scripts. McIlvaine says she found all the scripts online. Friends say McIlvaine doesn't have the money to defend against Fox.
"PJ doesn't have the kind of cash needed to hire an attorney," reads a post on the blog Celluloid Blonde. "Like I said, days she works a telephone line selling flowers to make ends meet and nights she writes -- fighting to bridge that artist-who-does-art vs. artist-who-gets-paid-for-art gap. In between she is caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia. In between that she is caring for an infant. She is going to need help."Cinemablend describes how it all went down.
Two strangers knocked on her door and informed her, in front of her children, 20th Century Fox was suing her for 15 million dollars. Two hours later, after grilling her with questions for two solid hours, they left her stunned and crying in her living room staring at a business card that stated they were "private investigators."It sounds like she didn't have to right to post the scripts, but Fox is being really heavy handed about this. All it had to do was send a demand letter and surely she would have complied. Fox is very angry about the Deadpool script being leaked (it's all over the Internet), but McIlvane wasn't the leaker.This was the first contact PJ had from 20th Century Fox regarding a Media Fire online script library she created -- and was the day 20th Century Fox filed a law suit against PJ in federal court for fifteen million dollars.