‘Top Gun: Maverick’ lawsuit alleging blockbuster film too similar to magazine article is tossed

Paramount Pictures has won the dismissal of a lawsuit professing its 2022 Tom Cruise blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” borrowed much too a great deal from a 1983 magazine short article that impressed the initial “Top Gun” film.

In a determination on Friday, US District Judge Percy Anderson in Los Angeles stated the sequel was not “substantially similar” to Ehud Yonay’s “Top Guns,” about the US Navy’s Major Gun fighter pilot coaching college in San Diego.

Yonay’s widow Shosh Yonay and son Yuval Yonay, the heirs to his copyright, said they deserved some of the sequel’s profits, after Paramount created a billion-greenback franchise off an report that “breathed existence into the specialized humdrum of a navy base.”

Legal professionals for the Yonays did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for remark. Paramount’s lawyers did not instantly answer to comparable requests.

“Top Gun: Maverick” featured Cruise reprising his function as US Navy test pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.

It grossed $1.5 billion around the world, getting Cruise’s major film, and is the 12th best-grossing film in accordance to Box Workplace Mojo.

The plaintiffs, both from Israel, claimed that the fictional “Maverick” was “derivative” of nonfictional “Top Guns” because of identical plots, characters, dialog, options and themes.

But the decide stated copyright regulation doesn’t defend factual components these as the identities of true men and women in “Top Guns,” or acquainted plot elements these types of as pilots embarking on missions, becoming shot down or carousing at a bar.

He also said copyright regulation does not shield themes this sort of as “the sheer really like of flying,” or the only specific dialog — “Fight’s on” — determined in the two is effective.

“No fair juror could come across substantial similarity of tips and expression,” Anderson wrote.

Anderson also mentioned Paramount was not demanded to credit Ehud Yonay in the sequel, as it experienced in the primary “Top Gun” with a “suggested by” credit score, immediately after the Yonays in 2020 terminated Paramount’s exclusive movie legal rights to his report.

The posting was released in the May possibly 1983 difficulty of California magazine.

The situation is Yonay et al v. Paramount Images Corp, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 22-03846.