Sylvester Stallone did not steal the plot for The Expendables from another screenwriter, a federal judge has ruled.
Marcus Webb claimed the Stallone screenplay for The Expendables was plagiarized from his own work called The Cordoba Caper which was also about a group of American mercenaries on a Latin-American rescue mission.
In legal papers, Webb apparently claimed that both stories had 20 “striking similarities” according to EOnline . Stallone claimed never saw Webb’s script. According to Movieline , Stallone admitted that he based his draft on a script called Barrow by David Callaham who ultimately received co-writer credit for The Expendables .
One of the similarities was that both screenplays featured a villain named General Garza but the judge noted that “Garza is a common Hispanic surname.”
In fact, US District Judge Jed Rakoff found Webb’s arguments not persuasive at all in his 18-page decision:
” … [T]he Court has carefully examined the entire litany of plaintiff’s proffered ‘striking similarities’ and finds none of them remotely striking or legally sufficient. Any reasonable fact-finder would have to conclude that these are two very different screenplays built on a familiar theme: mercenaries taking on a Latin American dictator.”
The court dismissed the case on summary judgment, meaning that there wasn’t enough evidence in the initial stages to necessitate bringing the dispute before a jury. Jude Rakoff actually made the initial ruling in June, but didn’t release his written opinion until now.
The Expendables has proved to be a profitable movie franchise for Stallone. After the success of the first film, which premiered in August 2010, a sequel followed in August of this year. Production on The Expendables 3 is scheduled to begin next year.
[Image credit: Matt A Scott / Shutterstock.com ]
