Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks have found themselves the defendants in a lawsuit that states they stole the plot for their 2006 film “Disturbia” from the 1954 Hitchcock classic, “Rear Window.” The suit claims that the creators failed to obtain permission from the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, the group which holds the movie rights to the Cornell Woolrich short story, “Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint.” The Woolrich short story is the source material for “Rear Window,” making the rehash of the original film an illegal act without consent of the group that holds the copyright to the source material.
According to the lawsuit, “Disturbia” and “Rear Window” are “essentially the same.” That incredibly obvious fact has been pointed out since the film began screenings, with the Toronto Star calling it a “rip off with wit” and the New York Times referring to it as an “adolescent ‘Rear Window.'” With the blatant copyright infringement it seems odd that the lawsuit has taken this long to occur. Where have the executors of this trust been for the past two years? Were they bored this weekend and finally got around to watching that movie with the kid from “Even Stevens” only to find out they had been duped?
This incredibly large fuck-up on the behalf of the film’s creators isn’t the first, it seems even when they were in the midst of ripping off classic films, they somehow found time to turn down Rihanna, whose massive hit, “Disturbia,” was written for the film but the producers decided to go in another direction at the last moment. For a regular project this would be considered a big deal, but for “Disturbia” you can just mark it up as another example of the top-notch judgement calls made by Spielberg and Co.
