{"id":146146,"date":"2025-08-14T22:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T22:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/146146\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T22:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T22:05:09","slug":"paramount-pictures-claims-fraud-in-lawsuit-against-top-gun-maverick-writers-cousin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/146146\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Pictures Claims Fraud In Lawsuit Against \u2018Top Gun: Maverick\u2019 Writer\u2019s Cousin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tParamount Pictures has countersued the cousin of a writer on Top Gun: Maverick<\/a>, who alleges he co-wrote the screenplay, opening another front in the legal battle over alleged copyright infringement in the writing process for the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in California federal court, the studio alleges Shaun Gray deliberately hid his role in penning key scenes, with the aim of asserting claims for idea theft and seeking joint ownership of the screenplay. It accuses him of fraud and infringing on its copyrights. <\/p>\n

\n\tWith the success of Top Gun: Maverick, Gray \u201csaw an opportunity to shake down\u201d Paramount, states the complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, Marc Toberoff, a lawyer for Gray, said Paramount\u2019s counterclaims are \u201cdesigned to scare and intimidate\u201d the writer \u201cfrom asserting his authorial rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter Paramount\u00a0likely made a secret deal with Eric Singer, they try to blame Gray for Singer\u2019s alleged deception, when Gray was victimized by it,\u201d Toberoff added. \u201cThere is one saving grace though, Paramount\u2019s counterclaims serve as a ringing admission that indeed Shaun Gray authored most of the major character-defining action scenes appearing in\u00a0Top Gun: Maverick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGray is the cousin of Singer, who was recruited by Kosinski to write the film after collaborating with him on Only the Brave. He\u2019s argued <\/a>he should be credited as a co-author of the screenplay stemming from his role in writing pivotal sequences for the movie. This includes the opening in which Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, pushes a high-tech prototype fighter jet past its limits, breaking speed records before the aircraft fails, and another scene in which he repeatedly outmaneuvers elite pilots during a training exercise, culminating in a dogfight with a trainee.<\/p>\n

\n\tGray never reached a work-made-for-hire deal, which governs a production company\u2019s employment relationship with a writer and gives it the copyright to a script, with Paramount, unlike other Top Gun: Maverick writers, opening the door for him to claim joint authorship of the screenplay.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount brought on three waves of screenwriters for the movie, according to court documents. Singer \u2014 and by association, Gray \u2014 were brought on in the middle of the writing process, with two scribes penning drafts before and after the American Hustle writer submitted his own.<\/p>\n

\n\tHad it known of Gray\u2019s involvement in the movie, Paramount claims it would\u2019ve pursued other options that didn\u2019t put a cloud over its title to the film. The first is stopping Singer from working behind-the-scenes with Gray; another is cutting the scenes that Gray wrote; one more is not sharing Singer\u2019s draft with the next wave of screenwriters for the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGray did not try to negotiate a screenwriting contract with [Paramount], either individually or jointly with Singer, even though he knew that [Paramount] (like any mainstream studio) would not knowingly allow a writer to work on a screenplay for a major film without a work-made-for-hire agreement in place,\u201d writes Molly Lens, a lawyer for the studio, in the complaint. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn January 2023, more than half a year after the release of Top Gun: Maverick, Gray sent Paramount a written statement through his attorney in which he claimed he had a role in penning the film and kept it hidden from the studio out of concern that it\u2019d interfere with Singer being brought on as a writer, according to the complaint. Gray wrote he was worried that, if Singer pushed for the studio to contract them as a writing team with a shared credit, \u201cit risked blowing up the deal and could cause [them] to lose the project entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Writers Guild of America in 2019 began its process to determine the writing credits for the film. Paramount stresses that Gray, understanding that the union\u2019s decision is binding, chose to stay silent rather than lodge a claim. Gray wanted Singer to get a writing credit and share in that bonus, the studio says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd since Gray alleges he wrote several scenes without entering into an agreement with Paramount, it argues that he infringed on its copyrights. The sequences he penned \u201cexploit substantial protected expression owned by [Paramount] from Top Gun \u2014 most significantly, the character of Maverick himself,\u201d the complaint states. With the lawsuit, Gray has \u201ceffectively admitted to infringing [Paramount\u2019s] copyright in Top Gun and defrauding\u201d the company over his involvement in the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, the court rebuffed<\/a> Gray\u2019s bid for a court order that he was a joint author of a screenplay, which could\u2019ve entitled him to a share of profits from the film, while advancing his copyright infringement claim.<\/p>\n

\n\tGray\u2019s credits show that he was a staff writer on an episode of Shantaram and was Singer\u2019s writer\u2019s assistant for The International. He\u2019s mostly worked as a digital artist, including on The Magicians, Defiance and Two and a Half Men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount Pictures has countersued the cousin of a writer on Top Gun: Maverick, who alleges he co-wrote the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":146147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,19736,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-146146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-top-gun-maverick","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115029391813847835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}