Top Gun Maverick promo poster
A lawsuit against the maker of the 2022 Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun: Maverick” was thrown out by a federal court. The suit was brought by the family of the Israeli man whose magazine article was the basis for the original Top Gun movie, which came out in 1986. The family argued that they hold the copyright to the original story and should have been compensated for its use in a new film.
Tom Cruise’s original Top Gun film from 1986 was based on an article published in California magazine. The 1983 article about navy pilots titled Top Guns was written by Israeli Ehud Yonay. The lawsuit was filed by Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay, the widow and son of the late Ehud Yonay. The family says that the deal in which the story’s rights were sold for the making of the first Top Gun movie ran out before the sequel was released and so Paramount needed to negotiate a completely new deal with them before making the sequel.
According to the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, “On January 24, 2020, the copyright to the Story thus reverted to the Yonays under the Copyright Act, but Paramount deliberately ignored this, thumbing its nose at the statute.”
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However, Los Angeles U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson disagreed. The judge ruled that Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick was not “substantially similar” to Ehud Yonay’s original article.
“These claims are without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a spokesperson for Paramount told Fox News Digital at the time the lawsuit was first filed.
Marc Toberoff, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case, promised to appeal the decision.
“We respectfully disagree with the ruling, particularly on summary judgment, and will exercise our right of appeal to the 9th Circuit,” he said in a statement. “Once Yonay’s widow and son exercised their rights [to] reclaim his exhilarating story, Paramount hand-waved them away exclaiming ‘What copyright?’”
Top Gun: Maverick brought in almost $1.5 billion worldwide at the box office.
