Tom Cruise Sued For $1 BILLION Over Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Script

A man claims to have come up with the idea first and it was stolen from him, so $1B isn't so bad?

Lawsuit: Tom Cruise slammed $1 Billion suit

Tom Cruise sued $1B over Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol

Actor Tom Cruise has been sued for one billion dollars for the film Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol by a screenwriter, Timothy Patrick McLanahan who claims the film came from the script for his own film title, Head On.

According to legal documents filed by McLanahan in December, the hit action movie, which sold $600M worth of tickets worldwide, came from his script Head On and reports also say Paramount Pictures is also named in the suit.

The film came out more than two years ago, but only recently has a complaint been made that there is a major problem with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. It was such a massive success, bringing Tom Cruise back on the A list and making a star of Paula Patton.
 

According to RadarOnline, McLanahan claims he'd written a familiar script for another movie few years ago. "In 1998 I had written a screenplay called Head On,' he wrote in legal documents, 'After submitting it to the U.S. Copyright Office, Head On received a copyright certificate protecting its material and author from unauthorized use.'

The writer then detailed the trail of hands the script went through, starting with William Morris Agency, which sent it to CAA, where Tom is a client. McLanahan is claiming his script was put in front of Cruise's agent Rick Nicita, who is married to the star's production partner Paula Wagner and says there was not that much interest in Head On.

But in 2011 when Tom's big-budget Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol came out, McLanahan thought it seemed awfully familiar.

"I immediately recognized that the scripts for this movie had been illegally written and produced from Head On's 1998 copyright,' the writer claimed in documents.

Here is how the writer came to the $1 billion amount: He added up ticket sales ($694,710,000), DVD and blue ray sales ($144.5 million), and movie rentals and subscription sales and budget ($145 million), according to Radar.

There are still no comments from either Cruise or his reps but this becomes the actor's second linvolvment in a awsuit in less than a year. In mid December the Top Gun actor settled his $50m lawsuit with Bauer Publishing over a claim that he had 'abandoned' his daughter Suri, who he had with ex-wife Katie Holmes, according to reports.
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