The family who owns the rights to Alvin and the Chipmunks is suing Fox for “half of all profits” from last year’s Squeakquel, alleging, among other things, that the film’s script (it had one!) contained “substantial copyrighted contributions” used “without authorization” from an early draft by Janice Karman, the wife of Ross Bagdasarian, whose father created the Chipmunks. Karman apparently submitted an unsolicited screenplay for the film (which was later “revised” by Fox-hired writers), and she was allegedly offered money by the studio, but she deemed it “insufficient” and the two sides never agreed on a deal. But now she says the final draft contained substantial portions of her script and she’s demanding proper compensation (Squeakquel earned $220 million in the U.S., so hundreds of millions are at stake here). We think Fox should give it to her, because who would lie about such a thing? [Esq./HR]
