The Original ‘GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra’ Writers Are Suing Paramount For $23 Million

Written by Ashley Burns / 05.07.13

“We should keep the part with the El Camino for sure.”

I won’t pretend like GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was the best movie that we’ve ever seen. I won’t even pretend like it was a good movie. But it was what it was – a movie about a cartoon about toys. So when you’re working with that goofy of a concept, you don’t necessarily expect the film’s writers to submit a screenplay for a modern day Citizen Kane, but David Elliot and Paul Lovett still did their jobs, along with co-writer Stuart Beattie, and $300 million later, Rise of Cobra was sort of a success*.

And in this day and age, a “sort of” success is typically good enough for a sequel, so naturally GI Joe: Retaliation was a go. But instead of Marlon Wayans and Dennis Quaid, Retaliation teamed The Rock and Bruce Willis with Channing Tatum (for a few minutes) and instead of Elliot, Lovett and Beattie, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were recruited. The result is $355 million and counting at the global box office.

Oh, and a huge lawsuit from Elliot and Lovett, who are accusing Paramount, MGM, Hasbro and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura of stealing their ideas.

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Crocodile Dundee Wants His Money Back

Written by Ashley Burns / 04.17.13

“Oi mate, sell ya my croc skin vest or me koala fur condom.”

For the past eight years or so, Australian acting legend and international treasure Paul Hogan has seen his name and reputation dragged through the proverbial kangaroo poop as he has been accused on several occasions of tax evasion. Ultimately, he was never convicted, despite several humiliating attempts by the Aussie government that included serving him right after his mom’s funeral, and he reached an undisclosed settlement with officials after he sued last year for all of the embarrassment and damage to his reputation.

So what does the man who gave us Crocodile Dundee do next? He goes after the people who framed him, that’s what. And he’s starting with his former tax adviser, who Hogan claims stole or “misappropriated” $34 million of his hard-earned coin.

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Judge won’t dismiss case of actress who sued IMDB for revealing her age

Written by Vince Mancini / 03.20.13

If you’ll remember, back in October 2011, an actress sued IMDB for revealing her age without her consent. IMDB came back a few weeks later, saying they only released her age after she attempted to use a fake birthdate, and filed to have the lawsuit dismissed. This week, a judge ruled that the actress’s suit can go forward.

U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman said that actress Junie Hoang’s claim that IMDb.com breached privacy and subscriber agreements in using information that she provided when subscribing to IMDbPro was enough in dispute to warrant a trial. But Pechman rejected Hoang’s claim that IMDb violated the Consumer Protection Act, and also that IMDb parent Amazon.com should also be held liable.

The way it originally came out, it sounded like the actress, Junie Hoang, the star of Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver, and Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warrior, among other films, had tried to provide IMDB a false birthdate, and IMDB used her credit card information to search out and publish her real birthdate. Turns out that’s sort of true, but not the whole story.

Hoang, whose real name is Huong Hoang, first signed up for IMDb in 2001, but left her age blank. In 2004, she used a friend’s account to submit a 1978 date of birth, even though she was actually born in 1971. In 2007, she decided that she wanted the false birth date to be removed, and repeatedly contacted the database, asking that it be taken off her page. Yet even after she sent them documents, including a fake Texas ID, showing that the birth date was wrong, they did not remove the 1978 date from her profile.

She just didn’t lie young enough. That’s the problem with fake birthdates, they age at the same speed you do. If she was really thinking about her future, she would’ve said her birthday was 1996, so she could play barely legal in 2015. Always be thinking ahead.

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The Great ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Porn Parody Lawsuit Nightmare Is Finally Over

Written by Ashley Burns / 03.12.13

Back in November, Vinnie wrote that the copyright owner of the wildly popular book Fifty Shades of Grey and Universal, the studio bringing that saucy literary romp to the big screen, were suing Smash Pictures, the company responsible for Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaption. Of course, there’s a great deal of irony in the people behind a porn parody of Twilight suing the porn parody of a porn parody, but this world is full of idiots, so here we are.

Anyway, it appears that the miscreants behind the porn-within-a-porn have been whipped into submission, as the porn producers have agreed to a settlement with Universal and the other people.

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Stuntman Suing Sony Over Terrifying ‘Ghost Rider 2′ Accident

Written by Ashley Burns / 03.11.13

Sorry, I just love this photoshop.

For what it was, Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance was much better than the original film, which basically played like a parody of a parody. But it was still pretty awful and definitely didn’t need to be made, except that Nic Cage desperately needed the money to finish building his pyramid tomb. It also didn’t need extra stunt men who had nothing to do with the actual film recording additional stunts for the DVD/Blu-Ray release, but Sony still wanted to dress the Rider up and pray that it could develop a cult following.

Unfortunately, during the filming of those bonus DVD stunts, a stuntman named Michael Gaboff was badly injured when his particular jump went very, very wrong, and now he’s suing Sony for “negligence, peculiar risk, ultrahazardous, breach of contract”, among others. Hmmm, ten bucks says Cage stars in a movie called Ultrahazardous by 2014.

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