Top Gun maker Paramount sued over copyright breach

Top Gun maker Paramount sued over copyright breach

The family of the Israeli writer whose article inspired the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun is suing film studio Paramount Pictures for copyright infringement over its sequel, Qazet.az reports.

They claim the studio did not have the rights to Ehud Yonay's 1983 story "Top Guns" when it released the sequel Top Gun: Maverick last month.

The film earned $548m globally in its first 10 days of release.

Paramount says the claim was "without merit" and vowed to contest it.

Top Gun: Maverick sees Cruise reprise his role as US navy pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell from the original 1986 film.

It had the fourth biggest opening weekend of any film in the Covid-era, behind the best-selling Spider-Man: No Way Home, second-place Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and then The Batman.

The lawsuit - filed on Monday at the Los Angeles federal court by Shosh and Yuval Yonay, Ehud's widow and son - alleges that Paramount failed to reacquire the rights to Ehud's magazine article after it was terminated under the US Copyright Act.

They are seeking unspecified damages from the film studio, including profits from Top Gun: Maverick.

According to the lawsuit, Paramount's Top Gun franchise would not have existed without Ehud's "literary efforts and evocative prose and narrative".