Warner Bros. is “ditching its drama pilot about a crime-solving girl hacker who teams up with a male police detective,” because Sony Pictures is “threatening legal action over similarities” with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Attempts to decrease the similarities by “turning the white male cop into a black female lawyer and giving the loner hacker a boyfriend” apparently weren’t good enough, because “the series is based around [sic] a hacker.”
Wtf? Sony claims ownership of the mere concept of having a hacker as a main character?
Or is it just that it’s a female hacker? Maybe DC comics should be suing Sony then.
In related news, the Moffat-Vertue axis is still sabre-rattling against CBS for daring to imitate the idea of an updated Sherlock Holmes series.
Now I love the hell out of Sherlock, and I doubt that CBS’s effort will even remotely measure up. But before the BBC folks decide to resort to violence over this, they might remember that the idea of Holmes-in-the-present-day is not exactly one they invented.