A British screenwriter – Jake Mandeville-Anthony – is suing Disney/Pixar for stealing his idea for the movie “Cars”. He claims he came up with the idea for the talking cars movie way back in the early 90’s and sent it, along with descriptions and sketches of animated cars and marketing and merchandising plans to several studios, including Disney. In fact, he claims he met in person with Jim Morris, who at the time was an executive with Lucasfilm. Morris joined Pixar in 2005 and “Cars” was released a year later.
While all of this may sound suspicious, don’t you wonder why Mandeville-Anthony didn’t file this lawsuit sooner, instead of waiting until a few months before the scheduled release of “Cars 2” (which he is trying to stop, by the way).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the writer and Pixar have been in a private legal battle for some time. Maybe that is about this, and Mandeville-Anthony decided to take it public.
It all sounds a little crazy, after all, talking cars have been around for a long time. And didn’t someone sue DreamWorks awhile ago claiming the studio stole his idea for “Kung Fu Panda”?
Good luck trying to keep “Cars 2” from being released. Not even if he had Mater as his lawyer could Mandeville-Anthony get that done.