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Two screenwriters have sued filmmaker Quentin Tarantino for allegedly taking the concept of one of their scripts and turning it into Django Unchained. 

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Quentin Tarantino Facing $100 Million ‘Django Unchained’ Copyright Case

Two screenwriters have sued filmmaker Quentin Tarantino for allegedly taking the concept of one of their scripts and turning it into Django Unchained. 

Quentin Tarantino once said “I steal from every single movie ever made”, which is most probably his own way of saying that he has been inspired by films that came before. While this is true for every film director, it looks like a couple of writers are using his own words against him.

Oscar Colvin Jr. and Torrance J. Colvin have filed a case against the film director along with Columbia Pictures and The Weinstein Company for allegedly taking the concept off their screenplay, Freedom, and using it to make 2012’s Django Unchained. They even cited the “I-steal” quote, and referred to Tarantino as an “admitted thief”.

The lawsuit was filed on December 24 in a federal court in Washington D.C. and it reads: “Before Django Freeman, there was an escaped slave named Jackson Freeman who desired to purchase his family’s freedom from a malevolent plantation owner” and “before Dr. Schultz, there was Samson, another white man, who would assist Mr. Freeman in his efforts to rescue his loved one(s) from slavery.”

“There are a plethora of similarities between ‘Freedom’ and ‘Django Unchained,’” the suit states. Lawyers for the pair continued, saying that “defendants would call them coincidences, however, the intentional use of our work is neither an accident nor coincidence.”

The lawsuit also asserts that Freedom was submitted to the William Morris Agency and at one point, the possibility of Tarantino directing it was put forward. The Colvins allegedly registered the screenplay to the Writers Guild of America on 2004.

The suit then went on to allege that “defendant Tarantino claims to have based his screenplay on Sergio Corbucci’s ‘Django,’ but the truth is that there are far more similarities between ‘Freedom’ and ‘Django Unchained’ than between ‘Django’ and ‘Django Unchained.’”

It also cited a key plot point in the movie that ties it with the Freedom screenplay: “Returning to the hellish realm of the South to purchase the freedom of his loved one(s) with the assistance of a Caucasian in the South is the uniquely original beat that links ‘Django Unchained’ to ‘Freedom‘.

Representatives for Columbia Pictures, The Weinstein Company, and Tarantino have not commented on the matter. 

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