Warner Bros. Win ‘The Matrix’ Copyright Lawsuit

Hollywood production giant Warner Bros. have won in a defence case against a playwright who claimed that sci-fi trilogy The Matrix was based on one of his projects.

Thomas Althouse took the studio to court last year after noticing similarities between the Keanu Reeves-starrer and his own script for The Immortals, which he submitted to the studio in 1993. Although the first Matrix movie released in 1999, directing siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski claim that they began working on the series in 1992, completing draft scripts for all three films by 1993.

Yesterday, Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled in favour of the Wachowskis and Warner Bros.’ producer Joel Silver, stating that Althouse’s claims were insubstantial. In his ruling, he declared that, “the basic premises of The Matrix Trilogy and The Immortals are so different that it would be unreasonable to find their plots substantially similar.”

Althouse’s story revolved around a CIA agent who becomes immortal and fights against a reanimated Adolph Hitler and his fellow Nazis in the year 2235. He saw comparisons between his protagonist’s goal to help the so-called ‘short-lifers’ that Hitler seeks to oppress and destroy and The Matrix‘s Neo and his desire to free the humans enslaved by a race of powerful machines.

Althouse also brought up shared allusions to the works of Christianity, although religious themes are not protected under copyright laws and so proved unimportant to the case.

You can read the full case report here.