On the heels of news that Fox is trying to extort money out of Warner Bros. by trying to halt the release of Watchmen next year is another story about trying to put the breaks on a big studio movie. It will likely be to little, too late, but writer Adam Stone is claiming that this weekend's Death Race is not so much a reimagineering of Death Race 2000 as it is a rip-off of a script he wrote entitled Joust and, as such, he's trying to stop the release of the film. His lawsuit claims that there are "39 elements" of Death Race lifted from his screenplay - which is one that producer Jeremy Bolt and producer/director Paul W.S. Anderson had both passed on, yet kept a copy of in order to use it as a "blueprint" for the Jason Statham vs. Evil Joan Allen flick. On one hand, studios ripping off writers happens far too often. On the other hand, how original can your script be if someone could plagiarize it and then claim it's a remake of a movie from 1975?
