Sunday 13 May 2012

BATTLESHIP VS AMERICAN BATTLESHIP: This Means War

The Asylum, long-time purveyors of straight to DVD dross that looks suspiciously like whatever big budget action film is currently in cinemas, have recently found themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit from Universal Pictures, thanks to their recent film American Battleship. I can see what Universal are saying, but surely THIS time it was purely coincidental? The Asylum couldn't have PLANNED to release such a similar film at the same time? They wouldn't release yet ANOTHER film just to try and piggy back some profit off Hollywood's best efforts again, would they? WOULD THEY?


December 12th, 2011 - Universal releases the trailer for its upcoming board game based action spectacular, Battleship.


Late December 2011 - The Asylum starts filming their latest production near to a suspiciously large body of water, possibly involving boats.


March 14th, 2012 - The Asylum release the trailer for their completely original property, the Mario Van Peebles/Carl Weathers starring American Battleship.



April 20th 2012 - Ahead of the release of Battleship, someone at Universal Pictures decides to start paying attention and launches a lawsuit against The Asylum for copyright infringement, stating...
“This action arises out of Global Asylum’s knowing and willful violation of Universal’s rights with respect to Universal’s highly anticipated motion picture Battleship, and Global Asylum’s blatant infringement and unfair completion in advertising and promotion for sale, in the United States and in Europe, a straight-to-DVD knock-off that features substantially similar artwork, packaging, release dates, and film trailers as Universal’s motion picture.”
Later that day, April 20th 2012 - The Asylum's joint copy-boy, press secretary and probable Chief Financial Officer releases this wonderfully bitchy comeback that makes you wish their films were better so you could root for them.
"The Global Asylum has promoted the feature film American Battleship for nearly a year while Universal raised no concerns. The timing of Universal’s recently filed lawsuit coincides with mixed reviews of its big-budget film, Battleship — the first movie based on a board game since Clue. Looking for a scapegoat, or more publicity, for its pending box-office disaster, the executives at Universal filed this lawsuit in fear of a repeat of the box office flop, John Carter of Mars. The Universal action is wholly without merit and we will vigorously defend their claims in Court. Nonetheless, we appreciate the publicity."
May 10th 2012 - Of their own accord and in no way a result of the Universal lawsuit, The Asylum decide that they didn't like having Battleship in their title anyway, and decide to alter the DVD cover of their film to reflect their newfound artistic ideologies.


See, not a shred of confusion between the two films now. Thanks Asylum, you've really cleared that one up.

The full terms of the lawsuit can be found at Deadline here, and are quite brilliant.

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