Paramount has been sued by the cousin of a writer for Top Gun: Maverick, who alleges he co-wrote the screenplay.
In a lawsuit filed in New York federal court on Sunday, Shaun Gray says he penned key scenes for the film after screenwriter Eric Warren Singer and director Joseph Kosinski enlisted his help to craft the story behind the blockbuster sequel. He seeks a share of profits from the film as a cowriter or, alternatively, unspecified damages for copyright infringement.
The lawsuit marks the second legal battle over the rights to Top Gun: Maverick. In 2023, the heirs to the author of a 1983 magazine story that inspired the original film accused Paramount of forging ahead with the project without renegotiating a new license. The plaintiff in the since-dismissed case was represented by copyright termination heavyweight Marc Toberoff.
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In a statement, Paramount Pictures said this lawsuit, “like the one previously brought by Mr. Toberoff in an attempt to benefit off of the success of Top Gun: Maverick, is completely without merit.” It added, “We are confident that a court will reject this claim as well.”
Gray is the cousin of Singer, who was recruited by Kosinski to write the film after collaborating with him on Only the Brave. His credits show that he was a staff writer on an episode of Shantaram and was Singer’s writer’s assistant for The International. He’s mostly worked as a digital artist, including on The Magicians, Defiance and Two and a Half Men.
In the lawsuit, Gray says Singer, after being hired by Paramount Pictures to pen the screenplay for the movie as a work-made-for-hire, approached him in 2017 to co-write it at Kosinski’s request. Over the next five months, he actively participated in story meetings and “wrote key scenes” for vital action sequences, the lawsuit says.
This includes the opening scene in which Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, pushes a high-tech prototype fighter jet past its limits, breaking speed records before the aircraft fails, and another sequence in which he repeatedly outmaneuvers elite pilots during a training exercise, culminating in a dogfight with a trainee. The lawsuit includes time-stamped files and emails that document his writing of the scenes.
Gray argues he’s a co-author of the screenplay since he never reached a work-made-for-hire deal, which governs a production company’s employment relationship with a writer and gives it the copyright to a script, with Paramount, unlike other writers for Top Gun: Maverick, including Singer, Eric Kruger, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig and Justin Marks. He says he never entered into any written contract regarding his work on the movie.
The lawsuit seeks a court order for Gray to receive a “screenplay by” credit moving forward, for Paramount to include him in future marketing efforts and works related to the movie, and a cut of profit. If the court declines to issue such an order, he brings a claim for copyright infringement and seeks unspecified damages.
In a statement, Toberoff said the lawsuit has “absolutely nothing to do with the prior Top Gun suit currently up on appeal.” He added, “Paramount can deny and deflect all they want” but that an exhibit included in the complaint documents “Shaun Gray’s very significant joint-authorship of the Top Gun: Maverick screenplay with detailed citations to Gray’s time-stamped files and time-stamped emails conveying to Eric Singer the numerous pivotal scenes Gray authored and, at times, to the film’s director, Joe Kosinski as well.”
