Original "Matrix" Screenplay Author Steps Up Copyright Infringement Case Against Warner Brothers

LOS ANGELES - Dec. 9, 2013 - PRLog -- Depositions are set to begin this week in the ongoing $300 million copyright infringement suit brought by independent playwright and author Thomas Althouse against the Warner Brothers film studio and the team that produced the globally successful Matrix film franchise.

Mr. Althouse’s deposition in the case is scheduled for this coming Friday, December 13th. Given the defendants’ apparent reluctance to meet disclosure deadlines thus far, however, it remains to be seen whether the author’s attorneys will succeed in obtaining the needed depositions from Matrix trilogy directors Lana and Andy Wachowski as well as producer Joel Silver.

In 1993, a mutual acquaintance invited the young author to present his recently completed screenplay The Immortals to a group of film executives at Warner Brothers’ New York offices. Althouse’s original script featured characters with virtual-reality enhancers in the backs of their necks and tentacled killing machines, as well as an everyman protagonist who struggles to free the masses of humanity from the absolutist designs of a self-replicating, Hitler-esque villain with a continually revamped “Program” intended to harvest biological energy from unsuspecting humans.

After expressing avid interest in developing the project further, the New York WB executives encouraged the author to obtain the necessary copyright protections and submit his screenplay materials through attorney to their Los Angeles story department headquarters.

“I remember thinking it was the chance of a lifetime,” recalls Mr. Althouse, now living with his wife and young son in a rented condo in Maui, Hawaii. “I was going through a difficult period of my life at that point and had invested so much of myself in the screenplay. I honestly thought this would be an amazing way to help people learn from my story.”

Following the advice of WB’s executives, Mr. Althouse submitted his copyrighted screenplay, story treatment and musical score to Warner’s story department via certified mail on June 25th of that year. After several weeks without a response, curiosity prompted the author to phone WB’s story department and inquire about the status of his submission. A department executive verbally confirmed the studio’s receipt of the Immortals story materials but expressed serious reservations regarding the screenplay’s politically sensitive inclusion of Adolf Hitler as a primary character. By the time their conversation had ended, Mr. Althouse believed his project to be dead in the water.

More than a decade later—two years after Warner Brothers’ 2003 release of the final film installment The Matrix: Revolutions—a separate claimant brought a widely publicized copyright infringement suit against Warner Brothers and the Wachowski siblings. In her court testimony from Sophia Stewart vs. Andy Wachowski et al., WB story department head Teresa Wayne confirmed that all screenplays, scripts and story treatments received by Warner through agents or attorneys are regularly added to the studio’s story database, to which all WB story department staff enjoy unrestricted access.

Although that case was ultimately dismissed in summary judgment (despite erroneous media reports to the contrary), Ms. Wayne’s statements would later prove crucial in bolstering Mr. Althouse’s claims to access—a critical factor in establishing “striking similarity” between creative works of disputed origin. (In copyright infringement cases, a plaintiff attempts to establish striking similarity by demonstrating (a) that the defendant had access to the plaintiff's work; and (b) that the degree of similarity is too substantial to have occurred through coincidence, independent creation, or a prior common source.) Even more pertinently, Matrix co-director Lana Wachowski's case deposition dates the siblings' creative conception of the film's story on or around October 25th, a full four months after the WB story department is known to have received Mr. Althouse's Immortals screenplay materials.

Today, one of the most typical responses from those who hear the author's story is: If his claim of copyright infringement is a legitimate one, why did it take him twenty years to come forward? Moreover, owing to the statute of limitations attached to the first Matrix film’s 1999 release, this delay in filing suit also precluded the author from pressing his ownership rights to that initial screenplay.

In response, Mr. Althouse notes that he had been officially diagnosed with a stress disorder that prevented him from watching violent films and TV programs. “Not only that,” the author explains, “but I didn’t watch the second and third movies until long after they came out, because I heard they were terrible. I had seen the first one when it came out but figured it was just coincidence that some elements were similar [to those in the Immortals story]. It wasn’t until my attorney suggested it in 2010—after I’d run across a couple of familiar images on a random movie website—that I finally sat down to watch the other two and was like . . . no way.”

The author and his legal team have since compiled a listing of over 115 instances of striking similarity—including almost verbatim dialogue and character descriptions—between his original copyrighted script and that of the Matrix film trilogy. Mr. Althouse also notes that his name and other vital statistics appear to have been intentionally manipulated by the Wachowskis in developing the character of Thomas A. Anderson (a.k.a. “Neo”).

Despite the strength of his claims, the author’s case has received scant media attention since the Warner-owned celebrity news site TMZ broke news of the suit in March of this year. Several months later TMZ published a follow-up interview article with the Wachowskis, referencing Mr. Althouse as a “hack” and taking pains to undermine his credibility. The article ended by noting that “calls to Althouse were not returned,” yet to this day the author and his family cannot recall having received even a single phone call or email from the celebrity news outlet.

In actual fact, Mr. Althouse continues to develop his status as an accomplished playwright, actor and local middle school drama instructor, having recently been included in MauiTime magazine’s listing of “20 People Who Matter On Maui.” His original stage comedy The Worthmores is also slated to begin a full production run at Maui’s Historic Iao Theater in the spring of 2014.