"Mall Cop": Same Title, Same Plot, Trouble For Sony?

The response from them was, ‘we prefer to develop projects in-house.’”

Happy Madison Productions would not confirm whether Catalfo’s script had been submitted to the company. Kevin James is not affiliated with Happy Madison, though he starred alongside Sandler in 2007’s “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.”

On Tuesday, TheWrap received an email from Duke McBride, who said he worked on the “Paul Blart” film set.  According to McBride, the film’s title was mysteriously switched to “Untitled Kevin James Project” during production at the Burlington Mall in Massachusetts and then changed back to “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” a few weeks later.

“The writer was a lawyer and was really giving the producers a hard time,” wrote McBride. “Kevin James looked pretty sheepish for a few days too.”

“One guy there who was definitely in a position to know said the studio was so shocked when they read the scripts side-by-side that that they immediately sent a Sony bigwig to NH with an apology and a check to ‘work it out’ in typical Hollywood fashion,” McBride wrote. “I also remember hearing that the writer was a lawyer and was really giving the producers a hard time. Kevin James looked pretty sheepish for a few days too.”

Asked to comment on the allegations about the script, Sony spokesman Steve Elzer replied:  “While we have a policy of not commenting on allegations such as these, we stand by the fact that the movie was written by Kevin James & Nick Bakay.”
 
 “It’s a non-story. Kevin James and Nick Bakay wrote the script,” said a spokesman for the Endeavor Agency, where James is a client.

Neither addressed the question of whether James and Bakay had seen or were familiar with the Catalfo script.

The Motion Picture Association of America confirmed that Catalfo registered “Mall Cop” with the organization, but a representative in the title registration department said Catalfo’s title had expired.

“But I know that he made some sort of agreement” with studios that had also registered the title, said the representative, declining to reveal any more information.

Catalfo said that when he first became aware of that a story about a mall cop was in production, he rushed to read the script. “I said, ‘this sounds familiar,’” he recalled.

In a video interview posted on About.com (link to: (http://video.about.com/movies/Paul-Blart-Steve-Carr.htm)
), “Paul Blart” co-writer Nick Bakay says he drew inspiration for the script partly from his own 1979 stint as a security guard one summer during college.

If a screenwriter like Catalfo were to take legal action, there are two types of claims he could make – for copyright infringement or for breach of implied contract, also known as a submission claim.
 
"With a claim for copyright infringement, you have to prove access and substantial similarity between the two scripts by comparing things like the scenes, characters, timing and situation," said Michael J. Plonsker, Esq., co-chair of the entertainment and media department at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP.

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