Paramount has filed a countersuit against Shaun Gray, the cousin of “Top Gun: Maverick” co-writer Eric Warren Singer, who claimed in his own lawsuit that he wrote key scenes for the hit 2022 blockbuster.
In the countersuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and obtained by TheWrap, Paramount accuses Gray of deliberately hiding his involvement on writing the screenplay for “Top Gun: Maverick” with the intention of later suing the studio for co-writer credit. The lawsuit charges Gray with fraud and copyright infringement.
“Gray did not come out of the woodwork until 2023, long after ‘Maverick”s release, when he suddenly told [Paramount] that he had allegedly authored portions of Singer’s draft and clouded [Paramount]’s title to ‘Maverick’ as its sole author and copyright owner,” the countersuit claims.
Last month, a federal judge denied Gray’s request for a court order declaring him co-author of the screenplay, which would have entitled him to a cut of the film’s profits. However, the judge allowed his copyright infringement claim to advance.
Gray claims he was key in writing aerial combat scenes for “Top Gun: Maverick,” most notably the opening scene in which Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, played by Tom Cruise, pushes a prototype hypersonic jet past its limits, landing him in hot water with a rear admiral played by Ed Harris.
In the countersuit, Paramount claims that Gray, when reaching out to the studio in January 2023, said he did not seek co-writer credit when Paramount negotiated with Singer to write a draft of the screenplay because he feared it would risk “blowing up” a deal between Paramount and his cousin. It also notes that Gray did not file an authorship claim in 2019 when the Writers Guild of America did its standard process to determine writing credits.
“Gray did not try to negotiate a screenwriting contract with [Paramount], either individually or jointly with Singer, even though he knew that [Paramount] (like any mainstream studio) would not knowingly allow a writer to work on a screenplay for a major film without a work-made-for-hire agreement in place,” the countersuit reads.
TheWrap has reached out to attorneys for Gray and will update with any response.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.
