"Sharknado" vs "Atlantic Rim"

Not sure which is worse, a tornado depositing living sharks into the streets of Los Angeles, or monsters from the deep attacking Florida and being beaten back by robot fighters. On the latter, did you think I was talking about the new movie "Pacific Rim" or had made a mistake in the title of this blog post? No, because a TV movie aired in Canada on July 13, 2013 called "Atlantic Rim", which right down to the title and plot could not be a more direct ripoff of "Pacific Rim".

The copyright lawyers must be sharpening their pencils. After all, there has been a legal battle waging over the use of the title "The Butler" which originally was a 1916 movie now owned by Warner Brothers. The Weinstein Company thought it could use the title "The Butler" for its upcoming film that stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a White House butler employed by all the presidents between Eisenhower and Reagan. I too had always thought that you could not copyright a title, however, this dispute seems to be based on other legal and non-legal issues. According to this Huffington Post story on July 9, Harvey Weinstein told "CBS This Morning host Norah O'Donnell, there have been 122 instances of movies using the same title as other movies in Hollywood history, including the recent comedy "The Heat," which shares its name with three other films." As others have pointed out, something else is going on.

Might be an interesting project to put together a Web site called Ripoff Central or something like that which documents "Hollywood" vs indie film ripoffs. I'm sure the producers of "Atlantic Rim" will defend its existence on the basis of you can't copyright an idea, only its execution. After I watch my recording of "Atlantic Rim" I'll try and report back. Sadly, I never recorded "Sharknado" but I hope to catch it in a rerun.