‘Dragon Tattoo’ Similarities Doom CBS Pilot
Amidst the avalanche of pilot casting news this week, CBS has quietly lost its police procedural pilot Quean to a legal standoff between the show producing studio (Warner Bros. TV) and a third party (Sony Pictures).
Quean would have centered on "an edgy and independent millennial hacker girl [who] teams up with an Oakland police detective to solve crimes." Deadline Hollywood reports that the project was getting to the casting stage when Warner Bros. TV received a formal threat of a lawsuit from Sony Pictures over "alleged similarities to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."Writer Ilene Chaiken (The L World) then went through an extensive rewrite of the pilot, making major changes to the lead character. CBS apparently liked the result; however, it fell short to impress the external law firm called in for the case, the point of contention for them being the fact that the lead is a hacker.Although the legal battle might be explained by the fact that Sony Pictures, which holds the rights to the ongoing The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo trilogy, is approaching this from a motion picture perspective. This may ultimately inspire similar threats in the future.
