'Pirates of Caribbean' Movies a Rip-Off, Lawsuit Claims

Disney's "Pirates of Caribbean" movies are a rip-off, a copyright lawsuit claims. The legal document was filed Tuesday in federal court in Colorado on behalf of writers Arthur Lee Alfred II, E. Ezequiel Martinez Jr. and their producer Tova Laiter, according to The Wrap.

The screenwriters said they presented a screenplay called "Pirates of the Caribbean" to The Walt Disney Company in 1999, and claimed that the company then pirated the original plot, themes, characters and settings, The Denver Post reported.

According to the complaint, the screenwriters "created an entirely new genre of pirate, which had never been used previously," The Denver Post reported.

Central to their theme was the creation of Captain Jack Sparrow, who defied the common depiction of pirates by being "a new funny pirate, who is not feared and is repeatedly referred to as a good man."

The 25-page filing noted that it is standard practice for a studio passing on a project to immediately return original works to the submitters, Deadline reported. This is to prevent the "unintentional" copying of any original screenplay, however, in this instance the complainants said Walt Disney returned their screenplay two years later.

Disney released the first film in the series, "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," seven months later, on July 9, 2003.

Upon viewing the film, Alfred and Martinez noticed the similarities to their screenplay.

"Defendants never obtained a license from plaintiffs to prepare reproductions of plaintiffs' original works of authorship," the lawsuit said, per The Denver Post.

Disney responded to the filing, saying that the complaint was "entirely without merit," adding that the company would vigorously defend against it in court, Deadline noted.