Screenwriter says 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' ripped off his script; sues Tom Cruise for $US1 billion 2014

Tom Cruise, the star of the Mission Impossible series. Source: Supplied

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol made buckets of money when it was released in 2011, raking in over $700 million. But did someone else come up with the story?

RadarOnline.com is reporting that screenwriter Timothy Patrick McLanahan is suing Cruise for $US1 billion, because he reckons he came up with the idea for the movie way back in 1998.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, McLanahan filed a lawsuit against Cruise, Paramount Pictures and various production companies in December.
He said, "In 1998, I had written a screenplay called Head On. After submitting it to the U.S. Copyright Office, Head On received a copyright certificate protecting its material and author from unauthorised use."
McLanahan said that he sent the script to William Morris Agency, only to have them pass. However, he claimed, they then sent it on - without his permission - to another agency, CAA.
William Morris "then shopped the script around the world," the court documents claimed, "including Tom Cruise's Rick Nicita, top agent with Creative Artist Agency."
(Nicita's wife, Paula Wagner, was Cruise's production partner for 13 years).
McLanahan's script garnered little interest, but then years later, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was released and McLanahan says he immediately saw similarities.
"I immediately recognised that the scripts for this movie had been illegally written and produced from Head On's 1998 copyright," he claimed.
As such, he is suing Cruise and his associates for copyright infringement for $US1 billion: the sum of Ghost Protocol's cinema ticket sales, DVD and blue ray sales, movie rentals and subscription sales and budget.