Quentin Tarantino filed an amended $1 million lawsuit against Gawker Media on May 1 over an allegedly leaked copy of a screenplay the director plans to use for his next film.
A federal judge last week dismissed the complaint, but gave the director a week to re-file in order to potentially show that the gossip and media website directly caused the alleged copyright violation.
In the amended suit, Tarantino contends Gawker induced an unidentified reader who had a copy of The Hateful Eight screenplay to leak it to the website, which then promoted itself as the exclusive source to download and read the Western-themed piece.
An email message for comment sent after business hours to the New York offices of Gawker was not immediately returned.
The suit alleges that after Gawker “caused” one of its readers to leak the 146-page script, the website posted an article with the headline, “Here is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script,” with a link to the screenplay on Gawker’s Defamer blog.
“Gawker has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck,” according to the lawsuit. “This time they went too far.”
“Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating within certain limited Hollywood circles without his permission, Gawker crossed the journalistic line, first by requesting that a reader ‘leak’ an infringing copy directly to Gawker, then second, after obtaining a link to and itself directly downloading an infringing PDF copy, and then third, by promoting itself to the public as the first source to download and read the entire screenplay illegally and directing the public to do so,” the suit states.
The link to The Hateful Eight in January on Defamer was the first incidence of the complete screenplay being posted online, according to the lawsuit.
Tarantino alleges that damages stemming from the incident amount to more than $1 million. He is also seeking an injunction against Gawker Media.
Tarantino initially said he was so irate about the alleged leak that he scrapped plans to make The Hateful Eight.
But the director-writer recently held a reading of the script and told audiences that he was still working on the film.
