{"id":398218,"date":"2026-01-10T00:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T00:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398218\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T00:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T00:27:08","slug":"maverick-writers-cousin-loses-lawsuit-against-paramount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398218\/","title":{"rendered":"Maverick’ Writer’s Cousin Loses Lawsuit Against Paramount"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe cousin of one of the writers of \u201cTop Gun: Maverick<\/a>\u201d has lost his lawsuit against Paramount<\/a>, in which he claimed to have written key scenes in the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe plaintiff, Shaun Gray<\/a>, is now facing potential liability for allegedly defrauding the studio and infringing on its copyrights.<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Jed Rakoff on Friday threw out Gray\u2019s copyright claim against Paramount, finding that Gray cannot copyright scenes that are based on the studio\u2019s IP.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGray is a writer who indisputably based his entire script on existing material, including \u2018Top Gun\u2019 characters, settings and plot devices,\u201d Rakoff wrote. \u201cGray\u2019s copyright is therefore invalid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGray, who has primarily worked as a visual effects artist, sued the studio<\/a> last April, alleging that he had worked closely with his cousin, screenwriter Eric Singer, and director Joseph Kosinski, for five months and had kept meticulous files documenting his contributions to the screenplay.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe alleged that he was responsible for at least a dozen key action scenes in the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount countersued<\/a> in September, accusing Gray of infringing on its copyrights by writing scenes based on \u201cTop Gun,\u201d and of fraudulently concealing his role in writing the screenplay in order to gain a financial advantage.<\/p>\n

\n\tRakoff previously dismissed<\/a> Gray\u2019s claim of joint authorship, but allowed the copyright infringement claim to advance to discovery. In his ruling on Friday, Rakoff disposed of the remaining copyright claim, while allowing Paramount\u2019s claims against Gray to continue to trial.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are pleased with the Court\u2019s decision to dismiss Gray\u2019s claims and allow Paramount\u2019s counterclaims to move forward,\u201d a studio spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tSinger shared writing credit on the film with Christopher McQuarrie and Ehren Kruger. Singer worked under a standard \u201cwork made for hire\u201d agreement with Paramount, in which the studio reserved the copyright of the script. Gray, however, never signed such an agreement, and argued that the absence of such a deal entitled him to copyright his contributions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cousin of one of the writers of \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d has lost his lawsuit against Paramount, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206,4208,192340,20791],"class_list":{"0":"post-398218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-paramount","11":"tag-shaun-gray","12":"tag-top-gun-maverick"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}