A screenwriter has sued Illumination Entertainment and Migration scribe Mike White for copyright infringement, accusing them of ripping off his script to make the animated feature.
The screenwriter, Kenneth Giavara, claims in a lawsuit filed in California federal court that the film bears “substantial similarities” to his screenplay South for the Winter. Both works follow a family of birds whose homebody father reluctantly agrees to a road trip-esque migration.
Giavara seeks profits from the movie and unspecified damages, plus a court order naming him as a writer of the film.
The lawsuit points to several alleged overlaps between the scripts across plot, sequence of events, and themes. Like the Illumination movie, South for the Winter features a family of birds living in New England confronted with a decision of whether to migrate to a warmer climate or stay in the safety of their home. They begin their migration in Central Park in New York, where much of the films are located.
Giavara stresses that the headstrong protagonists in both movies are named Mac (Mack in Migration) and are helped by an older mentor bird who introduces an alternative world view by encouraging freedom and exploration. Themes of coming-of-age independence and migration as an identity-forming adventure are featured in Migration, like it is in South for the Winter, the lawsuit filed on Friday claims.
In 2011, Giavara’s script for the film won the top prize in the Fresh Voices Screenplay Competition in the animated category. It was shopped across Hollywood for years by Giavara’s attorney, who sent it to studios, producers and agents.
“It is more than just a mere possibility that White, the alleged writer of the screenplay for Migration, discovered and misappropriated the South for the Winter copyrighted work, and/or disclosed it to the Defendants, who then incorporated elements from those works without permission or authorization,” writes Francis Bottini, a lawyer for Giavara, in the complaint.
Illumination’s Migration grossed over $300 million worldwide on a budget of roughly $72 million. Its voice cast includes Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Danny DeVito, Keegan-Michael Key, and Awkwafina.
Giavara’s lawsuit faces long odds in court, where the standard to convince juries that similarities between two works constitute copyright infringement are high. Copyright law doesn’t protect general ideas or tropes considered standard in the treatment of particular topics (think a getaway driver in a heist movie) — only the particular expression of those ideas. Last year, juries in idea theft cases over M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant and Moana rejected copyright infringement claims.
