Paramount Pictures faces copyright lawsuit over Top Gun 2

Top Gun: Maverick is a box office success, with the highest opening of all time for Tom Cruise and $600 million in ticket sales so far. But on Monday, Paramount Pictures was sued in a copyright complaint seeking to halt all screenings, distribution, and future sequels. According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the man's family exercised their right to reclaim the copyright to the story in 2018, and it took effect in 2020.

The plaintiffs argue that Paramount failed to reacquire the film rights from Shosh and Yuval Yonay (Ehud Yonay's widow and son) before releasing "Top Gun: Maverick." The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California states: "On January 24, 2020, the rights to the story reverted to the Yonays pursuant to the Copyright Act, but Paramount willfully ignored this and flouted the statute."

Paramount responded to the lawsuit in a statement to Deadline, saying, "These claims are without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves."

The lawsuit states that in 1983, California magazine published an article by Ehud Yonay titled "Top Gun," which told the story of the Navy pilot "in a very graphic and cinematic way."

Marc Toberoff, an attorney for the Yonay family, issued a statement also arguing that the law gives authors the ability to "benefit financially from their creations and participate in the fruits of their labor in some meaningful way." If the lawsuit moves forward, it can only mean that Paramount will still be able to release derivative works of Yonay's original stories, but only after obtaining the copyright again.

“Paramount was silent,” Toberoff said. “They didn’t even make any attempt to spend money to relicense the rights to the story.”

According to the lawsuit, Paramount responded to a cease-and-desist letter from the Yonays in May but denied that Top Gun: Maverick was a "clear derivative" of the Yonay magazine story.