Netflix and Adam McKay are two-for-two in defeating copyright lawsuits from self-published authors over the 2021 film “Don’t Look Up.”
Judge Gregory Presnell dismissed a lawsuit on Tuesday from Darren Hunter, of Harleysville, Pa., who claimed that the film was based on his novel, “The Million Day Forecast.”
The judge ruled that the novel is “an entirely different work” from the movie, and that the alleged similarities constitute “broad uncopyrightable ideas that are typical of works that center around the Earth’s destruction.”
Netflix had argued that, among other differences, “Don’t Look Up” is a satire of disaster movies, while Hunter’s novel is “part science fiction, part conspiracy thriller, part ‘YA.’”
“The humor is tame and adolescent,” Netflix’s lawyers wrote of the novel. “The Film, by contrast, walks the line between being a truly terrifying disaster movie and one long joke, due to its satire and sometimes over-the-top silliness.”
Another author, William Collier, sued in 2023, claiming that “Don’t Look Up” was actually based on his self-published novel, “Stanley’s Comet.” That lawsuit was thrown out last year on similar grounds.
Collier briefly pursued an appeal to the 9th Circuit, but dropped it when Netflix filed a motion seeking about $100,000 in attorneys’ fees.
In the latest case, Presnell read the book and watched the movie before concluding that “as a matter of law, no lay person could recognize that the Movie has been appropriated from ‘The Million Day Forecast.’”
Hunter initially filed suit in state court in Orlando, Fla., seeking $3 billion in damages. Netflix removed the case to federal court. In opposing the motion to dismiss, Hunter’s attorney argued that the issue of the alleged similarities between the two works was a factual question that should have been left for the jury.
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