Reese Witherspoon got a lot of accolades for producing “Gone Girl,” and now she’s got a lawsuit.
TMZ broke the story that Leslie Weller claims she wrote a screenplay called “Out of the Blue” back in 2005. She sent a copy to a script consultant and claims that set the wheels in motion for someone to jack her work. She says the book “Gone Girl” which came out in 2012 is a rip off of her screenplay.
Weller claims a bunch of similarities … they both focus on a married couple’s relationship where the husband and wife are slowly drifting apart. They both contain a key twist where the wife is not the nice, normal, and somewhat naive housewife and is in fact a psychopath who sets up her husband.
Weller goes on … both her screenplay and the novel are structured in the same way — first, everyone sympathizes with the wife, and then you start to despise the husband, but things turn and by the end, you despise them both.
And she says both her work and “Gone Girl” feature a scene with a hammer that leads you to believe the husband might hurt the wife.
Weller is also suing the book’s author, Gillian Flynn, along with the movie’s director, David Fincher. She says the movie lifts from the book, which lifts from her screenplay.