Disney and Pixar are being sued for allegedly plagiarizing the idea for 2015’s hit “Inside Out”.
A lawsuit filed in a California federal court, by Damon Pourshian, states that Pixar’s film infringes on a script the Canadian man wrote in 1999 also titled Inside Out, which eventually got turned into a short film a year later in 2000.
Pourshian claims the film has more in common than just the name and his work has many similarities to Inside Out, as his script and short movie tell the story of a young boy named Lewis reacting to everyday life “through anthropomorphized representations of his bodily organs,” which are seen inside Lewis’ body.
The short film also shows these organs reacting to the real world and features a personification of Lewis’ brain which operates a command center. The short movie includes Brain, Heart, Colon, Stomach, and Bladder as the main organ characters, and they communicate and argue with each other.
In Pixar’s Inside Out, the main character is a girl named Riley and the core characters are her emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust.
The 20-page lawsuit details more than two-dozen substantial similarities in content, theme and characters between the two films, many illustrated with comparative images. The complaint notes that, “The obvious and striking similarities between Mr. Pourshian’s and Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out extend from overarching themes to specific details, and they are far too numerous to be attributable to chance.”
The suit goes on to say Pourshian created the script and film at Sheridan College, which “has sent large numbers of its graduates to work at Disney and Pixar and is considered a ‘feeder’ school for Disney and Pixar.”
Pourshian’s classmates also reportedly noticed the similarities between the two projects upon viewing Pixar’s Inside Out. Purshian is seeking unspecified damages and for his name to be added to the Inside Out credits.
This isn’t the first time Disney and Pixar have been sued for Inside Out, A 2017 copyright infringement lawsuit brought against Inside Out last year by child development expert Denise Daniels was dismissed last month by U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez. In her suit, Daniels claimed the film bore a striking resemblance to a TV project, The Moodsters, she’d developed and pitched numerous times to Disney executives between 2006 and 2009.
Also back in June, author Carla Jo Masterson filed suit in a Nevada federal court, claiming the film was based on her book, What’s On The Other Side Of The Rainbow? (The Secret Of The Golden Mirror), as well as her screenplay, “The Secret of the Golden Mirror.”
Both works “are original, creative, and artistic stories about how children identify, understand the reasons for, and manage the effects of their emotions,” the suit reads.
“The specific original, artistic, and creative expression and device used by Carla J. Masterson in ‘What’s On the Other Side of the Rainbow?’ and ‘The Secret of the Golden Mirror’ is to depict the childhood emotions of Joy, Fear, Sad, Anger, Laughter, Friendship, Love, and Shy as characters that appear throughout the book in consistent and continuing configurations and colors.”
While there maybe some similarities with the concepts of these projects that still doesn’t mean that Disney plagiarized anything as there are clear differences as well. The courts will decide in the end, but if anyone has a real claim, just think “Herman’s Head”.
The director of Inside Out, Pete Docter, has recently been named Pixar’s new chief creative officer.
