Directing duo Allen and Albert Hughes, most famous for their films Menace II Society and Dead Presidents, had a big hit in 2010 with The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington. Now, they are being sued by a Georgia woman who claims the pair and a credited screenwriter ripped off her story. All Hip Hop reports:
Woodstock, Georgia based writer Bridgette Burgin claims that the movie was stolen from an unpublished two-part book she originally wrote titled “The Final Call.”
According to Burgin, she entered 10 chapters of her book into a nationally advertised writers contest conducted by Writers Digest and The Peter Taylor Prize in Tennessee.
Burgin claims that numerous “screeners” who read manuscripts and submissions were allowed to take them home and keep after the competition.
The lawsuit claims that two “screeners” who were judges of the contest supplied Burgin’s manuscript to Gary Whitta, who presented it to the Hughes Brothers as “The Book of Eli.”
“Gary Whitta was one of the first recipients to receive Burgin’s manuscripts, and presented it to Allen and Albert to produce and direct, and yet unnamed sources who paid Whitta to replicate the manuscript’s last remaining chapters in the form of a screenplay, which he named “The Book of Eli.”
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