Ah, the old cliche….
So J (my writing partner) says “Hey, one of the money guys we were showing this to says it’s a lot like FILM X (not its real name). He seems concerned that it’s sort of a copy. But film X only came out 3 years ago or so, and you wrote this at least 7 years ago, right?”
ME: “Film X? Really? I thought that was a more straightforward serial killer film. Never saw it, though.” and looked it up on IMDB while we were still on the phone.
Long story short, I pointed out that (a) I could name a half dozen films off the top of my head that were more similar to mine than film X, not to mention that mine was being told from a very different viewpoint.
If anything, I said, a Britt Ecklund vehicle from the 1960s was far more influential on me (having been warped by it as a child, not as in “story inspired by”).
Besides, nothing is really “new” any more.
I don’t think we’ll have a problem, but I also promised that if need be I could post a question on one of the horror movie websites and could probably get names of at least a score of similar movies in a couple of days.
Ah, Hollywood! Where everything old is new again.
