Author sues Joss Whedon, claims he stole the idea for The Cabin In The Woods
A Santa Monica writer has filed a lawsuit against Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard, and Lionsgate Films, claiming that they stole the idea for The Cabin In The Woods from his own self-published novel. Author Peter Gallagher has alleged that Whedon and company’s 2012 horror satire shares several key similarities to his 2006 novel The Little White Trip: A Night In The Pines, in which a group of five young people is manipulated into a horror movie scenario by outside forces. Gallagher’s legal complaint, available in full here, draws several other parallels between the book and the movie, including similar character names and personality types and scenes in which both sets of characters “begin to drink alcohol and to play games.” (The complaint also states, somewhat apropos of nothing, that The Little White Trip was required reading “for a period of time” at Los Angeles’ Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School.)