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Is MacGyver About to Sue MacGruber?

 In  Comedy

If you love behind-the-scenes Hollywood drama, you're going to love this! As we've discussed before, Rogue Pictures is planning to release a big-screen version of "MacGruber" on April 23, 2010. "MacGruber" will be based on the SNL-sketch of the same name, starring Will Forte and Kristen Wiig. If you've never seen the "MacGruber" sketches, here's all you need to know, it's a total parody of the late 1980s TV show "MacGyver," the twist is that instead of being able to get out of tough situations by using every day objects, MacGruber ends up getting distracted by his personal life and problems and each sketch ends with a bomb blowing up.

It doesn't really sound like something that could be extended into 90 minutes, but what do I know, I voluntarily watched "Stuart Saves His Family" on Showtime once.

This is where it gets interesting, despite the appearance (and even Pepsi ad tie-in) with "MacGyver" star Richard Dean Anderson in some "MacGruber" SNL sketches, that love for the parody might not extend to MacGyver's creator, Lee David Zlotoff.

Latino Review has a source that says that Zlotoff isn't really that plussed by the idea of a film that is a parody of his intellectual property, especially since a "MacGyver" feature film has been rumored to be in the works for years. As Latino Review's source puts it, the caselaw surrounding parody are extremely specific and most works of parody are limited both in form and in scope. That means, you can have a sequence in a film that is a parody of another film sequence. You can even do what the Wayans Brothers have been doing for the last decade and make entire films that parody an entire genre of film, but if you want to parody a specific work, you're limited in how long that work can be.

It seems, a 90-minute "MacGyver" parody might cross that line, at least in Zlotoff's mind. This is what Pinche Taco tells Latino Review:

And he is in the wings I hear tell with the Madre of all lawsuits. Not just to shut the film down and save us from this cinematic hell. No. He's looking at Relativity for dolares. Mucho Dolares. And it seems likely that he would get it too.

With a film that is this close to release, with a marketing campaign already in progress, if a lawsuit were to be filed (and not immediately dismissed by the court), it would appear that Rogue Pictures would have little choice but to pay to settle, lest they lose even more money pulling a scheduled film from its release window.

Be sure to read all the details at Latino Review. Personally, if this controversy does end up playing out, I think it might be good for a "MacGruber" film. No offense to Mr. Forte (who I always enjoy), but frankly, this saga strikes me as infinitely more interesting than a "MacGruber" film on its own.

What do you think?

Source:Latino Review