The South by Southwest Film Conference has revealed the complete program for its festival commencing in March, with films by auteurs Michel Gondry (The Thorn in the Heart) and Shane Meadows (Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee) joining the previously announced opening-night blockbuster Kick-Ass and populist non-fiction fare about subjects from Bill Hicks to George Lucas. Also floating near the top of the must-see bracket is the premiere of the SNL spin-off MacGruber -- a festival coup except for the minor detail that its primary influence is trying to have it killed.
The first hints of discord between Lee Zlotoff -- who created the ingenious-inventor-adventurer hit MacGyver that the less-competent MacGruber has a parodized for three years now -- and the send-up's producers emerged earlier this week, when an insider went public with Zlotoff's plot to sue the holy hell out of Relativity Media and stop MacGruber in its tracks. A little late, though, no? Well, no, says Zlotoff, who has been developing a MacGyver feature at New Line for almost a year and who had his lawyers sending cease-and-desist love letters to Relativity (and distributor Universal) for months after MacGruber was announced.
Naturally nobody at either studio is commenting, but Zlotoff's attorney says his client is weighing options -- up to and including a copyright-infringement lawsuit and/or an injunction against the film's release on April 23. That usually translates to "we'll take a flat settlement up front and a percentage of first-dollar gross" (e.g. the Fox/Warners Watchmen kerfuffle), but parodies are generally protected under fair-use statutes (e.g. Airplane! and/or the Austin Powers franchise), so who knows? By at least one account, MacGruber in fact burnishes its source's legacy, which may be enough for a judge to recommend Zlotoff cool it. Or maybe it's the exploitive, overextended SNL sketch adaptation that will kill the lackluster subgenre once and for all. Maybe don't buy your fest tickets for this one just yet.
ยท 2010 Film Conference [SXSW]