The Asylum and The Art of The Movie Knock-Off

Sometime in November 2008, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Fox was in the process of taking action against The Asylum (aka The Global Asylum, Inc.) over their film The Day the Earth Stopped. Apparently, this dispute has not progressed any further than a cease-and-desist letter. There are no related federal or state filings on record and the film is still being marketed and sold by The Asylum.

What is Fox upset about? Remakes, knockoffs and recycled concepts are an integral part of the film industry. The Asylum, however, has turned the knock-off into a science. The company deals in what it calls mockbusters (actually registered as a trademark) or films that bear a resemblance, however large or small, to bigger studio productions. First, the similarity is manifested in stories and titles. For example, the plot for The Day the Earth Stopped is described as follows:

Hundreds of massive intergalactic robots appear in all of the major world capitals with an ultimatum: Prove the value of human civilization or be destroyed.

This is very similar to the plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Second, the similarities occur in the marketing materials. Compare the poster for Fox's remake and The Asylum's mockbuster film:

Finally, the release dates of films from The Asylum are even tightly coupled to those of the studio titles, thus allowing the company to ride the publicity wave created by the millions of dollars in studio marketing. For example, The Day the Earth Stopped was released on December 9, 2008 while The Day the Earth Stood Still was December, 12 2008. Coincidence? The following chart compares titles and release dates of other films from The Asylum (left) with those from major studios (right).


As an aside, Sunday School Musical really stuck out when compiling the list.

In any case, one might think this will be smooth sailing for Fox but as is often the case in these matters, intuition is a faulty guide. Some elements of a film are protected by copyright (script or characters but neither character names nor titles) while others may fall under trademark (titles might be protected) or right of publicity laws (individuals may have these claims, depending on state law). If this dispute evolves into actual litigation, it will be interesting to see how Fox frames the case.