I'm sure you all remember the Deapool script leak a couple of months ago. We reviewed it here at CBM, as did many other sites. Although we didn't actually reprint or post any excerpts from the script, and gave it a glowing review, I was contacted by Fox's legal team and asked..well, told to remove it in a pretty unfriendly manner. Well, now the same legal team are taking action against flower saleswoman and aspiring screenwriter Patricia McIlvaine. McIlvaine apparently distributed, but did not leak, the Deadpool script along with up to 100 others online. Fox don't seem interested in pursuing whoever leaked the script, just this woman who for all intents and purposes sent it around in an email.
From McIlvaine's site..
Two strangers knocked on her door and informed her, in front of her children, 20th Century Fox was suing her for 15 million dollars. Two hours later, after grilling her with questions for two solid hours, they left her stunned and crying in her living room staring at a business card that stated they were “private investigators.”
This was the first contact PJ had from 20th Century Fox regarding a Media Fire online script library she created — and was the day 20th Century Fox filed a law suit against PJ in federal court for fifteen million dollars.
On the same site, McIlvaine describes herself as
a struggling screenwriter who sells flowers over the phone by day and writes scripts by night." She says she collected scripts that were already posted online and made a free online library of scripts in order to assist other screenwriters. What makes this all the more of an assholish move on the part of these lawyers is that, as pointed out by
Cinemablend, certain sites DID reprint entire excerpts of the script with their review and those articles have been allowed to remain up. Reason? Maybe they are in Fox's pocket, or maybe big corporate backers make more daunting targets than struggling florists.