New Moon 'Halted Over Lawsuit'

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New Moon 'Halted Over Lawsuit'

Twilight sequel New Moon has been thrown into jeopardy - author Stephenie Meyer is facing a plagiarism lawsuit over the vampire franchise, according to reports.

The original 2008 movie - starring Robert Pattinson - was a major international hit and has spawned a follow-up which is currently being shot in Canada. The film franchise is based on the popular book series, written by Meyer.

But production on the second film has reportedly been halted following claims Meyer is facing legal action from her former college roommate, who is said to have accused the writer of basing the novels on her ideas.

According to I'mnotobsessed.com, Heidi Stanton - who studied alongside Meyer at Brigham Young University, Utah - claims the vampire books are similar to a short story she wrote when she was a student there.

Stanton filed her lawsuit against Meyer in Utah last Tuesday, alleging idea infringement.

She states in the papers, "Quite frankly, I was shocked when I began watching the movie with my husband last week. I immediately told him that she got that idea from me! I wrote a fictional short story with the same ideas when we were in college together."

Meyer claims the premise for the popular series came to her in a dream in June 2003 and she completed the first novel three months later.

And the legal battle has reportedly cast doubt on the highly-anticipated New Moon, with production being "put on hold" until the case is resolved, according to the website.

New Moon is scheduled for release at the end of the year.

Okay, I have a question here; why didn't she speak up earlier!? :D

According to the Twilight Lexicon this is not true...

But seems strange to me - the story must have started somewhere, so maybe this other woman did make some comments about Smeyer plagiarising and it's spiralled from there?

Woah. o.O"

But yeah - why *didn't* she speak up earlier? There's no way she could have possibly overlooked the Twilight hype going on for ages now, she would have *somehow* found out about it even if she didn't read the book <.<"

Hm, still, I find it hard to believe it's not a geniune claim - after all, who would want to go into lawsuit just for the sake of it? There might be huge sums involved if she does win but the process itself is bound to be long, costly and the outcome unsure. :/

So uhm ... well, if that's true, then, what can I say ... Ms Meyer hasn't done something very noble U.U"

But in any case - if the filming is put to halt until after the case is cleared, poor Robert Pattinson is gonna grow old ... there goes the eternally-young-sexy-beast-Edward XD

I don't think it's true, either :D I mean, if it had been, surely she would've mentioned it earlier - I mean, even if you lived under a rock you'd know about Twilight by now, and SOMEHOW recognized it to be yours... so I think this is just, maybe, a way to make fangirls throw themselves off a cliff.

Luckily Finland doesn't have many cliffs xD

Oh, and I found this on IMDB :D

No, no - even if you were living under a rock, you WOULD know about it by now :D

wow. how....bogus. what a tale. i think this chicka is a liar. if it was true she would have "told on" stephenie earlier....a lot earlier...like when the first book was let out. maybe she did write a short story about vamps...but not like stef's I bet.

and on the slim chance that this is true...not cool. for stephenie to do that.

and on a twilight fan note of this all: No NO NONONONNO!! why must they wait! waa.

Thing is - all this woman probably did (if indeed it is true) - was write about a generic vampire and a generic girl who fall in love.

I mean, if we want to get technical then we could say that Stephenie Meyer has "plagiarised" from other sources herself.

Edward could be said to be very like that other broody vampire, Angel. He's got the hair, the creepy stalkerness, the falling in love with the teenager, the issues with sex etc.

Okay, so Bella is nothing like Buffy (she's more like the anti-Buffy lol) but on the surface their story is very similar.

The basic premise of vampire falls in love with human has been done hundreds of times in many different ways - it's nothing new.

Now, if this woman (again, if this is true) can produce the short story she wrote about sparkling vampires named Edward Cullen, a Quileute werewolf called Jacob and a whiny so-and-so named Bella AND prove she wrote it in college, then that would be another story.

(On a side note, seems Smeyer didn't come up with the concept of sparkling vamps after all!

Quote :

ILLYRIA
(punches Angel, sending him flying across the room)
Do you know what you were when I was young? You were the muck at our feet. We called you "the ooze that eats itself". You were pretty at night. You sparkled, and you stank. You still stink of it!

Hahaha )

From Smeyers website:

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April 21, 2009

There are a lot of things I should be doing updates on—for example, how awesome and successful the Book Babe event was, and how cool it was to meet all the other authors and hang out with them a little bit, and how much I appreciated all the tremendous support from the fans—but instead of commenting on happy things (which I admit I should have done a week ago; I was waiting for things to slow down for a day, silly me!), I'm commenting on ridiculous internet rumors so that my publicist's day will be just a little bit better.

I am not being sued. No one has contacted me or my publisher to inform either of us that I'm being sued. I never had a roommate named Heidi. There is no professor in the BYU English department named Dr. Peter Benton (though there is a character on ER by that name). And most of all, I began writing Twilight exactly the way I've told people in countless interviews and events for the past six years: I had a cool dream, I wrote it down, writing it down was really fun, so I kept writing until I had a whole book.

The sad thing about this silly situation is that so many legitimate news outlets reported it without doing any research at all to determine if there was any truth to the story. And at least two of these facts are really, really easy to confirm. Particularly, the one about the BYU professor. A simple on-line search can give you that information. Also, a quick call to my publisher would have cleared up the whole lawsuit story. (Kudos to the fansites who did their due diligence and debunked this rumor days ago.)

I guess the moral of the story is that—big surprise—you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Seems like it's April Fool's Day every day on-line. So no worries, the filming of New Moon continues uninterrupted. And, to end this on a bright note, the filming of New Moon continues to be awesome. It's all so beautiful! Chris Weitz is brilliant. Kristen, Rob, and Taylor are beyond words. I have gotten choked up more than once on set due to their amazing performances. I can't wait to see it all put together!

Steph