The scandal swirling around the making of Angelina Jolie’s upcoming movie “In the Land of Blood and Honey” is turning into a dramatic legal thriller. The first-time director and supposed screenwriter is being sued for copyright infringement for lifting the plot of her new film — slated for a Dec. 23 release — from a non-fiction book written by Croatian journalist James J. Braddock.
VIDEO: See the trailer of “In the Land of Blood and Honey”
Granted one could argue that many movies and plays are lifted from literature and real life. “West Side Story,” for instance, is “Romeo and Juliet” set in New York City. Instead of two feuding families, two rival gangs clip the budding romance. But Shakespeare wasn’t around to sue playwright Arthur Laurents, who never hid the fact his story was based on the bard’s work. Similarly, the “Law and Order” TV franchise is notorious for grafting its plots from news reports of events that actually occurred.
In the case of “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” however, the writer crying foul met and spoke on the phone with one of the movie’s producers prior to its production — a man named Edin Sarkic — whom the plaintiff alleges discussed turning his book “The Soul Shattering” into a movie, according to his publicly filed lawuit.
According to the official complaint, the movie and book share the following similarities:
Setting: Both involve a love story set in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the early 1990s.
Main Characters: The female protagonist in both works is a Croatian woman who lives near Sarajevo and held prisoner in a Serbian concentration camp located in a village — a striking coincidence since most camps of this type were built in industrial or agricultural sites. In another odd coincidence, the female character in both the movie and book is raped by soldiers and officers in the camp and becomes a servant at the camp headquarters, a role that very few females in the camps assumed.
Meanwhile, the lead male character in both media is a camp commander whose father is not only a high-ranking “Greater Serbian” nationalist, but also a big-wig with the Yugoslav People’s Army.
Storyline: In both works, the male character is torn between his love for his country and the pretty prisoner, the latter with whom he predictably falls in love and helps escape.
In her recent denial that she stole her movie’s core components from a previously published book, Jolie told the “Los Angeles Times”: “There are many books and documentaries that I did pull from. It’s a combination of many people’s stories. But that particular book I’ve never seen.”
Perhaps not. Or maybe the mother of six was delirious with fever and forgot she read the book. Asked what sparked her to sit down at the computer and start writing, she told Vanity Fair a few months ago, “I had the flu (and) had to be quarantined from the children for two days. I was in the attic of a house in France. I was isolated, pacing. I don’t watch TV and I wasn’t reading anything. So I started writing. I went from the beginning to the end. I didn’t know any other way.”
Or, given the “Salt” actress’s propensity for poaching things that belong to others, she may have simply repressed the fact that someone else had rights to the original.
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