Also found at Metafilter is this discussion of White Wolf’s lawsuit against Sony Pictures over alleged copyright infringement in the new film “Underworld”. While my first (and probably even second) impulse is to dismiss the lawsuit as frivolous, my first thought upon seeing the trailer a few weeks ago was that it seemed awfully reminiscent of some of White Wolf’s roleplaying games.
That doesn’t, of course, make it a derivative work. It’s difficult to argue that White Wolf’s vampire and werewolf mythos is not itself a derivative work. As Metafilter user effugas writes: “White Wolf turned Montague and Capulet (public domain characters) into Vampire and Werewolf (public domain myths) and is peeved that others might do the same.”
But I’m curious to know what my readers more familiar with White Wolf’s product line think about this. Do you think they have a case? Have the writers of “Underworld” just cribbed from Vampire: The Masquerade, or simply created created a similar universe based on shared public domain characters and myths?