Written by By Eliza Byard, CNN Los Angeles
Seventeen years after its premiere, “Pulp Fiction” remains one of the more cult-like film titles to have ever come out of the Hollywood filmmaking business.
The 1994 film, based on a film from the 1970s, got a second lease on life thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s take on the material. While the original contained mostly white characters, Tarantino not only cast the likes of John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman to star alongside a more diverse cast, but he also retooled the plot to reflect racial, sexual and socioeconomic change.
Tarantino’s project — set in a small Southern California town in the 1980s — initially made Tarantino out to be a renaissance man, with his genre mashup known to generations of viewers for its creative scope and all-around wild popularity. In recent years, however, Tarantino has pointed to a damning amount of disrespect for his brand of cinema, leading him to publicly announce he’d never make another “Pulp Fiction.”
Now, in an attempt to keep Tarantino on the “Pulp Fiction” track, Miramax has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the director, his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood production company and AT&T Content Studio for “illegally” using its copyright-protected intellectual property, according to Reuters .
According to the suit, filed in California federal court Wednesday, AT&T’s venture has allegedly infringed upon several “Pulp Fiction” scenes and multiple copyrighted songs, including “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “You Could Lose Yourself (To Me)” and “Scarface.”
In the case, Miramax, which was part of Walt Disney Co., alleges that Tarantino and his company first reached out to them in 2015 regarding “Twin Peaks: The Return,” prompting the film studio to offer new capital, in exchange for Tarantino licensing certain music. In return, Miramax says the writer-director agreed to only use its music for backing tracks in clips and unreleased footage, not as main music.
AT&T Content Studio didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.