The movie ‘Monsters, Inc.’ was accused of ripping off
Although it was already established as a trailblazing new force in animated cinema by then, fourth feature Monsters, Inc. continued the short-but-proud tradition of Pixar delivering nothing but top-tier content that ended up showered in critical, commercial, and awards season acclaim.
The first of the studio’s movies to win a competitive Academy Award – second overall after John Lasseter’s ‘Special Achievement’ gong for making history with Toy Story – after securing Randy Newman his first Oscar at the 15th time of asking when ‘If I Didn’t Have You’ scooped the prize for ‘Best Original Song’, it was another rousing success.
For a long time, Pixar was defined by its adherence to original storytelling, with The Incredibles 2 being both the outfit’s 20th theatrical release and its first follow-up that wasn’t part of the Toy Story or Cars franchises, but there were several legal challenges mounted along the way that tried to cast doubt on just how unique its narratives were.
Lori Madrid sued Pixar after claiming that her poem There’s a Boy in My Closet had been illegally used as the basis for Monsters, Inc., but the judge threw out the case after determining they had nothing in common. Stanley Mouse fared a little better when he alleged the characters of Mike and Sulley had been lifted from his designs for Eat my Dust, a project he tried and failed to pitch to studios in the 1990s.
Pixar’s legal team denied any copyright infringement had taken place, but the case was nonetheless settled for an undisclosed sum. And yet, neither of them are as close to Monsters, Inc. as a forgotten family comedy from 1989 that has so much in common with the movie that it’s borderline suspicious, but the creative team behind Little Monsters didn’t end up chancing their arm in court.
Starring Fred Savage as Brian Stevenson, the youngster discovers there’s a blue monster living under his bed, before accompanying his new friend on a journey to a hidden underworld inhabited by all manner of creatures, who use an interconnected network that reaches the bedroom of every child on the planet to pull pranks on them.
The third act revolves around the nefarious antagonist kidnapping a child to spur the heroes into action and save the day, while they even trade mementoes as a token to remember each other by. It’s not quite like-for-like or perilously litigious for Pixar, but it was nonetheless strange that of all the people to sue Monsters, Inc. waving around cries of plagiarism, the film that has more in common with it than most didn’t even bother.
Then again, Little Monsters was scripted by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, who were very familiar with distributors Disney having penned the classic Aladdin and the not-so-classic The Puppet Masters for subsidiary Buena Vista, and one of their first gigs after Monsters, Inc. was released came when they were hired to pen Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, so even if they wanted to they wouldn’t have been all that interested in rocking the Mouse House’s boat for the sake of their livelihood.
