Among the triumphs of copyright infringement lawsuit for the sequel. Top Gun: Maverick has achieved unprecedented success in of its box office draw and glowing reviews, with the sequel soaring past the success of the original. With a fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 97% and a box office gross of over $552 million, Top Gun: Maverick is on track to create a beloved legacy in its own right.
Premiering 36 years after the 1986 original, Top Gun: Maverick brings back Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who is now tasked with training a new generation of Top Gun recruits for a high-stakes mission. Top Gun 2 manages to outshine the original in its modern approach to the characters, primarily in of the emotional crux between Maverick and Rooster, the son of his late best friend and co-pilot, Goose. Addressing his grief, mortality, and personal sacrifices, Top Gun 2 has an incredibly poignant payoff for Maverick through his relationships with Miles Teller’s Rooster, Val Kilmer’s Iceman, and Jennifer Connelly’s Penny.
However, the celebrations for Top Gun 2’s unexpected success didn’t last long, as the heirs to the author whose story inspired 1986’s Top Gun are now suing Paramount in a game-changing IP lawsuit. In 1983, author Ehud Yonay wrote an article for California Magazine titled “Top Guns,” with the documented stories being licensed by Paramount Pictures quickly thereafter. Now, after nearly four decades, the story’s cult status, and an incredible sequel performance, Paramount could lose big on one of the studio’s greatest assets.
Why Paramount Is Being Sued For Top Gun 2
On June 6, 2022, Ehud’s heirs, Shosh and Yuval Yonay, announced that they would be proceeding with legal motions against Paramount for copyright infringement. The heirs claim that Top Gun 2's Paramount Pictures failed to reacquire the rights to Yonay’s “Top Guns” article when the copyright termination notice had been sent in 2018. Copyright laws state that authors (or their heirs) have the right to reclaim copyrights 35 years after transferring the rights for publication, so long as the transfer occurred after 1977. Since Paramount originally acquired the rights for Top Gun in 1983, their rights to the intellectual property ended in 2018, which is when Yonay’s heirs claim they sent the studio a warning. The Yonays assert that Paramount ignored the fact that copyright for “Top Guns” reverted to them in January 2020, with the heirs sending a cease-and-desist letter to the studio on May 11, 2022.
Paramount denies that the copyright infringement lawsuit has any merit, maintaining that the Top Gun 2's enormous box office profits.
Will Paramount Lose The Lawsuit? How Top Gun 2's Delays Factor In
Paramount is adamant that the Yonays’ lawsuit has no merit, but it seems a significant settlement payout will occur either way. If Paramount does choose to keep fighting rather than settle, the studio will likely be trapped in a legal battle for years, which has been the case for the Yonays’ lawyer’s Friday the 13th copyright lawsuit. The most significant obstacle for Top Gun: Maverick in the lawsuit is the movie’s many delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While production on the film had initially concluded in 2019 for an intended release in July of that year, Paramount’s sequel was subject to three years’ worth of pushbacks. Paramount maintains that the long-delayed Top Gun 2 was "sufficiently" finished before copyright reverted to the Yonays in 2020, but the heirs allege that production wasn’t officially completed until May 2021.
Top Gun: Maverick’s May 2022 release and possible touch-ups amidst its many delays are where the studio will have its most significant obstacle. Paramount hasn’t been very forthcoming about the timeline of Top Gun 2’s production after its originally slated 2019 release date, so these details will become increasingly important as the lawsuit moves forward. Either way, the Yonays have a leg up in of the fact that they sent a two-year warning of the “Top Guns” copyright termination in January 2018, as production for Top Gun: Maverick didn’t begin until May 2018, giving the studio ample time to respond to the notice.
What Top Gun 2's Lawsuit Means For Future Sequels
If Paramount loses the IP lawsuit, it won’t just lose out on a portion of Top Gun 2’s record-breaking box office haul, but also the rights to make sequels and spinoffs. The family of 1983’s “Top Guns” author seeks to stop the studio from continuing the franchise after Top Gun: Maverick, which means Paramount risks losing a continuation of its most significant new asset. The lawsuit states that the Yonays’ recovery of the copyright doesn’t prevent Paramount from continuing to “exploit” the 1986 Top Gun film, but rather that it cannot do so for any project completed after January 24, 2020, which they claim includes Top Gun: Maverick. The Yonays also request that Top Gun’s 2022 sequel declare that it is derivative of the 1983 article, as Paramount had done for the original movie.
Following the successful opening of Top Gun: Maverick in May 2022, Paramount claimed that there were no immediate plans for Top Gun 3 or spinoffs. In light of the lawsuit, these statements now seem to be based on the notion that they’d be engaging in a legal battle over the rights to continue the franchise. If the Yonays win the lawsuit, Paramount will be unable to produce any Top Gun projects in the United States. However, if Paramount can prove that the sequels and spinoffs are no longer derivative of the 1983 article, as they claim is the case for Top Gun: Maverick, there’s a chance that Tom Cruise could return as the talented aviator in the future.
Even if Paramount is able to reclaim the rights to the article or prove that Top Gun 2 was not derivative of the article, the lawsuit inevitably sets back the development of any sequel. As such, spinoffs shouldn’t be expected anytime soon, and if Paramount should lose the case, the Tom Cruise-starring Top Gun: Maverick could prove to be the triumphant finale to the fighter pilot story. But, considering the shocking performance of Top Gun 2 at the box office and its encouraging cultural response, the franchise isn't one that Paramount is willing to risk losing. In order to secure the rights to future sequels with no trouble from the family, Paramount could try to settle in a manner that allows them to continue the franchise while granting certain retributions for the Yonays.
