Lawsuit Filed Against Tom Cruise Over Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Screenwriter Timothy Patrick has filed a lawsuit against Tom Cruise and Paramount Pictures, in addition to ten other persons, asking for $1 billion in compensation for moral and financial damages, for allegedly stealing the plot of a script he wrote, and turning it into the film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

Patrick said that the film is a rip-off of his own “Head On,” which he started pitching around back in 1998. One of the people he pitched the idea to was Rick Nicita, Tom Cruise's agent at Creative Artist Agency, and he believes this was how they wound up stealing the story. "I was told by the agency that they could not use the script as a movie," he wrote. He said that upon watching Cruise's movie, he immediately recognized that it was illegally stolen and produced from his “Head On” script.

"Because the Ghost Protocol film generated close to $1 billion [£613 million], I am asking for this amount in damages," said McLanahan in the court papers.