Toho Suing Over Anne Hathaway Film ‘Colossal’

Director Nacho Vigalondo is currently trying to shop around his film Colossal, which is about a woman (played by Anne Hathaway) who finds herself psychically connected to a giant lizard fighting a giant robot in Tokyo. Vigalondo has described it at “the cheapest Godzilla movie ever,” and maybe he shouldn’t have.

Well, that and maybe he shouldn’t have promoted it with pictures directly lifted from Godzilla (2014), because that kind of got Toho angry.

And you wouldn’t like Toho when they’re angry.

Toho has filed a lawsuit against the filmmaker, claiming it’s an unauthorized Godzilla film.

And I don’t blame them.

You see, Colossal has been blatantly using Godzilla images (and the name) in its promotions. Here I’ve attached a screen shot from an email to investors and a photo of the movie poster being used at Cannes (both taken from the lawsuit):

Of course, no one seems to have mentioned that the robot in the promotions is clearly Mazinger Z. I wonder if anyone has told Go Nagai about this?

Honestly? This looks pretty open and shut. It just goes to show that while it’s totally cool to allude to cultural icons, it’s probably a terrible idea to just directly steal copyrighted images and toss them on your posters.

I’m just saying.

Via Deadline