Comic creator Stephen Busti has sued Universal Pictures and Platinum Studios claiming that they ripped off the concept of his comic story “Cowboys and Aliens,” which appeared in Bizarre Fantasy #1 in 1994. Busti contends that his story provided the basic concept for the 2011 summer blockbuster movie Cowboys & Aliens, which was directed by Jon Favreau.
While Universal may have deep pockets, its Cowboys & Aliens movie, which cost $163 million to produce (and millions more to promote), earned just $174.8 million worldwide at the box office, leaving it nearly $200 million in the red (moviemakers typically receive just under 50% of the box office revenues).
While Universal may have deep pockets, its Cowboys & Aliens movie, which cost $163 million to produce (and millions more to promote), earned just $174.8 million worldwide at the box office, leaving it nearly $200 million in the red (moviemakers typically receive just under 50% of the box office revenues).
The celebrity scandal Website TMZ broke the story of Busti’s lawsuit, which interestingly includes Platinum Studio’s Scott Mitchell Rosenberg as well as Universal. According to TMZ, a preview of Busti’s story was spotlighted in Comic Shop News in November of 1995 on the same page that featured a story about Rosenberg, who later “created the Cowboys & Aliens” property at Platinum. In 1997 Platinum produced a Cowboys & Aliens poster that featured a huge alien spaceship flying over a cowboy, and sold the “high concept” project to Universal and Dreamworks. The actual Cowboys & Aliens comic book didn’t appear in graphic novel form until 2006.
