The Tetris Effect author says film-makers copied his story brick for brick
Dan Ackerman, editor-in-chief of the tech news website Gizmodo, has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court accusing Apple, the Tetris Company and others of adapting his book about the video game Tetris into a feature film without his permission.
Ackerman claims he sent his book The Tetris Effect in 2016 to the Tetris Company, which allegedly copied it for the movie and threatened to sue him if he pursued his own film or television spin-offs.
The Tetris film premiered on the Apple TV platform in March. Ackerman asked the court for damages equaling at least 6% of the film’s US$80m production budget.
Ackerman’s The Tetris Effect: The Game That Hypnotized the World was published in 2016. The book describes the Soviet history of the popular puzzle game and the fight for its global licensing rights as a “cold war thriller with a political intrigue angle”, according to Ackerman’s lawsuit.
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The lawsuit said that Ackerman sent a pre-publication copy of the book to the Tetris Company earlier that year. He said the company refused to license its intellectual property for projects related to his book, dissuading producers who were interested in adapting it, and sent him a “strongly worded cease and desist letter”.
According to the complaint, the company’s CEO, Maya Rogers, and screenwriter Noah Pink began copying Ackerman’s book for the Tetris screenplay starting in 2017. Ackerman said the film “liberally borrowed numerous specific sections and events of the book” and was “similar in almost all material respects” to it.
Nikita Efremov, right, and Taron Egerton in a scene from the Tetris movie. Photograph: Angus Pigott/AP
Ackerman accused Apple and the Tetris Company of copyright infringement, unfair competition and illegally interfering with his business relations.
Ackerman’s attorney, Kevin Landau, said that the lawsuit “aims to right a wrong and provide the respect and justice to the work, diligence and ownership of someone who is entitled to such respect and acknowledgment under the law”.
Representatives for Apple and the Tetris Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.