In 2012, Luc Besson's mid-budget action factory delivered "Lockout," a sci-fi-ish action movie that saw a game Guy Pearce leading a dumb yet more-enjoyable-than-it-had-any-right-to-be adventure about an ex-con tasked with rescuing the President's daughter from a prison… in space! Like I said, it's dumb. The box office was dreadful and reviews were worse, though on a positive note, Box Office described the picture as "a sleek, slick and shameless rip-off of John Carpenter's Snake Plissken films 'Escape from New York' and 'Escape from L.A.' " And Carpenter himself agreed.
READ MORE: 'Lockout' Is The B-Movie You've Been Waiting For All Year
The director took production company EuropaCorp and the film's writers — Stephen St. Leger, James Mather and Besson— to court over the matter, claiming they plagiarized his work. Surprisingly, Carpenter has won. These kinds of cases are notoriously difficult to prove, let alone win, but in...
