Universal Suing The Asylum Over Battleship Rip-Off
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You all should be very familiar with a professional trollers The Asylum by now. The small production company is famous for making the straight-to-DVD copycat flicks that fill Blockbuster’s dusty shelves with confusing imagery meant to trick renters into accidentally grabbing their mock version of Almighty Thor, rather than the actual Marvel version of Thor. It’s a little shiesty, but it works for them, and if someone is dumb enough to fall for it then they deserve to watch a shitty movie.
Well, The Asylum has now stepped on the wrong person’s toes. According to TMZ, Universal, the production company behind the upcoming noisy-robot-alien flick Battleship, is suing the mocksters for producing American Battleship, a very similar movie with an even more similar poster. Claiming that American Battleship is piggybacking on their hard work and $30 million ad campaign, Universal is suing The Asylum for “unspecified damages”, which will likely wind up being millions of dollars.
This hardly seems worth Universal’s time. First of all, they’re not going to get much out of such a small company. Maybe they can sink their battleship, but Asylum isn’t exactly overflowing with dough so Universal’s payout won’t be much, if anything, at which point The Asylum will dance into the distance singing:
However, it seems logical that Universal will go through with this in hopes of receiving some more income from their Battlefield venture, which we are all hoping will be dead in the water after opening weekend anyway. Seriously guys, don’t go see this movie. It looks terrible.
As mentioned, Universal has spent $30 million on their US ad campaign already, and while they’re upset this little company is riding their coattails, this negative news story keeps Battleship front of mind for people, and all press is good press, right? Right. Anyway, although this could be a bump in the road for The Asylum, don’t expect the Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus producers to stop making some of the best good/bad movies on the market. Personally, I’m way more excited to see a low budget Mario Van Peebles/Carl Weathers movie. That seems like way more fun.
