DAWN OF THE DEAD - LEGAL ROW OVER ZOMBIE MOVIE

LEGAL ROW OVER ZOMBIE MOVIE

A Japanese electronics company is facing legal action from the makers of 1978 film DAWN OF THE DEAD - who accuse the firm of infringing copyright in a new videogame. The MKR Group contends that Capcom stole ideas from the zombie movie and its 2004 remake to produce Rising Dead - a game for the Microsoft XBox 360 console. MKR's president and chief shareholder is Richard Rubinstein, producer on both hit horror films. Both the films and the game feature battles with zombies inside a shopping mall and MKR has now lodged a complaint insisting the alleged similarities are too great. Papers filed at the U.S. District Court in New York on Monday (25Feb08) state the company's argument that both Dawn Of The Dead and Dead Rising provide "thoughtful social commentary on the 'mall culture' zeitgeist" as well as "a sizeable portion of sensationalistic violence". The complaint follows a previous one filed by Capcom earlier this month (Feb08), in which the gamesmaker argued that "humans battling zombies in a shopping mall" was a "wholly unprotectible idea".