'The Village' Ripped From Children's Book?

[Thursday, August 12th, 2004]
Publishers Simon & Schuster have indicated it may file a lawsuit against the Oscar-nominated writer-director M. Night Shyamalan claiming his film, The Village, ripped off a children's book by one of its stable of writers, according to E-Online.

The publisher says there's a striking resemblance between children's author Margaret Peterson Haddix's first book, Running Out of Time, published by Simon & Schuster in 1995, and Shyamalan's hit movie.

"No one's called anyone. It's just something that's internally under review," says a spokeswoman for the company.

Opening July 30 to mixed reviews, The Village dominated the box office over its first weekend, grossing $50.8 million. But bad buzz is apparently turning The Village into a ghost town--the film's ticket sales dipped nearly 70 percent in its second weekend, earning just $16.5 million between Friday and Sunday to bring its 10-day total to $85.6 million.

Van Straaten says that several fans and journalists began contacting Haddix in the days after The Village came out, to see if she had any comment on the apparent similarities between the film and her Running Out of Time, including the final twist at the end of the flick.

(Warning: Major spoilers ahead.)

"It was the fans that really pointed it out in the first place," says van Straaten. "The book is about a young tomboyish girl in a rural village in the 1800s who comes to learn that, in fact, it is a historical preserve in 1996 and that the adults have kept that secret from the children of the village. She finds that out when her mother sends her out to get medicine. But she learns it pretty early on in the book and then discovers all sorts of other intrigue."

Shyamalan's plot, on the other hand, centers around an innocent, blind tomboy (Bryce Dallas Howard), who must venture out of her close-knit 19th century village and into a haunted wood beyond its border to obtain medicine for the one she loves. Along the way, she discovers that the elders have their own secret that they've kept from the younger people in their community, and things aren't what they seem.

Haddix could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But she did tell the New York Times that she saw The Village and noted that "the spoiler ending is the thing that is the biggest similarity."

Disney and Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures were quick to dismiss any suggestions of plagiarism.

"Whatever claims are being made of similarities between the book and the movie have no merit," says a statement from Disney's Buena Vista Pictures, which distributed the picture.

More On 'The Village'...

E-Mail This Article » Share your comments on 'The Village'