Oh dear, it seems the creator of 80s TV hit McGyver could take the joke when MacGruber was just a piss-take on SNL, but now that millions of dollars are at stake with a big screen version, it seems he things the joke’s gone too far.
MacGruber originated on Saturday Night Live as a spoof of a McGyver-like agent, with the difference being that while Richard Dean Anderson’s character got out of sticky situations using whatever was lying around, Will Forte’s bumbling spy invariably screwed things up. Now the sketches have been turned into a movie, which is due to hit cinemas in April.
However, according to Latino Review, Lee Zlotoff, the creator of McGyver is not impressed (or more likely he’s seen that he might be able to make some cash). He feels that because his show served as the inspiration for MacGruber, he should be paid a lot of money for the movie. And he may be right, as while the US laws on parody means you can do a spoof on copyrighted works, it’s less clear on the rules for taking something wholesale – when it’s very obvious where the inspiration came from – and making a movie parody of it.
As MacGruber has never hidden the fact it was a piss-take of McGyver, it would seem Zlotoff has a case, especially as he’s been working on a McGyver film, which could be derailed by the emergence of MacGruber. However, the laws on parody aren’t exactly black and white, and much rests on what can be classed as fair use, what’s free speech and also whether a parody is likely to hurt the market for the original.
For example, while Austin Powers was obviously a James Bond parody, it didn’t break any copyright laws because it was protected under fair use rules, and was obviously inspired by rather than based on Bond. However if they’d called the main character James Bond instead of Austin Powers, things would have been very different. It seems it’s the similarity in the name of MacGruber and McGyver that could have a big effect on the legal standing of the film (i.e. whether an audience would think MacGruber is officially related to McGyver or not, or just inspired by a similar character).
While THR suggests MacGruber has a decent case to argue fair use, it could turn into a messy fight,