Quantico lawsuit alleges copyright theft

Quantico producer Mark Gordon has been hit with a lawsuit that claims he took the show’s premise from a 1999 CNN documentary, Quantico: The Making Of An FBI Agent.

Deadline reports filmmakers Jamie Hellman and Barbara Leibovitz Hellman and business exec Paula Paizes filed a 35-page complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court that says their documentary followed a class of trainees at the FBI academy.

Paizes says she worked for Gordon in 2001 and brought him the documentary, which the Mark Gordon Company optioned, and then signed an agreement in 2002 for a producer credit and profits from a Quantico movie.

Hellman and Leibovitz signed their own agreement with MGC and then provided “information which was not included in the Documentary, including all of their notes and transcripts… [that] included detailed descriptions of the training, both physical and psychological, and personal stories of the FBI trainees which were not depicted in the documentary,” they say.

The suit says the “Quantico Project” initially was discussed as a movie, with a storyline that “included a conspiracy inside the FBI Academy.” In a July 2002 email to MGC, Paizes described the concept as “a story about struggle/conflict and change — who saves who?? who are the real good guys etc?? who can you trust??”

Hollywood Reporter notes the plaintiffs say Quantico is “clearly derived” from Hellman and Leibovitz’s documentary and Paizes’ script development.