Inside James Wan’s Malignant Plagiarism Lawsuit Settlement

Just when you thought the horror was over, James Wan found himself entangled in a malignant legal battle that took a page straight out of one of his twisted psychological thrillers.

The famed horror maestro behind the Conjuring Universe and recent hit Malignant was slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit by writer Adam Cosco. The claim? That Wan’s 2021 mind-bending flick Malignant was a plagiarized version of Cosco’s unproduced screenplay Little Brother.

The similarities were eerily on point – both scripts featured a protagonist harboring a sinister secret in the form of a parasitic twin absorbed into their body during childhood. This “malignant” twin would occasionally take control, leading to scenes of brutal violence.

Cosco alleged that a Blumhouse executive had slipped Wan a copy of the Little Brother script, which then “inspired” the core premise of Malignant a little too generously. Talk about a real-life horror story for any writer!

However, Wan’s production company Atomic Monster fired back, portraying Cosco’s lawsuit as a desperate attempt to suppress their free speech and creative freedom. The judge initially agreed, stating Cosco couldn’t prove the defendants had ever even laid eyes on his script.

But in a twist as shocking as the ones Wan is famous for, the two parties have now settled the copyright case out of court under undisclosed terms. Cosco originally sought a $150,000 payout for the alleged plagiarism before embracing the shadowy deal.

So while the full truth may forever remain entombed, one can’t help but imagine Wan taking inspiration for his next psychological shocker from this real-life brush with a writer’s malignant grievances!

Was it a legitimate case of a plagiarized plot? Or just an overzealous writer seeing ghosts of their own ideas? The veil of secrecy drawn over the settlement leaves us to ponder the mystery ourselves in delightfully unsettling Wan-nian fashion.