A mockbuster (also known as knockbuster or drafting opportunity[1]) is a film created to exploit the publicity of another major motion picture with a similar title or subject.
Blockbuster, once the largest DVD rental chain, implied support to the concept by buying 100,000 copies of The Asylum's version of War of the Worlds during the theatrical opening week of Steven Spielberg's film based on the same novel starring Tom Cruise.
In reverse, Glen A. Larson was accused of producing mockbusters at the height of his career, with his television series plagiarizing popular films of the time (Battlestar Galactica, for example, capitalized on the popularity of Star Wars, while Alias Smith and Jones was a take on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).
[12] Dingo Pictures was a German animation company founded in 1992 by Ludwig Ickert and Roswitha Haas, and based in Friedrichsdorf.
[13] They created traditionally-animated films based on fairy tales and concepts similar to those used by Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks.
[18] The film follows the intergalactic battle between a quarrelsome alien race and shape-shifting extraterrestrials, while six college friends find themselves in the middle of the interstellar war.
A 1993 science fiction horror film titled Carnosaur, produced by Roger Corman and starring Diane Ladd as a mad scientist who plans to recreate dinosaurs and destroy humanity, is loosely based on the 1984 novel of the same name by John Brosnan, but the two have little in common.
[19] (Diane Ladd's daughter Laura Dern starred in Jurassic Park) In some cases, the knockoff film may bear little or no resemblance to the original.
Its title and cover art focused on an incidental female character with red hair, in an attempt to evoke the design of Brave's protagonist Merida.
The Asylum CEO David Michael Latt responds to criticisms about loose plot lines by stating that "We don't have spies at the studios.
[citation needed] Besides the aforementioned film, The Asylum has also released The Land That Time Forgot, Transmorphers, AVH: Alien vs. Hunter, The Da Vinci Treasure, Battle of Los Angeles, Atlantic Rim and Paranormal Entity.
[30] Dolphy also played leading roles in other mockbusters, including Wanted: Perfect Father, a comedy-drama based on the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire,[31][32][33] and Tataynic, a 1998 parody of James Cameron's Titanic.
[26] The original Puss in Boots was made by DreamWorks Animation by 300 people working for four years at the cost of $130 million.
For these large production houses, it wasn't just a question of free riding on the marketing success of these more popular films; mockbusters have become a source of bad publicity.
[37] Mockbuster producers have had no legal troubles with drafting off as a result of Disney losing a case against GoodTimes Entertainment, which had used similar packaging for their own version of Aladdin.
They supposedly tweak the plot lines and the titles just enough to skirt legal trouble and yet ride on the publicity of major blockbusters.
"[26] In December 2013, The Walt Disney Company filed in California federal court to get an injunction against the continued distribution of the Canadian film The Legend of Sarila, retitled Frozen Land.
Unlike fairy tales, which are in the public domain, the J. R. R. Tolkien novels have been exclusively licensed to Warner Bros. and SZC for production and film adaptation.
The court described Global Asylum (the defendant in this case) as a low-budget company that makes "mockbusters" of popular films with similar titling.
Warner Bros. and SZC submitted evidence to prove that consumers would be confused by the identical title and that they would lose not only ticket sales but also DVD revenue.
[45] The films also featured major plot differences: "In an ancient age, the small, peace-loving Hobbits are enslaved by the Java Men, a race of flesh-eating dragon-riders.
The young Hobbit Goben must join forces with their neighbor giants, the humans, to free his people and vanquish their enemies.
The court rejected The Asylum's scientific fair-use claims since there was no evidence to suggest that the film was about a prehistoric group of people who lived in Indonesia.
The court rejected all of The Asylum's defenses: (i) that it was permitted to use "Hobbits" in the title of its film pursuant to the free speech test of the Second Circuit's decision in Rogers v. Grimaldi, (ii) that its use of the mark constituted nominative fair use to indicate plaintiffs' films and (iii) that the "Hobbits" mark was a generic name.
The court decided that The Asylum had failed to prove its defenses and on December 10, 2012, found in favor of the plaintiffs and entered a temporary restraining order.
The 2022 adaptation of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers spoofed animated mockbusters with "bootlegged" titles like Flying Bedroom Boy, Pooj the Fat Honey Bear and Spaghetti Dogs.