Movies

Tarantino files lawsuit over leaked script

Famed director Quentin Tarantino, fuming over the leak of his movie script, sued Gawker on Monday for allegedly violating copyright protections.

Gawker Media’s snarky New York websites, Gawker and Defamer, last week posted links to “The Hateful Eight” script, sending the “Pulp Fiction” director Tarantino into a rage.

He first vowed not to do the movie — and now he’s suing.

“Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck,” according to Tarantino’s civil suit, filed in a California federal court.

Gawker Editor-in-Chief John Cook, in a posting, insisted, “This claim is false,” and vowed, “We’ll be fighting this one.”

Cook said the site merely linked to a separate site, Anon Lists, because it was the topic of fevered discussion.

But Tarantino appears unlikely to buy that rationale.

“This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that [“The Hateful Eight”] may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally,” the suit says.

Tarantino’s legal team said Gawker took great joy in leaking the secret script.

“Their headline boasts, ‘Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino “Hateful Eight” Script’ — ‘Here,’ not someplace else, but ‘Here’ on the Gawker website,” the suit alleges.

Tarantino’s lawyers said Gawker, founded by British journalist Nick Denton, shouldn’t be allowed to claim its work falls within protected acts of legitimate journalism.