A judge has ordered James DeMonaco to turn over his early drafts of The Purge. The writer-director was sued by Douglas Jordan-Benel, who alleges DeMonaco stole from his screenplay, Settler’s Day. DeMonaco has been involved in a legal battle with Jordan-Benel since 2015.
Previously, DeMonaco was compelled to turn over emails to the courts however, those materials have come under scrutiny. Jordan-Benel’s lawyers claim to have “compelling evidence” that DeMonaco had tampered with the files to make it seem like he had the idea sooner.
Judge Michael Wilner sided with Jordan-Benel as DeMonaco will now have to turn over original files of The Purge screenplay. “If further technical review of the most suspicious e-mails on Plaintiff’s wish list — remember that the Court let Plaintiff pick the e-mails to be analyzed — then analysis of less suspicious (or, more fairly, non-suspicious) e-mails is less likely to lead to valuable results,” Wilner stated in his reasoning.
Wilner did concede, however, that DeMonaco’s computer crashing in 2009 could be causing a discrepancy in dates. DeMonaco had to redownload many files after his computer crashed while writing, this could make many files seem tampered with. However, Wilner ultimately decided it’s best to err on the side of caution here though.
This case is ongoing.
