BOSTON, May 1, 2014 — In 1999, the feature film rights to Tess Gerritsen’s novel Gravity were sold outright to the motion picture company Katja Motion Picture Corporation and its parent company New Line Productions.
While that project was still in development, Ms. Gerritsen wrote and submitted additional material, including scenes of satellite debris colliding with the International Space Station, the total destruction of ISS, and the surviving female astronaut left adrift in her space suit, alone and untethered. As far as Ms. Gerritsen knew, efforts to develop her novel into a film ended in 2002.
Years later, Ms. Gerritsen became aware of striking similarities between her novel and the then-upcoming film Gravity, to be directed by Alfonso Cuaron and produced, financed, and released by Warner Bros., which, since 2008, has owned and controlled New Line and Katja. Both Ms. Gerritsen’s novel and the film are set in orbital space and feature a female medical doctor/astronaut who is stranded alone aboard a space station after a series of disasters kill the rest of the crew. Both detail the astronaut’s struggle to survive. Both are called Gravity.
At the time, Ms. Gerritsen was unaware of any connection between those persons responsible for the film and those who had worked to develop her novel into a film. Ms. Gerritsen believed that as improbable as it appeared, it was at least within the realm of possibility that an independent storyteller could come up with the same specific setting, character, situation, and give it an identical title.
Then, in February 2014, Ms. Gerritsen received startling new information from a reliable source. She was told that at least one individual who was key to the development of the film Gravity had also been connected to her project while it was in development, and would have been familiar with her novel.
Ms. Gerritsen is now convinced the similarities are not merely coincidental. Therefore, she has decided to pursue legal action. She has engaged Glen Kulik, of the firm of Kulik Gottesman & Siegel LLP, to file a complaint against Warner Bros., New Line and Katja. Please see the link to the complaint at www.tessgerritsen.com/gravity-2014.
Author Tess Gerritsen is a physician and an internationally bestselling author. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the New York Times bestseller Harvest. Her 24 novels include the Rizzoli and Isles crime series, on which the television series “Rizzoli & Isles” is based. Among her novels are The Surgeon, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, and Last to Die. Her books are translated into 37 languages and more than 25 million copies have been sold. She lives in Maine.
