Mark Gordon pilfered idea from a 1999 documentary, claims lawsuit.
By Raif Karerat
The creator of “Quantico,” the recently debuted ABC drama starring Priyanka Chopra, has been slapped with a lawsuit claiming he stole the idea for the hit television series from a documentary.
According to Deadline, who broke the story, Jamie Hellman, Barbara Leibovitz Hellman, and Paula Paizes have filed a suit against Mark Gordon, alleging the latter pilfered the idea for “Quantico” from Leibovitz and Hellman’s 1999 documentary, “Quantico: The Making Of An FBI Agent.”
Paizes, a business executive, says she worked for Gordon in 2001 and brought him the documentary, which the Mark Gordon Company optioned, and then signed an agreement in 2002 for a producer credit and profits from a Quantico movie.
Hellman and Leibovitz signed their own agreement with MGC and then provided “information which was not included in the Documentary, including all of their notes and transcripts… [that] included detailed descriptions of the training, both physical and psychological, and personal stories of the FBI trainees which were not depicted in the documentary,” disclosed the Hollywood Reporter.
Over the following year, Paizes allegedly worked with several writers to develop a feature film script based on the documentary. In February 2003, she emailed Gordon, stating, “I keep thinking this would make a great drama series — cause it could play as it is — a character based drama set inside the FBI training academy,” to which Gordon allegedly replied, “I would be happy to discuss this with you when I get back [from production]. It’s a good idea.”
However, no project developed by the end of the option in April 2003; flash forward eleven years and Gordon is producing “Quantico” for ABC, much to the apparent chagrin of the plaintiffs.
The trio alleges Quantico is “clearly derived” from Hellman and Leibovitz’s documentary and Paizes’ script development, specifically, “the detailed knowledge of training techniques, lifestyle and terminology used in Quantico could only have derived from the transcripts and notes obtained by Leibovitz and Hellman during their unprecedented access to FBI recruits for the Documentary, copies of which were retained by [Gordon],” according to the complaint.