Starz says ‘P-Valley’ did not copy cabaret play
US cable TV network Starz claims that it did not copy a cabaret stage play in the creation of its strip-club drama “P-Valley”.
The playwright Nicole Gilbert-Daniels had accused Starz, Lionsgate, and the show's writers of infringing copyrights related to the musical stage play “Soul Kittens Cabaret”.
She accused the show of infringing three of her copyrights, PAU002998885, PAU003535055 and PA0001924906, which are registered under “Motion Picture” and “Dramatic Work and Music or Choreography”.
However, in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit submitted on Tuesday, March 15, Starz said that the similarities that Gilbert-Daniels had identified between her play and the series were “abstract ideas, stock elements, and random similarities scattered throughout the works, none of which are protected under copyright law”.
If the motion to dismiss for failure to state claim was not granted, Starz asked the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia court to transfer the case to the US District for the Central District of California, claiming that the convenience of the parties and witnesses “weighs heavily” in favour of the transfer.
Starz held that defendant Garcia Patrik-Ian-Polk should be dismissed from the lawsuit as she is not subject to personal jurisdiction in Georgia, had never lived in the state, and never travelled to the state in connection with “P-Valley”.
The complaint
Gilbert-Daniels alleged that Lionsgate and Starz copied several key elements of her play in a complaint submitted to the Georgia court in January.
The playwright claims she pitched a TV drama version of her play to the Lionsgate executives in September 2014.
The producer’s CEO Jon Felthemeir reportedly “expressed enthusiasm and interest” in adapting the play into a musical drama series and would share the script with the Lionsgate team. Gilbert-Daniels claims Lionsgate did not contact her following this initial meeting.
Upon learning of “P-Valley” which premiered in 2020, she noted several key similarities between the show's core plot and characters and her own play, including the inclusion of the character of a gender-fluid club owner who is on the verge of losing the club to a casino development project.
The complaint said: “There is no credible way for defendants to feign that their copying was coincidental or accidental, or to contend that ‘P-Valley’ shares the same family of general plotlines and attendant scènes à faire common to any other work featuring female dancers who work at a club.
“To the contrary, taken both as a whole and at a scene-by-scene level, ‘P-Valley’ is inescapably a veritable copy of ‘Soul Kittens Cabaret’.”
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