Spielberg faces 'Disturbia' lawsuit

Steven Spielberg and two major Hollywood studios have been accused of stealing the plot of last year's Disturbia from Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic Rear Window.

According to Reuters, Universal and Spielberg's studio DreamWorks are named in a lawsuit filed by the Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust, claiming that they broke copyright for producing Disturbia without the permission of the rights holders.

Hitchcock's Rear Window was based on Cornell Woolrich's short story Murder From A Fixed Viewpoint. The British director acquired the film rights in 1953 and the lawsuit argues that DreamWorks should have done the same.

The lawsuit stated: "What the defendants have been unwilling to do openly, legitimately and legally, [they] have done surreptitiously, by their back-door use of the Rear Window story without paying compensation."

Both Rear Window and Disturbia centre on a housebound man who spies on his neighbour.

Disturbia director D.J. Caruso admitted in an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News last year that Rear Window "was a big inspiration", but denied that he had set out to remake it.

"I embraced it instead of running away from it," he said. "I didn't want it to be a remake because that would be silly. You can't remake Rear Window."

> Click here to read our review of Disturbia