'Skyline' duo face legal battle with Sony

Colin and Greg Strause, the directors behind upcoming film Skyline, could face a legal battle with Sony Pictures Entertainment over rival sci-fi Battle: Los Angeles.

According to Deadline, Sony is considering taking to court Hydraulx Filmz, the visual effect company owned by the Strause brothers, after the studio hired the firm to do work on its $100 million blockbuster Battle: Los Angeles.

Concurrently, the Strauses were making their own alien invasion project, Skyline, budgeted at a more modest $20 million and dealing with four friends in the aftermath of an alien invasion of LA.

The brothers allegedly did not disclose that they were producing a similar film and Sony is investigating the possibility that the duo used the studio's money and equipment to help their own movie, which will be released via Universal and Relativity on November 12. The pair also had access to Battle LA's storyboards, pre-visualisation videos and script, after being considered as directors for the project.

Battle: Los Angeles is due for release on March 12, 2011.

"We utterly deny using Battle LA equipment on Skyline," Greg Strause told TheWrap. "That’s highly offensive. It’s completely untrue. We’ve been in the alien invasion business for many years before Battle LA. The first movie I directed was an alien invasion, called Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem. That's one of the reasons they came to us, we do computer generated aliens well."

Sony apparently only realised the similarities between the movies when they saw the Skyline trailer at Comic-Con the day after they had debuted footage from Battle LA.

> Click here to watch the teaser trailer for 'Skyline'