Reese Witherspoon Sued Over 'Gone Girl'

Reese Witherspoon has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit by a writer who claims that the book and the movie Gone Girl were based off her own work.

Leslie Weller, who penned a screenplay in 2005 called Out of the Blue, has named Witherspoon, Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn and the movie's director David Flynn in a lawsuit in which she claims the book and the movie bare striking similarities to her screenplay, TMZ reports.

Weller alleges that her screenplay and Gone Girl both focus on a married couple's relationship that is beginning to crumble. She continues to claim that both contain a twist in which the wife, who is at first believed to be a naïve housewife, is actually a psychopath who sets up her husband in an elaborate hoax and that they all feature a scene with a hammer that casts the husband in a negative light. The suit also alleges that the book and the movie follow the same structure of her screenplay, where the wife at first appears innocent and the husband appears guilty, but by the end, neither of them are decent people.

The lawsuit alleges that the movie draws from the book, which draws from the screenplay Weller had sent to a script consultant shortly after completion.

Witherspoon has not yet commented on the suit.