Guy Ritchie is being sued for his film The Gentlemen, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam. Last month, actor and writer Mickey De Hara filed a lawsuit in the London High Court alleging Ritchie commissioned him to write the sequel to the 2008 gangster movie RockNRolla based on his “personal life experiences.” In British newspaper reports, De Hara was found guilty of possessing cocaine and cannabis “with an intent to supply,” and faced jail time as a result. Nevertheless, Ritchie told De Hara, “the time of the gangster movie was over” after he delivered the screenplay about a protagonist who runs a marijuana business in 2018. Almost two years later, Ritchie released a film called The Gentlemen, in which McConaughey plays a gangster named Mickey who is seeking to sell off his marijuana business. De Hara claims the film is a “substantial” replica of his screenplay. According to the lawsuit, The Gentlemen copies “unique aspects of” De Hara’s cast of characters and the plot, including an aristocrat with a drug addict child and a protagonist who runs a marijuana empire.
According to De Hara, Ritchie’s film contains a scene where Coach (played by Colin Farrell) fights with some youths in a cafe and sprays vinegar into their eyes, which was directly derived from his screenplay. In his version, a character called Coach led a team of thugs nicknamed The Baby Squad. In Jan. 2020, De Hara texted Ritchie to mention the similarities between the two projects, and Ritchie replied: “Mickey, I and my people have tried to contact you for some years now. There was no response. I am happy for us to sit down and have a chat.” According to De Hara, Ritchie made no attempt to get in touch with him in advance of the project’s release. DeHara says he asked Ritchie in April 2020 for a writing credit for the film before its digital release, but both Ritchie and one of his associates rejected his request and offered him credit for a different project he wasn’t working on.
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“I have a feeling that might be too late Mickey,” Ritchie texted, according to the legal filings. “I’ll try, but what I can do is get you a credit on something in the future. Let me see what I can do. Honestly, we did try to get hold of you.” According to the lawsuit, De Hara “has no intention of seeking credit for original work that was not created by him” but instead seeks “credit for his original work that has been used in The Gentlemen without his consent and without payment of the agreed remuneration.” The writer is also seeking over $250,000 in profits from the film. Ritchie and De Hara first worked together on the 2000 film Snatch before the director asked him to write the 2008 feature RockNRolla, which starred Gerard Butler, Thandiwe Newton, Idris Elba, and Tom Hardy. According to De Hara, Ritchie asked him to write the RockNRolla screenplay with another writer named Martin Askew, with the idea of turning it into a trilogy. The IMDb credits Ritchie as the sole writer, along with DeHara and Askew as associate producers. DeHara also had a walk-on role in the movie. Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies, and Ritchie are credited as writers for The Gentlemen. There has been no defense filed yet by Ritchie.
