Twatlight Sequel: A New Poon
In 2013 and 2014, I dabbled in a satire page of my own creation. It was called The Hindrance Report: All News Unfit for Print. For a variety of reasons, I disbanded the site but have reposted a few pages on or around their original publication date for amusement.
Summit Entertainment and parent company, Lions Gate Entertainment have filed for an injunction to stop the release of “Twatlight: A New Poon,” which parodies the Twilight Franchise.
New Poon is a DVD sequel by Shady Side Productions, which released a low-budget internet production of “Twatlight” in 2010.
Neither the plaintiffs nor the defendant are new to the court room.
In 1999, Shady Side successfully faced down Dreamworks in a $10 million lawsuit over their release of “Shaving Private Ryan.” In that same year, Summit Entertainment and Universal Studios jointly sued independent actor/director, Evan Stripes for his production of “American Pies.” The lawsuit was dropped when it was revealed that both Evan and most of his co-stars were underage students from a local high school.
Experts on the case have mixed arguments about the likelihood of success. The industry successfully pushed back against the parody genre in the spring of 2013 when Universal successfully squashed “Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation.” However, Levin Schlesinger, of the ACLU says the substantial modification in New Poon should make Shady Side successful.
“Ironically, the lesson’s learned from their unsuccessful beginning in the saga are what will prevent a ruling on copyright infringement. In Twatlight, they went overboard on mimicking much of Twilight, including the signature character ‘Blowa’ moping about the entire movie and pretty much killing the libido of anyone watching. Fans didn’t like it. In New Poon, Blowa is a bit perkier and major differences like that will work in the defendant’s favor.”
Others are questioning the tactics of a major player in the film industry spending time and money on this lawsuit. Gilbert Helfry, a copyright lawyer for Munchy Productions, said that in absence of clear copyright violation, companies have been better off to ignore the parodies or to make a deal with the devil so to speak.
“BBC successfully ignored two parodies of Dr. Who, and Nintendo actually bought distribution rights of Super Hornio Brothers. The reason why you don’t know about Super Hornio Brothers is because Nintendo is willing to sue someone for illegal distribution. In a case like this, the media attention will cause a low-budget porn video to become as big as the target of its parody”
In an email, Shady Side’s producer, Dean Braithman echoed the sentiments of Helfry.
“Look man, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. While I’m wrangling in court, I’m getting free advertising to an internet fan base. Even if they stop this production, I’ll be back in six months with my third production in two years, Twatlight: Eclipsed.
He hints that Blowa saves the day when she takes on an all-black Vulturi gangbang.
Neither Summit nor Lions Gate responded to requests for interviews.
