Sommige van Luc Besson zijn films zijn cult klassiekers, en nog veel meer films zijn pure bagger die je beter kan skippen. Zo verscheen er in 2012 de film Lockout die bij veel die hard film buffs wel erg bekend voor kwam. Want het had behoorlijk wat weg van de klassieker Escape from New York uit 1981, een film die je overigens minimaal één keer in je leven gezien moet hebben. Besson werd aangeklaagd en gisteren heeft een rechter uitspraak gedaan dat hij van mening is dat Lockout wel heel erg veel op Escape from New York leek en moet nu $500.000 aan John Carpenter betalen. Het hele verhaal kan je trouwens hier lezen.

The director of "The Fifth Element" and "Nikita" had denied that his 2012 film "Lockout" copied the cult futuristic thriller in which New York's Manhattan island is a giant prison that has been overrun by its inmates.

Kurt Russell plays a government agent-turned-convict who goes inside to rescue the US president after his plane crash-lands there.

An appeals court in Paris ruled that "Lockout" had "massively borrowed key elements" of the earlier movie, according to a judgement put online Friday by BFMTV.

In "Lockout", Guy Pearce plays a wrongly convicted man who is offered his freedom if he can free the US president's daughter from a jail in outer space which its violent prisoners have taken over.

Critics have long pointed to the uncanny parallels between the two films.

Box Office magazine called "Lockout" -- which Besson wrote with Irish filmmakers Stephen St. Leger and James Mathers -- "a sleek, slick and shameless rip-off of Carpenter's 'Escape from New York'" as well as its sequel, "Escape from LA".

The Mandatory website joked that it was a "stealth remake".

But plagiarism cases in the movie business are notoriously difficult to prove, particularly as so many action and sci-fi films share similar tropes.