When one company dominates media outlets (or, when real life is better than a soap opera)

Over the last week or so, I have been watching a developing battle between film directors Walter Salles and his partner Daniela Thomas and the screenwriter João Emanuel Carneiro. Salles and Thomas are about to start shooting a new film that Thomas developed with screenwriter George Moura and Carneiro (note that I don’t know if Carneiro will be credited as a screenwriter; he did help with early versions of the script). Carneiro is now writing the new seven o’clock soap opera, Cobras & lagartos and it turns out that his protagonist has much in common with a protagonist of the new Salles/Thomas film. The character in question was apparently not in the script of the film when Carneiro bowed out of the project but was instead the idea of Thomas and Moura. Unfortunately for them, Thomas and Moura continued to include Carneiro by e-mailing him new versions of the script. Carneiro apparently liked some of their revisions so much that he stole one of them.

Walter Salles found out about this affair through an article about the soap opera in the Folha. No episodes had yet aired, but Salles immediately became suspicious when the article noted that the protagonist would be a flute-playing motorcycle delivery boy who falls in love with a cellist. In the film, a motorcycle delivery boy falls in love with a woman who plays the flute and loves classical music. Salles immediately contacted the television network, Globo. They changed the character’s instrument to the clarinet and turned him into a motorcycle driver (but not delivery boy). The network re-filmed seven scenes from the opening episodes.

After the series premiered, Salles and Thomas decided that the changes were not enough and they went public, choosing the Folha as their outlet. Both seemed very upset and suggested that this would jeopardize their film project.

It has now been confirmed that Salles and his production company, Videofilmes, are suing Carneiro.

You might wonder why the series was allowed to air with very minor changes even when Thomas and Moura have plenty of documentary evidence in the form of e-mails that their character was developed after Carneiro left the project and when it is so clear that Carneiro’s character is borrowed from Thomas and Moura’s. Simple. TV Globo, the television network that is airing the show, and Globo Filmes, the distributor of Salles’ films, are all part of the the massive Globo media giant, which also controls companies that provide cable and internet to many Brazilians, a major music distributor and Rio de Janeiro’s largest daily newspaper. Call me a cynic, but I suspect that Globo did not think that Salles, an independent producer and director at the mercy of distribution, would want to bite the hand that feeds him.

He decided to bite, but it raises a bigger question. How often does this happen to less powerful people who are unable to challenge the Globos of the world?