Author Charges Hit Film 'Knocked Up' Based on Story of Reporter

By: E&P Staff Rebecca Eckler, a Canadian author, has filed suit in Los Angeles against sued NBC Universal and director Judd Apatow, charging that they stole the idea for their new hit movie "Knocked Up" from her 2004 book.

The book was also called "Knocled Up" and featured a character who gets drunk at a party and gets pregnant in a one-night stand. The character in the movie worked as a TV reporter, but in her book she was a newspaper reporter.

Eckler says the cover of Apatow's script holds the same image as the cover of her book: a martini glass with a pacifier around the stem. She claims she learned of Apatow's project while pitching her book to Hollywood producers. She points out that the lead male character in book and film is a Jewish Canadian.

In a statement, Apatow says the book and film are very different: "The book is about a woman who gets pregnant by the fiance that she loves on the night of her engagement party. The film is a very different story; the film is about a one-night stand between a pot smoking slacker and an ambitious young woman that leads to a pregnancy and their attempts to get to know each other. Anyone who reads the book and sees the movie will instantly know that they are two very different stories about a common experience."