GK Films; Dave Allocca/Startraksphoto.comThere will be Blood, indeed, but it'll be shed in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Angelina Jolie has lost her bid to have a plagiarism case against her dismissed after a judge ruled that the copyright-infringement suit involving her directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, be moved from Illinois to Los Angeles.
Journalist James Braddock filed a complaint against the writer-director last December, claiming that the film cribbed his novel The Soul Shattering, which was published in 2007.
Jolie had asked that the case, which was originally filed in Illinois, be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., in an eight-page memorandum obtained by E! News, transferred the suit to Los Angeles and denied her motion to dismiss the case.
Dow stated that he decided to move the case because the majority of relevant documents and principal witnesses are in California.
The ruling also names Jolie as a principal witness. "Ms. Jolie, who resides in Los Angeles, not only wrote the screenplay but also directed and was a producer of the film," it states.
Braddock alleges that Jolie gained access to his book, which was originally published in Croatian, while researching her film. In his lawsuit, he also claims that he had been in discussions with a producer about adapting his novel into a movie but, unbeknownst to him, that the producer had purportedly been in touch with Jolie about the project that would become In the Land of Blood and Honey.
The film went on to snag a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, although it was widely considered to be a critical disappointment.
—Reporting by Claudia Rosenbaum