Marvin Gaye’s son is suing Fox and Lee Daniels, claims they stole the idea for Empire
It has been a good few years for the lawyers who represent Marvin Gaye’s family, at least in terms of getting work. First there was that whole “Blurred Lines” thing, and now TMZ is reporting that Marvin Gaye III is preparing to file a lawsuit against Fox and Lee Daniels for allegedly stealing the idea for Empire from him. He claims that he shopped around a treatment for a show called Diamonds & Ballads back in 2010 that he described as a take on Dynasty and The Sopranos set in the music industry, but no networks picked it up. He believes that one of the people he pitched his idea to passed it along to Lee Daniels, who then turned it into the surprise hit Empire. The supposed smoking gun in all of this are some quotes that Daniels made in which he compared his show to Dynasty and The Sopranos. Obviously that’s too huge to be a coincidence, so this seems like an open-and-shut case to us.