MOVIES - March 11, 1987

Christopher Reeve is being sued for $45 million by two men who claim he plagiarized their story and “palmed” it off as his own for “Superman IV.” The Los Angeles Superior Court suit filed Tuesday also names producer Cannon Films and distributor Warner Bros. as defendants and wants to halt the film’s release, scheduled for September, until the writers are paid and given screen credit. Barry Taff and Kenneth Stoller--who are not listed as members of the Writers Guild of America--claim they wrote “Superman: The Confrontation,” in 1985, registered it at the Writers Guild and sent it to Reeve, Warners and Cannon. They claim that Reeve received it and then said he’d come up with an idea for a sequel. Reeve’s agent, Andrea Eastman, dismissed the claim as “absolutely not true. It was a story Chris has had for a very long time.” Eastman said screenwriters Larry Konner and Mark Rosenthal wrote the script.