Joss Whedon accused of stealing idea for film

"Avengers: Age of Ultron" director Joss Whedon has been accused of stealing the idea for the 2012 meta-horror movie "The Cabin in the Woods".

Peter Gallagher, the author of a 2006 novel "The Little White Trip: A Night In the Pines" has accused Whedon, who produced and co-wrote the script of "The Cabin in the Woods", as well as the film's director, Drew Goddard, reports hollywoodreporter.com.

Whedon and Goddard are named as defendants, along with Lionsgate and Whedon's Mutant Enemy production company, in the complaint filed Monday in the California federal court.

Gallagher is suing for alleged copyright infringement and wants $10 million in damages. He is basing his claim on the works' similar premises, both featuring a group of young people terrorised by monsters while staying at a cabin in what is revealed to be a horror-film scenario designed by mysterious operators.

The author also alleges similarities between the characters' names and personalities - his book's blond Julie and shy Dura and the film's Jules (Anna Hutchison) and Dana (Kristen Connolly), and handsome and scatterbrained men in both works - and certain scenes involving the characters finding strange items in their respective cabins and discovering hidden cameras.