Earlier this summer a few sci-fi geek sites covered pretty well the similarities between The Island and a 1979 low-budget sci-fi flick called Clonus (a.k.a., Parts: The Clonus Horror )), which came out on DVD last March. I summarized the claims in a piece that ran in this space on 7.8. And now the producers of the earlier film have gone to court to sue DreamWorks and Warner Bros. over the alleged ripoff. In a suit filed last Monday (8.8) in federal court in Manhattan, Clonusproducers Myrl A. Schreibman and Robert S. Fiveson (a) asserted that The Island was based on their film, (b) asked for unspecified damages and part of the limited proceeds from the DreamWorks bomb, and (c) asked the court to order the studios to withdraw Michael Bay’s futuristic thriller from release until the matter is settled. And to think that the whole magilla could have been avoided if Island producers Walter Parkes and Laurie McDonald had just written a check to Schriebman and Fiveson early on…as many producers do in order to cover their bases if their new film is remarkably similar to a previous work.