Spielberg sued over Soldiers film

Spielberg and wife Kate Kapshaw: Spielberg is being sued over a storyline

Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio is being sued by a film-maker who claims the director stole the plot of his movie to make the 1998 animation Small Soldiers.

Gregory Grant says the Saving Private Ryan director considered turning his award-winning short Ode to GI Joe into a feature but turned it down and made Small Soldiers instead.

He says the action comedy made by Spielberg's DreamWorks SKG studio in which toy soldiers come to life "directly copied several distinctive scenes" from his short film.

Small Soldiers tells the story of intelligent and vicious warring toy soldiers

A spokeswoman for DreamWorks, said: "We haven't been served with a lawsuit, so we can't comment."

According to the legal action, Ode to GI Joe appeared in several film festivals in 1991.

The film also won a student award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hi-tech battle

Grant claims he and executives of Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment production company discussed making the short into a full-length film, which Amblin eventually turned down.

However, Grant alleges that two weeks later Amblin and Spielberg announced they were making the animated movie that became Small Soldiers.

Small Soldiers was produced and distributed by DreamWorks and Universal. It centres around the son of a toy store owner who tries out some new hi-tech action figures: The Commando Elite and the Gorgonites.

Unfortunately, both sets of toys have been designed with computer chips to move, talk and destroy each other.

A battle ensues, in which the full destructive ability of creative computer chips fighting one another is revealed - with surprising results.