Royce Mathew, a Brooklyn-born screenwriter, claims Disney plundered his buccaneer screenplay to make the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie and now he’s suing Disney and just about everyone else involved in the 2003 movie, just as the sequel to the $654 million blockbuster hits movie screens around the country.

Mathew says he spent 13 years developing ideas for a “Super Natural Pirate Movie” that is “strikingly similar to” Disney’s $655 million blockbuster “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.” His script featured a pirate ship named the Black Pearl, and a medallion central to the plot, just like Disney’s movie, Mathew alleges. There’s also a blacksmith/swordsman named Will Turner; an eccentric pirate captain; a crew whose curse was visible only in moonlight, and a daughter of a British governor named Elizabeth, who falls in love with Turner. “Plaintiff’s materials contained numerous other elements of protected expression, including elements of plot and sequence of events, characters, dialogue, theme, mood, setting, pace, and total concept and feel,” his lawsuit alleges. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in California, was first reported by TMZ.com. Mathew says he moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1980 to pursue a career in the film industry. After finishing his script in 1993, he pitched it to Disney repeatedly, he says. “Defendants rejected Mr. Mathew’s suggestions that a major motion picture based upon his material would be a financially rewarding project,” the lawsuit says. Alleging copyright infringement, the lawsuit asks for unspecified damages and that all copies of the movie be destroyed. It doesn’t mention the sequel, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which raked in $135.6 million last weekend. Disney didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

So did Disney producers swashbuckle their way across the “Pirates of the Caribbean” script like mighty pirates? Only an armada of lawyers and a reckless one-eyed judge will tell.

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