Exclusive: “Where there’s a hit, there’s a false writ,” Vertigo Films co-founder James Richardson has declared after a judge threw out a lawsuit, in which a writer claimed that Vertigo’s Roman Empire series Britannia was stolen.

Penned by Jez Butterworth and Tom Butterworth, Britannia ran for three seasons on Sky before its cancellation in 2023. Starring The Walking Dead actor David Morrissey as a military leader who spearheads the Roman invasion of Britannia, the drama aired on Amazon Prime Video and later Epix in the U.S.

Benjamin Crushcov, a writer and teacher, alleged in a High Court lawsuit that Sky misappropriated his idea and original script for Britannia, and then conspired to cover up the drama’s true origins. Executive producer Richardson was named as a defendant in the £6.5M ($8.7M) lawsuit, as was Karen Hyland, a journalist who Crushcov accused of taking a copy of his...