Shia LaBeouf got into some trouble recently after he used someone else’s idea for a short film that he had made. The film debuted at film festivals over a year ago, but was just published to the public online as of recently, and gained the attention of the man who wrote the original immediately.

He released a short film called Howardcantor.com online on December 17, 2013, and it was revealed shortly after that he could be facing legal action for plagiarism. His film tells the story of an anguished online film critic, and he is played by comedian Jim Gaffigan.

The story was borrowed from a graphic novella called Justin M. Damiano by Daniel Clowes. Days after, Daniel Clowes was already exploring his legal options after it seemed that Shia LaBeouf had copied his story almost exactly.

As a result, Shia LaBeouf has apologized, and did it in the most epic way possible. He hired an airplane to write in the sky “I’m sorry Daniel Clowes.”

Mr. Clowes, I can only ask that you view my apology as a stepping stone toward repairing this misunderstanding between us. I'm sorry.

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013

However, it may not be the most genuine of apologizes because it was reported that it could simply be raising suspicion that the actor has moved on from saying he’s sorry, and is now simply taunting Clowes fans and LaBeouf critics.

LaBeouf has been in all sorts of trouble since putting the film online, and although he even took to Twitter to address the claims of plagiarism, it was even revealed that he had plagiarized much of his apologetic tweets.

I am sorry for all the plagiarized tweets, they all were unintelligent, ambiguous and needlessly hurtful.

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013

You have my apologies for offending you for thinking I was being serious instead of accurately realizing I was mocking you.

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013

He had a string of tweets, and while some of them sounded very genuine, others can be traced almost exactly to the apologizes made by people such as Mark Zuckerberg and Lars Von Trier. His initial tweets were also reminiscent of something that Picasso said in order to defend his work.

He also had to post a photo on Twitter because it was unlikely the author, who lives in San Francisco, would have been able to see his message during the short time that it was visible before the words disappeared in the wind.

CLOUD: - vapor floating in the atmosphere - remote servers used to SHARE DATA - to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014

Shia Labeouf had neglected to formally apologize to Daniel Clowes for the way that he had illegally used his work until now. How genuine is an apology that comes in the form of sky writing?

When you’ve made a mistake you should apologise. But more importantly – most important of all – you’ve got to learn from your mistakes.

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 28, 2013

Image via Twitter