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James Cameron sued: "You stole Avatar from me"
- Thread starter rezuth
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ViewtifulJC
Banned
Creator of Fern Gully better get in that shit, too.
MatthewB92
Member
With tall smurfs.
crazy monkey
Banned
Simon Belmont
Banned
A mechanical exo-suit and having Segourney Weaver in the movie. Yep, there's definitely no way Cameron would have come up with either of those ideas on his own.
planar1280
Banned
he has no proof.
Nora Kisaragi
Banned
let's make this a class-action lawsuit
How did you come to that conclusion?
Why did you ignore everything else?
We need to go derper.
I'm sure if it had been your idea you would not complain and leave those millions on the table.
You aren't missing anything really.
He waited for the hype to settle before he saw it.
It would certainly be interesting to see the evidence he has to back it up. If he's telling the truth and the charade went on as long as he said a decade ago, he should have retained ample materials proving this point. I'm just not quite sure James Cameron would be that stupid knowing that it might be out there still.
Simon Belmont
Banned
Because none of it is terribly original, and to say you came up with two 'ideas' for a movie in 1997 that already appeared in a movie Cameron did in 1986 is delusional.
Its in the OP
"In his suit, Ryder alleges he complained to Cameron's people in 2009 -- but when they finally got back to him earlier this year, they told him to kick rocks, claiming J.C. had written the story before 1999. "
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
Successful high-concept stories almost always get sued by some broke-ass writer who thinks their idea was stolen, usually to no avail. AVATAR is so derivative it was inevitable someone would think they got ripped off. It's incredibly difficult to prove, even if they happened to be right, which they usually aren't.
Devolution
Member
Harry Dresden
Member
Which is why they threw in some hot blue alien chicks.
planar1280
Banned
the article makes no mention of its so I am guessing its a simple case of his word against cameron
Maximum profits which includes post blu-ray release profits
IamMattFox
Member
I was actually going to ask about this one. Well, not the BBC, but there was some woman who alleged she sent the Wachowskis the story in the early eighties or nineties after responding to an ad or something similar.
Did anything ever come of that or was she a crazy person?
Edit: snopes to the rescue!
Grant Morrison has a case
I would agree with you but the difference this time is that he worked for Cameron and actually pitched them the project and they allegedly had several meetings about it.
Awesome Animals
Member
I so wish I was home right now so I could take a picture of my copy of Ferngully. I actually own the damn movie.
If what he claims is true, what he came up with is basically the synopsis of that movie. If that's not terribly original, well, that's just because Avatar isn't. But the description is distinct enough to the point where you can't say "oh, well, that could be any old movie."
That's a valid point, however, if the guy is telling the truth, he actually worked with Cameron and pitched the idea to him. He's not some random guy that's trying to cash in, in that case.
Read the OP: In his suit, Ryder alleges he complained to Cameron's people in 2009 -- but when they finally got back to him earlier this year, they told him to kick rocks, claiming J.C. had written the story before 1999.
It's actually not that difficult to prove in this sort of instance, if there is a paper trail related to the meetings they had. Any smart writer also would have mailed their script to themselves prior to having any meetings related to the script and kept the envelope sealed. If this guy did that, had all those meetings, and Cameron DOESN'T have any such physical proof that drafts of the script existed prior to the date of their first meeting, then this guy has a legitimate case that he could win.
Those are a lot of "ifs," though.
This kind of strategy infuriates me, and it is frequently done, where people wait years before protecting their copyright despite knowing of infractions at earlier times. IF someone makes moeny off of your work, you have a right to protect your work. What you don't have the right to do is piggyback off of their efforts like they piggybacked off of yours. And I'd like to think it's why companies risk losing their copyrights if they don't make efforts to protect them, but the system is a bit lenient.
But that's another discussion.
This guy might have a case depending on the details and his evidence. The fact that he worked for Cameron and may have pitched the idea to cameron himself makes it something worth hearing out, I guess.
Simon Belmont
Banned
If true he still wouldn't be the first person to think of mining in space.
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