James Cameron's "Avatar" Photo: WETA (c) 20th Century Fox 2009
"Avatar," which lost out in several Oscar categories to the much lower-budget "The Hurt Locker," has at least pulled even in the lawsuit race. The two movies do have a number of things in common. They had the same number of Academy Award nominations (nine each), they're directed by people who used to be married to each other and now they have both managed to attract lawsuits by plaintiffs crying rip-off.
According to The Hollywood Reporters "THR, Esq." column, Emil Malak, a Vancouver restaurant owner, is suing James Cameron, Twentieth Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment for copyright infringement.
Malak, claims that "Avatar" bears a striking resemblance to his copyrighted screenplay, "Terra Incognita." In Malak's story, a tree is a focal point of a community of indigenous people and contains their collective memories. His characters are odd-looking creatures, some with braided hair and others with tails, who protect their home planet from militaristic human intruders to mine precious minerals.
Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" Photo: Courtesy Summit Ent. (c) 2009
Malak says that in October 2002, he sent the script and some graphic designs to about 20 movie studios, including Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment. He never got a response.
Unsolicited screenplays seldom do get a response in Hollywood. In fact, submissions that don't come through recognized agencies seldom get read at all. Professional screenwriters as a rule do not include graphic designs with spec scripts. Nonetheless, Malak has posted a point by point comparison of his screenplay with "Avatar" online. Should this be widely read, it may not solve much, but it will certainly make it harder to empanel an impartial jury.
One Staff Sergeant Jeffrey S. Sarver has filed suit in New Jersey against "The Hurt Locker, LLC," screenwriter Mark Boal, director Kathryn Bigelow, producers Greg Shapiro, Nicolas Chartier, Tony Mark, Donall McCusker, Summit Entertainment, Voltage Pictures, Grosvenor Park Media, First Light Productions, Kingsgate Films and Playboy Enterprises, claiming:
“The Hurt Locker” motion picture film and DVD are nothing more than the exploitation of a real life honorable, courageous, and long serving member of our country’s armed forces, by greedy multi-billion dollar “entertainment” corporations, which engaged in the very simple - though unconscionable and unlawful – act of plagiarizing the name, likeness, mannerisms, habits, and intimate and personal life story of Plaintiff Staff Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver, for the sole commercial purpose of unjustly enriching the Defendants in the amount of multiple millions of dollars.
"The Hurt Locker" Photo: Courtesy Summit Ent. (c) 2009 All rights reserved
Quite apart from the fact that Sergeant Sarver apparently hasn't checked the box office figures for "The Hurt Locker," the character he alleges is unlawfully based on himself is named Sergeant William James.
"The Hurt Locker" grew out of an article Mark Boal wrote for "Playboy"after having been embedded with the military. Boal and "Playboy" agreed to certain ground rules set by the Department of Defense before Boal was embedded. One of the rules was that reporters would be restricted in the type of personal information they could report regarding armed services personnel. Reporters were limited to releasing the name and hometown of a service member only, and only the the service member's consent.
Whether this was sufficient to give Sergeant Sarver a stake in the film is a large question. Summit Entertainment, in a statement quoted by THR, said: “We have no doubt that Master Sgt. Sarver served his country with honor and commitment risking his life for a greater good, but we distributed the film based on a fictional screenplay written by Mark Boal. We hope for a quick resolution to the claims made by Master Sgt. Sarver.”
In any event, it all goes to show that in Hollywood, you're nobody until somebody sues you.
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