Today in Best Picture Nominee Lawsuits: Chinese Man Says He Came Up With Avatar First
Yesterday I gave you the skinny on Master Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver’s lawsuit against the makers of The Hurt Locker, in which he claims his exploits were the unacknowledged inspiration for Jeremy Renner‘s character. Well, guess what – it’s Friday and there’s news of another lawsuit against a Best Picture nominee. This time it’s Avatar‘s turn. Yes, that’s how competitive these two movies are – they even go tit-for-tat in lawsuits. I bet Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron had some epic beer-pong matches back in the day. But enough about that…back to the Avatar lawsuit. In this suit, a Chinese sci-fi author named Zhou Shaomou claims that the novel he published in 1997, Tale of the Blue Crows, was blatantly ripped off by James Cameron when he concocted his own 3D opus. In Zhou’s mind, “blatantly ripped off” means his story and Cameron’s are both about distant planets, both about blue people and – most damningly – both describe humanity’s journey to the fictional blue people planet as taking right around six years. Okay, in Zhou’s book it takes six years, but in Avatar it takes five years, nine months and twenty-two days – but that’s close enough for a lawsuit, at least according to Zhou. And now he wants $162 million. Which is about what Avatar grossed every five minutes during the peak of its run. I for one support Zhou in his efforts – he’s an inspiration to everyone who wants to get rich by saying he had an idea first and it’s not his fault no one noticed.
Filed Under: Features
Hey, yeah, I came up with the idea of ripping off Dances With Wolves first, too!