Wachowski Brothers: Artists or plagiarists?
December 14th, 2004 at 1:56 pm (Movie News)
I found an article explaining that Sophia Stewart has won a court case for $2.5 billion in damages from The Matrix trilogy and The Terminator trilogy both of which she claims were her original ideas. According to the article Warner Brothers was fully aware they were basing the Matrix movies on Stewart’s original manuscript “The Third Eye” and cut 30 minutes from the original Matrix movie in order to avoid having to pay for rights. In an interview Stewart goes as far as saying that the reason The Matrix Reloaded (2003) bombed after the original movie’s success is that the Wachowskis tried their hand at original work for the second and then went back to stealing her ideas for The Matrix Revolutions (2003).
Update: The claim has been found to be bogus. See http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp for details.
Leopoldo said,
December 14, 2004 at 2:15 pm
I gave the interview a full listen andI gave the interview a full listen and have to wonder just how much of the movie this nutcase was actually capable of writing…
Carl Caputo said,
December 14, 2004 at 4:28 pm
Neil Gaiman, who knows a thing or two, thinks this thing is lazy journalists and crazy ladies.
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/12/urban-legends.asp
Sounds right reasonable to me.
TEMM1 said,
January 21, 2005 at 8:10 am
Reality is often stranger than fiction. You better beleive that a corporate giant like Warner Brothers would not pay a cent if it wasn’t necessary.
“Some of these minds are not ready to be unplugged and are so dependant on the Matrix that they would fight to protect it” …Morpheus
Let’s give the lady some credit.
Jon said,
February 3, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Harlan Ellison also accused Cameron of lifting some of his ideas as the basis for Terminator. IIRC he sued and won as the films now have an acknowledgment attributed to him. This would seem to fly in the face of Sophia’s claim to developing the idea. I doubt Ellison lifted the idea from her.
donglong said,
February 6, 2005 at 1:15 am
all she’s got is a chance to go to court, that was what the decision was all about…she hasn’t won anything yet…
I read “third eye”…the parallels are in the overall story. It’s not as though they ripped her off word for word, but I believe they certainly took a good look at it. Her characters seem to have been used, i.e. the brothers changed the names.
The FBI concluded Warner Bros was involved in hiding the plagarism. I can understand the brothers stealing, but really…Warner has been very very silly here, if they broke the woman off 10 million she woulda been over the moon probably.
guest i guess said,
March 17, 2005 at 2:41 pm
What i think is the more interesting part of this story is that Sophie did not originally file a claim to the Terminator movies. She didn’t even see them. It was FBI investigators who found witnesses and information connecting the two.
Seba said,
March 30, 2005 at 9:42 pm
Actually, the Wachowski bros plundered Grant Morrison’s “Invisibles” comic book series before they lifted anyone’s scrip — Grant tried to file a lawsuit when the film was released, but unfortunately, the publishing company of the book is owned by the same parent company as the film, so nothing came of it. And I won’t even bring up Dark City…the Matrix was glossy crap by two comic/film geeks with no original concepts.
mediageek said,
May 15, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Delightfully ironic. This lady is suing a bunch of Hollywood studios for a bajillion dollars, then has the hubris to state the following:
“It’s not about money with me. It’s about justice.”
Sure. Whatever.
Grim said,
August 14, 2006 at 11:33 am
Wasn’t Revolutions the big bomb and not Reloaded? As I recall, everybody (included myself) pretty much hated Revoluations and liked Reloaded. So she’s basically saying that they did worse by going back to use her ideas.
Seroius said,
October 14, 2006 at 1:30 am
The Matrix Trilogy is by far the ultimate collections of films, no matter what, i respect the brothers for comin up for it, if Sophia really liked her ‘Third Eye’ manuscript, then i think she should of gone to Warner Bros. and start there, dam…
“I didn’t say it would be easy Neo, I just said it would be the truth”. -Morpheus
Rod said,
December 9, 2006 at 10:33 am
Snopes tags the lawsuit article as being an urban legend. Details here:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp
That RIAA article looks like a well crafted fabrication designed leverage the confusion surrounding the Sophia Stewart claims.