December 14, 2004
Wachowski Brothers: Artists or plagiarists?
[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).
Posted by Leopoldo at December 14, 2004 01:56 PM | TrackBackI 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...
Posted by: Leopoldo on December 14, 2004 02:15 PMNeil 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.
Posted by: Carl Caputo on December 14, 2004 04:28 PMReality 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.
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.
Posted by: Jon on February 3, 2005 10:30 PMall 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.
Posted by: donglong on February 6, 2005 01:15 AMWhat 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.
Posted by: guest i guess on March 17, 2005 02:41 PMActually, 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.
Posted by: Seba on March 30, 2005 09:42 PMDelightfully 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.
Posted by: mediageek on May 15, 2005 08:06 PM
