James Cameron sued over “Avatar”
Now that Avatar has earned a billion dollars, people are coming out of the woodwork to sue James Cameron claiming his film too closely resembles their works of fiction. For example, Zhou Shaomou tells China Daily that 80% of the plot and key elements of Avatar were ripped straight from his 1997 Sci-Fi novel Tale of the Blue Crows.
It tells the story of an epic journey taken by six astronauts to a distant planet which is home to a race of blue-skinned beings.
“I wrote in my novel that their space journey took them six years but in Cameron’s movie the journey takes them five years, nine months and 22 days. I was shocked when I first saw that. It is too close.”
“I realise that no-one knows me in China but I insist on fighting for my copyright,” he said. “Over ten million people have read my book over the internet.
“Nobody was supportive and many asked why someone as famous as Cameron would copy an obscure work from a little-known author. I really wanted to argue back, ‘Why not?'”
Yes, a film Cameron spent 10 years making and which any Dungeons and Dragons dork could have come up with while living in their parent’s basement was specifically lifted from an obscure internet novel from 1997. The similarities being space travel, the time frame of 6 years vs five years, nine months and 22 days and blue aliens. I think this guy has a rock solid case against Cameron. You should probably make friends with him now before he wins his millions and starts getting suspicious.
Cameron wrote this story way before this guy did.
gee if it were me i wouldn’t be claiming any sort of connection to that movie. don’t care what the fanboys think, it had the worst, more derivative script i’ve ever heard.
I don’t think I’d be so fast to claim ownership of such a moronic script. Terrible dialogue and worse plot. It seems only people who saw it in 3D actually enjoyed it. I for once thought it was a steaming pile of crap.
The 3D didn’t really help. I’ve seen much better 3D.
Only one blue-species SciFi story allowed!
unobtanium lol
A more likely source was Poul Anderson’s 1957 novella “Call Me Joe”.
“Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like Avatar’s Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificial created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body.”
http://io9.com/5390226/did-james-cameron-rip-off-poul-andersons-novella
If anyone sues Cameron, it should be whoever wrote “Pocahontas.”
10 million people have read his book and he’s still obscure and little known? Knock a few zeros off that number and it’d make more sense.
whoa whoa whoa– who let his date/wife attend whatever significant event that earned THAT gown without steaming it first? damn. that is real wrinkly.
Wow that is so freaking stupid. I hate this random guy, he can’t even spell ‘realize’ correctly, and he’s obviously a bag of douche. Cameron has been sketching ideas for this movie for a LONG time, I’m talking 30 years, before this guy was even born.
I’m pretty sure this movie share’s at least 50% of its plot with most Hollywood film made in the last 20 years
that’s his ****ing excuse, space astronauts and blue people? Then maybe the Roddenberry’s Estate should sue his stupid @$$ for ripping EFC since that was pitched years before his book’s release; stupid, ****ing C0(K sucking parasite MU+@****ER
@Lindsay – ‘realise’ is an acceptable spelling of ‘realize’ in many of the Commonwealth nations.
Yeah Cameron deffinetly rippef-off some scenes…… for instances, some of the plants look like those similiar to what the Pow-wow dancers wear at Gatherings…….
Besides – I thought Avatar was a Smurfs clone anyway.
Geek Hat on: I’ll tell you why Cameron picked 5 years, 9 months, whatever for the time of the trip to Alpha Centauri, because if you accelerate at 1G and then decelerate at 1G to Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light years away, it will take you about 5.9 years (Earth time) to get there. On the ship itself it will take only 3.5 years, due to relativistic time dilation, but that’s a whole other thing (time moves slower when you move really fast, fact). Cameron’s ship seems to be going a tiny bit faster than a 1G acceleration/deceleration, but… Read more »
—‘Moral fantasy’ from the long rich, shameless Red China suck-up and sellout —James Cameron.
——————————right—!
Hey WTF… “unobtanium” is a real word with a real definition created back in the 50s by NASA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtanium
But seriously, it’s a pretty lazy name, but i guess it work with the lazy choice of standard noble savage with some white man’s burden plot…
@David
I’m guessing that and the SFX is where all the effort went, and they had none left for coming up with a story on their own which is why they went with a stock plot.
Oh, and they so should have gone with “phlebotinum”!
hahaha.. blue people and space travel.. WOW. I’m pretty sure i just lost two minutes of my life. So why doesn’t he just sue.. oh i don’t know.. The fifth element’s writers- blue alien, space travel. Avatar was terrible from the beginning til the end. I wouldn’t wish viewing it on my worst enemy and i definitely wouldn’t be claiming it was stolen from me, i would be totally ashamed. Idiots. Why is this happening with every successful movie? This is even stupid-er than that guy who claimed he wrote Kill Bill.