Copyright Dispute: Disney and James Cameron Face Lawsuit Over ‘Avatar’


Dec 16 (Reuters) – Disney (DIS.N), opens new tab and famed director James Cameron have been hit with a lawsuit in California federal courtroom by a 3-D animator who alleges that Cameron copied his work within the blockbuster 2022 movie “Avatar: The Approach of Water.”
Eric Ryder’s grievance, opens new tab, filed on Monday, stated that he collaborated with Cameron’s Lightstorm Leisure to develop a film based mostly on his science fiction story “KRZ” within the late Nineteen Nineties. The grievance alleged that Cameron copied components of the story for the Avatar sequence.

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A 3rd “Avatar” film, “Fireplace and Ash,” is set to be launched in the USA on Friday. Ryder requested a minimum of $500 million in damages and a courtroom order blocking the brand new movie’s launch.
Ryder filed a comparable lawsuit over the primary “Avatar” movie in 2011, which a California state courtroom dismissed after discovering that Cameron created “Avatar” earlier than Ryder submitted his story to Lightstorm.

“This motion just isn’t an try and relitigate prior claims,” the brand new lawsuit stated. “It challenges new acts of copying that happen for the primary time in Avatar 2.”

Spokespeople for Disney and Lightstorm didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon the grievance on Tuesday.

“The defendants’ alleged misappropriation and downright theft of Mr. Ryder’s protected inventive work to create the third highest-grossing film of all time is blatant and egregious, and it cries out for compensation,” Ryder’s lawyer Daniel Saunders stated in an announcement.

The grievance stated that the “Avatar” sequence, like “KRZ,” consists of “anthropomorphic beings, an enormous oceanic setting, and a sinister, Earth-based company partaking in environmentally dangerous mining operations on the moon of a fuel big planet known as Europa.”

Ryder stated that “The Approach of Water” revolves round “the harvesting of an animal-based substance that when refined can lengthen human life,” a plot level that was featured in “KRZ” however not included within the first “Avatar” film.

“Whereas this animal-based, life-extending substance is only one of many examples of infringing content material in Avatar 2, its use as a foundational plot gadget is central to Defendants’ appropriation,” the lawsuit stated.

The case is Ryder v. Cameron, U.S. District Courtroom for the Central District of California, No. 2:25-cv-11854.

For Ryder: Daniel Saunders of Kasowitz

For Cameron and Disney: lawyer data not but out there

Learn extra:

James Cameron slapped with lawsuit over “Avatar” plot

Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington

Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Belief Rules., opens new tab



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