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The most successful movie of all time is not a rip off of a screenwriter’s unmade film and novel, the U.S. District court ruled today. “Bats And Butterflies is a children’s story with a simple protagonist,” said Judge Manuel Real, Monday in Los Angeles. “Avatar is a more complex story about a conflicted protagonist.” The judge went on to add that the two were “not substantially similar” to each other. Back in the beginning of the year, Elijah Schkeiban filed a copyright infringement suit against James Cameron, 20th Century Fox, the director’s Lightstorm Entertainment and production company Dune Entertainment claiming that 2009’s Avatar was based on his novel and subsequent film script. The two sides have been chipping away at it legally ever since with the defendants getting successfully getting two motions to dismiss and Schkeiban amending his complaint.
Though there is at least one other Avatar copyright case still in legal motion, today’s hearing brought most of Schkeiban’s efforts to an end. The ruling from the bench gave no leave for the plaintiff to amend his complaint, effectively ending his case. This latest sequence of events stemmed from the August 31 motion (read it here) the plaintiffs filed to dismiss. “To summarize, Plaintiff has now filed three complaints in this action, all of which fail to provide the necessary factual enhancement. His inability to do so shows that the Court should dismiss his claims without leave to amend,” said the 10-page request to dismiss without leave. Today they got their desired decision. Cameron is scheduled to start work soon on the back-to-back Avatar sequels for Fox with stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana. Zachary Levine, Sarah Wolk and Jessica Trotter of Los Angeles firm Wolk Levine & Trotter LLP represented the plaintiff. James Cameron and the other defendants are represented by Robert Rotstein and Elaine Ki Jin Kim of West LA’s Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.
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Love the “Avatar is complex” notion…
Maybe for us the audience who paid good money to watch that BS.
I love Cameron as a filmmaker, but Avatar was BAD.
This is very funny. There isn’t one original idea anywhere in “Avatar.”
Cameron can’t have stolen the idea from Bats & Butterflies, since he stole it from Poul Anderson’s 1957 novella Call me Joe.
You assume that Cameron had read that book. You don’t know that he had. I have read that author and I’m a senior but never read that one. I disagree with people about Avatar. It doesn’t matter if the ideas could be seen in other movies. There aren’t too many things that haven’t been done one way or another. It is how Cameron puts everything together. I know very well that most of what is in the movie Avatar is unique if not the plot which I didn’t care. The visuals were outstanding and the movie was well liked and successful. There is always someone that has to say something nasty. I can bet there are other science fiction stories that are similar as well out and about. You cannot copyright ideas only the words you use to convey the ideas. You won’t find many books these days with a difference in overall plots depending on the genre. It is foolish to think so because someone inevitably will compare the story to someone else’s.
No, but it was a ripoff of Fern Gully.
If anyone should be suing Mr. Cameron, then it is the Joseph Campbell estate.
Meh. It’s John Carter, Warlord of Mars, except that Dejah Thoris is a gigantic, cat-like smurf. These white messiah storylines predate even Campbell by decades, if not hundreds of years. Good thing for Cameron that the first few John Carter novels have been in the public domain for several years now. Good thing for movie fans that Cameron was able to adapt liberally from the John Carter novels because we would otherwise have been stuck with just the actual too-faithful John Carter movie rather than the movie that does John Carter right.
Sir you assume that he has seen John Carter or read the books. I had never heard of it until they made the movie. I saw it and I don’t think it is remotely like Avatar.
And that pending suit, if it’s the one I’m thinking about, is a doozy. A _completed_ sci-fi book that I read in the late 70s and which Avatar mirrors so closely it’s hard to image that it’s coincidence.
This is great news for all Avatar fans and fans of any genre. Far too many of these claims are made against companies which not only harms the reputation of both parties, but it costs everyone money. Most importantly we have to wait longer for the next product, movie, etc.
It was “Dances with Wolves” crossed with “Fern Gully”. Romeo & Juliet on Endor.
There are 5 or 6 other lawsuits pending against Cameron for Avatar. Apparently he ripped off everyone who ever wrote a science fiction story about another planet. His story was generic and cliched but he had an enormous budget and the latest technology to make it look like it was something fresh and new.
Because Avatar was so generic everyone thinks he stole it from something else. He was definitely inspired to write it by other stories and the strongest lawsuit against him is the one that was filed by the guy who worked for him at Lighstorm as a special effects technician that is the only suit that has some actual merit.
The guy who use to work for Lightstorm and filed the lawsuit is Eric Ryder…his lawsuit is just as ridiculous and will be dismissed. He claims that Avatar ripped off his ideas from his screenplay entitled K.R.Z. 2068. But from what I read in his complaint, there is no merit to the case. For one, he claims that he had an IMPLIED contract with Lightstorm and Cameron to not use his material without proper compensation or credit. The problem is this is code for having NO ACTUAL CONTRACT. Second, if you work for a company, as Ryder did for Lightstorm when he wrote K.R.Z. 2068., you don’t get to keep the patent or profits for whatever it is you produced while being paid by the company. Otherwise, the scientists who developed drugs that made pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars would be able to file massive lawsuits claiming their drugs were “stolen” from them. Same with employees who work for Apple or Microsoft and write software code or develop hardware that make those companies billions of dollars…NONE of it entitles them to personal compensation or recognition since they produced that product at work using company computers and resources and while being paid for being on the company clock.
These people who are suing Cameron are complete jackasses and think they own all sorts of ideas and storylines that they in fact do not own under the law. And I can see why they would be under this misapprehension judging by all the dumb people in here who are similarly using the word “steal” in its most generic definition to imply actual legal copyright infringement, which are two completely different things.
Most of these screenplay lawsuits are the music equivalent of some jackass claiming that a major rock band stole his idea when they wrote “a love song about a beautiful woman.” Ideas and generic concepts are NOT copyright protected.
Did someone seriously call Avatar a “complex story about a conflicted protagonist”? A judge no less?
Avatar’s most egregious plagiarism is of “Call Me Joe,” as Tacos has pointed out.
Am i the only one who thinks AVATAR 2 & 3 is really not that highly anticipated? The first one was great fun but do we really crave 2 or 3? 3-D was a novelty (Mr. Cameron did a hell of a job with it) but since then, good 3-D has become a standard that has been met with fantastic films (Avengers)… Not sure the public cares enough about more blue people.
I think the audience thinks that anything from James Cameron at this point will be gold. I’m sure the sequels will be reasonably successful just based on his name recognition.
Mr. FU sez . . .
Also, since Avatar, what 3D movie was up to par visually? I’ve seen a bunch and it’s night and day – the comment is like saying in between Star Wars Eps 4 and Empire Strikes Back – ‘well, there were dozens of space flicks out since, hard to image someone will go for the sequel now that the novelty has worn out.
Sometimes, this board really has rather uninspired and not well thought out comments.
Avatar hate seems to be a meme wholly exclusive to internet movie sites.
I thought it was just me who noticed this. The hate online is ridiculous.
Now if Allen Dean foster sues Camerson it might be different. As every sci-fi fan knows Jimbo totally stole from Foster’s ” Midworld” so damn much is isn’t even funny.
I know nothing about these particular suits, but what I do know is, all artists crib from other artists, consciously or subconsciously. It’s how ‘genres’ emerge, and popular themes, and quintessential stories. If anyone thinks Cameron, the guy who’s written and directed so many classics, has to stealthily steal his ideas from others, has little idea about the creative process (and the driven, inspired individual that Cameron always comes across as in interviews.) It’s good these suits have been dismissed because they stop original (by which I mean non-licenced) movies being made. Thank you and goodnight.
At the end of the day power talks. Nobody wants to cross a mogul like James Cameron. Schkeiban is a nobody. However, if Kevin Costner decided to sue Cameron for ripping off Dances With Wolves, I’m betting he’d get an acknowledgement credit at the very least (just like Harlon Ellison did for The Terminator).
Anyone who lived through the 70′s and bought a YES album knows where Cameron got the look for Pandora. I’m very surprised that artist Roger Dean didn’t file suit. The film totally appropriated the man’s life’s work.
None of the posters in here seem to understand what the legal definition of a copyright infringement is when it comes to screenplays. For one, it’s perfectly lawful to “steal” generic ideas or even specific ideas. For example, anyone can write a screenplay about an intergalactic society of good people vs. bad people even though this concept was already done in Star Wars and many other sci-fi screenplays. In order to meet the legal definition of copyright infringement, what matters is the SPECIFIC EXECUTION and SPECIFIC EXPRESSION of that idea. The way you dummies are talking in here, you’d have everyone believe that Law & Order has thousands of defendable copyright claims against thousands of other cop dramas that “stole” one of their episode ideas about cops arresting rapists or murderers or child abusers. Generic ideas…even specific ideas are NOT copyright protected! It’s only the specific expression of that idea that is protected. So all these statements you idiots keep making about Avatar being similar to these other movies and implying that there is some type of legal copyright infringement….you’re all legally incompetent in this area and really need to just shut up.
None of these copyright infringement claims against Cameron will survive a pre-trial dismissal. Why? Because the plaintiffs’ lawyers writing these frivolous lawsuits are just as legally inept as the people posting in here about their distorted understanding of what copyright infringement is. Most of these attorneys are looking for an easy settlement and know their cases have no merit. If they don’t know their cases have no merit, then they really are dumb and will soon find out.
Legitimate cases of copyright infringement such as Art Buchwald for Coming to America are extremely rare.
Finally, the fact that numerous screenwriters claim Cameron ripped off their idea for Avatar cannot possibly be true since these same screenwriters would also have to sue each other, since according to them, their screenplay was a unique idea that Cameron stole from them. The fact is, these screenwriters don’t even know each other and never even saw each other’s screenplays, thus disproving the merits of their own lawsuits that their idea is unique and was stolen from them and only them by Cameron.
So people filing multiple lawsuits actually works in favor of Cameron since these screenwriters seem to concede that the other plaintiffs did not steal from them as well.
I guess the writer of Paprika should sue Chris Nolan for ripping off his idea.
Avatar is a silly movie. They weren’t blue people. They went from being human to a cartoon. It wasn’t believable. I felt like I was watching an adult cartoon
In no way did it look like a cartoon. This is what I liked about it. It was very realistic. If you are not a big science fiction fan you might not like Avatar but you would be a minority in that one.