The Matrix’s Wachowskis Sued For Alleged Copyright Infringement
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The first time I watched The Matrix, I was really blown away by how many ideas the Wachowskis threw into the slick martial arts extravaganza. Conversely, I was astounded by how many of those ideas foundered once the sequels came into play. Still, though, pretty cool fight scenes.
Clearly someone who has never farted and passed it off as someone else’s, Hawaii’s Thomas Althouse is representing himself in a lawsuit against Lana and Andy Wachowski, as well as producer Joel Silver and Warner Bros., suing them all for copyright infringement to the tune of $300 million, claiming they stole ideas from a script he’d written. Althouse submitted his Writers Guild-registered screenplay, The Immortals, to Warner Bros. in 1993 , a year prior to the Wachowskis’ arrival at the WB with original scripts for Bound and The Matrix.
To be clear, Althouse is saying that The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are the real culprits, and not just for wasting viewers’ time. He says the sequels stole his ideas concerning the “neck enhancers” that characters use to slip in and out of the virtual world, as well as claiming that Neo bears a striking resemblance to his Immortals character Jim.
The two questions that spring to mind are, “Who would take responsibility for those overblown money-chasers?” and “Why now?” Well, it turns out Althouse only recently realized he’d been ripped off when he first watched the two Matrix sequels in 2010. Maybe there’s some hope for this guy after all.
(Lawsuits of this kind are pretty common in Hollywood. James Cameron has been sued multiple times in recent years by people claiming he ripped off their ideas for Avatar.)
