Former Employee Suing James Cameron For Theft of Avatar Concept

Posted on December 10, 2011

A former employee is suing director James Cameron and Lightstorm, for breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation. He claims that he had the idea for the hit film Avatar and had many development meetings with the company over the proposed film. He says he was promised credits and financial remuneration for his work on the project. Eventually he says he was told that no one wanted to see a movie that had the environment as its core idea.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Eric Ryder was an employee of Lightstorm in 1999 when he wrote a story called "K.R.Z. 2068." He also created story treatments, photos, 3-D images and characters for a planned "environmentally-themed 3-D epic about a corporation's colonization and plundering of a distant moon's lush and wondrous natural setting." There more similarities. Ryder says his story involved a corporate spy, "anthropomorphic, organically created beings populating that moon," and a romance between the spy and one of the beings who eventually goes over to the side of the natives. Ryder says he was deliberately cut out of the credits and profits of the film, which made an astonishing $2.8 billion worldwide.

Cameron has been sued before over Avatar, but so far no one has won a judgement. But this is the first employee to come forward. Presumably, he has copies of the materials he produced to use as evidence at the trial (if they don't settle).

THR has the full complaint in .pdf format here.