2 weeks ago
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Indigenous histrion Q’orianka Kilcher has filed a suit against filmmaker James Cameron, alleging that her facial features were utilized without support arsenic the ground for Neytiri successful Avatar.
According to the ailment filed successful California national court, Kilcher claims Cameron and respective accumulation companies, including The Walt Disney Company and Lightstorm Entertainment, utilized her likeness aft seeing a photograph of her from The New World, successful which she portrayed Pocahontas astatine the property of 14.
The suit alleges that Cameron instructed his plan squad to exemplary Neytiri’s quality utilizing Kilcher’s facial structure, which was aboriginal incorporated into sketches, integer scans and ocular effects assets utilized passim the Avatar franchise. Neytiri is portrayed onscreen by Zoe Saldaña.
“What Cameron did was not inspiration, it was extraction,” Kilcher’s lawyer Arnold P. Peter said successful a connection accompanying the lawsuit.
Kilcher further alleges she lone became alert of the transportation aft a video interrogation featuring Cameron resurfaced online past year. In the clip, Cameron reportedly points to an aboriginal Neytiri sketch and says: “The existent root for this was a photograph successful the LA Times, a young histrion named Q’orianka Kilcher. This is really her … her little face.”
The ailment besides references a gathering betwixt Cameron and Kilcher successful 2010, during which the manager allegedly talented her a signed drafting of Neytiri alongside a enactment stating, “Your quality was my aboriginal inspiration for Neytiri.”
Kilcher described the alleged usage of her likeness arsenic “deeply wrong,” arguing that her individuality and Indigenous practice were commercially exploited without consent. The suit seeks damages, nett disgorgement and corrective nationalist disclosure.
Released successful 2009, Avatar became 1 of the highest-grossing films successful history, spawning a multibillion-dollar franchise that continues with aggregate sequels.
