Elon Musk Says ‘Blade Runner 2049’ ‘Sucked’ After Production Company Sues Him
Elon Musk, named as a defendant in a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by the production company behind sci-fi movie “Blade Runner 2049,” had a three-word response to the litigation.
“That movie sucked,” Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, posted on the X social-media platform Tuesday, responding to news of the lawsuit.
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Musk, Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery are accused of misappropriating the intellectual property of Alcon Entertainment‘s “Blade Runner 2049” for last month’s launch of Tesla’s Robotaxi self-driving “cybercab.”
Released in 2017, “Blade Runner 2049” stars Ryan Gosling as K, a new blade runner for the LAPD, who “unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos,” leading him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who’s been missing for 30 years. “Blade Runner 2049” has an 88% “certified fresh” critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 89% audience score.
“Blade Runner 2049” garnered $259.2 million at the worldwide box office on an estimated $150 million budget, per Box Office Mojo. It was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The pic is a sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner,” which starred Ford.
According to Alcon’s lawsuit, filed Monday in L.A. federal court, Musk’s Robotaxi video presentation used AI-created images representing scenes from “Blade Runner 2049″ after Alcon expressly denied permission to use the images. That included an image featuring “a Ryan Gosling look-alike” and “the iconic Peugeot-styled futuristic vehicle” in “Blade Runner 2049,” Alcon’s suit alleges.
“Musk personally became aware of Alcon’s permission denials and express objections” to using “Blade Runner 2049” images for the Tesla event, the lawsuit alleges. “He thus personally knew and understood that to incorporate ‘BR2049’ into the event presentation at all would be improper and an unauthorized misappropriation of ‘BR2049’ goodwill. He did it anyway.”
Alcon’s lawsuit said the company wanted “Blade Runner 2049” to have no affiliation of any kind with “Tesla, X, Musk or any Musk-owned company,” given “Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech.”
The lawsuit alleges that neither Warner Bros. Pictures nor any other WBD entity “has or ever had sufficient rights to allow Tesla to exploit ‘BR2049’ or any of its elements, marks or goodwill in connection with the globally livestreamed cybercab reveal event.”
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