Movie and television studio Alcon Entertainment filed a lawsuit Monday against Tesla, Elon Musk and Warner Bros. Discovery for allegedly using imagery from the film “Blade Runner 2049” without permission during a live-streamed Cybercab unveiling earlier this month.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles federal court, alleges Alcon had refused a request from Warner Bros. to use images from the firm for Tesla’s Cybercab unveiling, which took place at Warner Bros.’ Burbank, Calfornia, studio lot, only for Tesla to then use images created with artificial intelligence that mirrored the movie for the event.
During the Cybercab unveiling, Musk gave a speech while a screen displayed an image of a man in a long coat overlooking an orange-tinted, ruined city for 11 seconds. The complaint states that, in addition to those 11 seconds, the video had a continued life having been shared by Musk, Tesla, X and others, resulting in “millions of total views.”
“The financial magnitude of the misappropriation here was substantial,” the plaintiffs allege. “Alcon has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars building the BR2049 brand into the famous mark that it now is.”
Alcon also claims this falsely suggested there was a relationship between the entertainment company and Tesla. The lawsuit points to Musk as the reason why it did not want to have that relationship, taking personal shots at the Tesla CEO in the process, calling him “problematic.”
“Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account,” the lawsuit states. It asserts “a potential brand affiliation with Tesla is even more issuefraught” if a company does not share “Musk’s extreme political and social views[.]”
“Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons,” the complaint says.
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Neither Tesla nor the plaintiff’s attorneys responded to FOX Business inquiries about the lawsuit.
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In a statement, Alcon said the defendants’ “conduct is likely to cause confusion among Alcon’s ‘Blade Runner’ brand partner customers, including those it is partnering with for its upcoming ‘Blade Runner 2099’ series for Amazon Prime.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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