Yahoo Finance Elon Musk Hit With Lawsuit from 'Blade Runner' Producers Over Cybercab Event
During the unveiling of Tesla's Cybercab maybe-a-concept robotaxi earlier this month, Elon Musk, as he often does, referenced the cult classic science fiction franchise Blade Runner. He also went one step further, sharing a generic image that resembled a scene from the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049 while discussing the future he envisions for Tesla. That choice has now landed Musk, Tesla, and Warner Bros. in legal trouble.
The executive, automaker, and movie studio have all been sued by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind both Blade Runner 2049 and the upcoming sequel series Blade Runner 2099. The group's complaint accuses the three parties of direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and false endorsement.
According to the filing, the saga started when Musk asked Warner Brothers Discovery to use a still from Blade Runner 2049 during the unveiling. Alcon refused that request, but the event used with a generic image that seemed to reference a specific scene from the film. This, Alcon says, was an AI-generated photo meant to get around the producer's rights.
Since Musk is effectively campaigning as a surrogate for presidential candidate Donald Trump throughout Pennsylvania across the entire month of October, the complaint notes that "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 filing then suggests that the sequence during the reveal was a "false affiliation," one that goes against the brand's wishes to avoid Musk's public persona.
The exact scale of the cost to Alcon here is unknown, but the filing suggests that "based on prior BR2049 automotive brand affiliation contracts and the nature and scope of the use here, the fair market value of the brand affiliation goodwill that Defendants stole is at least in the six figures and possibly much higher."
The event, called "We, Robot", also drew ire from I, Robot director Alex Proyas. After the event, Proyas took to social media to lambast the similarities between the look of his film and the look of Tesla's products of dubious future availability by asking "Can I have my designs back, please?"
While the Cybercab reveal may be Musk's latest of many references to the film franchise based on a beloved (and mostly unrelated) Philip K. Dick novel, Musk does not seem to have a strong idea of what exactly happens in these movies. In a 2023 tweet, Musk described Tesla's Cybertruck as "what Bladerunner [sic] would have driven." As anyone who's seen the film would know, the series title is a reference to a job that multiple protagonists perform, not a name or a title of any one character.
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