David Zaslav must have known linking arms with Elon Musk was going to blow up in his face, right?
Well, either way, courtesy of Blade Runner 2049 producers Alcon Entertainment, it’s another day, another lawsuit against the “problematic’ Tesla CEO, with Warner Bros. Discovery thrown in for good measure.
Pissed off that their denial of use of imagery from the Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling starring sequel in Musk’s October 10 Cybercab presentation on the WBD lot was ignored, Alcon are suing the X boss and the Zas-running media giant for copyright infringement. “This was clearly all a bad faith and intentionally malicious gambit by Defendants to make the otherwise stilted and stiff content of the joint WBDI-Tesla event more attractive to the global audience and to misappropriate BR2049’s brand to help sell Teslas,” says the jury trial seeking complaint filed today in federal court.
Read Alcon’s lawsuit against Elon Musk, Tesla & WBD here
Alcon asserts that they refused use of footage and imagery from the 2017 Denis Villeneuve helmed flick on October 9, only to learn of and “apparently AI-generated faked image” of a character who looked like Gosling and other such visuals. During those 11 seconds, Musk tried awkwardly to explain why he was showing the audience a picture of BR2049 when he was supposed to be talking about his new product,” the wide-ranging damages and injunction seeking filing states. “He really had no credible reason.”
Adding to Tesla and WBD’s refusal to abide by the very clear “No” that Alcon say they gave the parties on that association with the South African billionaire and hardcore Donald Trump supporter has “muddied the waters’ for the upcoming Amazon Prime Video BR2049-based Blade Runner 2099 television series.
Seems the Trump rally leaping, advertiser losing and Kamala Harris assignation joking Musk is the issue, as is so often the case in such suits of late.
“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 illustrated document from Pasadena-based Anderson Yeh PC says, making a point that Musk “personally” knew Alcon did not give permission to use of BR2049 images in the Telsa show and tell. “If, as here, a company or its principals do not actually agree with Musk’s extreme political and social views, then a potential brand affiliation with Tesla is even more fraught. Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
(L-R) Tesla CEO Elon Musk & WBD CEO David Zaslav attend the men’s final match between USA’s Taylor Fritz and Italy’s Jannik Sinner
Spotted together at the US Open back in September, Zaslav and Musk have become quite the pals. Certainly, with X/Twitter down almost 80% in value from when Musk bought it for around $44 billion two years ago, and WBD stock hitting new lows pretty frequently, both parties could use a media friend or potential cash injection.
With that, WBD did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on the Alcon lawsuit. If they do, this post will be updated. Musk may be a bit busy today too, as his vow to hand out $1 million a day to a registered voter up until Election Day looks to be hitting a political and legal wall.
Just another day in Elonland and Zasland.
