'Blade Runner 2049' producer sues Elon Musk, Warner Bros. Discovery over Tesla Cybercab launch

A Los Angeles-based accumulation institution has sued Tesla, its Chief Executive Elon Musk, and Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging that the electrical conveyance shaper ripped disconnected scenes from the 2017 movie “Blade Runner 2049” to beforehand its caller robotaxi.

Alcon Entertainment, which produced the movie for Warner Bros., filed the copyright infringement suit Monday successful California.

The ailment accuses the Hollywood studio, Tesla and Musk of utilizing artificial quality to make an representation resembling scenes from “Blade Runner 2049,” which Musk presented during a motorboat lawsuit for Tesla’s Cybercab connected the Warner Bros. workplace batch successful Burbank. The livestreamed lawsuit took spot Oct. 10 — soon aft Alcon said it denied a petition from Warner Bros. Discovery to usage a accumulation photograph from the sci-fi movie to promote Tesla’s caller product.

“Alcon refused each permissions and adamantly objected to Defendants suggesting immoderate affiliation betwixt [‘Blade Runner 2049’] and Tesla, Musk oregon immoderate Musk-owned company,” the 52-page suit reads.

“Defendants past utilized an seemingly AI-generated faked representation to bash it each anyway.”

Representatives for New York City-based Warner Bros. Discovery and Austin-based Tesla did not instantly respond Monday to The Times’ requests for comment.

The accumulation photograph Warner Bros. Discovery asked to usage depicts “Blade Runner 2049” prima Ryan Gosling walking distant from the camera crossed a desolate, dystopian scenery reduced to rubble and reddish dirt. Gosling wears a brownish trench overgarment successful quality arsenic a futuristic bounty huntsman portion approaching a metropolis skyline shrouded successful thick, orangish smog.

The representation from the Cybercab livestream shows a antheral — with a physique and haircut akin to Gosling’s — wearing a brownish trench overgarment and lasting connected reddish ungraded portion overlooking a metropolis skyline enveloped successful a thick, orangish haze.

During the Cybercab motorboat party, Musk besides allegedly referenced “Blade Runner 2049” portion introducing the conveyance to a planetary audience.

According to the complaint, Alcon refused the defendants’ petition successful portion due to the fact that it considers Musk problematic.

“Any prudent marque considering immoderate Tesla concern has to instrumentality Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hatred speech, into account,” the filing reads.

“If, arsenic here, a institution oregon its principals bash not really hold with Musk’s utmost governmental and societal views, past a imaginable marque affiliation with Tesla is adjacent much issue-fraught.”

A batch is riding connected the Cybercab for Musk, who has been selling unfulfilled promises of autonomous vehicles for years. Although Tesla’s income of its signature electrical cars stumbled early successful 2024, the institution has an $800-billion marketplace capitalization built mostly connected the anticipation that it volition beryllium capable to overtake competitors to predominate the burgeoning robotaxi market. Whether Tesla is anyplace adjacent to completing its propulsion to make the exertion needed to bash so, however, remains an unfastened question.

“It was hardly coincidental that the lone circumstantial Hollywood movie which Musk really discussed to transportation his new, afloat autonomous, AI-driven cybercab was [‘Blade Runner 2049’],” the ailment reads, “a movie which conscionable happens to diagnostic a strikingly-designed, artificially intelligent, afloat autonomous car passim the story.”

Alcon is demanding a assemblage proceedings and perchance hundreds of thousands of dollars successful damages.

Times unit writer Caroline Petrow-Cohen contributed to this report.