Someone e-mailed me about a lawsuit filed against the makers of THE MATRIX by a black woman writer named Sophia Stewart claiming to have written screenplays that were stolen and used to make THE TERMINATOR and THE MATRIX. She says she submitted her 1981 screenplay, "The Third Eye," to the Wachowski Brothers in the mid-1980s.

Now, I google-searched this and all I could find were newsgroups, web forums and blogs discussing this. There was one frequently-appearing quote from a "news" source that announces the suit was settled and that Stewart will get millions of dollars. But nobody on these forums ever cites the news source. The links are all to other personal websites, including one that I believe is Stewart's. And none of the links that came up in the search connected to any legitimate news source. One poster on one of the forums says that the only actual news source was a community college newspaper in Salt Lake City, where Stewart resides. And that all that's actually happened so far is that Stewart filed her suit in California somewhere. And of course all this leads to the usual conspiracy conjuring where everything you hear on the internet is true but that the mainstream media outlets, all connected by corporate affiliations to Warner Bros., are suppressing the story. Why? Because all hell would break loose if the public found out that (gasp!) a black woman wrote THE MATRIX. Even my gullible friend who alerted me to this wrote, "see I knew there was a reason the Matrix reasonated with so many people of color."

So, the question remains: is there anything to this or is it just an internet rumor gone wild or, more likely, simply a case of yet another writer who failed to sell their work finding similar themes or elements in others' work and claiming to have been ripped off? Anybody know?
I want to respond to my friend, but I want to have a few sources first--if there are any.

Well if she did win a lot of money,hopefully she is then sued by Harlan Ellison and the estate of PK Dick for stealing their ideas.

This trial is nowhere near being settled. The latest action, according to Movie City News, is a September 28 prelimary ruling on a motion to dismiss some of elements of the lawsuit.

The information you have came from a wildly misleading Salt Lake City Community College weekly newspaper article that clearly wasn't competently fact-checked.

Thanks for the links, Todd. I hope Movie City News will let us know what happens next. According to an update to the original article, "The decision on October 4th enabled Ms. Stewart to proceed with her case, as all attempts to have it dismissed were unsuccessful." Although, given how accurate everything else is in the article, I don't know if even that is true. I found it amusing that Stewart is quoted as saying that AOL Time Warner "owns 95 percent of the media," including The New York Times, the LA Times, Dreamworks and Newsweek. Even better is this tidbit: "According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film [THE MATRIX], in attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement." Calling Efrem Zimbalist Jr.!!! But, wait, the old "FBI" TV series was produced by Warner Bros., so aren't THEY part of the conspiracy, too???? :ph43r:

Addendum: In perusing the court document, I note that it ends like this:
"For the foregoing reasons, defendants' motion to dismiss claims one through seven of the complaint is granted with leave to amend. Plaintiff may file an amended complaint that addresses the deficiencies noted herein within twenty days of the date of this order." (Dated September 27, 2004)
So all it's saying is that the plaintiff (Ms. Stewart) may file an amended complaint. Not quite what the article said. So, did Stewart ever do so?

So this screenplay was submitted to the Warkowski's in the mid-80s? Well, since Larry was born in 1965 and Andy in 1967 they must have gotten their production company set up right out of high school...

And if it was submitted to the Warkowski's in the mid-1980s (before they'd made any films at all), what does James Cameron's THE TERMINATOR have to do with it?

Vincent