Hollywood's greatest heist: The black woman who created 'The Matrix' and 'Terminator'
Sophia Stewart. On September 25, 2014, the Federal Court in Utah awarded her $3.5 billion in lien as compensation for her stolen work.
What you need to know:
- Child prodigy Sophia Stewart created The Matrix and Terminator franchises before Hollywood giants stole her work.
- For decades, she fought the industry's most powerful directors who made $25 billion from her visionary manuscript The Third Eye.
- In 2014, after the longest legal battle in film history, she won a staggering $3.5 billion judgment, finally recognising her as the true genius behind cinema's greatest sci-fi franchises.
In 1984, ambitious film director James Cameron, who would advance to create the epic Titanic and Avatar franchises, was living in a modest apartment in Sacramento Valley, northern California, when he met Conan movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cameron, who had initially settled on former American Football star O.J. Simpson for the starring role of The Terminator, abruptly switched to Arnold. He, however, didn't inform him that the screenplay had been stolen from its original creator, Sophia Stewart.
Jamaican-born child prodigy Sophia is a multi-gifted writer who had an astronomical understanding of mathematics, technology, engineering and metaphysics. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and by the age of 10, she had learnt how to drive and compose music using the piano without a tutor. At age 11, her gift in mathematics sparked her entrepreneurial skills and she started completing payroll documentation for construction companies to earn surplus income and executed tax verification for numerous adults.
The cover of Sophia Stewart's memoir, The Mother of the Matrix: The Sophia Stewart Story.
Due to her brilliance, she skipped high school and proceeded directly to the City University of New York. She eventually earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, majoring in law and psychology. She, however, had an insatiable craving for creating metaphysical movies and possessed an inherited gift from her ingenious Cherokee grandmother, who was a visionary seer. From 1979 to 1983, Sophia triggered her passion for metaphysical movies by attending the University of Southern California (USC) film school. In 1980 while working part-time in Vice President of Columbia Pictures Dick Bariss's office, Sophia finalised her book titled The Third Eye. She protected her intellectual property rights, registering and copyrighting the book together with the screenplay on February 2, 1983.
The book's storyline begins in Los Angeles in 2029 in the middle of a nuclear war that has reduced the city to rubble. The remnants of humanity are fighting a desperate guerrilla war against the intelligent machines of Cyberdyne Systems. In this world, it's possible to travel back in time. Therefore, Cyberdyne Systems send back Cyberdyne Systems T-1000 to 1984 to kill a woman named Sarah Connor, before she could give birth to her son who would grow up to save humanity in its war on the machines. The humans successively respond by sending back one of their kind, Kyle Reese (Arnold) 'The Terminator' Cyberdyne Systems 101 to destroy T-1000 before he kills Sarah.
In May 1981, Sophia mailed her book to Susan Merzback, Vice President of Creative Affairs for 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Susan was astonished by Sophia's metaphysical work in The Third Eye. It was so compelling it engrossed the reader into a foresight trek and the first 25 pages were so brilliant Susan predicted that films created from the work would gross over $7 billion. The book foretold the evolution of consciousness, hologram engineering, 3D technology, cloning and artificial intelligence 33 years prior to their inventions.
In October 1983, embellished by Sophia's genius, Susan asked her to send The Third Eye screenplay. Sophia mailed it together with a ‘screen treatment,’ a film terminology that refers to a concise detailed summary of the screenplay. Susan maliciously shared the 'treatment' with Paramount Pictures staffers David Martin, Valarie Red and Gale Ann Hurd. Gale knew director Cameron who had just directed a lackluster B-Rated movie in Rome titled Piranha II, which had performed abysmally in movie theatres. Cameron and Gale thereafter embezzled and plagiarised Sophia's work by acting in concert with 20th Century Fox, which funded, produced, released and distributed The Terminator and its sequels.
In the summer of 1986, Sophia sent The Third Eye's six-page 'screen treatment' and 45-page 'instrument' to Hollywood producers Andy and Larry Wachowski in response to a national magazine advert that was seeking works of science fiction.
During the 1970s, boxer Mohammed Ali was a superhero within the black community and was also a close friend of Sophia. In The Third Eye, she created a famous character called Neo that she modelled around Ali's personality. Neo is John Connor, the son of Sarah Connor in The Terminator. In The Matrix, Neogrew into anadult striving to save humanity.
In March 1999, 13 years after Sophia's submission, the Wachowskis acted in concert with producers Joel Silver, Benjamin Bloom and Warner Brothers and distributed a film and comic book series titled The Matrix. On April 1, 1999, Sophia visited a movie theatre to watch The Matrix not knowing that the film had been extracted from her work. She immediately recognised the blatant theft and phoned the legal department of Warner Brothers. They identified her because all her copyrighted details were encrusted on the footnote of the front page of The Third Eye documentation she had submitted.
Sophia contends in her memoir, The Mother of the Matrix: The Sophia Stewart Story, that on June 10, 1999, she filed a written complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). She articulates how the Wachowskis, Silver, Bloom, Warner Brothers, Gale, 20th Century Fox and Cameron stole her work, infringed her copyrights and created movie comics, video games and merchandise that grossed over $25 billion.
It became the most protracted court case in film history. The FBI spoke to numerous film industry witnesses, who confessed that The Third Eye had been used to create the global cult classics The Terminator and The Matrix. On September 25, 2014, the Federal Court in Utah awarded Sophia $3.5 billion in liens as compensation for her stolen work.
The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).
