- Nicolas Chartier
-
Nicolas Chartier was born in 1974 and is a French film sales agent and film producer. Chartier is partners with American film producer Dean Devlin in the sales and production company, Voltage Pictures. Voltage has produced its first independent feature film, The Hurt Locker (2009) directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film was picked up for wide theatrical release in the United States by Summit Entertainment and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Chartier previously was head of U.S. sales for Sydney-based Arclight Films.[1]
Chartier had previously cofounded Vortex Pictures for Gold Circle Films.[2] Chartier was a sales agent for the distribution of Academy Award-winning film, Crash, directed by Paul Haggis.
Contents
Impulsive emails
On occasion, Chartier personally sends out email to the general public stating strong opinions. Boing Boing, a popular blog, has described these as "impulsive emails".[3]
Academy Award vote solicitation
In February 2010, Chartier emailed a group of Academy Award voters to solicit votes for The Hurt Locker instead of Avatar for the Best Picture award of the 82nd Academy Awards. He later issued a public apology saying that it was "out of line and not in the spirit of the celebration of cinema that this acknowledgment is."[4][5] The Academy deemed his emails a direct violation of Awards rules and banned him from attending the awards ceremony.[6]
Justification of BitTorrent user lawsuit
In 2010, he created some controversy after once again sending an abrasive letter to a person criticizing him for a plan to sue BitTorrent users that shared his movie. This was featured on the widely read blog BoingBoing.[3] The letter went on to call the author of the original email a "moron", wished him to have is house robbed and continued to say "I hope your family and your kids end up in jail one day for stealing".[7] This lawsuit, and the one initiated by his production company Voltage pictures for the prior film Far Cry, are now being contested by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the grounds that it violates personal jurisdiction laws, lack of evidence, and improper joinder.[8] CNET featured an article about one of the people who received a formal demand for cash in which the man (who claims to have never downloaded the film or even know how to secure his own router) described the suit as "an obvious intimidation scam".[9]
References
- ^ "Devlin, Chartier Turn on Voltage" by Liza Foreman, The Hollywood Reporter, March 10, 2005
- ^ Film Finders Sydney Buzz, April 22, 2003
- ^ a b Xeni Jardin (2010-05-18). "Hurt Locker producer: criticizing our lawsuits makes you a moron and a thief". Boing Boing. Happy Mutants. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/18/voltage-pictures-pre.html. Retrieved 2010-05-18.
- ^ Pete Hammond (02/25/2010). "'Hurt Letter' plot thickens after producer offers mea culpa". Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/season/2010/02/hurt-letter-plot-thickens-as-producer-offers-mea-culpa-by-pete-hammond.html. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
- ^ Adam Rosenberg (02/25/2010). "'Hurt Locker' Producer Apologizes For Dissing 'Avatar'". MTV. http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1632611/story.jhtml. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
- ^ "Hurt Locker producer barred from Oscars". BBC. 03/03/2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8546775.stm. Retrieved 03/03/2010.
- ^ http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/18/voltage-pictures-pre.html
- ^ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/aclu-eff-seek-to-sever-gigantic-p2p-lawsuits.ars
- ^ http://news.cnet.com/2300-1023_3-10003610-4.html?tag=mncol
External links
Categories:- French film producers
- 1974 births
- Living people
- Producers who won the Best Picture Academy Award
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