Co-producer of Hurt Locker sued, banned

Nicolas Chartier, the co-producer of the Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker, is not going to be welcome at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday because of an email campaign that he orchestrated. It seems that he sent notes via email to Academy voters urging them not to vote for the $500 million blockbuster Avatar and to support his low budget film instead. This is against the Academy’s rules.

Chartier issued an apology:

“As passionate as I am about the film we made, this was an extremely inappropriate e-mail to send and something that the Academy strongly disapproves of in the rules. My naïveté, ignorance of the rules and plain stupidity as a first time nominee is not an excuse for this behaviour and I strongly regret it.”

He is also facing a lawsuit that has been filed by a United States Army sergeant, Jeffrey Sarver, who claims that the lead character in the film is based on him. He says that he is the person who actually coined the phrase “the hurt locker.”

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