Someone might want to send the bomb squad over to The Hurt Locker HQ. Nicolas Chartier, one of four producers of the Best Picture nominee, was scolded by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences last week for sending out anti-Avatar e-mails to Academy voters, and now he has been officially banned from attending the Oscars ceremony this Sunday. As CNN reports, the e-mails urged voters not to cast their ballot for "a $500 million film" and to instead rank The Hurt Locker first and Avatar tenth, a violation of Academy rules. If The Hurt Locker beats out fellow frontrunner Avatar Sunday night, Chartier will still get his statue, but he will sadly never know the bouquet of the commingled pit-sweat of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. The other producers of The Hurt Locker—including the film's director, Kathryn Bigelow, also up for Best Director—will be allowed to attend the ceremony (and bask in that nutty, comedic musk).
But that ain't all. According to AP, the attorney for Master Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver—a member of the bomb-disposal unit in Iraq in which screenwriter Mark Boal was embedded while doing research for the film—says the soldier plans on filing a lawsuit against The Hurt Locker. Sarver claims he's owed "financial participation in the film" based on his allegation that Boal based his main character, Will James, on Sarver, including the appropriation of his call signal, Blaster One—not to mention swiping the title of the film itself, a term Sarver says he coined. Summit Entertainment, The Hurt Locker's U.S. distributor, had this to say: "We have no doubt that Master Sgt. Sarver served his country with honor and commitment risking his life for a greater good, but we distributed the film based on a fictional screenplay written by Mark Boal."