![]() ![]() This case is crawling along, so it’s unclear when we’ll get another update about it, but now that it’s not being thrown out of court, it may be time to examine it closer and take it a bit more seriously.įollow me on Twitter and on Facebook. But I know Grand Theft Auto, and I know celebrity gossip, and the Lohan comparisons do seem pretty obvious to me now that I’m looking at this closely. Whether legally she has a case or not, I can’t be sure, as that isn’t my field. If she was essentially a part of both the game’s marketing campaign and the story, and this is one of the best-selling games of all time, I get why she’s at least trying to sue them. I understand the desire to craft "desperate actress wants millions from video game publisher" headlines, but that might be a bit too dismissive. It’s enough to make me understand why Lohan is going after Take-Two, and enough to make me think that her case is not totally baseless. No, they didn’t name the character Lacey Rohan or photoshop an existing picture of Lindsay for their own promotional materials, but did they use her all the same? To me, it certainly seems like it. Simply anecdotally, not legally, the evidence seems to indicate to me that Rockstar did use Lohan as a basis for both Lacey Jonas and the famous Red Bikini Girl photo. Development on GTA 5 began in 2009, and Lohan was in and out of court (and jail) from 2007 through 2013, when the game was released. And yet, the photo itself certainly does evoke one of the most iconic press photos ever taken of Lohan, not just because of her revealing bikini, but because if you uncrop the image, it shows her wearing her trademark alcohol ankle-monitor, which she was issued in 2007, near the beginning of her years-long battle with substance and legal issues. Lohan claims that a “lookalike” model was hired for the image, though it would be hard to argue that Welinder looks much like Lohan. But eventually it was revealed that model Shelby Welinder posed for the photo, and she had an invoice from Rockstar to prove it. ![]() That’s nothing to laugh off.īut is it Lohan’s likeness? Red Bikini Girl has been hotly debated for ages by fans, with the most common theory was that she was based on a specific photo of Kate Upton (see above). Red Bikini Girl was quite literally the biggest piece of the ad campaign for one of the best-selling video games of all time. This is the primary issue, because it would signify that Rockstar was directly making money off Lohan’s likeness, not just that she had a quasi-cameo in-game as an NPC. She was glimpsed on the box yes, but I’m talking about posters, billboards, banner ads, literally every form of promotion you can imagine. Red Bikini Girl is the most important part of all this, because she was essentially the face (and body) of Grand Theft Auto V, through countless marketing materials. ![]()
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