‘Stillwater’: Is Matt Damon trying to increase his net worth unlawfully?

Remember the story of Amanda Knox, the American exchange student who spent almost four years in jail in Italy for wrongfully being accused of her roommate’s murder? Well, it seems that her story was the inspiration behind a newly released film titled Stillwater, and Amanda Knox is currently accusing lead actor Matt Damon and director Tom McCarthy of using her story without her consent to raise their net worth. 

Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER.

/ a thread

— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021

Criticizing the film team

While the net worth of star Matt Damon and director Tom McCarthy may be rising now that Stillwater is out, Amanda Knox is not so pleased with the film. Amanda Knox, who became well-known after her story was turned into a Netflix documentary film in 2016, has made it clear that she is certainly not pleased with the making of the Stillwater film, and how she was not able to get a say on what the story entailed as it was being written. 

While Stillwater is mostly a fictional story, director and co-writer Tom McCarthy has name-dropped Amanda Knox on multiple occasions during the movie’s press cycle, and has made it clear that her story is a big influence on the plot of the movie overall. On Thursday, following the release of a Vanity Fair interview that name-dropped her in the headlines, Amanda Knox finally took to Twitter to express her disdain for the movie. 

In the movie, Abigail Breslin plays an American foreign exchange student imprisoned in France jail after being accused of her roommate’s murder. Matt Damon plays her conservative father who travels from Oklahoma to Marseille and tries to catch the real killer to help free his daughter. While this isn’t a perfect match to the story of Amanda Knox, you simply can’t deny that there are plenty of similarities between the two stories. 

He became interested in the family dynamics of the “Amanda Knox saga.” “Who are the people that are visiting [her], and what are those relationships? Like, what’s the story around the story?” I have a lot to say about that, & would have told McCarthy…if he’d ever reached out.

— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021

Speaking out

Amanda Knox has made it clear that she is not okay with the net worth of stars like Matt Damon and Tom McCarthy rising over a story that was not theirs to ever tell. In her Twitter thread, she asked: Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in?” 

“I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER”. She continued that she had an issue with how Vanity Fair described the film as “loosely based” from the “Amanda Knox saga” despite already being acquitted of the crime. 

She explained: “I want to pause right here on that phrase: “the Amanda Knox saga.” What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No. It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede. It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice”.

It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice. In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency.

— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021

“In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency. Everyone else in that “saga” had more influence over events than I did. The erroneous focus on me by the authorities led to an erroneous focus on me by the press, which shaped how I was viewed. In prison, I had no control over my public image, no voice in my story”, she shared. 

“By fictionalizing away my innocence, my total lack of involvement, by erasing the role of the authorities in my wrongful conviction, McCarthy reinforces an image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person. With Matt Damon’s star power, both are sure to profit handsomely off of this fictionalization of ‘the Amanda Knox saga’ that is sure to leave plenty of viewers wondering, ‘Maybe the real-life Amanda was involved somehow”.

In the thread, she even ended up inviting Matt Damon and Tom McCarthy onto her podcast to discuss the issue with them. She wrote: “I bet we could have a fascinating conversation about identity, and public perception, and who should get to exploit a name, face, and story that has entered the public imagination”.