By WARREN GAMBLE
Jane Campion says she has a clear copyright to her screenplay for The Piano and is distressed by "uninformed speculation" that it was based on an 80-year-old novel.
The New Zealand film director is seeking an apology from the Oxford University Press for its Australian film companion citing The Piano as being based on Jane Mander's 1920 book The Story of a New Zealand River.
In a letter to the Weekend Herald, Campion said the editor of the Oxford Companion to Australian Film had not been able to account for the entry "nor could he remember the independent researcher who resourced the mistake."
Her agent said that if a correction and apology were not given, she would sue for defamation.