- Whatever Matthew McConaughey did to protect himself legally against AI-generated use of his likeness
- Whatever Michael Jackson's and Tupac's estates did to handle postmortem work. (Namely, MJ's album Xscape and Tupac's 2012 Coachella hologram).
- Whatever legal and economic shackles were placed on Britney Spears during her conservatorship.
- Terms of "360 deals" in the record industry.
- How SAG-AFTRA handled the introduction of CGI. Tl;dr: there's a distinction between "active performance capture" (e.g. live motion capture) vs. "passive capture" (e.g. photogrammetry scan of a face + CGI to animate it).
On another note: I remember watching BTS for National Treasure (where the treasure room scene in particular was somewhat new technology to be able to render that many reflective objects in one scene through CG alone). I know that Nicolas Cage has also done several CG-heavy films since then. Also, Nicolas Cage is a Coppola.
Overall, I imagine that the man has had enough exposure to the fiddly details of film contracts to know the difference between "the introduction of a new technology" vs. "somebody trying to screw him over".
And my 2c is that it sounds like the studio tried to screw him over.