Hollywood blockbuster surrounded by further controversy after a makeup artist working on a nearby set attacked

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A monkey thought to be from the Gold Coast set of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 has attacked a makeup artist working on the set of another movie.

The artist, a woman in her 50s, told paramedics she was in the sound stage of the Movie World theme park about midday on Tuesday when the monkey bit her on the ear.

A Queensland ambulance service senior operations supervisor, Stephen Burns, said paramedics believed the attack was unprovoked, leaving a wound that was “fortunately not [serious]”.

“We believe that the monkey had come up behind the patient and then bit her on her right ear,” he said.

“The lady, we believe, was not making any attempt to approach the monkey. She was actually sitting down.”

Paramedics understood the monkey was “part of the Caribbean film set”, said Burns, but the attack took part on the set of an unrelated film.

It is not yet clear if the monkey was one of two capuchin monkeys specially allowed into the country on strict transport conditions to play the role of “Jack the monkey” in the Hollywood blockbuster.

The capuchin monkeys arrived in March against protests of animal rights groups.

The Department of Environment imposed conditions, including the monkeys be held in held in “secure mesh and steel enclosures within a fenced compound”.

The application said the monkeys would be “freely handled by their trainers and restrained by leashes when outside of their designated living quarters for the purposes of training and filming”.

A spokesman for Movie World owner Village Roadshow studios later said that “a production member was interacting with a monkey when she received a minor laceration to her ear”.

“All future enquiries related to the incident should be referred to the productions who are renting facilities at Village Roadshow Studios,” he said.

No one at Disney, one of the production companies behind Pirates of the Caribbean, could be reached for comment.

The attack also follows a flurry of controversy after the agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, accused Pirates star Johnny Depp of illegally bringing his terriers, Pistol and Boo, into Australia.

Joyce said the dogs faced being put down unless they “buggered off back to the United States … on the same chartered jet [Depp] flew out on”.

The dogs left Australia shortly before Joyce’s deadline expired.

Depp’s wife, Amber Heard, said the couple would “avoid the land down under from now on, just as much as we can, thanks to certain politicians there”.