Leech and Inerfeld also attempted to amend their complaint to add a claim of tortious interference against JTM. She writes: “The issue of who has superior rights to those profits depends on future events that may never occur, especially since plaintiffs and defendants have ceased working together on the film and plaintiffs’ right to compensation is, in any event, contingent on various factors, such as the amount of profits earned, TWC’s failure to pay them their alleged share of the profits, and TWC’s payment of the profits to JTM.” As for JTM, the plaintiffs demanded a declaratory judgment that their contractual rights to share in the profits were superior to JTM’s security interest in profits from the film.īut in reference to the financiers, Judge Jaffe says there’s no controversy to adjudicate. Instead, Leech and Inerfeld went on the legal attack against TWC - even claiming that they were paid $500,000 in hush money to keep the dispute quiet on the verge of the Weinsteins’ The King’s Speech Oscar victory in 2011. Leech and Inerfeld were upset, alleging that the agreement had mortgaged their own financial upside and said the Weinsteins advised them that if they wanted their past due money, they would have to agree to this arrangement. TWC entered into a Funding and Security Agreement with JTM whereby the financiers agreed to provide new money and, in return, get 25 percent of the film’s gross receipts and 100 percent of all foreign gross receipts. With the film pushing its budget, the Weinsteins went outside for fresh capital. Leech and Inerfeld said they signed a deal whereby they were to receive at least 20 percent of Escape‘s adjusted gross profit, which they estimated would be worth close to $50 million in back end participation alone.īut the film languished in development, and the plaintiffs claimed that the Weinsteins repeatedly unlocked the script, forcing rewrites at least 17 times, which they say “eviscerated” the movie’s budget by keeping 200-plus animators on payroll. The lawsuit from Leech and Inerfield, the duo that created the 2005 Weinstein hit Hoodwinked, involved a computer animation film that proposed to tell the story of an alien prison break from Area 51. an exit from the ongoing lawsuit in a summary ruling. On Monday, New York Superior Court judge Barbara Jaffe handed co-defendant JTM Escape Co. Leech and Inerfeld claimed that the funding agreement came at their own financial interest. The plaintiffs, who were subsequently labeled by TWC’s attorneys as “vindictive Hollywood talent,” went after not only TWC but also the financiers who, during the film’s development, agreed to provide fresh funding.
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