If you want to get robbed in Hollywood, sign a deal based on Net.

The books get cooked to screw every sucker who agrees to that, including the tax man.

If you want to get paid in Hollywood, sign a deal based on Gross.

The screenwriter for this recent blockbuster is learning that lesson the hard way right now.

Anthony McCarten

Bohemian Rhapsody

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s Anthony McCarten Sues Queen Biopic Producers Over Profits; Claim The Blockbuster Is $51M In The Red Will Rock Hollywood

EXCLUSIVE: Bohemian Rhapsody screenwriter Anthony McCarten has filed a breach of contract suit against Graham King and his GK Films for money owed on the 2018 Best Picture-nominated film about Queen and its iconic singer Freddie Mercury.

The lawsuit hit today and shows a fascinating peek behind the curtain into what happens when participants rely on studio net point deals. The $55 million budget film grossed $911 million worldwide, and yet according to accounting statements issued by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Bohemian Rhapsody is in the red, to the tune of $51 million.

The legal action is a bit twisty, because the producer King and his GK Films are named, but not Fox or Disney, which acquired the studio and holds Bohemian Rhapsody in its vast library. The reason for this is, McCarten’s suit maintains he made a deal directly with King to receive 5% of GK’s take. Eventually, King turned over all of those deals to Fox and now Disney. McCarten maintains that the deal accounting definitions changed and he has not been paid a cent from his backend deal and that King has been unresponsive to his appeals to get paid.

This is a problem the CAA-repped McCarten and his Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump Holley LLP attorneys want to see solved with “monetary damages in an amount to be proven at trial,” a full accounting of the movie, and “a judicial declaration of the parties’ contractual rights and duties in connection with the Writer’s Agreement…By this Action, McCarten seeks to hold GK Films to its promise in the Writer’s Agreement,” says the 50-page filing Wednesday in LA Superior Court, citing the first of three deals the scribe struck with production company WAGW, Inc in 2015 for an “amount equal to 5% of 100% of the ‘Net Proceeds’” – Source

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