Win for FOX as Bones stars David Boreanaz & Emily Deschanel stripped of $128 M in damages

[hewontgo]

BREAKING: Stunning win for @FOXTV as #Bones stars @David_Boreanaz & #EmilyDeschanel stripped of $128 M in damages in profit participation lawsuit https://t.co/K3jg12Fy69
- Dominic Patten (@DeadlineDominic) May 2, 2019
A judge tossed most of a $179 million judgment that Bones stars Deschanel and Boreanaz and executive producers were awarded earlier

Comments

[missjersey]

What's the legal matter exactly?

[phoenix_rose_up]

IIRC Fox cooked the books to reduce the earnings of the show (and I think drove it into a deficit??) and thus reduced the % profits they were contractually owed.

[ghastly]

From here:

Back in 2015, those involved in getting Bones off the ground including Josephson, Boreanaz, Deschanel and Reichs filed lawsuits in California state court claiming they had been defrauded by Fox of their rightful profit participation. The complaints called out Fox's "leading role in the well-documented history of Hollywood accounting scandals," referencing past litigation over M*A*S*H, The X-Files, NYPD Blue and Cops, and took issue with “sweetheart” self-dealing between Fox’s studio and network arms as well as Hulu, in which Fox had a 30 percent stake. The procedural drama took in nearly half a billion dollars in its first seven seasons - Josephson even says James Murdoch once told him that Bones was "perhaps the most profitable show in Fox's history” - but the series was calculated to be a money loser. That meant no profits to share with Josephson and others.

&

So if a studio is within the same corporate structure as a streamer or broadcaster, an underhanded way for the parent company to derive the spoils from a show (

[carolinalily]

These kinds of corrupt business practices are why I always tend to side with the actors, writers, directors because the total money pool is enormous and nobody is tuning in because of studios, the audience is because of the people in front of the camera and day-to-day getting the show out there.

[crystalzelda]

Ugh, that sucks! FOX deserves to pay the punitive damages.

[abe_san]

With disney lawyers behind them now I guess it will be easier for FOX to stomp this :c

[manu19]

I thought FOX tv business is unrelated to the movie business acquisition

[scriptedending]

This is so shitty. I know, I know, they can cry into their millions, but fuck Fox for being allowed to get away with literal theft.

[michiru]

this is going to happen more now that disney owns basically everything that makes huge amounts of money.