Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

tessgerritsen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 130 posts

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#21

Post by pyre »

dxhdr wrote: post #3

What's wrong with these people? Why couldn't Warner Brothers reach out to Tess and say "Hey, we're going to produce a sci-fi film based on GRAVITY. We'd like to work with you and are interested in re-negotiating your contract for a new version of the story." You know, acting in good faith. Instead they just screw her, no recognition, no money? How is that the default thought process for a company? This may be vindict…

From interactions previous employer(s)/co-worker(s) have had with Warner Bros., I do not have a good opinion of WB corporate culture (at least at the higher levels).

Someone probably got a promotion for this based on saving the company some amount of money and will see no negative consequences even if the courts stick it to WB financially.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#22

Post by chucksmart »

dxhdr wrote: post #3

What's wrong with these people? Why couldn't Warner Brothers reach out to Tess and say "Hey, we're going to produce a sci-fi film based on GRAVITY. We'd like to work with you and are interested in re-negotiating your contract for a new version of the story." You know, acting in good faith. Instead they just screw her, no recognition, no money? How is that the default thought process for a company? This may be vindict…

A wait for the lawsuit first negotiation strategy works well against people without the wherewithal for protracted litigation.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#23

Post by tptacek »

Here's the whole ruling:

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wb-gravity-...

It's more complicated (of course) than Gerritsen makes it out to be. The Hollywood Reporter does a decent job of explaining the contours:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/warner-bros-knocks-...

(and, in fairness, it's more complicated than WB makes it out to be as well).

Most of the ruling concerns itself with the admissibility of various documents for the purposes of a dismissal ruling, which is complicated by the fact that the court has to stipulate all of the plaintiffs facts as true and still find no cause for a lawsuit in order to grant the motion.

From what I can tell, the meat of the ruling is:

* Gerritsen didn't have a contract with WB, but with Katja and, presumably, New Line.

* Gerritsen's argument depends in part on the notion that Katja/New Line would, absent control by WB, have fought against WB making a picture based on work they'd already licensed. Katja/New Line didn't do that.

* Gerritsen might have a legitimate grievance, but it's with Katja/New Line and its previous owners, who were paid by WB. Gerritsen is thus in effect a creditor of Katja's, and if she's owed something, it's owed from the proceeds of the sale, not from WB's own bank account. Or something like that?

It's headachey stuff.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#24

Post by spiritplumber »

tptacek wrote: post #23

Here's the whole ruling: https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wb-gravity-... It's more complicated (of course) than Gerritsen makes it out to be. The Hollywood Reporter does a decent job of explaining the contours: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/warner-bros-knocks-... (and, in fairness, it's more complicated than WB makes it out to be as well). Most of the ruling concerns itself with the admissi…

No, if you buy a company, you buy it lock stock and barrel - that includes outstanding debts, existing deals, and obligations.

Otherwise it'd be trivial to make a company go millions in debt, then sell it to an accomplice who would keep the assets and poof the debts.

This still happens, of course, but there are fraud laws against it, and successful attempts when they happen generally require wriggling through a lot of loopholes.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#25

Post by thret »

mdturnerphys wrote: post #13
chrisbennet wrote: post #9

Even if they honor the contract she will get nothing besides being credited. Her contract states that she gets a percentage of the profits - and the movie will probably never make a profit. Return of the Jedi never made a profit "despite having earned $475 million at the box-office against a budget of $32.5 million" (Wikipedia "Hollywood Accounting") Very sad.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Unreal: "A WB receipt was leaked online, showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended up with a $167 million loss on paper. This is especially unusual, given that the Harry Potter film series is the highest-grossing film series of all time."

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#26

Post by spiritplumber »

burnte wrote: post #2

This is alarming, but not surprising, especially in Hollywood. However, once they amend the complaint, I have a feeling WB will have a hard time arguing that both the contract gives them the rights to the story, and that the contract isn't enforceable or binding. This will be interesting.

I had a similar problem a good while ago, on a much smaller scale, when a company that was buying land to put solar panels on it went bankrupt - essentially, they bought the panels, installed them on land that was actually belonging to another company that belonged to the crook's wife, and then declared bankruptcy after setting up some deal with the wife's company whereby it would get first rights to the assets (the panels) which were liquidated for pennies on the dollar. End result, they got free solar panels for their land.

I did an electrical design for them, and ended up not getting paid because the debt was with the defunct company, not the wife's company.

When I asked for my father's advice, he told me that legal channels are powerless in these cases, and offered to loan me a construction crew to go to the land at night and either steal or destroy as many panels as I felt was fair.

Frankly I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, although I am guessing that it's more of a Mediterranean thing than an Anglosaxon thing. The general consensus among Italians and Greeks to whom I told the story is that this was a fair manner to solve the issue, the general consensus among Americans and Canadians to whom I told the story is that my father proposed a criminal action (This whole thing happened in Italy).

Virtue probably lies in the middle, but I wouldn't know what the middle ground for this sort of thing is...

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#28

Post by madsravn »

spiritplumber wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #23

Here's the whole ruling: https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wb-gravity-... It's more complicated (of course) than Gerritsen makes it out to be. The Hollywood Reporter does a decent job of explaining the contours: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/warner-bros-knocks-... (and, in fairness, it's more complicated than WB makes it out to be as well). Most of the ruling concerns itself with the admissi…

No, if you buy a company, you buy it lock stock and barrel - that includes outstanding debts, existing deals, and obligations. Otherwise it'd be trivial to make a company go millions in debt, then sell it to an accomplice who would keep the assets and poof the debts. This still happens, of course, but there are fraud laws against it, and successful attempts when they happen generally require wriggling through a lot o…

Let's turn it around. If they (WB) feel like they didn't buy it all, they shouldn't have the intellectual property to make a movie based on the book. Seeing it this way, they never bought anything.

Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood

#29

Post by sukilot »

spiritplumber wrote: post #26
burnte wrote: post #2

This is alarming, but not surprising, especially in Hollywood. However, once they amend the complaint, I have a feeling WB will have a hard time arguing that both the contract gives them the rights to the story, and that the contract isn't enforceable or binding. This will be interesting.

I had a similar problem a good while ago, on a much smaller scale, when a company that was buying land to put solar panels on it went bankrupt - essentially, they bought the panels, installed them on land that was actually belonging to another company that belonged to the crook's wife, and then declared bankruptcy after setting up some deal with the wife's company whereby it would get first rights to the assets (the…

In your story, fair and criminal are not exclusive. So the cultural bias was more about if you could expect to be punished by law.
Post reply on HN