The near four-year legal battle between the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Dick Clark Productions over control of the Golden Globe Awards has been settled, the HFPA and DCP have confirmed.
The agreement was reached after a U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments on the HFPA appeal of a 2012 district court ruling in favor of DCP, but before it issued a ruling.
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Under the settlement, Dick Clark Productions will continue to produce the Globes for the HFPA, whose approximately 90 members vote for the awards. The show will remain on NBC until at least 2018.
“We are very happy that this is finally behind us, and as of now we are two partners at the table,” HFPA president Theo Kingma told TheWrap on Monday. “This is something that I have wanted and my membership has wanted for many, many years.”
Added DCP chairman Peter Guber and CEO Allen Shapiro in a press release announcing the settlement, “We regret that the relationship between Dick Clark Productions and the HFPA deteriorated to the point that litigation ensued, but our focus is now on the future.”
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Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and Kingma said a confidentiality agreement prevented him from offering any details.
The lengthy and bitter lawsuit began when a DCP executive negotiated an extension with NBC without the knowledge of the HFPA, with the production company claiming its contracts gave it the right to produce the show for as long as it was on the network. The HFPA charged that DCP overstepped its authority, and that a 1993 extension of its contract with the production company was invalid. The district court disagreed.