UPDATE
Don’t blame us – blame the William Morris Agency.
That’s what lawyers for Walt Disney told the jury in their closing statement Tuesday, sending the $270 million case, brought by “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” creator Celador International, to the jury.
Disney’s lead lawyer Marty Katz declared to the nine jurors that “if Celador Productions is unhappy with the deal that got, they have the wrong defendant here.”
Katz told the jury that it’s the William Morris Agency, who negotiated the deal that saw “Millionaire” air on ABC for their client Celador, that the U.K. company should be suing. Celador knew, from the deal they signed with ABC, “they were never going to make money off the network run,” Katz told the jury. Which is why “the only secret deal is between Celador and WMA to put off any dispute between themselves” for after the company went after Disney.
“What you will decide is not who wins or loses, though you will certainly decide that,” Celador attorney Roman Silberfeld said earlier in the day, “but what the truth is in this case.”
The truth to Celador, which first filed its suit in 2004, is that Disney, ABC, Buena Vista Television and Valleycrest Production conducted a series of slippery deals and secret arrangements that saw the “Millionaire” creators left short hundreds of millions in expected revenues and profits from the hit game show when it came to America in 1999.
“This is a shell game,” Silberfeld said, “so that what ends up being shared is an empty pot.”
Such shell-game tactics and the money they denied the company are why Celador are seeking damages of around $279 million to $395 million in fees and revenues, based on two different sets of accounting methodologies the company commissioned and the number of episodes of the show; and around $11 million in lost merchandising revenues. With such big figures floating in the air, the attorney earnestly told the noticeably weary jury that they must affirm “people and corporations should treat each other fairly.”
As he has before, Katz bluntly contended that Celador International are not acting as an agent for Celador Productions, that there is no foundation to their damages claims and that company founder Paul Smith simply wants more money that the millions he’d already made in Executive Producer fees off “Millionaire.”
Money that, according to Katz, Smith was determined to pursue through renegotiating the deal he’d signed. Money that, Katz contends, Smith would pursue through audits and the lawsuit if he didn’t get what he wanted there.
But there is truth and there is fact.
Judge Virginia Phillips called the case a “dispute about a contract” when the trial started almost a month ago In the process, however, the trial has become an investigation into the often shadowy world of Hollywood accounting.
Silberfeld made sure to emphasize that point in his final remarks, telling the jury that the realities of Hollywood accounting are that when it comes to addressing shareholders, “they try to make things look big” – and if they are accounting to IRS or profit participants, “they try to make things look really small … that’s what happened here.”
