"All My Children" and "One Life to Live" haven't even returned yet, and already they're generating plenty of drama.
ABC, which licensed rights to the long-running soaps after canceling them to Prospect Park, has responded to Prospect Park's $25 million lawsuit claiming that ABC sabotaged the relaunch of "One Life to Live," calling the lawsuit "baseless."
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“ABC remains very supportive of the on line launch of both ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘All My Children,'" the network told TheWrap in a statement Tuesday. "With respect to Prospect Park’s lawsuit, we believe the claims are baseless and we will defend them vigorously in court and not the press.”
In its suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on April 18, Prospect Park — which is premiering the resurrected soap operas on April 29 — claims that it agreed to loan seven "One Life to Live" characters to ABC for the rival soap "General Hospital," as "a gesture of good will to ABC" while Prospect Park geared up for the relaunches.
Prospect Park says that it agreed to the character loan with the agreement that Prospect Park would have "express 'approval' rights" over how the characters were used.
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However, the suit alleges, not only were they not consulted on how the characters were used, but ABC virtually rendered two of the characters useless to the relaunched "One Life to Live" by killing them off in a car accident. A third character, Thomas Delgado — who, according to Prospect Park, had not even been loaned to ABC — was ruined for use when the network claimed that he was actually the "General Hospital" character, Lorenzo Alcazar, the suit claims. And a fourth character, Todd Manning, was made a central character on "General Hospital," which has "impacted Manning's transition back to 'OLTL' and made it near impossible to keep him without alienating the fans," the suit says.
(Can't they just resolve all that by claiming it was a dream or a coma fantasy, like they usually do with soaps?)
Prospect Park is seeking compensatory damages that are "reasonably estimated to be no less than $25,000,000."
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.