Weinstein’s company owes us millions, claim Hollywood stars
THE great and the good of Hollywood have filed objections against the sale of the Weinstein Company, claiming the bankrupt studio owes them money.
Stars including Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Lawrence have filed documents regarding outstanding payments from the company before it is sold in a court-supervised auction.
The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy in March, after months of trying to find a buyer. It also ended all non-disclosure agreements, some of which may have been signed with Weinstein’s victims.
Tarantino, the Oscarwinning director who made four films with the studio, states in papers that he is owed more than $4m (€3.3m) in royalties for his movies ‘Grindhouse’, ‘Inglourious Basterds’, ‘Django Unchained’ and ‘The Hateful Eight’.
The director has asked that the sale of the company be stalled until the Weinstein Company fulfils its contractual obligations and says it will pay.
Elsewhere, Lawrence has said she is owed $102,623 for ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, Clooney has filed for $250,000 for his production of ‘August: Osage County’, while adding that the amount doesn’t account for back-end participation. For the same film and ‘The Giver’, Streep has claimed $168,611.
Many of the celebrity filings state that the amounts are difficult to ascertain without an audit due to the Weinstein Company’s poor accounts.
Streep, for instance, found her name misspelled as “Street”, and said she has been unable to find accurate accounting of outstanding payments. The March 20 bankruptcy filing listed thousands of names on its 394-page list of people owed money by the Weinstein Company, including Malia Obama, Judi Dench, David Bowie and Daniel Radcliffe. (© Daily Telegraph, London)