Taymor Sues Spider-Man Producers
Earlier this week Showbiz411 reported that original director and co-writer Julie Taymor is suing the producers of Broadway’s Spider Man: Turn off the Dark, the named defendants being Michael Cohl’s 8 Legged Productions.
“Taymor has been in arbitration negotiations for months trying to get some financial remuneration from the company. After creating the musical and working on it for nine years, she’s been paid just $150,000 for the production that carries a reported $70 million budget. Taymor was ousted by the producers last spring. Last week, the Tony Awards committee ruled that even though Taymor had been replaced as director of the show, only she qualified for a nomination.” Showbiz 411.
A Tony Award winner for The Lion King, Ms Taymor is sueing for in excess of $1million in unpaid royalties. Her union has been in arbitration with the show’s producers since she was replaced for the show’s overhaul in April / May 2011.
While Ms Taymor was sacked from the troubled show during it’s extended Broadway preview period (183 previews), according to The Guardian, “she alleges that, even after extensive changes to the musical made in April, the production still uses approximately 25% of her original script contributions, for which she has not been receiving royalties.”
The producers recently paid Ms. Taymor $52,880 to cover royalties for preview until April 17, when the show stopped previews to be reworked, but nothing for the ongoing run of the show.
Showbiz411 reported Taymor’s attorney Charles Spada as saying: “As the lawsuit makes clear, the defendants have violated Ms. Taymor’s creative rights as an author of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Moreover, the producers have failed to compensate Ms. Taymor for their continued use of her work to date, despite the fact that the show has consistently played to capacity or near-capacity houses since its first public performance in November 2010. Ms. Taymor regrets that the producers’ actions have left her no choice but to resort to legal recourse to protect her rights. Ms. Taymor continues to support the talented and hardworking cast and crew, and she remains proud of her creative work on the production for over seven years, not only as an author, but as the director, mask designer, and collaborator.”
The New York Times reported that despite it’s high box office grosses on Broadway, all is not rosy with the show financially.
In recent months the producers of “Spider-Man” have been facing hard financial choices. Since opening to mixed reviews in June, “Spider-Man” has been one of the top-grossing shows on Broadway, regularly pulling in between $1.4 million and $1.6 million a week. Yet the weekly operating costs for this technically ambitious production total more than $1 million, and the producers have also had to make payments on loans they took out to mount “Spider-Man,” a show twice as expensive as any in Broadway history. Given the size of the production and the creative team, the producers also have an array of royalty obligations to several different artists.
In spite of the high grosses, executives involved with “Spider-Man” have said privately that money is, in fact, quite tight and that the producers have had to set priorities about which debts to repay first. In addition to Ms. Taymor’s lawsuit and her separate arbitration claim, an investor in the musical, Patricia Lambrecht, recently filed a lawsuit against the producers, contending that she had not been paid on schedule for a deal in which she provided financial assistance so they could retrofit the Foxwoods Theater for the show.
Mr. Cohl and Mr. Harris responded in a statement Tuesday evening: “Since Ms. Taymor’s departure in March, we have repeatedly tried to resolve these issues. The production has indeed compensated Ms. Taymor for her contribution as a co-book writer. Fortunately the court system will provide, once and for all, an opportunity to resolve this dispute.”
Ms Taymor is also seeking an injunction: preventing any unauthorised use of her name or likeness in a "making-of" documentary made by the producers. The Guardian
November 12, 2011
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