Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson Tara Ziemba/Getty Pictures
The Blind Facet’s producers are standing behind their Oscar-winning movie regardless of inspiration Michael Oher’s ongoing authorized drama with the Tuohy household.
“The Blind Facet was a movie that no main studio would make, again when Alcon financed the movie in 2009. The prevailing ‘knowledge’ was {that a} soccer film starring a girl wouldn’t enchantment to soccer followers, it had an excessive amount of soccer to enchantment to households, and that films starring Black actors don’t work abroad,” Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, who’re the co-heads of Alcon Leisure, instructed The Hollywood Reporter in a prolonged assertion on Thursday, August 24. “Our opinion was that it will enchantment to everybody, and, in 2009, when this nation, and the world extra broadly, was extra hopeful and fewer divided — it did.”
The Blind Facet instructed the rags-to-riches story of soccer participant Oher, now 37, again when he was a foster child in highschool. Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy finally took him in and helped him get into school. The movie — which Johnson and Kosove wished to focus on the “higher angels of human nature” within the Tuohys’ acts of kindness and Oher’s “extraordinary braveness” — starred Quinton Aaron, Tim McGraw, Sandra Bullock, Lily Collins and Kathy Bates. The 2009 movie, which earned Bullock an Academy Award, had been tailored from Michael Lewis’ biography about Oher and the Tuohys.
“The Blind Facet is verifiably genuine and can by no means be a lie or pretend, whatever the familial ups and downs which have occurred subsequent to the movie,” Johnson and Kosove’s assertion continued. “Certainly, scores of trusted people, not the least of whom is Michael Lewis, one among our nation’s most revered writers and journalists and the writer of the guide The Blind Facet, have spoken of their first-hand information of the authenticity of the Tuohys loving Michael dearly and elevating Michael as their son by the tip of highschool, after which all through school and onto the NFL.”
Michael Oher visits SiriusXM Roy Rochlin/Getty Pictures
Oher filed a lawsuit towards Sean and Leigh Anne, each 63, earlier this month, claiming that they by no means legally adopted him — as they publicly stated that they had — and as an alternative compelled him right into a conservatorship in 2004. Oher, who beforehand performed soccer for the Baltimore Ravens, is now in search of to terminate the guardianship and earn a share of the Tuohy household’s movie royalties.
Sean and Leigh Anne, for his or her half, have denied Oher’s claims that they “tricked” him into the conservatorship and shut down Oher’s allegations that they made hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from the movie’s manufacturing.
Oher filed further courtroom paperwork earlier this week that claimed that Sean and Leigh Anne “negotiated a contract” to adapt his life story on his behalf and by no means introduced him with “any written documentation” of the earnings. After Oher alleged he was “saved at midnight” concerning the movie’s earnings, Johnson and Kosove have debunked these claims.
The Alcon execs defined to THR that the film rights to Lewis’ biography have been negotiated by Twentieth Century Fox after which inherited by their agency when the film went into manufacturing.
“The deal that was made by Fox for the Tuohy’s and Michael Oher’s life rights was in line with {the marketplace} at the moment for the rights of comparatively unknown people. Due to this fact, it didn’t embrace vital payouts within the occasion of the movie’s success,” Johnson and Kosove stated, denying studies that the Tuohys obtained hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for the variation. “Alcon has paid roughly $767,000 to the expertise company that represents the Tuohy household and Michael Oher (who, presumably, took fee earlier than passing it by). We anticipate that the Tuohy household and Michael Oher will obtain further earnings as audiences proceed to get pleasure from this true story within the years to come back.”
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Johnson and Kosove’s staff additionally made a “charitable contribution” to the Tuohys’ household basis, providing the identical deal to a nonprofit of Oher’s selecting. Oher allegedly “declined” their provide, in accordance with the Alcon staff’s assertion.
