Anschutz/Cussler: Fistfight In The Desert
The great thing about showbiz is no matter how much money is involved and how important the property is, it always comes down to the egos of a couple of people. Whether it’s two former business partners releasing competing Lambada movies on the same day, or the Rolling Stones holding back a TV special for 30 years because another band had a better segment than them, business takes the back seat.
Such is the case of SAHARA, the Matthew McConaughey/Penelope Cruz adventure of a couple years back. Didn’t it seem like they were setting up a franchise there? That you were going to be seeing Dirk Pitt movies every two years for a long, long time? They were, and you would have, but the producer and the writer got into a fight.
The writer is novelist Clive (RAISE THE TITANIC) Cussler. The producer is Philip (CHRONICLES OF NARNIA) Anschutz, who also runs Regal Entertainment Group and a few other concerns, such as Home Depot and the Staples Center sports arena. They had an unusual deal, according to the AP:
Anschutz gave Cussler creative control — a rarity in Hollywood — over films based on his books featuring his fictional alter ego, Dirk Pitt. In return, the writer would be paid $10 million for each book that became a movie and receive consultation and approval rights.
The first spawn of this unholy alliance was SAHARA. It looks like that creative control thing was a little rash.
The lawsuit portrays Cussler as an obstructive presence, rejecting numerous revisions of the screenplay and bashing the film in the media before it was released. “He delayed production of `Sahara,’ markedly increased its costs and harmed its commercial prospects,” the lawsuit said.
Cussler told the Denver Post in December 2003 that the “Sahara” scripts were “garbage,” and all seven he had received were thrown in the trash, according to the countersuit. Anschutz also claimed that Cussler made racist comments about Jews and blacks before the film was made. Cussler denied the accusations.
Okay, the racism thing is ugly but beside the point. I’m no lawyer but I think Cussler has a case. It seems to me he was told he could approve stuff and then that he had to cooperate if people disagreed with him. As a novelist he probably didn’t think cinematically (you have to simplify books to make them into movies) but then that’s why you don’t give the novelists creative control.
Wow, though - seven screenplays! They could have saved a lot of time by having Cussler write a crappy version of his own.
Don’t expect sequels this summer. If you’re desperate for entertainment, I recommend court transcripts.
May 17th, 2007 at 2:29 am
[...] Just a quick note - the long and enormously entertaining trial over creative rights to the movie SAHARA has been solved, and the novelist Clive Cussler is the loser to the tune of $5 million. A Los Angeles jury decided he acted in bad faith by slating the film, arguing over the script and inflating his book sales when dealing with (Crusader Entertainment). But the jury left the judge to decide whether Crusader owned Mr Cussler $8m (£4m) for the rights to a second book. [...]