Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the creators of WILL AND GRACE, have dropped their suit against NBC Productions after a whirlwind civil trial which was complicated and featured an interesting twist. Let’s put it this way - Mutchnick and Kohan were winning with a $48 million settlement on Thursday morning, but by the end of the day there had been a mistrial, a juror dismissal and a discarded verdict.

For those of you who aren’t entertainment lawyers, a little history. TV networks used to buy programs from independent producers like Aaron Spelling. The producers would usually produce the show at cost, with hopes that it would run long enough to sell in syndication. The talent would negotiate their profit participation based on the syndication money. Still with me?

In the mid-nineties the networks started forming their own production companies. These companies would partner with producers to make the shows. The idea was, the networks would participate in the profits, and also would be less inclined to play hardball when negotiating because after all, they’d be stickin’ it to themselves.

The talent, however, were getting a pretty good stickin’ to in this scenario. David Duchovney was among the first to notice that the X-FILES was syndicated from FoxTV to the FX network, at low low prices. He sued, which may be a factor in his working so little after the X-FILES. Don’t know what’s up with Gillian Anderson.

Anyway, the WILL AND GRACE trial turned on the same premise. The jury was convinced that NBC Productions had negotiated in bad faith and were about to deliver their favorable verdict when defense lawyers turned up the bombshell that the foreman, Dean Hartwell, had written anti-NBC screeds on his blog several years ago. Hatwell says he hadn’t remembered it, which I’m inclined to believe. I don’t even remember what this ENTRY is about. Do you?

Anyway, this led to the mistrial, and from there the out-of-court settlement, which both parties are agreeing to keep mum about. Will, who was a lawyer, would appreciate this outcome; Grace, who was a loquacious interior designer, would have preferred the earlier one. Strictly speaking no one would have cared about their opinion anyway because everybody watched to see what Jack and Karen would think. For the record I bet that Mutchnick and Kohan are walking away with more than the original award but less than they would have gotten after putative damages. NBC will make it up by suing people who illegally downloaded the show.

(Hear this read on the Box Office Weekly podcast here) 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 3:26 am and is filed under General, Lawsuits, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.