Amazon Settles Woody Allen’s $68 Million Lawsuit - Slate

That settles that.

Ander Gillenea/AFP/Getty Images

Amazon Studios has settled the lawsuit filmmaker Woody Allen brought against them over their decision to not distribute his film A Rainy Day in New York and cancel his deal with the studio, Variety reports. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Allen sued Amazon in February for $68 million after the studio shelved his movie and cancelled the deal they’d signed him to with great fanfare in 2016. That deal was made when the studio was just entering the movie business, before studio chief Roy Price was pushed out in his own cloud of sexual harassment allegations. Allen brought Amazon Hollywood credibility when they needed it: Café Society opened Cannes after Amazon bought it; the studio’s first self-distributed film was Wonder Wheel—but it also obliged them to stay in the Woody Allen business, complete with guaranteed payments and distribution requirements, none of which Amazon met by shelving A Rainy Day in New York. Amazon was reportedly also on the hook for three more Woody Allen movies after A Rainy Day in New York, none of which they will be producing or distributing any more. Allen’s next movie, Rifkin’s Festival, shot in Spain over the summer. It stars Gina Gershon and Christoph Waltz as an American couple who fall in love with other people while attending the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Amazon claimed in court that Allen’s deal had become untenable because of his comments about Harvey Weinstein and increased scrutiny of Allen’s history in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The director claimed, not without reason, that Amazon had known about past accusations against him when they hired him. The allegations that Allen had abused his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow were first made public in 1992; Farrow wrote her open letter about the allegations, which Allen has always denied, in 2014. The morning Café Society opened Cannes, Ronan Farrow called out Amazon in a Hollywood Reporter essay about Allen; at that point his first Harvey Weinstein story was still a year and a half away. And now, in a very different social environment, under undisclosed terms, Amazon’s relationship with Woody Allen has come to a close.

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https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/woody-allen-amazon-studios-lawsuit-settles-68-million.html

2019-11-10 05:37:00Z
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