Comic book icon Frank Miller has reportedly been hit with a lawsuit from one of his former collaborators. According to a recent report, Miller has been sued by producer Stephen L’Heureux for defamation and economic interference, with the lawsuit reportedly asking for $25 million. The suit alleges that Miller – as well as Frank Miller, Inc. CEO – Silenn Thomas have actively prevented adaptations of two of Miller’s titles from getting off the ground. These include a TV adaptation of Sin City and a movie version of Hard Boiled, with L’Heureux asserting that he owns the relevant rights to both properties.
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The suit is reportedly aiming for “compensatory damages, including lost revenue, loss of future revenue, damage to reputation, loss of good will, and emotional distress in an amount to be proven at trial but estimated to be in excess of $25,000,000,” among other things.
“Despite these written agreements and repeated admissions and acknowledgments of L’Heureux’s Sin City Rights and Hard Boiled Rights, and having been fully compensated for granting those rights to L’Heureux, Defendants, individually, collectively, and through their representatives, have engaged in a systematic campaign to defame L’Heureux, to damage his reputation, and to deliberately and wrongfully interfere with his contractual agreements and his prospective economic gain from the production of the Sin City and/or Hard Boiled projects which he intended to produce pursuant to the rights he obtained from Miller,” the complaint paperwork reads.
L’Heureux alleges that, since 2008, Miller and Thomas have repeatedly made “false, misleading, and defamatory statements” over the rights to Sin City and Hard Boiled. The statements were reportedly made to an array of people in the industry, including executives at Skydance, MGM, and even “A-List” directors such as Zack Snyder and Louis Leterrier.
Miller’s attorney Allen B. Grodsky has responded to the lawsuit, calling the claims of it “baseless” and confirming that it would be “aggressively” defended.
This suit does not involve some of Miller’s other properties, including the recently-released Netflix fantasy series Cursed. The new take on Arthurian legend debuted on the streaming platform earlier this month, and is based on a YA novel from Miller and Tom Wheeler.
Sin City, which was released beginning in 1991, follows the noir-tinged exploits of the citizens of Basin City. Two film adaptations of the title have already been released, with L’Heureux serving as a producer on the sequel, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. Hard Boiled, a three-issue miniseries published from 1990 to 1992, follows an insurance investigator who learns that he is a homicidal cyborg who could save the human race.
What do you think of Frank Miller being hit with this significant lawsuit? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
h/t: Deadline
