Woody Allen Settles $68 Million Lawsuit Against Amazon Studios
Woody Allen is having a year. His proposed memoir was rejected by four publishing houses, his latest film “A Rainy Day in New York” hardly saw the light of day outside of foreign markets, and he’s been embattled in a lawsuit to the tune of $68 million with Amazon Studios, who terminated a four-picture deal with the Academy Award-winning director last year.
The Oscar-winning “Annie Hall” director has reportedly settled his breach-of-contract lawsuit against Amazon, which ended their deal with Allen when allegations that he molested his daughter, Dylan Farrow, arose again amid the rise of the #MeToo movement.
In response to the lawsuit, Amazon attorneys, according to Variety, initially said in a statement, “Scores of actors and actresses expressed profound regret for having worked with Allen in the past, and many declared publicly that they would never work with him in the future…Allen’s actions and their cascading consequences ensured that Amazon could never possibly receive the benefit of its four-picture agreement.”
Allen claimed that Amazon owed him a minimum of $68 million in payments. The streamer’s pact with Allen followed his 2016 series “Crisis in Six Acts,” and didn’t travel very far after “Cafe Society,” “Wonder Wheel,” and this year’s would-be “A Rainy Day in New York,” starring Timothée Chalamet as the Woody Allen stand-in du jour. (For viewers who had the chance to see the movie abroad, the romance co-starring Selena Gomez, Elle Fanning, Jude Law, Diego Luna, and Liev Schrieber was, apparently, not that bad.)
Allen, however, continued to work during the legal proceedings. He’s at work on a new movie — European-backed “Rifkin’s Festival,” now in post-production and starring Steve Guttenberg, Gina Gershon, Christoph Waltz, Elena Anaya, Wallace Shawn, and Louis Garrel. And he has repeatedly defended himself despite the resurfaced allegations. “I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses [and] not one of them has ever complained about me, not a single complaint. I’ve worked with, employed women in the top capacity, in every capacity, for years and we’ve always paid them exactly the equal of men,” he said. “I’ve done everything that the #MeToo movement would love to achieve.”
While actors such as Greta Gerwig and Chalamet have renounced ever working with Allen again, the director continues to meet warmer reception from actors and audiences abroad, as has been the case with Allen for years.
