Frank Miller and Silenn Thomas, the CEO of Frank Miller Ink, are being sued for over $25 million for defamation and economic-interference by Stephen L’Heureux, producer of ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’, which was based on Miller’s comic. L’Heureux asserts that he owns the adaptation rights to ‘Sin City’ and another Miller book, ‘Hard Boiled’ but that Miller and Thomas have interfered with numerous attempts to turn those works into movie or TV projects, with interested parties including MGM and David Ellison’s Skydance Media.
According to the court papers filed, L’Heureux is suing 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” and more.
“Despite these written agreements and repeated admissions and acknowledgements 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.”
Miller’s lawyer, Allen B. Grodsky of Grodsky, Olecki & Puritsky LLP has already issued a statement in response (via Deadline):
“The claims asserted in Mr. L’Heureux’s lawsuit are baseless, and we will be aggressively defending this lawsuit.”
It appears that L’Heureux owns the rights to turn ‘Sin City’ and ‘Hard Boiled’ into TV or movie projects. That isn’t in dispute. But he seems to be saying that Miller and Thomas have actively attempted to interfere with and derail any negotiations with interested outlets and studios.
Miller has since moved on to another successful TV project, the new Netflix hit ‘Cursed’.
Stay tuned for information as it surfaces.
