This is Spinal Tap creators Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean have reached a settlement with Vivendi and its subsidiary StudioCanal after initially filing a lawsuit three and a half years ago that alleged the media conglomerate committed fraud and withheld revenue from them.
In the initial lawsuit filed in October 2016, Shearer sought $125 million in compensatory and punitive damages, but the addition of three new plaintiffs (Reiner, Guest and McKean) raised that figure to $400 million when they joined the suit in February 2017. They claimed that Vivendi only reported $98 in total income from soundtrack music sales and $81 in worldwide merchandising income between 1989 and 2006.
As The Hollywood Reporter states, both sides are in the process of “restructuring the parties’ relationship and modifying contracts pertaining to the picture’s distribution.”
The publication notes that settlement discussions also involved rights to Spinal Tap and financial compensation for the movie’s creators.
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