Rather than being a victim, Intertainment Licensing was a willing participant in a scheme to inflate feature film budgets on its co-productions with Franchise Pictures, a Franchise attorney told jurors Wednesday. A day after Elie Samaha's Franchise was accused of cheating Intertainment out of $100 million, Franchise attorney Bill Price struck back in his opening statement by saying that Intertainment Licensing CEO Barry Baeres not only knew the budgets were exaggerated but benefited from them by charging higher subdistribution fees in certain European markets. "This is an attempt to deceive 10 (jurors) who do not work in the independent film industry, an attempt to fool 10 people into believing that there is a fixed definition of 'budget' in the independent film industry," Price told the jurors in the Santa Ana, Calif., courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Alicemarie Stotler. "From the beginning there was a discussion that there would be more than one budget."...
- 4/22/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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