Amazon Sued by Woody Allen for Backing Out of Distribution Deals

Filmmaker Woody Allen sued Amazon.com Inc. for breach of contract, saying the e-commerce company’s studio unit backed out of a deal to finance and distribute his movies based on 25-year-old allegations it already knew about when it entered into agreements with him.

Allen is seeking more than $68 million in damages.

Amazon Studios signed its first movie deal with Allen in 2016 when it acquired the rights to distribute “Cafe Society” and signed a multi-picture deal with the director the following year, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in New York on Thursday. But last June, as Allen prepared for a 2019 release of a new movie, “A Rainy Day in New York,” the studio notified him that it was terminating the agreement without explanation.

The notice came a few months after Amazon hired Jennifer Salke, a top TV programming executive, to run its in-house film and television studio after Roy Price resigned amid claims of sexual harassment. Allen said executives had met with him in December 2017 to discuss the “negative publicity and reputational harm” stemming from those claims and the studio’s association with Harvey Weinstein but agreed to proceed with the release of “Rainy Day.”

Pressed to explain the termination, the studio said the deal was “impracticable” due to “supervening events, including renewed allegations against Mr. Allen, his own controversial comments, and the increasing refusal of top talent to work with or be associated with him in any way,” Allen said in the lawsuit.

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.

Allen has been dogged by controversy for years over his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former wife Mia Farrow, and by accusations of child molestation by Dylan Farrow, Allen and Farrow’s daughter, which he has consistently denied.

“Amazon has tried to excuse its action by referencing a 25-year-old, baseless allegation against Mr. Allen, but that allegation was already well known to Amazon (and the public) before Amazon entered into four separate deals with Mr. Allen – and in any event it does not provide a basis for Amazon to terminate the contract,” lawyers for the director wrote in the lawsuit. “There simply was no legitimate ground for Amazon to renege on its promises.”

The case is Gravier Productions Inc. v Amazon Content Services LLC, 19-cv-1169, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

https://twitter.com/NewsyNick/status/1093589433729904640

Michael Cohen Search Warrant Documents to Be Made Partly Public

A judge said the public is entitled to learn more about the FBI search warrant served on Michael Cohen almost a year ago, just as President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer is about to go to prison.

Over objections from federal prosecutors, U.S. District Judge William Pauley on Thursday granted a request by media organizations for access to documents related to the April 9 FBI search of Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, while agreeing with the government that some materials must remain secret to protect ongoing investigations.

"The public interest in the underlying subject matter of the materials – which implicates the integrity of the 2016 presidential election – is substantial," Pauley said. The judge gave the government until Feb. 28 to file the materials under seal, with proposed redactions for him to review. The judge said he’d then order the documents to be made public.

Disclosing the materials with certain portions redacted strikes the appropriate balance between public access and prosecutors’ desire for confidentiality to protect its ongoing investigations, Pauley said. The judge said the applications and affidavits for the search warrants "catalogue an assortment of uncharged individuals and detail their involvement in communications and transactions connected to the campaign finance charges to which Cohen pled guilty."

In Cohen Plea, New York Prosecutors Flex Their Independence

"At this stage, wholesale disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the government’s ongoing investigation," Pauley wrote. "It would also unveil subjects of the investigation and the potential conduct under scrutiny, the full volume and nature of the evidence gathered thus far, and the sources of information provided to the government."

Cohen didn’t take part in the dispute over access to the warrant materials. His spokesman, Lanny Davis, declined to comment on Thursday’s ruling.

According to Pauley, the sealed warrant materials identify people who dealt with Cohen in his taxi medallion business, banks to which he made misstatements and firms that paid him consulting fees.

Cohen pleaded guilty Aug. 21 to five counts of tax evasion, one count of making a false statement to a financial institution and two federal campaign finance violations. The latter counts related to Cohen’s role in paying two women to keep quiet about their alleged sexual encounters with Trump, before he became president.

In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements to Congress about a plan for a Trump Tower project in Moscow.

Pauley sentenced Cohen to three years. He’s set to report to prison next month, after his scheduled testimony before Congress at the end of February.

Pauley set May 15 for the government to identify, under seal, "the individuals or entities" whose identities prosecutors want to be kept secret.

The case is U.S. v. Cohen, 18-cr-00602, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-07/democratic-threat-to-subpoena-doj-s-whitaker-opens-two-day-drama