{"id":1036320,"date":"2026-09-01T04:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T04:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036320\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T04:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T04:53:15","slug":"obsession-ep-sues-over-promised-profit-participation-from-horror-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036320\/","title":{"rendered":"Obsession EP Sues Over Promised Profit Participation From Horror Hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLeonora Ann Darby claims she has been rewarded for saving Obsession<\/a> by her fellow executive producers ripping her off promised big bucks from the one of the highest-grossing horror movie of all time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis action arises from a seven-year pattern of unequal treatment and broken compensation promises by two older male film producers to a younger female producer whose labor was material to the growth of their company and who rescued their biggest film, the global hit Obsession,\u201d reads a breach of contract complaint filed August 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo One Wish Willow zinger here, but long 135-page filing short, Darby says Tea Shop Productions<\/a>\u2018 James Harris and Mark Lane were playing her for a while, and the Inde Navarrette<\/a>\u2013 and Michael Johnston-starring Obsession simply proved the final straw.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpecifically, Darby says the duo brought her onboard at their \u201cfailing\u201d and \u201cfledgling company\u201d in 2019 with offers of being an \u201cequal producer, including with respect to compensation, company direction, project decisions, financial transparency, and access to business opportunities.\u201d Among those aforementioned opportunities were Lane and Harris\u2019 2024 promise, allegedly reneged on at least once, that Darby would \u201creceive one-third (33.33%) of the net profits due to Tea Shop on films she lead-produced, together with direct participation in the applicable collection account management agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filing asserts: \u201cDarby kept her side of that bargain. From 2019 through 2026, she progressed from development and production executive to one of Tea Shop\u2019s three producers. She originated and developed projects, attached filmmakers, assembled financing, produced films from preproduction through delivery, supervised post-production, resolved legal and quality-control problems, built systems, managed vendors and staff, and repeatedly stepped into projects when Harris or Lane needed someone else to carry the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStating that she had to swoop in and get the Curry Barker<\/a>-penned and -directed Obsession back on track both creatively and in terms of post-production, Darby says she was scammed out of her cut of the nearly $510 million the horror film subsequently scored at the worldwide box office after its May release.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese Defendants failed to honor their promises and instead treated Darby as their subordinate, including in a highly demeaning and gendered manner, and continually refused to properly compensate her, culminating in ruthlessly cutting Darby out of the overall net profits for the motion picture Obsession (other than a single initial payment), Tea Shop\u2019s biggest hit and one of the most successful independent films of all time,\u201d the document from Beverly Hills firm Singh, Singh & Trauben says of the situation centered around the film, which was budgeted at less than $800,000. (Do the profit-participation math!)<\/p>\n

\n\tSeeking unspecified damages and wages from Tea Shop, the 10-claim filing seeking a jury trial also wants an \u201cequitable accounting and inquiry concerning Obsession, A Banquet, Banquet, Bull, The Wasp, The Cut, Into the Deep, Tornado, The Surfer, and any other project shown by the records to be subject to the pleaded agreements, followed by judgment for the balance found due.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDarby does grant she received an extra $300,000 payment for Obsession when all was said and done. However, as the email and other correspondence in the document-heavy complaint points out, she seemed to get the short end of even that stick, as well as being shunned publicly and in the media by Lane and Harris.<\/p>\n

\n\tTaking credit for getting a turfed Barker back in the driver\u2019s seat and Obsession in shape for it to score a $16.2 million sale to Focus Features<\/a> at last year\u2019s Toronto Film Festival<\/a>, Darby is suing Tea Shop and its various business entities, as well as Harris and Lane individually. Focus, which released Obsession wide on May 15 to big rewards, is not named as a defendant, nor is fellow executive producer Jason Blum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline reached out to Tea Shop about the suit but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leonora Ann Darby claims she has been rewarded for saving Obsession by her fellow executive producers ripping her…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1036321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[109689,171,42316,325842,109690,107048,267921,64287,77123,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1036320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-curry-barker","tag-entertainment","tag-focus-features","tag-inde-navarrette","tag-jason-blum","tag-obsession","tag-tea-shop-productions","tag-tiff","tag-toronto-film-festival","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117193998927865121","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}