Gerard Butler has resolved a legal fight over allegations that he’s owed at least $10 million in profits from the 2013 blockbuster Olympus Has Fallen.
Defendants Nu Image and Millennium Media notified the court on Tuesday of a settlement, which is conditioned on the completion of certain terms within 45 days. Specifics of the agreement weren’t disclosed.
Butler and his production company G-Base Entertainment in 2021 sued in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging some producers have earned tens of millions of dollars from the film but have refused to pay him his share of profits. He pointed to a “comprehensive, premeditated scheme” designed to “grossly misrepresent the finances of the film.”
Under his deal to star in and produce the movie, Butler is owed box office bonuses, 6 percent of domestic revenue, 2 percent of foreign revenue and 10 percent of net profits.
According to the complaint, an audit revealed that Nu Image and Millennium Media understated their receipts and profits from Olympus Has Fallen by over $11 million. This included failing to report roughly $8 million in payments to their senior executives. Among other alleged misrepresentations were understating domestic revenue by over $17.5 million and deducting residuals that were never paid, which may have had implications for the crew’s health care eligibility, the lawsuit said.
Butler argued distribution agreements were fraudulently structured so distributors didn’t have to report all gross receipts.
“Producers instructed those distributors to deduct certain amounts from the grosses they would report to Producers,” stated the complaint. “Producers, in turn, did not include these deducted amounts in the financial information provided to Butler.”
The alleged scheme included entering into agreements that were designed to undermine producers’ ability to properly account to and pay Butler. The lawsuit claimed, “Producers then reneged on their promise to have certain of those third party distributors account to and pay Butler directly. This allowed Producers to control and manipulate how they would report the Film’s proceeds to Butler.”
Butler also nodded to a legal fight between the producers and the Directors Guild of America. By allegedly failing to report profits, they have threatened the health care eligibility of the movie’s director and assistant directors.
The complaint alleged fraud, breach of contract, and intentional interference with contractual relations, among other claims. The defendants argued that can only advance a breach of contract claim in the absence of false representations that Butler relied on to back up a claim for fraud. A trial was scheduled for January 2024.
Olympus Has Fallen, which spawned two sequels, has grossed at least $170 million worldwide. Producers represented to Butler that the movie has generated less than $100,000 in domestic revenue and less than $320,000 in foreign revenue from 2019 to 2021.
Millennium Media and a lawyer for the company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
