Former Radical Comics EIC Dave Elliott is suing the comics publisher/movie company, claiming a litany of breaches:

David Elliott has filed a lawsuit against Blatant (which also owns the film arm Radical Pictures) and shareholders Barry Levine, Jesse Berger and Matthew Berger in California Superior Court. Elliott says he’s the co-founder, co-publisher, and former editor-in-chief of the company and its various publishing efforts, and that it terminated him in April. Elliott alleges that Blatant hasn’t given him his full salary, failed to properly credit him on several projects including Hercules and Aladdin, and is exploiting properties without consideration where Elliott owns a portion of the copyrights.

THR has a copy of the complaint, and the most interesting thing is this:

“Blatant’s management failed to have any of its employees sign work-for-hire agreements and/or assignments of copyrights, thereby clouding title to all of Blatant’s projects, and making it impossible for Blatant to provide proper chain of title documents and guarantees to investors, production companies, studios, and insurers, to the detriment of its shareholders.”

If true, this would come as quite a shock to the many players around town who have signed various sorts of deals with Radical. Talk about a ready made topic for cocktail party chatter!

Speaking of Radical, they have a huge booth on the floor and are the latest company to sport oversized giveaway bags.

1 COMMENT

  1. Probably not the best timing for Radical’s property rights to be up in the air considering ComicCon is where many movie deals get made.

  3. I don’t understand why people even WANT to do a deal with Barry Levine. He’s a renowned poseur and wannabe who clung to the anuses of KISS for god’s sake. So he convinced some loser investors from the Philippines that he knew what he was doing- their problem. I mean, if someone wants to do Hercules then just do Hercules, why do their version?