Sahara Lawsuit a Bust–Just Like the Movie
The lawsuit unfolding between adventure author Clive Cussler and Phillip Anschutz’s Crusader Entertainment may be more about bruised egos than breaches of contract.
A jury ruled last week in Los Angeles Superior Court that Cussler must pay Crusader damages of $5 million for inflating book sales during negotiations for the 2005 film Sahara, while Crusader may have to hand $8 million over to Cussler for failing to follow through with the second movie they originally planned to make.
Cussler initially brought charges against Crusader in 2004, claiming that the production company lied about the level of control he would have over the direction of the film. My guess is that Cussler may have been embarrassed about the poor showing that Sahara made at the box office, pulling in a measly $68 million in the U.S. (consider first that the movie cost $130 million to make–not including promotion expenses).
Crusader of course counter-sued Cussler, claiming that the author told executives that his Dirk Pitt novel Sahara sold 100 million copies, when in actuality it sold 40 million. Considering the wealth of Cussler and Anschutz, who really don’t need to add any more millions to their bank accounts, these lawsuits seem to be more of a blame game for why the film failed so horribly.
It is no secret that adapting books into feature films has made production companies (and authors) a lot of money in the past. Crusader purchased the rights to two of Cussler’s novels with the intention of making a Dirk Pitt film series, so I included some box office sales from other popular series that were based on books:
Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001): $968.6 million
Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets (2002): $866.3 million
Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004): $789.4 million
Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire (2005): $892.2 million
*That totals over $3 billion in gross sales, with three movies in the series left to make…
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001):$860.7 million
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002): $921.6 million
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003): $1.2 billion
*And then there’s the 17 Academy Awards that the films collectively won…
Let me also mention that there are over 6,000 movies listed on the Internet Movie Database that were based on novels, with Forrest Gump (which was the highest grossing film in the U.S. the year it was released) and The Godfather to name a few. If you take a look at the list of top grossing movies of all-time, you will also recognize that quite a few of the films were adapted from books.
Cussler and Anschutz probably didn’t think they had the Harry Potter series or the Lord of the Rings trilogy on their hands, but they also weren’t expecting the film to generate an $80 million loss. Especially with stars like Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz headlining the movie.
So in closing, it appears that Cussler and Anschutz tied up the California court system for three months because the author didn’t want to admit that he wrote a lousy book, and Crusader didn’t want to admit that they produced a bad movie. In retrospect, the trial turned out kind of like Sahara did: wasteful, pretentious, and forgettable.