Lantern Entertainment Pays $5.5 Million to Take Three Quentin Tarantino Films
By Gene Maddaus
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Lantern Entertainment officially bought the remnants of the Weinstein Co. in July for $289 million. But the company has since been involved in a thicket of legal disputes over various Weinstein titles.
On Tuesday, the company resolved one of its key outstanding issues, agreeing to pay $5.5 million to take full control of three Quentin Tarantino films: “Inglourious Basterds,” “Django Unchained,” and “Hateful Eight.” Of that amount, $155,524 goes to Tarantino and $5.3 million goes to Sony Pictures Entertainment, which co-financed “Django Unchained.”
Lantern had earlier reached an agreement with Universal, which co-financed “Inglourious Basterds,” under which it agreed to pay Universal $685,351 to assume contracts related to that film, bringing the total for the three films to $6.1 million.
Tarantino and his companies filed an objection in April in the Weinstein bankruptcy case, alleging that he was owed at least $4.5 million in unpaid royalties. Tarantino was one of at least 100 Weinstein counterparties who filed objections to the sale, alleging that they were owed money at the time of the bankruptcy filing. The objection alleged that the Weinstein Co. had also failed to make payments to Sony and to Universal, which blocked Tarantino from receiving further payments from those studios.
As part of the sale agreement in July, Lantern set aside $8.75 million to “cure” the contracts, though it left unresolved which contracts it would assume and which it would reject.
In a stipulation filed Tuesday, Lantern agreed to take three of the four Tarantino films produced for the Weinstein Co. Lantern did not assume. “Death Proof,” the 2007 Tarantino film that was released under the title “Grindhouse,” as a double feature with “Planet Terror” by Richard Rodriguez.
The agreement allows Lantern to collect ancillary revenues from the three films. Tarantino will be paid residuals in accordance with his contracts.
