Producer Sues DreamWorks, Claiming Self-Sabotage
February 9 -- A producer on a little-seen DreamWorks comedy has filed suit against the studio, alleging that the company thwarted the Northern Ireland-based film's box-office potential by bowing to British officials who were about to knight DreamWorks co-head Steven Spielberg.
According to the New York Daily News, producer Jerome O'Connor sued DreamWorks SKG in Manhattan, N.Y., federal court Thursday. His complaints charge that DreamWorks "set out to quash" and censor An Everlasting Piece after the British Foreign Office expressed its dissatisfaction with the film's supposedly sentimental view of the Irish Republic Army.
O'Connor also alleges that the studio reduced An Everlasting Piece from 800 theaters to a paltry eight "purely to accommodate … a foreign government," the Daily News reports. The producer claims that director Barry Levinson was punished after he refused to cut scenes that portrayed Brit soldiers stationed in war-torn 1980s Belfast as incapable greenhorns.
DreamWorks co-founder Spielberg was knighted by the Queen of England on Jan. 29. O'Connor's suit claims that the studio "quietly removed the film" in order to prevent any disruption of the honor.
The suit further charges that Spielberg had a working relationship with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who loaned military equipment and troops for the Spielberg HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.
Director Levinson's representative did not return calls requesting comment, while a DreamWorks mouthpiece denied any allegations. "We don't have any knowledge of a lawsuit being filed," the studio rep told Daily News columnists Rush & Molloy.
