Neal Moritz Sues Universal Over Fast & Furious Spinoff Hobbs & Shaw

Producer Neal Moritz has filed a lawsuit against Universal Pictures over the Rock and Jason Statham’s Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw. Deadline reports that Moritz filed a lawsuit alleging oral contract and promissory fraud after he was kicked off the film. The suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and demands that Moritz be reinstated as lead producer on the film or be paid “tens of millions of dollars in lost compensation.”

The complaint claims that “In an extraordinary show of bad faith, and just a few days before filming was set to begin on ‘Hobbs and Shaw,’ Universal took the position that Moritz either had to amend his oral producer deal to accept substantially inferior financial terms, or be cut out of the Picture altogether. Remarkably, despite Moritz having complete Pay-or-Play protection on all of his last several deals on the FF Franchise and having relied on Universal’s oral promises, Universal also took the extraordinary position that it was free to exploit Moritz’s ideas for ‘Hobbs and Shaw,’ and his work product over an approximately year-and-a-half period, without honoring its oral producer agreement.”

It goes onto say that Moritz refused to agree to the terms and was kicked off the project on September 7th despite a verbal agreement with Universal chair Donna Langley and president Jimmy Horowitz that Mortiz would receive “$2 million in fixed compensation applicable against a 6% first dollar gross participation.” Moritz says that he was asked to take a participation pool that was was “far worse financially for Mortiz than any other pool participation he had ever received on any film in the FF franchise.”

Universal has not yet commented on the lawsuit about the film, which releases on August 2, 2019.