Blind area 2009 film written and directed by John Lee Hancock about the life of an American football player. Michael Oherand which won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Sandra Bullock.
Now, ESPN is reporting that Oher, now 37, has filed a lawsuit in Shelby County against his adoptive parents. Sean AND Lee Ann Tuohy, stating that the two never actually adopted him, but tricked him into signing employment contracts and becoming his legal guardians at the age of 18. As for the film, Oher says that they contracted to make it and that he never received any payment for it. The former athlete’s petition to the court is to terminate legal protection and prohibit Tuohy from using his name and appearance in his activities, as well as calculating a percentage of the profit from the works created at the moment and indemnification.
Difficult childhood
Born into a family of 12 in which his mother struggled with addictions, Oher was placed in foster care at the age of ten and moved from family to family throughout his teenage years, even living on the street. In the meantime, he developed a great talent for sports and started playing football. It was in high school that the boy met the Tuohy brothers and became friends with them, until Lee Ann and Sean invited him to move in with them. Years later, Oher became an NFL champion with the Baltimore Ravens.
The former athlete has never made a secret of his disagreement with the way his life was portrayed in The Blind Side, especially that it made him seem “slow to understand,” which could affect his dealings with NFL corporations. Oher has published several books, with a third published last week called When Your Back Against the Wall: Fame, Football, and Lessons Learned from Life’s Adversity. In it, as ESPN explains, he writes: “I am grateful for so much of what has happened because of The Blind Side, which may be shocking that the experience associated with this whole story has caused me one of the greatest suffering in recent years. . years”.
The reaction of the Tuohy couple
The reaction of the family to the complaint of the ex-sportsman was not long in coming. Mr and Mrs Tuohy wrote in The Daily Memphian that they were “devastated”:
It is very sad to think that we would economically exploit any of our children. But we will continue to love Michael at 37 as we loved him at 16.
We didn’t make any money from the movies. More specifically, Michael Lewis (author of The Blind Side) gave us half of his royalties. All family members received equal compensation, including Michael. It’s about $14,000 each.
The couple later explained that the reason Michael was not adopted was because they could not adopt a boy of legal age, and that the only legal option was a guardianship that would allow the boy to attend Ole Miss University. and continue your career. The two were so worried about the consequences that they made sure their biological mother was present in court. In addition, they insisted that if Michael wanted to, they would end legal custody:
It’s hard to think because we’ll have to defend ourselves in court, but we’ll do whatever he wants. If he had told us earlier that he no longer wanted to be part of the family, we would have been hurt, but we would have done it right away.
What is the profit, if any?
Meanwhile, there are those who made the calculations: Sean McNulty, in The Ankler newsletter, explained that if the athlete’s allegations are confirmed and the family does not share with him 2.5% of the profits from the film, which they were, judging by the title, yes, this will be a figure of about 4 million dollars. However, it should be noted that the matter is rather not about money, but in principle: Michael Oher, in fact, earned a good 35 million dollars in 9 years in the NFL …
Source: Variety