Drake & LeBron Sued For $10M Over Hockey Documentary
Drake and LeBron James are being accused of stealing the rights for Black Ice. That’s the title of their upcoming documentary about a segregated hockey league.
According to gossip site TMZ, “the rapper and NBA star are being sued for $10 million by Billy Hunter, the former head of the NBA players union, who claims he holds the exclusive legal rights to produce a movie about Canada’s Colored Hockey League that formed in 1895.”
Hunter claims LeBron and Drake used their production companies to make a deal with the authors the book Black Ice, which the documentary is based on. Hunter is accusing them of not letting him in on the deal. However, Hunter claims he had a deal with the George and Darril Fosty, the men who wrote Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925. Hunter claims that in this alleged deal that he would hold the exclusive rights to produce a movie. He also claims that he paid the authors a combined amount of $265,000 to have the movie rights but claims they worked on a side deal with LeBron and Drake.
The suit says, “Hunter claims that he confronted the Fosty brothers after hearing about their deal with LeBron and Drake and says the authors claimed the documentary did not violate their agreement with Hunter because a documentary is different than a movie,” TMZ reports. Hunter says that their deal is “absurd and made in bad faith.”
Hunter is going after LeBron and Drake for a cut of the documentary’s profits plus $10 million in damages.
Darril Fosty told the outlet that he and his brother believe that, “the suit is unwarranted and frivolous and they will officially respond through their legal team.”
It has yet to be reported if Drake or LeBron’s legal team has made a statement involving the suit at this time.
The documentary is expected to premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday (September 10).