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While the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni legal battle heats up, what many don’t know is that Baldoni is already fighting another legal battle over rights. Justin Baldoni’s Wayfarer had struck a deal with former NBA superstar Craig Hodges to make a biographical documentary about him.
Based on his 2017 bookLong Shot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter, the documentary was supposed to take a look at his struggles as one of the few Black men in the early 90s who took a stand for justice and faced repercussions for it.
The deal was signed in 2021, and while things seemed to go well at first, creative differences soon forced them to put a halt on it. Troubles arose when Hodges demanded the rights back to the project after Baldoni’s company decided to shelve the project entirely ever since the two parties have been engaged in a legal dispute with no end in sight.
Justin Baldoni has been fighting a legal battle with a former NBA star over rights
Many don’t know that theIt Ends With Usstar has been fighting a lawsuit for the entire last year before his conflict withBlake Livelyturned intoa massive legal battle. As mentioned before,Justin Baldoni’s production company Wayfarer struck a deal with former Chicago Bulls star Craig Hodges in 2021 to make a documentary on his life.
WhileThe Last Dance, the NBA superstar Michael Jordan’s documentary series made it seem like the perfect time to tell the story of his contemporary, there was another purpose to it. Hodges claimed in his book that he was shut out by the NBA in the 90s for speaking up against injustice and criticizing other Black athletes for their disregard for using their platforms“to assist the poor and disenfranchised”.
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According to Hodges, he wanted to highlight in his documentary the other side of the league away from the glamor, wealth, and fame. Where even superstar athletes could get banned just for using their platform to demand equal rights.
Incidentally, things were going well and Hodges had found the perfect person to helm his story in the British-Indian producer Jivi Singh. As a result, when the deal fell through with the initially appointed director, Hodges wanted Singh to direct the documentary as well under his IFF Content.
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According toDeadline, things went wrong soon after as according to Craig Hodges, Wayfarer had problems with the direction the documentary was taking and wanted to frame“Craig Hodges in a palatable way that the NBA would accept, which isn’t the essence of my book.”
Wayfarer never seemed interested in that version of the story. Justin Baldoni was definitely interested in virtue signaling and piggy-backing off the hype of The Last Dance, but a lot less interested in the true weight of responsibility that came with accurately depicting the realities of being a Black man in America.
Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer, however, denied the claims. According to them, their only purpose was to ensure the story gets told through the lens of someone who can accurately relate to the story.
Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer denied Craig Hodges’s claims
According to a video call reviewed and reported byDeadline, Justin Baldoni and CEO Jamey Heath were trying to urge Jivi Singh to drop the project as they did not think he was the right person to helm the project.
While Singh tried to make them elaborate on what exactly their concern was they remarked that he wouldn’t have to ask them that if he had experienced the events himself. Baldoni further stated that the problem is so uniquely American, the director needs to be a Black American to grasp the concept fully.
Racism in America… is so unique to America that most people don’t quite understand it. So, when Jamie as a Black person tells you, as a non-Black person, if you’d experienced it, you wouldn’t have to ask that question. It’s coming from 50 years of pain and racism, of being thrown out of a swimming pool when he was seven years old and the white people had to drain the pool because a Black person touched it. It comes from a place you don’t know.
Interestingly, the man behind the story, Craig Hodges thought Singh’s vision to be the most accurate one. This led the producer to film quite a lot of the documentary which ultimately got tangled in the battle.
According to the outlet, what has made matters worse is Wayfarer’s demands of $50,000 at the start and $125,000 additional in exchange for the rights to the documentary as they have spent over $1.1 million on the same.
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Moreover, they had also shared more funds with Hodges for his living expenses during the shooting apart from the agreed-upon paycheck for his consultancy. However, both Singh and Hodges claimed that with this, Justin Baldoni’s company was asking them to pay for something they already owned.
Craig Hodges also stated that he feels Wayfarer should give up all rights as it is his story and he feels that Singh would be the right person to helm it.
Anushree Banerjee
Articles Published :595
Anushree Banerjee is an Anime Writer at FandomWire with over 550 published articles. She has a post-grad in English and years of experience working with some of the biggest companies on the pop culture, and anime scene, such as, Sportskeeda, Pinkvilla, and MovieWeb. Staying on top of everything anime consumes her days, while bingeing on everything horror, and thriller keeps her up at night. Be it superhero flicks from Marvel and DC, or Shonen, and Seinen, like Bleach, The Apothecary Diaries, and Attack on Titan, she can probably state facts about them faster than she can recite her home address.
