ABC Sued Over Soaps: $25 Million Lawsuit Filed Over Soap Opera Disputes (VIDEO)
ABC has been sued over two soaps by a production company that has accused the network of breach of contract.
Soap opera producer Prospect Park has accused ABC of trying to derail its attempts to bring two canceled soap opera series onto the Internet for online viewing. Prospect Park is claiming that the network owes if $25 million according to a lawsuit filed.
The production company reportedly licensed rights to two soap operas, All My Children and One Life to Live, in 2011. However, as the company struggled to bring the shows to the online audiences they were interrupted in their efforts by the ABC network, according to their claims.
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The company has claimed that ABC offered to bring seven characters from One Life to Live onto General Hospital to try and help get viewers interested in the online reboots.
However, that would prove difficult, Prospect Park claims, seeing as the network ended up killing off a handful of the characters in the process, basically undermining Prospect Park's operations.
The production company has also claimed that ABC moved one of the characters and his fictional newspaper company from the One Life to Live universe into General Hospital without permission, and that this essentially prevents Prospect Park from using the character in its online series.
One part of the lawsuit reads: "In other instances, ABC damaged 'One Life to Live' characters by, among other things, creating absurd story lines, having characters do things they would never do, and destroying critical character relationships popular with soap fans."
Despite the lawsuit and difficulties Prospect Park has said it still intends to move forward with the projects, and both programs are expected to premiere on April 29.
The company has released a statement saying, "Over and over again our effort to bring these shows to audiences has faced challenges, and yet we along with the actors, the writers, producers and the directors as well as our fans have confronted and then overcome these challenges, and we have every confidence that we will prevail again."
ABC has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
