Bill Nye Sues Disney for Holding Back His Cut of Science Show Profits
Bill Nye's patience with complicated things may have met its match, as the science personality called out Disney's complex profit statements that allegedly concluded that he owed almost half a million to the company due to an "accounting error."
Nye and his representatives have filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, Aug. 24. According to their filing, the television host has been trying to come to grips with Disney's profit statements for "Bill Nye the Science Guy" and how the entertainment giant has arrived at the nearly $500,000 figure they say Nye owes them.
Disney has requested that Nye return $496,111 from the $585,123 that the company sent him for his cut of the profits in 2008.
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Nye's own reckoning places him at the opposite conclusion, and then some. According to his audit, Disney has withheld $28 million in profits from the science show. It has been a subject of suspicion for Nye since 2008, according to Variety.
KCTS, a Seattle PBS subsidiary, launched "Bill Nye the Science Guy" in 1992 in partnership with Nye and two producers. The cost of the show has been subsidized in no small part by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, Nye's lawsuit explained.
Disney's Buena Vista Television then entered a distribution agreement for the show. The owners were to get half of the net profits from VHS and DVD sales, along with other channels like Netflix and iTunes. Nye is due for one-sixth of the net profits as well, according to the agreement.
"The disturbing size of the supposed 'accounting error,' coupled with the seeming indifference of both (Buena Vista Television) and (the Walt Disney Company), left Mr. Nye suspicious of the veracity of the accounting statements he had been receiving from BVT over the years," the lawsuit alleges.
The suit also accused Disney of reporting costs of $20 million of the show, when it has been largely supported by federal grants at the time. The Buena Vista Television, via a representative, rebuffed Nye's claims.
"This lawsuit is a publicity ploy and we look forward to vigorously defending it," the spokesperson said in a statement on Friday, Aug. 24, via The Hollywood Reporter.
