More than a week after former NFL player Michael Oher filed a petition that challenged the accuracy of the Oscar-winning film about his life, producers are attempting to set the record straight.
Alcon Entertainment honchos set out to affirm the authenticity of the 2009 blockbuster “The Blind Side,” starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw and Quinton Aaron. Promoted as based on a true story, the movie centered on a wealthy white family who takes in a Black foster child and steers him to football stardom.
In a 14-page legal document, dated Aug. 14, Oher alleged that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy did not adopt him as the film portrays, but instead placed him under a conservatorship after he turned 18, giving themselves legal authority to make business deals in his name.
“We feel it is now important for us to respond to some recent media reports, which include many mischaracterizations and uninformed opinions,” Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove said in a statement issued Thursday. “The impetus for these stories has been a lawsuit by Michael Oher, which seems to have given critics and journalists alike a justification to unfairly pick apart the movie fourteen years later — some going so far as to call it ‘fake’ or a ‘lie.’”
The producers — whose credits include “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and “The Good Lie” — added that the story of the film remains “verifiably authentic and will never be a lie or fake, regardless of the familial ups and downs that have occurred subsequent to the film.”
Johnson and Kosove said that Oher’s story told in the film was corroborated by Michael Lewis, the author of the 2006 book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” which featured Oher’s rags-to-riches story.
The producers also poo-pooed the misconception that the Tuohys, who were already wealthy before taking Oher in, hauled in hefty profits for the movie, which grossed over $300 million at the box office.
“The deal that was made by Fox for the Tuohy’s and Michael Oher’s life rights was consistent with the marketplace at that time for the rights of relatively unknown individuals. Therefore, it did not include significant payouts in the event of the film’s success,” the statement read.
“As a result, the notion that the Tuohys were paid millions of dollars by Alcon to the detriment of Michael Oher is false,” it continued. “In fact, Alcon has paid approximately $767,000 to the talent agency that represents the Tuohy family and Michael Oher (who, presumably, took commission before passing it through).”
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