An artist’s beef with Spike Lee over disputed poster art is now a legal fight.
Lee tried to promote what would become one of 2013’s biggest duds, the director’s remake of Oldboy, by sharing poster art from the film’s marketing campaign via social media.
That drew the attention of artist Juan Luis Garcia, who said he submitted very similar art to the ad agency behind the film, but the company chose not to purchase those images. Garcia, a Lee fan, wrote an open letter to the director hoping for some clarity on the matter. Lee replied tersely via Twitter:
I Never Heard Of This Guy Juan Luis Garcia,If He Has A Beef It’s Not With Me.I Did Not Hire Him, Do Not Know Him. Cheap Trick Writing To Me.YO
Now, the courts may decide who is right or wrong in this matter.
The complaint was filed on Tuesday in California federal court by Garcia, who says he previously designed the posters for such films as The Great Gatsby, 12 Years A Slave, Lincoln, 42 and Jobs.
In the lawsuit, Garcia says he offered Lee and his Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks production company “access to the posters, and offered Defendants the opportunity to use them to market their film, with the condition precedent that they pay Plaintiff for such use. Defendants never paid Plaintiff….”
The lawsuit takes issue with the fact that the Oldboy posters were released with the tags, “© 2013 Spike Lee,” and “© 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks.”
Lee also is being sued by an elderly Sanford, FL couple whose address the filmmaker tweeted. Lee thought George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin in a hotly disputed fight, lived at that address.
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