Michael Oher has filed a lawsuit against his adoptive family, and The Blind Side is taking heat for not being a real story. The Blind Side is a 2009 film based on the life of Oher and earned multiple Academy Award nominations and an Oscar win for Sandra Bullock. Alcon Entertainment produced The Blind Side, and the co-heads of the company are defending the film.
The Blind Side was a film that no major studio would make, back when Alcon financed the film in 2009, Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “The prevailing ‘wisdom’ was that a football movie starring a woman would not appeal to football fans, it had too much football to appeal to families, and that movies starring Black actors don’t work overseas. Our opinion was that it would appeal to everyone, and, in 2009, when this country, and the world more broadly, was more hopeful and less divided – it did. The two of us are the longest-running interracial business partnership in the history of the film industry. We have led not through publicity or pontification, but rather through the quiet power of example.”
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“The Blind Side is 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’s statement continued. “Indeed, scores of trusted individuals, not the least of whom is Michael Lewis, one of our country’s most respected writers and journalists and the author of the book The Blind Side, have spoken of their first-hand knowledge of the authenticity of the Tuohys loving Michael dearly and raising Michael as their son through the end of high school, and then throughout college and onto the NFL.”
In the lawsuit, Oher claims that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy never adopted him and tricked him into being his conservators. The former NFL offensive lineman and Super Bowl champion is now seeking to terminate the guardianship and earn a share of the Tuohy family’s royalties from The Blind Side.
“The notion that the Tuohys were paid millions of dollars by Alcon to the detriment of Michael Oher is false,” Johnson and Kosove said. “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). We anticipate that the Tuohy family and Michael Oher will receive additional profits as audiences continue to enjoy this true story in the years to come.”
