French actress Eva Green won her lawsuit in London on Friday against the production company of a science fiction film from which she claimed her stamp despite the cancellation of the feature film. The 42-year-old actress, star of Casino Royale in 2006, was set to star in a sci-fi film – A Patriot – before production was finally halted in October 2019.
Eva Green had sued the production company, White Lantern Films, to claim her one million dollar (918,000 euros) fee for the film, despite its cancellation. But the British production company had decided to counterattack by launching its own lawsuits against the actress, believing that she had made “unreasonable demands” and harmed the production of the film.
In a judgment delivered on Friday, the High Court in London ruled in favor of the actress and dismissed the production company. Judge Michael Green found that the actress did not “waive of duty” and committed no fatal breach.
During the trial, which was held at the beginning of the year, the actress had invoked her “French side” to explain the messages, to say the least derogatory, that she had sent during the filming. She had assured that she had “fallen in love” with the film project which was to deal with the climate crisis.
Lawyers for White Lantern Films, however, felt that the French actress had expressed “lack of confidence and dissatisfaction” with members of the production team. They rely on WhatsApp messages in which Eva Green allegedly called a member of the team “evil”, “devious sociopath”, “liar and crazy”. She also reportedly called production manager Terry Bird a “moron” and “a finished asshole.”
The actress’s lawyer, Edmund Cullen, had meanwhile argued that these messages should be read in the context of negotiations for the acquisition of the rights to the script to make a different film. He had denounced a case designed to portray Eva Green as a “diva” to “catch headlines” and “damage her reputation”.