'Gilmore Girls' Lawsuit: Ex Producer Gavin Polone Sues Warner Over Netflix Revival
While fans get excited with more news from Netflix's revival of Stars Hollow, there's one person out there who's not at all happy with Gilmore Girls: Seasons: show producer Gavin Polone. In a recent lawsuit against Warner Bros., the man who executive produced all 8 seasons of the show claims he's due royalties for the revival, and the studio refuses to pay.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Polone filed the suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court last Friday, asking WBTV for at least $195,000 in damages over being shut out of profits for the Gilmore Girls revival.
In the legal documents, Polone and his attorneys claim that his original agreement to produce the show included receiving $32,500 for any episode produced after 2003, plus a percentage of how much it grossed when aired and credit as executive producer.
However, Deadline reports that WBTV doesn't agree Polone deserves any of the aforementioned credits for different reasons, like how the Netflix revival is a "derivative work" from the original series, and that the upcoming event isn't even considered a "television series" because it's airing in Netflix instead of any sort of network television.
Husband-and-wife team Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino wrote the entirety of the revival based on their previous work in the original series, but they're changing up the format this time around, basing it on the BBC series Sherlock. (Instead of a regular season, the Gilmore Girls: Seasons revival will actually be four 90-minute movies.)
Since it's a different format, four TV movies/episodes instead of episodes, things get muddy in that department.
Most of the cast for the original Gilmore Girls is coming back for Seasons, with even superstar actress Melissa McCarthy confirming she'd be making a small appearance as her character Sookie St. James. There's still no date for the Netflix release, which is still being filmed, but it seems the revival could be airing as soon as this year!