New legal war charges that ABC signed secret separate deals with actors in an effort to torpedo the re-launch of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live”.
Prospect Park, which licensed the soaps from ABC with plans to relaunch them as web-only series, sued the Alphabet Net in Los Angeles Superior Court last year. The bombshell lawsuit claimed that the network deliberately sabotaged the web relaunch by killing off characters.
Yesterday, Prospect Park, the plaintiff filed a new complaint amended with more details of ABC's alleged fraud and a demand for more than $95 million in damages, The Hollywood Reporter said.
According to the legal docs, ABC schemed in a quest for a "mega soap."
After licensing the soaps to Prospect Park after cancelling them on network TV ABC is said to have erred, the complaint says. While Prospect Park was delayed in launching the new web-only versions, ABC began to exercise its option over the series.
ABC struck a deal with Prospect Park to permit it to "borrow" certain One Life to Live characters tobe used the network’s lone remaining soap, General Hospital, in a limited shoert-term usage.
The plaintiff charges that "even before the ink dried on the parties' agreement, ABC began unilaterally changing key storylines and themes, literally killing some OLTL characters and deeply integrating others into the GH landscape, all to create a mega soap of GH behind Prospect Park's back."
"ABC never intended to keep its promise,” the lawsuit charges. "The changes bewildered and alienated longtime OLTL fans."
The amended lawsuit charges that ABC also inked separate deals with several soap stars.
"ABC even went so far as to induce the actors who had been playing some of the more popular characters on OLTL to sign secret, exclusive, multiyear contracts with ABC,” the lawsuit states.
Those contracts are alleged to have been used by ABC to "limit or prevent the actors' return to OLTL once Prospect Park exercised its option rights."
ABC denied such charges when the initial lawsuit was filed in April 2013.
"ABC remains very supportive of the online launch of both One Life to Live and All My Children," the network said in a statement. "With respect to Prospect Park's lawsuit, we believe the claims are baseless and we will defend them vigorously in court and not the press."
Prospect Park’s attorney vows the case will proceed, saying “A jury will be outraged by this conduct.”
