Timothy Hutton has sued Leverage producer Electric Entertainment for breach of contract, claiming he was unfairly omitted from participating in the reboot of the drama series
The lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court claims Hutton and Electric had closed a deal in February 2020 in which Hutton would star, executive produce and direct at least one episode of the reboot,, on Amazon’s IMDb TV, after the original ran on TNT for five seasons from 2008-2012.
“Instead,” it continued, “…Electric used the BuzzFeed article to remove Hutton from the Reboot. Even worse — because a pay-or-play provision does not, by definition, require the studio to use the actor’s services — Electric refused to pay Hutton the $3+ million Electric owes him under the parties’ February 2020 agreement. It has not budged.”
Electric Entertainment said Monday it had not been served with the suit yet but called it “without merit.” “We take allegations of sexual assault very seriously, especially when children are involved. Despite dealing with these allegations for years, Mr. Hutton failed to disclose them to us before or during negotiations for him to reprise his role in” the company said. “Consequently, once we learned of the allegations in the press, we ceased negotiations with him and chose to move on without him. His baseless allegations against us are without merit and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves.