‘DIETER” is dead.
The Mike Myers comedy about a fictional German avant-garde talk-show host and his monkey sidekick appears to be a casualty of the raging battle between the star and the studio.
But who killed it?
Myers, who created the quirky character on “Saturday Night Live” in the early 90s, blames Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment.
The fuming farceur filed a lawsuit Monday claiming Universal and “co-conspirators” Imagine tried to bully him into making the “Dieter” movie without a decent script — one he wrote!
Myers and his wife Robin Ruzan also allege Universal committed assault, abuse of process and invasion of privacy, even hiring a goon to “stalk” Myers to serve papers.
The suit, in which Myers seeks damages of more than $20 million, alleges the studio’s process-server “stalked him on the streets near his home” and chased him “in a threatening manner down dark, winding and unlit streets.”
Myers’ suit comes on the heels of two separate lawsuits filed against him by Universal and Imagine.
Last month, Universal sued Myers for $5 million for breach of contract, claiming he ditched the project after the studio had invested millions of dollars and rounded up a supporting cast which included David Hasselhoff, Jack Black and “Saturday Night Live” star Will Ferrell. The studio halted pre-production work on the movie, laying off 25 people who were working on its early stages.
Then last week, “Dieter” producer Imagine Entertainment sued Myers for $30 million, alleging he breached a separate deal with the company when he dropped out of the project.
Imagine’s suit stated that Myers’ refusal to do “Dieter” because he wasn’t happy with the script was a smoke screen: “[Myers] claimed he had not approved the screenplay. Who wrote the screenplay? Myers,” it says in court papers.
The dust-up over the planned project has officially reached farcical proportions, with signature catch-phrases from Myers’ shwinging, shagadelic, monkey-loving alter-egos coming back to haunt him.
E! on-line yesterday described the Canadian comic as being “angry as a little girl” — one of Dieter’s favorite phrases.
Work on the doomed comedy, the latest in a string of big-screen treatments of popular “SNL” skits, ceased to be a laughing matter in May.
Myers said he’d pulled out because the script was “fundamentally flawed,” despite the fact he’d spent nearly two years as a co-writer, working on 14 different versions.
Even though Myers stood to pocket at least $20 million for the film, he said he refused to “cheat moviegoers who pay their hard-earned money to see my work.”
In the suit filed Monday, Myers reiterates that he had absolute approval over the script and that he repeatedly told Universal the script was not ready.
The claim calls the case “a classic example of a movie studio placing . . . greed above artistic integrity.”
Universal’s official response was: “We fully expected a cross-claim and it has no merit.”
Stay tuned for the next installment in an off-screen saga that would make any Hollywood screenwriter proud.
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Risky business
Making a movie from a “Saturday Night Live” sketch is not a surefire success. Here are a few hits and misses:
HITS
“The Blues Brothers” (1980)
“Wayne’s World” (1992)
“Wayne’s World 2” (1993)
MISSES
“Coneheads” (1993)
“It’s Pat” (1994)
“Stuart Saves His Family” (1995)
“A Night at the Roxbury” (1998)
“Blues Brothers 2000” (1998)
“Superstar” (1999)