‘The Blind Side’ Producers Respond to Michael Oher’s Claims of Inaccuracy: The Film ‘Will Never Be a Lie or Fake’

variety.com:

Sophia Scorziello editor Producers behind “The Blind Side” have issued a statement affirming the authenticity of Michael Oher’s story as told in the film, responding to Oher’s recent allegations that the Tuohy family fabricated his adoption and instead placed him in a conservatorship that he is still restricted to. “We feel it is now important for us to respond to some recent media reports, which include many mischaracterizations and uninformed opinions,” Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, “Blind Side” producers of and co-founders of Alcon Entertainment, said in a statement Thursday. “The impetus for these stories has been a lawsuit by Michael Oher, which seems to have given critics and journalists alike a justification to unfairly pick apart the movie fourteen years later – some going so far as to call it ‘fake’ or a ‘lie.’” The producers added that their film’s story remains “verifiably authentic and will never be a lie or fake, regardless of the familial ups and downs that have occurred subsequent to the film.” Johnson and Kosove, who founded Alcon back in 1997, claim that Oher’s story as told in the film was corroberated by Michael Lewis, the author of the 2006 novel “The Blind Side,” which John Lee Hancock based the film on.

The producers claim that Lewis and other individuals “have spoken of their first-hand knowledge of the authenticity of the Tuohys loving Michael dearly and raising Michael as their son through the end of high school, and then throughout college and onto the NFL.” The pair addressed Oher’s monetary claims, in which he alleged that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, along with their two biological children, received $225,000 plus 2.5% of “defined net proceeds” from “The Blind Side,” while Oher never.