Variety’s Legal Impact Report 2023: Meet Hollywood’s Top Entertainment Dealmakers and Litigators

variety.com:

LITIGATION Principals Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks, Lincenberg & Rhow The launch of major studios’ in-house streaming platforms put Hollywood self-dealing into hyperdrive, and the Bird Marella team has made headlines litigating the fallout.

Berlinski resolved producer Katie O’Connell Marsh’s multiyear litigation against Gaumont Television related to the Netflix series “Narcos” on the eve of trial in November 2022 and is currently repping Chuck Norris in a lawsuit alleging underpayment of profit participation for his series “Walker, Texas Ranger.” He also currently reps Genting Group, the second-largest casino operator in the world, in ongoing matters related to the development and operation of Genting SkyWorlds, a billion-dollar Fox-themed amusement park outside of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Nessim and Cherlow engineered an eve-of-trial settlement in 2022 for the holders of a package commission on the original “MacGyver” in a breach of contract suit against CBS Studios regarding the current iteration of the series, and they’re repping “Supernatural” creator Eric Kripke in an upcoming arbitration for a nine-figure profit-participation dispute with Warner Bros.

Nessim also regularly reps SAG-AFTRA in connection with employment restraints in actor contracts. Consistent inconsistencies: “The standards for judging these self-dealing transactions are often very similar or identical, but the methodologies that these different studios use to arrive at self-dealing license fees are wildly different,” says Berlinski. LITIGATION Chair, Entertainment & Media Litigation Partner Partner Partner Venable Brenner repped Mattel pressing a Barbie trademark lawsuit over a snack product that was settled in September.