ABC Sued By Soap Opera Producer Prospect Park
ABC has been sued by soap opera producer Prospect Park for breach of contract.
The network stands accused of attempting to derail the company’s efforts to bring two canceled soap opera series online. Prospect Park has launched $25 million lawsuit against ABC.
The company licensed rights to All My Children and One Life to Live back in 2011. As Prospect Park struggled to bring the shows to audiences online, they were extended a helping hand by network executives.
ABC offered to bring seven characters from One Life to Live onto General Hospital in an effort to help get viewers interested in the online reboots. However, Prospect Park stated that the network ended up killing off a handful of the characters in the process.
Producers explained that the network also moved one of the characters and his fictional newspaper company from the One Life to Live universe into General Hospital. This essentially prevents Prospect Park from using the character in its online series.
“In other instances, ABC damaged ‘One Life to Live’ characters by, among other things, creating absurd story lines, having characters do things they would never do, and destroying critical character relationships popular with soap fans,” the suit explains.
Although Prospect Park has made these allegations against the network, ABC has yet to respond to the lawsuit as of this writing.
Despite the problems associated with One Life to Live and All My Children, Prospect Park still intends to move forward with the projects. Both programs are expected to premiere on April 29.
“Over and over again our effort to bring these shows to audiences has faced challenges, and yet we along with the actors, the writers, producers and the directors as well as our fans have confronted and then overcome these challenges, and we have every confidence that we will prevail again,” the company said in a statement.
What do you think about ABC being sued by Prospect Park? Do you think the network was trying to prevent the soap operas from getting rebooted online?
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