It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks for the Tuohy family and Michael Oher — whose lives were dramatized in The Blind Side. After the retired NFL player claimed he wasn’t paid for the 2009 film and accused the family that took him in as a homeless teenager of making millions using his name, the production company behind the movie has spoken out against the “many mischaracterizations and uninformed opinions.”
Last week, Oher filed a petition claiming he was tricked by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy into a conservatorship when he was 18 years old — and that he only recently found out he wasn’t legally adopted. He also alleged that the family “collectively received millions of dollars” while he “received nothing for his rights” to the film, per People.
As a result, Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove — the co-founders and co-CEOs of Alcon Entertainment — released a lengthy statement addressing Oher’s allegations.
According to them, Twentieth Century Fox initially negotiated the contracts for the film rights — which were later inherited by Alcon when the movie fell through at Fox. Earlier this month, Sean revealed that the Tuohy family, including Oher, had made $14,000 each after splitting the profit with Michael Lewis — the author who wrote the book on which The Blind Side is based.
“The deal that was made by Fox for the Tuohy’s and Michael Oher’s life rights was consistent with the marketplace at that time for the rights of relatively unknown individuals,” Johnson and Kosove said. “Therefore, it did not include significant payouts in the event of the film’s success.”
They added, “As a result, the notion that the Tuohys were paid millions of dollars by Alcon to the detriment of Michael Oher is false.”
The producers claimed that Alcon paid $767,000 to the talent agency representing both the Tuohy family and Michael Oher. They also “anticipate” that both parties will continue to receive additional profits in the “years to come” as people continue to watch the movie — which made more than $300 million at the box office.
“In addition to these contractual payments, Alcon made a charitable contribution to the Tuohy family foundation,” they wrote. “We offered to donate an equal amount to a charity of Mr. Oher’s choosing, which he declined.”
Both men went on to defend the authenticity of the movie — which has come under question since Oher’s scathing accusations. Regarding the story behind The Blind Side, they praised the Tuohys’ “wonderful acts of kindness” as well as the “extraordinary courage” Oher exhibited in accepting their “generosity not as a handout, or as his saviors, but as a way through which he could improve his own life.” Because of this, they noted that his children are able to live a much better life than he did as a child.
“In both of those regards, The Blind Side is verifiably authentic and will never be a lie or fake, regardless of the familial ups and downs that have occurred subsequent to the film,” they said in the statement.
They continued, “Indeed, scores of trusted individuals, not the least of whom is Michael Lewis, one of our country’s most respected writers and journalists and the author of the book The Blind Side, 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.”