cross-posted from: feddit.uk/post/21329827

The distributor for Strange Darling has sued its marketing partner on the horror fan-favorite for fraud and breach of contract.

Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Productions, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that seeks at least $10 million, accuses Spellbinder of failing to contribute its half of the $2 million marketing spend for the film. It also claims that the company kept some of the funds and bought social media followers and views on various platforms to create the appearance of a successful marketing campaign.

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Strange Darling, a nonlinear serial killer thriller, premiered in August on over 1,100 screens across the U.S. It made $1.1 million its opening weekend, significantly below box office expectations for its media campaign, reviews and broad theatrical release. Miramax financed the film, which has grossed roughly $3 million, on a budget of at least $4 million.

After acquiring distribution rights to the film, Magenta approached Global Pictures Media, a now-defunct company that specializes in financing theatrical release of films, to fund P&A (prints and advertising) for the movie only to be told that the firm shut down and that its principals were raising capital to launch Spellbinder, the complaint says. They agreed to evenly split $2 million in marketing spend, with Magenta wiring Spellbinder the funds to start the campaign.

The lawsuit claims that Spellbinder in June failed to deliver a contractually obligated dashboard providing live updates on media spend and throttled back the campaign, which led Magenta to request invoices to confirm spending up to that date. Later that month, the distributor learned that Spellbinder brought in Myosin, another marketing agency, to assist.

In July, Magenta was told that the media purchases laid out in the contract had not yet been negotiated or purchased in breach of the deal, the lawsuit says. Spellbinder allegedly said that it required more funds despite it being responsible for half of the costs.

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The lawsuit claims that Myosin, which is named in the complaint, commingled funds with Spellbinder. The ownership of the two companies are “identical,” states the lawsuit, which alleges that they “operate as a single entity and identify themselves separately only for purposes of evading liability.” Sean Clayton is a founder of both companies, according to the complaint.

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Magenta also claims that Spellbinder purchased followers on Instagram to make it appear that it had enacted a successful marketing campaign. The platform flagged nearly 25,000 of the movie’s 27,000 followers as likely being bots, according to the complaint.

“Further, it appears that Spellbinder purchased views of videos posted to Plaintiff’s YouTube account,” the lawsuit states. “These videos have a high number of views but extremely limited engagement, which suggests that the views are not genuine. The few comments on these YouTube videos also appear to have been generated by bots. Additionally, despite gaining millions of views on the top videos posted to the account, the account itself has generated less than 500 subscribers.”