Amber Heard famously gave the money from her divorce settlement with Johnny Depp to charity, but now she's in some legal hot water that may involve her giving away even more money – and not voluntarily. She is now the latest party facing a lawsuit in a tangled legal fight involving London Fields, a movie she starred in and which is now in "legal purgatory," according to a recent story in The Hollywood Reporter.
The trouble started when the film was set to premiere at last year's Toronto International Film Festival. The film's director, Mathew Cullen, along with much of the cast (including Heard) refused to participate in promoting the movie, and Cullen claimed that the movie's producers had taken his work away from him and "hijacked" it, making unauthorized changes to the cut of the film. Cullen sued Nicola Six Limited, the production company behind the film, for fraud surrounding the company's actions, and Christopher Hanley (who owns Nicola Six) counter-sued, claiming Cullen failed in his own duties as director, including delivering a final product on time and budget.
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Heard is named in the latest lawsuit filed by Hanley, who claims that Heard was part of a conspiracy to sabotage the release of London Fields along with Cullen. Among her alleged offenses, according to the complaint, is Heard's reluctance to perform nude scenes for the movie, as outlined by this excerpt from the lawsuit seeking a minimum of $10 million in compensatory damages from Heard and company:
"As a result of Heard's refusal to comply with her contractual obligations — including her improper refusal to act in provocative scenes contained in the pre-approved script — key scenes in the script had to be removed and/or rewritten to accommodate Heard's behavior."
Things get even more complicated when one realizes that none other than Johnny Depp has a small role in the movie, and that its production difficulties are rumored to have contributed to the split between Depp and Heard. This dynamic just adds more substance to the now-overwhelming cloud that hangs over the deeply troubled production, the cut of which assembled by producers is said to include "incendiary imagery evoking 9/11 jumpers edited against pornography" according to the lawsuit filed by director Cullen.
With lawsuits flying around left and right and London Fields lacking a distributor, there's no telling when it will escape its current legal predicament and actually be seen by audiences, what form it will be in when it does, and who will end up owing who money. If I were Amber Heard, I'd try to get the ball rolling on a movie about the making of London Fields, it would probably be pretty entertaining.
