Featured Image Credit: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images/ Warner Bros.
Topics: US News, The Blind Side, Film and TV, Money, Michael Oher
Joe Harker
Topics: US News, The Blind Side, Film and TV, Money, Michael Oher
The Touhy family have announced that they're planning on ending their conservatorship over Michael Oher after he filed a lawsuit against them.
They're the family depicted in the 2009 movie The Blind Side, which shows them adopting a young Oher while he's on his path to NFL glory.
However, the man himself claims that the movie doesn't portray events quite how they happened, and launched a lawsuit against the family over allegations that they 'tricked' him into signing up to the conservatorship, when he thought he was getting adopted.
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Also in the lawsuit are allegations that the Tuohy family earned a significant amount from The Blind Side and that he wasn't included in this.
According to Oher, the Tuohy family were paid $225,000 and 2.5 percent of the proceeds from the movie, which earned over $300 million at the box office.
How much money the family actually made from the movie is a contentious issue, as Oher's lawsuit claims they made lots of money that he wasn't party to.
However, lawyers for the Tuohy family dispute that claim with Steven Farese saying that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, along with their children Collins and Sean Jr, each received about $100,000 from the film.
Farese also claimed that Oher was included in this, so while each of the four Tuohys got $100,000, they allege that he received the same amount.
Meanwhile, People reports that the family have received in total about $700,000 from The Blind Side in 'rights, payments and profits', which was supposed to be split five ways between the family and Oher.
His lawsuit alleges that the conservatorship, which the family lawyers say is ending, was 'concocted by the family to enrich themselves at his expense'.
Attorneys for the Tuohy family have said that was 'hurtful and absurd', claiming that it was 'transparently ridiculous' that they tried to profit off him.
Amidst the competing claims and allegations for how much the family earned from The Blind Side, Sean Tuohy has said that they 'didn't make any money off the movie'.
He claimed that Michael Lewis, the author of the book The Blind Side which led to the movie, gave the family half of his share and that figure was divided up equally between The Tuohys and Oher.
According to Tuohy, that final figure came out to 'about $14,000 each'.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Lewis said that figure, which he split with the family, came from a $250,000 payment from 20th Century Fox to option The Blind Side for a movie - though they never did.
Instead it was Warner Bros who made the 2009 film, and the author said that after taxes and payments the half-share he gave to the Tuohy family amounted to about $70,000.
Lewis estimated that after taxes, the family made about $350,000 from the success of the movie.