Director Francis Ford Coppola has lost his court appeal against Warner Bros. over the film Pinocchio and been stripped of an $80 million jury award.
The case began in 1998, when a Superior Court jury ruled that Warner Bros. falsely claimed to have a Pinocchio deal with Coppola, preventing him from making the movie with Columbia Pictures, the Hollywood Reporter states.
A trial judge later threw out the jury’s $60 million punitive damage award, but left Coppola with $20 million in compensatory damages. The director appealed to have the punitive damages reinstated and Warner Bros. appealed to have the compensatory damages dismissed.
Last Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeals ruled that Warner Bros. had the right to tell Columbia in a 1994 letter that it reserved all rights to a Coppola Pinocchio movie.
Variety reports that the court concluded that even though a longform contract was never agreed upon, Coppola had signed a 1992 certificate of employment that gave Warner Bros. rights to his Pinocchio. The studio has spent about $350,000 developing on the project.
