'Dreamgirls' Avoids Motown Lawsuit

[Kringas]

Posted: 2/22/07 at 4:59pm

It's a shame the bloom has really started to fall off the rose. While I did enjoy the movie, I though the beefing up of the Supremes parallels was a little much. Apparently I'm not the only one.

'Dreamgirls' Avoids Motown Lawsuit

The producers of “Dreamgirls” and Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks avoided a lawsuit from Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. yesterday.

The companies ran full-page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter in which they apologized to Gordy for suggesting that “Dreamgirls” was the Motown story or that the corrupt record company president in the movie played by Jamie Foxx in any way resembled Gordy.

I’m told the ads were the result of a long negotiation on both sides, and that Gordy was prepared to take the players on.

“The breaking point was a ‘Dreamgirls’ book that showed first Curtis and the Dreams from the movie, and then flip the page and it was Berry and the Supremes. The suggestion was that he was one in the same,” a source revealed.

The source continued: “And it’s not the Motown story. Berry had more than just a girl group and a standalone singer [the Eddie Murphy character]. Motown is much more than that.”

The Motown story, as told by Gordy, will come to NBC in 2009 as a 12-part miniseries produced by Suzanne dePasse, Gordy’s longtime production associate. DePasse — with an extensive list of impressive credits — also produced the award-winning miniseries about the Temptations, one of the many Motown hit groups.


Fox News

Updated On: 2/22/07 at 04:59 PM