Sometimes the judiciary has to deal with the history of pop culture. In 2007/08, more than six million viewers saw the humorous love epic “Keinohrhasen” in Germany alone, by far the most successful cinema film of the year. The similarly knitted follow-up work “Zweiohrküken” (2009) was a big hit at the box office.
The main actor and director at the time was Til Schweiger, who, according to the credits, was also involved in the script together with the screenwriter Anika Decker. Decker denies Schweiger’s work on it.
According to media information, Decker received a non-success-related fee of 50,000 euros for the “Keinohrhasen” material. In view of the millions in revenue, this is an almost immoral savings budget. For a long time she has been fighting to get her fair share of the mega success. She was never allowed to see the exploitation through the sale of rights in the USA, as well as the high income from cinema, DVD, television and the Internet.
Decker has now been able to obtain disclosure of the earnings from both films at the Berlin Regional Court. Important basis for determining a supplementary salary requested by her. The judges ruled in her favor against the rights holders, as well as the production and marketing companies.
In the so-called “graded lawsuit”, an insight into the accounting of the production company Barefoot Films and the distribution company Warner Bros is a first step in determining the total volume. After that, tacheles could be talked about, i.e.: How much money is Decker really entitled to? The “fairness paragraph” also applied in the music sector for big hits would also apply here in view of the immense income.
So far, the parties involved have not wanted to comment on the Berlin “interim judgment”. In a further process, it must now be determined how high a (reasonable) fee really is.