Producer Keith Patterson is suing RKO Pictures, its CEO Theodore Hartley and vice chairman Mary Beth O’Connor after he says they backed out of a deal to create a weekly TV series based on Orson Welles’ classic film Citizen Kane.
Patterson is seeking damages in a 19-page complaint filed in a New York court on July 24. Details on the lawsuit were first reported in The Hollywood Reporter.
“In late November and December of 2016, Mr. Patterson, Ms. O’Connor and Mr. Hartley discussed in detail the creative and logistical components of creating a television series based upon Citizen Kane, including the selection of appropriate actors and other talent, and the tone, setting and other creative aspects of the series,” writes attorney John Rosenberg in the complaint. “Ms. O’Connor and Mr. Hartley explicitly concurred with Mr. Patterson that the updating of Citizen Kane was an important, and long overdue, project.”
However, Patterson says a personnel dispute with O’Connor over a consultant led to her telling him in February: “We are not doing this. I’m shutting it down.”
O’Connor told The New York Daily News that “any claim by Mr. Patterson is baseless.”
The plan called for developing classic RKO movies for television, though Citizen Kane is the only film mentioned at length in the lawsuit, while Cat People is mentioned in passing.
The suit makes no mention of participation by Warner Bros. or the Estate of Orson Welles, both of whom have an interest in Welles’ landmark 1941 movie.
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