Top > Entertainment > 2006 > August > 2006-08-09

Entertainment Firms Sued by Jerry Lewis

The famous comedian Jerry Lewis is suing two entertainment companies for $2.3 million, claiming they owe him money over a proposed remake of his 1961 movie "The Errand Boy." The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, names as defendants Spyglass Entertainment Group and Hollywood Pictures Corp.

The entertainment companies were not in a hurry to react. Calls to Spyglass were not immediately returned on Monday. No phone listing could be found for Hollywood Pictures. The lawsuit said Lewis and JAS Productions Inc. entered into an agreement with Hollywood Pictures in 1996 that gave the entertainment film company an option to remake "The Errand Boy."

Lewis was to act in the film and serve as a consultant and executive producer if the option was exercised, the lawsuit said. Between 1999 and 2001, Hollywood assigned its rights to the entertainment company Spyglass, which never made the movie but prepared a screenplay and hired script writers, according to the lawsuit. Lewis, 80, first appeared on screen in a movie My Friend Irma in 1949. He is an actor, film producer, writer and film director known for his slapstick humor and his charity fund-raising telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.