Author Michael Lewis responded Wednesday to accusations from former NFL lineman Michael Oher, a subject of Lewis’s best-selling book “The Blind Side,” that the wealthy family who took Oher in has hoarded profits from the award-winning film adaptation.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Lewis said that despite the movie’s success, no one involved in the book saw millions of dollars from the movie.
“Everybody should be mad at the Hollywood studio system,” Lewis said. “Michael Oher should join the writers strike. It’s outrageous how Hollywood accounting works, but the money is not in the Tuohys’ pockets.”
Oher, who is Black, was growing up poor in Memphis when he was taken in by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a wealthy White couple. Lewis, the author of “Moneyball,” “The Big Short” and other nonfiction bestsellers, heard the story from Sean Tuohy, a childhood friend, and turned it into the 2006 book that chronicled Oher’s rise to football acclaim and the booming market for NFL linemen capable of protecting quarterbacks’ backs — their “blind sides.”
In a legal filing this week, Oher alleged the Tuohy family used a conservatorship to keep profits from the movie, which the court filing argued paid the Tuohys and their two birth children $225,000 each, plus 2.5 percent of the film’s “defined net proceeds.” The movie was a hit, earning more than $300 million in theaters, according to Oher’s lawsuit.
According to Lewis, Twentieth Century Fox, as it was then known, paid $250,000 for the option to make “The Blind Side” a movie, which he split 50-50 with the Tuohy family. The Tuohys have said they split their share evenly, including with Oher. After taxes and agent fees, Lewis said, his half was around $70,000.
Fox, however, never made the movie. (According to Lewis, the studio had thought Julia Roberts would be interested in the film, but she wasn’t.) Instead, Lewis said, Alcon, a small production company backed by Tuohy’s neighbor, FedEx CEO Fred Smith, stepped in. Instead of paying the actors large salaries, Lewis said, they were offered a share of the profits. Lewis said his deal provided him a share of the movie’s net profits, too. Warner Bros. distributed the movie.
According to Lewis, the film made around half a billion dollars, but the equity stake in the movie was not as lucrative as it would appear. In fact, he said, he had called his own representatives at Creative Artists Agency over the years, following the movie’s success, asking about his share of the profits.
Lewis said that ultimately after agent fees and taxes, he and the Tuohy family received around $350,000 each from the profits of the movie. Lewis said the Tuohys planned to share the royalties among the family members, including Oher, but Oher began declining his royalty checks, Lewis said. Lewis said he believed the Tuohy family had deposited Oher’s share in a trust fund for Oher’s son.
Additionally, Lewis said that two years ago Oher called him to ask about a speaking tour to make money discussing the book. Lewis raised the idea to his agent, but nothing came of it.
Oher’s attorneys did not reply to a request for comment.
“What I feel really sad about is I watched the whole thing up close,” Lewis said. “They showered him with resources and love. That he’s suspicious of them is breathtaking. The state of mind one has to be in to do that — I feel sad for him.”
“The Blind Side” was a cultural phenomenon, earning Sandra Bullock an Academy Award for best actress, and is one of several best-selling books by Lewis that has been turned into a movie, including “Moneyball” and “The Big Short.” Oher went on to a successful career as an offensive lineman in the NFL from 2009 to 2016.
But the nature of the relationship between Oher and the Tuohy family — highlighted by questions of paternalism, racial dynamics and who profits off someone’s life story — was thrust back into the spotlight this week by Oher’s legal filing.
The nature of the conservatorship that Oher was placed under is not clear and somewhat unusual. Tennessee law reserves conservatorships for people with mental or physical disabilities who lack the capacity to make decisions for themselves, said Barbara Moss, an attorney in the state who is experienced in conservatorships.
“You have to have a doctor say you have a mental or physical disability in whole or in part,” Moss said. From an outside legal perspective, she said, the arrangement with Oher and the Tuohys was “bizarre.” “I’ve never seen something like that happen,” she said. “From what I know of Michael Oher … he wouldn’t have qualified.”
Lewis said he believed the Tuohy family chose a conservatorship for Oher because the process was quicker than traditional adoption. And they were concerned about the NCAA investigating Oher’s choice to attend the University of Mississippi, where the Tuohys were boosters.
In the lawsuit, Oher claims he was told the papers were “a necessary legal step in the adoption process” and that he learned only in February of this year that the papers “were not adoption papers or the equivalent of adoption papers.”
In his 2011 memoir, “I Beat The Odds,” Oher wrote the Tuohys were “named as my ‘legal conservators’ ” in the summer after he finished high school, describing a scene where he went to the courthouse with the couple to “celebrate.” He wrote that the Tuohy family “explained to me that it means pretty much the same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account.”