Filmmaker Woody Allen is suing Amazon for at least $68 million, saying that the company ended a four-picture movie deal last year after old accusations against him resurfaced in the press.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, says that Amazon knew about a "25-year-old" allegation before signing with Allen in 2017, but still used it as an excuse to back out of the deal.
"There simply was no legitimate ground for Amazon to renege on its promises," the lawsuit says.
Allen's daughter, Dylan Farrow, has said that Allen molested her in an attic in 1992 when she was 7 years old, which the filmmaker has repeatedly denied. The allegations were made public in 1992, and Farrow wrote about them in 2014, and then appeared in a TV interview early last year for the first time.
The lawsuit, which doesn't mention Farrow by name, says Amazon ended the deal with Allen in June 2018.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The online retailer, based in Seattle, has been producing TV shows and movies in recent years to help boost its online video streaming service.
According to the complaint, Allen finished a film called "A Rainy Day in New York" that Amazon never released, breaching its contract.
The more than $68 million Allen is seeking from Amazon includes additional payments for "A Rainy Day in New York," plus payments for the three other unfinished films.
Apple sells $46 billion worth of iPhones over the summer as AI helps end slump
Apple snapped out of a recent iPhone sales slump during its summer quarter, an early sign that its recent efforts to revive demand for its marquee product with an infusion of artificial intelligence are paying off.
Sales of the iPhone totaled $46.22 billion for the July-September period, a 6% increase from the same time last year, according to Apple's fiscal fourth-quarter report released Thursday. That improvement reversed two consecutive year-over-year declines in the iPhone's quarterly sales.
The iPhone boost helped Apple deliver total quarterly revenue and profit that exceeded the analyst projections that sway investors, excluding a one-time charge of $10.2 billion to account for a recent European Union court decision that lumped the Cupertino, California, company with a huge bill for back taxes.
Apple earned $14.74 billion, or 97 cents per share, a 36% decrease from the same time last year. If not for the one-time tax hit, Apple said it would have earned $1.64 per share — topping the $1.60 per share predicted by analysts, according to FactSet Research. Revenue rose 6% from last year to $94.93 billion, about $400 million more than analysts forecast.
But investors evidently were hoping for an even better quarter and appeared disappointed by an Apple forecast that implied its revenue for the October-December quarter covering the holiday shopping season might not grow as robustly as analysts envisioned. Apple's stock price shed about 2% in Thursday's extended trading, leaving the shares hovering around $221 — well below their peak of about $237 reached in mid-October.
The latest quarterly results captured the first few days that consumers were able to buy a new iPhone 16 line-up that included four different models designed... Read More