Reports suggest landmark five-year legal battle is set to conclude with media giant reimbursing those who have undertaken unpaid work at the company since as far back as 2005

The two interns who won a landmark case against Fox film studio after working unpaid on the set of Black Swan have succeeded in their five-year campaign to push the studio into paying those who had undertaken unpaid work experience at the company, according to Deadline.

Fox, which lost and then appealed a landmark ruling in a lawsuit filed by former interns Alexander Footman and Eric Glatt in 2013, has decided to settle rather than take the case back to court.



The settlement is yet to be approved by a judge, but it would see everyone who interned for free at Fox Entertainment Group, Fox Filmed Entertainment, Fox Networks Group and Fox Interactive Media in the first nine months of 2010, as well as certain people who worked unpaid in their New York and California offices between 2005-2010, receive about $495 (£373) each. Footman and Glatt would receive $7,500 and $6,000 respectively, while Eden Antalik, another plaintiff who joined them in 2012, would get $3,500. As Deadline notes, their lawyers will have made approximately $220,000 in fees by the time the settlement is agreed. Black Swan, released in 2010, took $330m at the global box office.



Footman and Glatt first sued Fox Searchlight in 2010 after claiming that the studio was breaking US law by requiring interns to perform tasks that had little or no educational value for no financial recompense. At the time the company defended themselves by saying the pair had been working for Aronofsky’s production company and that the lawsuit was meritless.

The plaintiffs expanded their suit to cover all internships at parent company Twentieth Century Fox in 2012. In 2013 federal jdge William Pauley sided with them, agreeing that the work they had been tasked with should have been carried out by paid employees. Fox appealed, but it seems to have now decided to settle.



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The Black Swan lawsuit is thought to have influenced a number of Hollywood media companies’ practice regarding internships. Studios have increasingly started paying interns for their work, which has resulted in the number of available internships decreasing.

In March this year, Glatt, a 40-year-old who quit his career in finance to become a documentary film-maker ahead of his work on Black Swan, told the Guardian how satisfying it was to fight back against the practice of menial unpaid internships. “It has been great and empowering to finally call bullshit on bullshit,” he said.

In a statement, Fox spokesman Chris Petrikin said: “Having decisively prevailed in our appeal, Fox wishes to put this matter completely behind us. We will refocus on a return to our proud history of offering dynamic, educational internships.”