Woody Allen is suing Amazon studios for $68million (£53m) over the decision to terminate their exclusive film deal.

It was back in 2016 that Amazon signed Allen to a five-film deal, a time when the longstanding allegations of sexual assault made against Allen by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow began to resurface.

Allen continued to deny the claims made by Farrow and, as part of his deal with Amazon, completed his first film Wonder Wheel starring Jim Belushi, Kate Winslet, Juno Temple, and Justin Timberlake. The film flopped drastically and didn’t come close to recouping the budget of $25million.

Undeterred by the disappointment, the director continued to start work on the second film which was given the working title of A Rainy Day in New York and again included a star-studded cast with Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez and Jude Law all involved. However, despite completing the film in 2017 and includ ing a somewhat controversial sex scene between a 44-year-old man and 15-year-old girl, Amazon decided to ‘indefinitely shelve’ the film and call time on their partnership with Allen.

Now, Allen has claimed that Amazon had no “legal or factual basis” to terminate their deal and did it safe in the knowledge that their decision “would cause substantial damage to Mr. Allen,” according to the lawsuit which has been submitted to the New York Federal Court.

The official lawsuit declaration made by Allen’s team states reasons that “Amazon has tried to excuse its action by referencing a 25-year old, baseless allegation against Mr. Allen, but that allegation was already well known to Amazon (and the public) before Amazon entered into four separate deals with Mr. Allen – and, in any event it does not provide a basis for Amazon to terminate the contract. There simply was no legitimate ground for Amazon to renege on its promises.”

A breakdown of the lawsuit shows that Allen is also requesting a reimbursement of $9million (£7m) that he allegedly invested to self-finance the scrapped film A Rainy Day in New York.

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