As far as the lawsuit is concerned, there’s two sides to the equation: the individual movie theatres and chains have to agree to show it. If chains have smarted up and decided they’re not going to show Boll, then that’s that. It’s possible that regardless of how much the distribution company tried, they only found 950 theatres willing to show it. So what if Zane got a commission? Does he own the distributor? Is he the marketing director? In the end, I don’t think Boll will have much of a case.

“Boll is able to acquire funding thanks to German tax laws that reward investments in film. The law allows investors in German-owned films to write off 100% of their investment as a tax deduction; it also allows them to invest borrowed money and write off any fees associated with the loan. The investor is then only required to pay taxes on the profits made by the movie; if the movie loses money, the investor gets a tax writeoff.” (from Wikipedia article on Boll)

So, the German government wins because the money stays in Germany and doesn’t go overseas, the investors and Uwe Boll win because they get a tax write-off, and the viewing public loses from being exposed to abhorrent excuses for motion pictures. Boll may have been cheated here on paper, but any potential profits lost are really not the point.

From what I read, Boll paid for something and got less than half of what he was promised. I highly doubt that more theaters would have made that much difference in revenue, but it’s still a raw deal.

Of course, I’m not in the industry and there may very well be some clause in the contract that allows distributers to show the film in however many theaters they want. But it still sounds like Zane was taking a page from Enron’s “Big Book of Business Bullshit”.