Hustle and Flow stars want their money

According to the Los Angeles Times, the film’s director Craig Brewer, co-producer Stephanie Allain and actors Terrence Howard, Anthony Anderson and DJ Qualls say they are still waiting for their promised cut of the $9 million John Singleton pocketed from Paramount-MTV for distribution rights. Singleton, on the other hand, is heated over being perceived as the bad guy. The production’s backstory has been told many times. When Hollywood rejected the “H&F” script at every turn, Singleton reached into his own pocket to complete much of the $3.5 million-budgeted film. At Sundance in January, a bidding war for the property jumped off with Paramount-MTV winning distribution rights for $9 million. The studio also gave Singleton an additional $7 million to develop two more films. According to the Times, Anderson, Allain, Howard, Anderson and Qualls had all worked for close to scale in return for a piece of the profits, but have yet to see a penny of their promised money. Paramount told the Times that Singleton began getting multimillion-dollar chunks of payment in the spring and had received 99% of the $9 million fee around the time of the film's July premiere. [Eurweb]