Those bible-thumping sons of beachs. I knew it was too good to be true. The parents and each of their two "real" kids got $250,000 each plus 2.5% of the net film profit. Micheal...nothing. It gets worse.
I'm shocked. Hollywood and some scum-sucking leeches get together to carpetbag the public. Imagine that.
I love Hollywood's real idea of Affirmative Action. A minority who legitimately deserves to be given a fair break and gets the back side of his supposed adopted families & woke Tinseltown's hand.
‘Blind Side’ Subject Michael Oher Claims Tuohy Family Never Adopted Him — Instead They Made Millions Off His Name
By Samantha Nungesser, NY Post
Aug 14, 2023 at 2:36pm
Talk about being blindsided. Michael Oher, the retired NFL player who was the central subject of the Oscar-winning film The Blind Side, petitioned to a Tennessee court that the rich white family that took him under their wing allegedly lied about his adoption and used his story to make a profit for themselves.
In a 14-page petition obtained by ESPN, Oher claimed that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who saved him from homelessness and took him into their home as a high school student, never actually adopted him. Instead, he alleged that he manipulated him into signing a document that made them his conservators shortly after he turned 18 years old in 2004.
The set-up — which is often used in cases of people with physical or psychological disabilities, despite Oher not having any known limitations — gives them full legal authority to any business deals made in his name.
“The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” the legal filing says, per ESPN.
It continues, “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the Conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys.”
Oher was going into his senior year of high school when he signed onto the conservatorship, which the Tuohys reportedly told him meant “pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,'” according to what he wrote in his 2011 memoir I Beat the Odds. However, he only recently learned that the papers didn’t legally make him a part of the family.
“Mike didn’t grow up with a stable family life. When the Tuohy family told Mike they loved him and wanted to adopt him, it filled a void that had been with him his entire life,” his attorney J. Gerard Stranch IV, said, per ESPN. “Discovering that he wasn’t actually adopted devastated Mike and wounded him deeply.”
Moreover, the Tuohy family has allegedly received millions of dollars in royalties for The Blind Side, which starred Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock — who won the Academy Award for Best Actress — as Sean and Leigh Anne. While the movie raked in more than $300 million and nabbed a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, Oher allegedly received nothing for a story “that would not have existed without him.”
According to the petition, the Tuohys began negotiating the deal for the film in 2006, which paid them and their two birth children each $225,000, as well as 2.5% of the film’s “defined net proceeds.” Meanwhile, a separate 2007 contract seemingly signed by Oher — who, unlike the rest of the family, was represented by a close family friend who helped facilitate the 2004 conservatorship — gave 20th Century Fox Studios the life rights to his story “without any payment whatsoever.”
The athlete said he does not remember signing the contract — and if he did sign it, claimed the implications were not explained to him.
“Mike’s relationship with the Tuohy family started to decline when he discovered that he was portrayed in the movie as unintelligent,” Stranch told ESPN. “Their relationship continued to deteriorate as he learned that he was the only member of the family not receiving royalty checks from the movie, and it was permanently fractured when he realized he wasn’t adopted and a part of the family.”
In the petition, Oher asked the court to end the conservatorship and to bar the Tuohys from using his name and likeness. In addition to being granted full accounting of the money the family earned in his name, he wants his “fair share” of the profits as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.