Tyler Perry sued: Tyler Perry has had a rough time with his film career lately and now Temptation has given him a lawsuit to deal with and more negative feedback to stomach.
After the harsh criticisms Perry received after taking on the lead role in Alex Cross we all kind of hoped that Temptation would help put him back on top, but it seems like Tyler Perry has little success if Madea isn’t involved.
Despite being a disappointing movie, it seems like somebody out there is actually willing to take credit for the recycled story line that we’ve all seen hundreds of times before.
According to TMZ, a small time screenwriter claims that the 43-year-old movie maker stole his idea for Temptation from his own story idea for a film called Lovers Kill.
Screenwriter William James wrote the plot in 2009 and supposedly handed it over to “an associate” of Oprah Winfrey’s hoping it would eventually make it’s way into Perry’s hands.
Needless to say, there is no way to prove that Oprah’s so-called “associate” gave the screenplay to Perry instead of just chucking it in the garbage like most big stars would do.
Regardless of his lack of evidence, James insists that he has a case here and is ready to move forward with his lawsuit against the famous director.
A lawsuit isn’t the only thing he’ll be dealing with. Stars and critics have been slamming Perry for casting Kim Kardashian in the movie.
Essence Atkins is the latest celeb to rip Perry a new one for placing the reality star in a supporting role.
In an interview with S2S Magazine, Atkins said that she found it very “interesting” that he picked her for the role simply because she had 16 million Twitter followers.
“He has one of the biggest Twitter personalities out there in his movies, and he had one of the worst box office weekends,” Atkins said.
While she did say the movie wasn’t a complete failure, she did feel as if its performance just didn’t own up to what he is usually capable of.
“It’s not a failure,” she added. “…but it did worse than his movies usually do just based on him. I thought that was an interesting finding. You’re experiment didn’t work.”
She even went so far as to explain why the “experiment” performed so poorly.
“People want to see good stories,” she explained. “It’s not necessarily that they want to see Kim Kardashian in a new movie. They want to see her in a bikini. They want to see her with Kanye. They want to see her on her show talking about her life with her sisters, but that doesn’t mean that they want to see her in a movie.”
The failed “experiment” cost Tyler and his team a whopping $11 million for production but only pulled in $48 million.
Unfortunately, having Kim Kardashian in the movie wasn’t even the worse thing he could have done.
Movie goers were left irate when Perry used HIV to punish the leading lady of the film and portrayed her in the same victimizing light his films always place on women of color.
The Washington Post explains, “Not only does he once again smack down a woman who would dare step out of her lane, but he uses HIV to punish her.”
The publication also went on to question, “Does he realize that successful women are the victims of their own ambition in nearly every one of his films?”
Veronica Miller, a write for The Grio, said it best as she explained, “Perry’s message is targeted specifically at black women – live the way a good little Christian girl should, or be eternally damned with disease.”
Perry needs to realize that in order to make an impact in the community it takes a lot more than just putting African Americans in his films; he has to be careful of how he portrays them on the big screen as well.
