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Tom & Rita's Big Fat Greek Lawsuit

Tue., Aug. 7, 2007 8:28 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

The little film that could may have resulted in the paycheck that never was.

Tom Hanks, wife Rita Wilson and Nia Vardalos have sued one of their fellow producers on the 2002 sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, claiming that they have yet to receive an unspecified share of the film's net profits.

According to the complaint filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by E! News, Gold Circle Films still owes the plaintiffs a percentage of the movie's theatrical, pay television, cable and home video grosses, which the defendant maintains amounted to $287 million. The film only cost about $5 million to make. (View the lawsuit.)

Industry tracker Box Office Mojo lists My Big Fat Greek Wedding's take at theaters worldwide as $369 million, however. The culture-clash comedy stars Vardalos—who was more or less discovered by Hanks and Wilson when they caught the one-woman play the film is based on—as spinster-turned-swan Toula, who gets engaged to a decidedly non-Greek English professor, played by John Corbett. Family-friendly mayhem ensues.

Vardalos, who starred in the short-lived spinoff series My Big Fat Greek Life, also penned the screenplay and earned an Oscar nomination for her efforts.

The companies that filed suit on behalf of Hanks, Wilson, Vardalos and producer Gary Goetzman state that Gold Circle "has acted willfully, maliciously and in wanton disregard of plaintiffs' rights under the agreements."

In response, Gold Circle VP Scott Niemeyer said in a statement that the suit "lacks any merit."

"Gold Circle has fully complied with its contractual obligations and has already paid plaintiffs a combined total of over $44 million in profits," he said. "Gold Circle has never thwarted the producers' audit rights."

In the meantime, while Hanks has continued to be one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, despite the fact that his most recent cinematic appearance was in the disappointing adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, Vardalos has made only one film since Wedding, the 2004 comedy Connie and Carla, which fizzled on impact.

She and Hanks are currently collaborating on the showbiz comedy A Wilderness of Monkeys, based on the novel by Laura Zigman. Vardalos, who cowrote the script, will star and Hanks is slated to direct and produce.

Hanks returns to the big screen, hopefully in better form, on Christmas Day in Charlie Wilson's War, which costars Julia Roberts (another big name who hasn't been putting in much face time lately), Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.