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Drake and LeBron James will have to do some explaining in court. They are being sued for stealing the rights to the Black Ice movie.
As per The New York Post the musician and athlete are being accused of finessing some individuals out of the deal for the film. Billy Hunter, the longtime NBA Players Association and ex-federal prosecutor, says that Drizzy and Bron do not have the legal right to produce the movie that is based on the book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895 to 1925. “While the defendants LeBron James, Drake and Maverick Carter [LeBron’s business partner] are internationally known and renowned in their respective fields of basketball and music, it does not afford them the right to steal another’s intellectual property,” the suit reads.
The authors of the work George Robert Fosty and Darril Fosty are also listed as defendants as he claims the duo took him out of the situation by entertaining inquiries from other production companies. To back up the allegation he states the authors were paid $265,000 for exclusive rights. “I don’t think they believed the property rights would be litigated. They thought I would go away. They gambled” Hunted told The New York Post in an exclusive statement. “The Dreamcrew Defendants’ and Uninterrupted Defendants’ acts were and are intentional and carried out for the purpose of disrupting Plaintiff’s legal rights. Each of the Dreamcrew Defendants and Uninterrupted Defendants acted with malice as demonstrated by the inflated price they paid for the duplicate option,” the Hunter suit claims.
In 1895, The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes was formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was Twenty-five years before the Negro Baseball Leauges in the United States, and twenty-two years before the birth of the National Hockey League. The Colored League would emerge as a premier force in Canadian hockey and supply the resilience necessary to preserve a unique culture which exists to this day. Unfortunately their contributions were conveniently ignored, or simply stolen, as white teams and hockey officials, influenced by the black league, copied elements of the black style or sought to take self-credit for black hockey innovations. Black Ice is the first written record of the Colored Hockey League in the Maritimes.
James, Drake and the Fostys have not responded to the matter.