The star, Lena Headey, the lead actress of the exceptional series “Game of Thrones”, participated in the shooting of “Thor: Love and Thunder” but does not appear in the final cut. A role for which his ex-agency representation claims him, among other things, 500 000 dollars of commission.
The star of “Game of Thrones”, Lena Headey, a British actress who reached the status of icon with her role of Cersei Lannister in the series Game of Thrones, faces a complex situation. Active on the small and big screen since 1992, she was seen in Zack Snyder’s film 300 and on television as Sarah Connor in the series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in 2008 and 2009.
By integrating “Game of Thrones”, Lena Headey enters a new dimension thanks to her dazzling presence in 62 episodes of the phenomenon Game of Thrones, from 2011. She has become a familiar face and a global celebrity, she is in high demand. While she was supposed to appear in the Marvel blockbuster Thor: Love and Thunder, she was finally not retained in the final cut. Whether she appears or not, it does not change anything – or not much – to the fact that she was paid for her work, and this is where things get complicated.
It is a fact that her former agency Troika – which became YMU in 2018, and which Lena Headey left in 2020 – has filed a complaint about a breach of contract and nonpayment of commissions due, including a 7% commission on her fee for Thor: Love and Thunder, which alone represents 500,000 dollars.
This company YMU (ex-Troika) was co-founded in 2005 by Michael Duff, an agent of Lena Headey 2005. An association that ended in 2020, but for Michael Duff and the YMU agency, Lena Headey still owes them commissions: 500,000 dollars for Thor: Love and Thunder, 300,000 dollars for her leading role in the film 9 Bullets, and 650,000 dollars for the Showtime series Rita. That is to say, a total approaching the 1.5 million dollars, that the agency asks him today.
There are no concrete elements but we can imagine that there are probably damages and/or penalties for delay in addition to the principal. Indeed, if according to information from Variety, the actress owes the agency 7% of its earnings, it would raise his fee for Love and Thunder to about 7 million dollars. An extraordinarily high sum for a role finally cut in the editing …
Anyway, Lena Headey is in deep disagreement with the request of the agency. She indeed assures that she never signed anything with Duff or the Troika agency and that her collaboration with Duff was based on a purely oral agreement since the late 90s. In the documents disclosed by the various parties involved in the complaint, Lena Headey also assures that the Troika agency had no part in her participation in Thor: Love and Thunder, and that she was approached directly by the director Taika Waititi. The same is true for 9 Bullets. And regarding the series Rita, which has not been confirmed after the production of the pilot episode, the actress says she was paid 325,000 dollars and has already paid the corresponding commission (22,750 dollars) to the agency.
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