Faizon Love has filed a lawsuit against Universal Studios. He alleged that the studio act of removing him from the international poster from the 2009 comedy ‘Couples Retreat’ is race discrimination. The suit also accuses Universal of fraud, breach of contract, and violation of California’s fair employment act and civil rights law.
Faizon in a statement said, “This film was a big money-maker for Universal, but instead of honouring my work and my contract, the studio chose to render me invisible to billions of moviegoers.”
The reason why Faizon filed the suit 11years later is that he only recently realized that the poster doesn’t have him and his Black co-star Kali Hawk on it still remains prevalent abroad and among bilingual audiences and neither were their names weren’t even mentioned in the poster.
He said he received an apologetic call from producer Scott Stuber after discovering that he was removed from the poster for the film’s international release. He also claims he was approached by Adam Fogelson, Universal chairman at the time, about future TV and film roles.
The Lawsuit states, “What Universal Studios had initially portrayed to Mr Love as an unintentional act of oversight and carelessness was, we now know an intentional act of disparate and discriminatory treatment by Universal Studios and the remaining Defendants.”
Love states Universal Studios didn’t follow up on their alleged promises which were to include him in future film and TV opportunities and in fact, his career never took off since the incident.
