Paris, December 1, 2016

 

 

Vivendi and Harry Shearer

 
The French newspaper “Le Monde”, dated Friday, December 2, 2016, has devoted nearly a page to a lawsuit from a certain Harry Shearer against Vivendi and its subsidiaries StudioCanal and Universal Music Group, alleging “non-perceived rights and damages”.

Vivendi wishes to state that the case is about the 1984 movie This is Spinal Tap with a USD 2.25 million budget. The exploitation of this movie, which generated a total of around USD 15 million in revenues, has never been contested, and has never resulted in any request for explanation from Harry Shearer.

Vivendi also wishes to state that it has never received until now any subpoena from Harry Shearer or his representatives, either in the United States or elsewhere. The Group is therefore surprised by this disproportionate press campaign and reserves its rights in this case. The film, made over 30 years ago, has never been mentioned since.

 

About Vivendi

Vivendi is an integrated media and content group. The company operates businesses throughout the media value chain, from talent discovery to the creation, production and distribution of content. The main subsidiaries of Vivendi comprise Canal+ Group and Universal Music Group. Canal+ Group is the leading pay-TV operator in France, and also serves markets in Africa, Poland and Vietnam. Canal+ Group operations also include Studiocanal, a leading European player in production, sales and distribution of film and TV series. Universal Music Group is the world leader in recorded music, music publishing and merchandising, with more than 50 labels covering all genres. A separate division, Vivendi Village, brings together Vivendi Ticketing (ticketing in the UK, the U.S and France), MyBestPro (experts counseling), Watchever (subscription video-on-demand), Radionomy (digital radio), Olympia Production, the L’Olympia and the Theâtre de L‘Oeuvre venues in Paris and the CanalOlympia venues in Africa. With 3.5 billion videos viewed each month, Dailymotion is one of the biggest video content aggregation and distribution platforms in the world. Gameloft is a worldwide leading video games on mobile, with 2 million games downloaded per day.

www.vivendi.comwww.cultureswithvivendi.com