November 9th 2023.
Michael Oher, the subject of the 2009 film The Blind Side, has been in an ongoing dispute with his adoptive parents, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, regarding money. According to ESPN, Oher allegedly received more than $138,000 from the Tuohys, despite their claims that he never profited from his story.
The Tuohy family's lawyer has stated that the book and movie proceeds were to be split five ways. The couple also believes that due to spending "tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to support Mr. Oher during his high school and college years," they did not cheat him out of anything that was owed. The sum amount also represents money made from the book of the same title, which predates the movie’s release.
The film grossed over $300 million at the box office, of which the Tuohys were paid $432,000 by Twentieth Century Fox, Alcon Film Fund, and Left Tackle Pictures. The money paid to Oher was reportedly split up over ten payments between January 2007 and April 2023.
In August, Oher filed a petition to end a conservatorship he alleges the Tuohys tricked him into signing a mere three months after his 18th birthday. In his book, When Your Back’s Against The Wall, Oher claims that the film about his life ultimately hurt his football career as well as upended the fantasy of family dreamed up by the Tuohys. He wrote, “There has been so much created from The Blind Side that I am grateful for, which is why you might find it as a shock that the experience surrounding the story has also been a large source of some of my deepest hurt and pain over the past 14 years.”
A lawyer from the family would later clarify that the family’s use of the word “adoption” was meant to be “in the colloquial sense,” according to ESPN. It seems as though Michael Oher and the Tuohys are still in a heated dispute over the money made from The Blind Side. Oher believes that he was not fairly compensated for his story while the Tuohys maintain that they paid Oher the money they agreed upon.
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