Some people may have heard of the 'Oh Marbella' movie... Marbella Films LTD produced this Picture back in 2003 and managed to screen the film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 at which a certain Warren Goldberg made an offer to theatrically distribute the film in the UK with a promise of an advance payment and overages which would see the films investors begin to recoup...
The Producers took the film off the UK market and waited 9 months only to find that no deal was ever to be authenticated and Warren's interest or intent had dissipated. We went back to the drawing board and a year later managed to secure a DVD deal with Prism Leisure in the UK (a much smaller deal). They took the film on, released it in failed on various accounts to report the sales to us and eventually went into administration (failing to ever pay us the distribution revenues of the DVD sales to date)...
Then, as luck would have it, the Producers discover that prior to going into Administration, Prism did a library sale to a so called Realman LTD - Warren Goldberg's company! So, several years later, the distributor who messed the Producers around ended up with the UK rights after all, and at little to no cost to himself and no gain to the Producers/Investors whatsoever and little the Producers could do to stop Warren from exploiting the film rights.
The deal between Prism Leisure and Realman LTD entailed adhering to the terms stipulated in the Oh Marbella/Prism Leisure agreement - which was for the Producers to be paid 25% of the Wholesale price of every unit/dvd sold.
After several conversations with Warren, confirming that he would make an effort to release the film with a fresh approach and 'naturally' adhere to the previous sales agreement as he is legally obligated to do, Oh Marbella is re released on the UK market place - but at Warren's classically ultra low budget rate of under 1 per DVD (Warren being in the bulk DVD sales business).
Several months later, the producers of the film finally get a sales report from Boulevard Entertainment AKA Realman LTD stating over 20,000 units to have been sold, and expecting 25% of the wholesale price, being a ridiculous 2,500 only.
However, even at that level, this was too high a price for Warren to pay for exploiting the film rights to such an extent that there is never to be a re sale of the title after bashing the film out at under 1 per DVD.
Here's what Warren tried to do, pay the producers a much reduced 2.5% of Wholesale instead of 25% by doing a 'secret' agreement internally between another one of his companies and having that company charge an additional cost bringing the Producers share down 100% to 2.5% instead of 25%. Cheeky, very cheeky, but apparently fair in Warren's eyes.
Well, the producers pursued things legally, and obviously have a solid case... Nevertheless, seeing the legal entity in the UK for the film was no longer operational and the controlling rights had been allocated to a company outside of the UK, Warren then argued that if the Producer were to have any case and fight it out, then he would expect the Producers to allocate 50k in escrow for costs to be incurred by the parties... A cost the Producers weren't in a position to afford and by that stage, a reward not worth the bother, despite the principle in the matter. This was the result of weeks of argument, by which the Producers were tired.
As it stands, the producers incurred another 5k in expenses and Warren just ignored it all... Which left the producers with 2 options - either fight this ridiculous case in court for a measly 2.5k and costs and damages or let it slide. So far, the money to be gained isn't worth the time and aggravation - So, Warren wins this battle - however, important that people know, producers, filmmakers, any business who may have to deal with this individual, that the Producers have learned thru this experience, that he is not an honest businessman, he is exploiting film rights fraudulently and this is just another reason and example why the film business is often considered a dishonest business and makes life difficult.
As a matter of personal opinion, do not trust Warren Goldberg, do not trust his paperwork - people of this nature most likely achieve small success by defrauding individuals, inexperienced filmmakers and small businesses to the extent that they simply give up. Well, principle denotes, that, at the very least, the truth should be told.
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