Michael Oher may not have been blindsided from profiting off “The Blind Side,” after all, according to new court documents.
Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, whom the retired NFL star accused of cheating him out of proceeds from the 2009 blockbuster movie, have presented proof that he was actually paid more than $138,000 in profits.
In sworn documents filed in a Tennessee court on Wednesday, the couple allegedly doled out 10 separate installment payments between June 2007 and April 2023 totaling $138,311.01. The financial accounting was ordered by a Shelby County probate court judge, ESPN reported.
Copies of tax forms also indicated that the Tuohys were paid more than $432,000 between 2007 and 2021 by Twentieth Century Fox and production companies Alcon Film Fund and Left Tackle Pictures. The Oscar winning film, starring Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw and Quinton Aaron, centered on a wealthy white family who takes in a Black foster child and steers him to football stardom, and was marketed as based on a true story.
Directed by John Lee Hancock, the movie grossed over $300 million at the box office.
On Aug. 14, Oher alleged that the Tuohys did not adopt him as the film portrays, but instead placed him under a conservatorship after he turned 18, giving themselves legal authority to make business deals in his name.
In their legal filing this week, the couple also included a ledger listing payments made to Oher, as well as copies of checks and bank statements showing deposits made to a bank account in one of his children’s names.
The payments represent Oher’s share of the profits made from the movie and the book that preceded it, according to the Tuohys’ legal team.
“By agreement between the family members including Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, their children SJ and Collins as well as Michael Oher, the book and movie proceeds were to be split five ways,” the attorneys stated.
They added that the couple “spent tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to support Mr. Oher during his high school and college years.”
He and his legal reps did not immediately comment.
