Two producers of The Real Housewives of Orange County are suing the show's creator and network for $5 million, claiming they were wrongly cut from Bravo's original Real Housewives franchise show and the series profits that came with it.
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Patrick Moses and Kevin Kaufman allege Scott Dunlop developed and sold the series with them and then conspired with Bravo to remove them so Dunlop could take over the whole production, according to the complaint filed in New York Supreme Court. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news Monday.
Moses and Kaufman allege they had the original idea for a reality show based on the goings on behind the gates of Coto de Caza. Kaufman says it came to him while visiting his then-friend Dunlop, who resided in Coto de Caza. Dunlop by then saw entertainment value in the upscale neighborhood as well, but the complaint claims he envisioned a satirical community theater-type program while Kaufman and Moses, a TV producer who worked with Kaufman's company Kaufman Films, saw a reality show.
The trio went on to form a production agreement that stipulated they split 'all fees, profits and revenues equally and in 2005 sold the show to Bravo, according to the complaint, which adds it was shortly after The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered in 2006 that Dunlop started the process to cut out his partners.
No comment yet from Bravo, their lawyers or Dunlop, who you'd think at this point could find a spare $5 million between his Coto de Caza sofa cushions.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.