News/Commentary

‘The Blind Side’ producers blow up Michael Oher’s claims about the Tuohy family

August 27, 2023 | | Print Article

The production company that reportedly financed “The Blind Side” has revealed how much the Tuohy family earned from the film, and surprise, surprise, it doesn’t remotely match what Michael Oher claimed they made.

Speaking with People magazine, Alcon Entertainment co-founders and co-CEOs Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove said that the Tuohy family were paid $767,000 in payments.

In addition to specifying the exact dollar amount, the duo also defended the film from the “many mischaracterizations and uninformed opinions” that have emerged ever since Oher accused the Tuohy family of taking advantage of/exploiting him.

As previously reported, Oher has sued the Tuohy family claiming they’d never adopted him — and that they’d instead put him in a conservatorship so they could profit off his name and cheat him out of the fortune made from “The Blind Side.”

He specifically claims he thought he was adopted but never was. Instead, he was tricked into signing a conservatorship at 18 that should have expired at 25 but never did. The conservatorship in turn allegedly allowed his adoptive family to rake in millions on the movie about his life and he never saw any of that money.

But according to Johnson and Kosove, the deal that was made “was consistent with the marketplace at that time for the rights of relatively unknown individuals.”

“Therefore, it did not include significant payouts in the event of the film’s success. As a result, the notion that the Tuohys were paid millions of dollars by Alcon to the detriment of Michael Oher is false,” they said.

Alcon Entertainment also responded to a claim in Oher’s lawsuit that “Sean Tuohy amended the agreement for Oher’s life story in 2010 without his knowledge, after which the [Tuohys’ Making It Happen] foundation received $200,000 from Alcon Entertainment.”

On Thursday the company said that it’d “offered to donate an equal amount to a charity of Mr. Oher’s choosing, which he declined.”

Continuing their statement to People magazine, Johnson and Kosove also defended the core message of “The Blind Side.”

“In the story of ‘The Blind Side,” we saw the better angels of human nature. We saw it in the Tuohy’s wonderful acts of kindness toward Michael Oher. However, more importantly, we saw it in the extraordinary courage that Michael Oher demonstrated in accepting the Tuohys’ generosity not as a handout, or as his saviors, but as a way through which he could improve his own life,” they said.

They added that Oher’s “academic accomplishments and athletic achievements demonstrate this” as well.

“His raising of his own children now, who shall know a life of possibility the likes of which Michael never knew as a child, is the ultimate testament to Michael’s own strength and courage. In both of those regards, ‘The Blind Side’ is verifiably authentic and will never be a lie or fake, regardless of the familial ups and downs that have occurred subsequent to the film,” they continued.

Oher evidently disagrees.

“While the movie did a great job of raising awareness about teens in foster care who might succeed if given a loving family and a chance, it did not do a good job of accurately painting my life,” he wrote in his new book, “When Your Back’s Against the Wall: Fame, Football, and Lessons Learned through a Lifetime of Adversity.”

While the Tuohy has faced the bulk of the backlash ever since Oher filed his suit, some of the backlash has been directed his way by, as an example, conservative commentator Jason Whitlock.

“What he’s doing to the family is despicable. He’s telling an obvious lie that he knows most of the media will be too afraid to question because he’s black,” Whitlock said earlier this month on his BlazeTV show.

“Michael Oher wants credit. I get it, I really do. He wants to be the star and hero of his own movie. Most people do. Oher lacks self-awareness, humility, and quite possibly, intelligence. Making $34 million as an average professional athlete will certainly create some delusion,” he continued.

“Michael Oher is so arrogant and delusional that he believes his natural intellect would have developed regardless of circumstances. It’s a naïve worldview. He’s still naïve,” Whitlock added.

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Vivek Saxena
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