Movie Producer Sues Universal

One of Hollywood’s biggest movie producers sued Universal Studios for fraud Wednesday, alleging that he was cheated out of money on the Kevin Spacey movie “K-Pax” because Universal botched the foreign distribution of the film.

Lawrence Gordon, whose films include “Die Hard” and “Field of Dreams,” claimed in Los Angeles Superior Court that Universal’s decision to involve a German tax shelter in the financing of “K-Pax” meant that the movie had an incompetent foreign distributor, “insuring that ‘K-Pax’ would not be properly exploited in the international film market.” Gordon alleges that the decision cost him millions of dollars because his pay was tied to the film’s performance worldwide.

A Universal spokeswoman said the studio does not comment on pending litigation.

German money once fueled many Hollywood projects, but began to dry up when the stock prices of German media firms fell and the German government soured on the tax breaks that made the deals attractive.