Elrico Tunstall and his attorney, Chris Crawford, appeared on WCOA this morning. They discussed the non-disclosure agreement for the distribution of the movie Sacred. They also responded to critics and WEAR TV’s coverage and clarified some of the facts regarding the movie and the proposed mini-series.
We will post the transcript later this morning.
Rick Outzen: Thank you for joining us. This is an extended version of Real News with Rick Outzen. Big story this week has been what’s going on with the movie Sacred. Channel three has come out. They say that they’ve checked with NBC and Peacock and cannot find anyone at Peacock or NBC that knows about the movie being there or the series that they’re beginning to film for. We’ve got Elrico Tunstall and his producer, and we’ve got Chris Crawford attorney here and to answer questions and tell us what’s going on. Elrico, what’s the story?
Elrico Tunstall: Man, it is just a lot going on. It’s been kind of overwhelming and it’s just hard for me to talk about. I brought Chris with me because like I said, it’s just been overwhelming for me, man. Just the negativity that’s come at me and everything to tear down that I worked so hard to build. It’s just mentally just been shaking me up. So I said I’ll let Chris do most of the talking, man, but I’m just hurting. It’s real hurtful to me and my family.
Rick Outzen: So Chris, so what is the relationship with Sacred and Peacock and is there a deal for Sacred to go on the Peacock Network?
Chris Crawford: So I think it’s important that we talk about the two different projects kind of in separate worlds. The Sacred movie is produced. There was a real cast, there was a real cameras that came and did it. It’s all done. It’s essentially in the can. There was a script, it’s all real. They did a premiere during the Foo Foo Fest.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Chris Crawford: So with that actual production, a distributor who is on the same contract for the series is doing their best to place it with Peacock. Peacock has taken an interest in African American produced movies, and we believe with 100% certainty that the movie will be on Peacock. Can I sit here today and give you the date certain? I can’t. That’s up to Peacock. But from everything that we’ve heard it, the movie will be on Peacock. The issue is WEAR has somewhat muddied the waters between the movie, which is 100% real, and this series, which production is just beginning. We had an open casting call roughly a week ago, two weeks ago. So that’s the story. The story’s very basic. Movie’s going to be on Peacock. The production company made a business decision to take the plot from the movie and make a series with the hope that that will also be on Peacock. The distributor that we have for the movie is the same one that we have for the series, and they are in the discussion with Peacock.
Rick Outzen: Okay. And you’ve seen the agreement. You have the agreement.
Chris Crawford: I’ll pull it out right now.
Rick Outzen: Okay, let’s do it. Now, Elrico, do you think you jumped the gun and all the talk about Peacock so early?
Elrico Tunstall: Well, no, not really because the deal with the movie being on Peacock is done. That is in place. It’s just the fact that it takes 90 days to actually be streamed on a platform, and I really feel like that is the problem that we’re running into. So yeah, I would say with the 90 days people expected to go on there the next day. That’s what we’re running into.
Rick Outzen: Now the other issue with this, the agreement with the distributor is there’s a non-disclosure agreement, right?
Chris Crawford: Yeah. So I have a folder from my office. I’m looking at it right now. You can see the logo.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Chris Crawford: What I did is I actually had the distribution agreement up first. I switched it around. You can see the non-disclosure, okay?
Rick Outzen: Right, right.
Chris Crawford: Okay, I’ll show you the date. You can see it. November 15th, 2022, right?
Rick Outzen: Right.
Chris Crawford: This agreement, this non-disclosure agreement is in play right now. So let me just be fair. There are times that my client will have a non-disclosure agreement with another party, and what they’re agreeing to not disclose is really not that big of a deal. We can work with the other party and bring things out that needs to be discussed, okay? The problem is, I spoke with the distributor on the phone. We had a three-way call, and what the distributor said is, we don’t want WEAR calling us and harassing us, right? So this is a thing where I’m there at the WEAR office and saying, “I’m not going to give this to you. We have an agreement that says we shouldn’t, but even more. So I know what you guys are going to do. You’re going to start calling and harassing.”
Let’s just be honest about what’s going on here. We were at WEAR’s office at roughly 4:00 yesterday, and we were there for about 45 minutes. And to say that the interview that they did with Elrico was peaceful, amicable, helpful, is completely contrary to what happened. Here’s little snippets of what they said. They said, “Well, Elrico, we’ve had hundreds of people,” and this is me summarizing, all right? “We’ve had hundreds of people that have called and said that you don’t have a legitimate business.” What kind of interview is that? That’s like saying, “Hey, we’ve had people that call all the time and say, you’re a bad guy. We’re not going to tell you who they are. We’re not going to tell you what exactly they said.” That that’s how the interview went.
We thought we were there to answer questions about the distribution agreement, which that was the only reason I was hired, was to look at the agreement, give them an opinion of whether or not they could disclose it, and then talk about how the agreement really works. That’s not what happened. They’re calling him a fraudster. And what is upsetting to me is these so-called experts that they called one of these individuals was a local, I don’t know, I’ve never heard of the guy, but it was a film guy and he said, “For sure it is more expensive to film things in Pensacola than Mobile, Miami, New Orleans,” which that is 100% true.
What we had, what the news didn’t say is we have a war veteran who took his GI bill, went and got educated in the film production industry and filmed a movie in Pensacola out of his own pocket and with the partners that he had. No one’s given him a clap on the back. No one’s saying, “You know what? Good job that you stayed here local and you tried to use the best you could with local talent and local people.” That’s what’s upsetting to me, and I thought, this was how naive I was,
Rick, I thought we were going to go to WEAR and we’re going to have this open discussion. They want the heat at this point. They want the smoke. That’s what’s going on. For whatever reasons this is personal between an individual at WEAR and Mr. Elrico.
Rick Outzen: So who we have in the studio, we have Chris Crawford attorney, he’s representing Elrico Tunstall. We’re talking about the movie and the possible TV series Sacred. Let’s back up just a little bit, and it came in the very beginning of the discussion is we’re talking about two different projects and they’ve kind of got conflated into one. The movie is completed. There is a distribution deal with a distributor that has committed to getting it on Peacock. There is not a deal for the TV series.
Chris Crawford: There is not 100% deal guaranteed right now.
So anybody who’s in this industry will always say there will never be a deal when the product is not even finished. I mean that’s logical. It would be nonsense to believe otherwise. So last night, what WEAR tried to tell us and what they asked me is, “Don’t you think people were defrauded into showing up for this casting believing that these people are going to be on Peacock?” Well, anybody who has ever been to an open casting before they think that they’re going to be on HBO, or NBC or ABC before they ever got casted. That’s like me going to Tom Thumb with a $25 million lottery, not winning and saying, “Well, I thought I was going to get it. What do you mean?” It was nonsensical for me to think that people are defrauded because there’s not a guaranteed deal with Peacock for the series.
Rick Outzen: Now, the other thing that’s come up is that people, that it was pay to play, that people paid. If they paid to get acting classes, then that was a ticket to be in cast.
Chris Crawford: But this is one of these things, again, where it’s an anonymous call. They’ll never tell us who this individual was, but for sure there were at least, let’s just say 500 people at this casting. Let’s ask them. I would love for anybody to call my office, call your office and say that they were told the only way they could be casted on this production is if they pay.
Rick Outzen: Now you’ve been doing acting classes before though, right Elrico?
Elrico Tunstall: Yes. I’m on my 17th one now. Been doing it for a long time, man. And I mean, it is not like I just started yesterday. I started this a long time ago. So it wasn’t just because of the movie or the pending series. I’ve been doing it way back. So I’m 17 classes in now.
Rick Outzen: So in looking at the, we’ve got Elrico Tunstall, we’ve got Chris Crawford here. Chris, in looking at, and you’ve shown me the agreement, I see the non-disclosure, I see date on it. The deal with the distributor, which is what? What’s the commitment on the distributor’s part?
Chris Crawford: I love that question because now I get to talk about what I was actually hired to look at. So the deal with the distributor for the series is what they call a shop around deal. So if there’s a great story that happened in Pensacola, there has been many high profile criminal cases that I’m involved in shop around deals. Okay. So how it works is some distributor who takes a liking to the story will sign an agreement where they have the exclusive right to do different things, to either sell it, to produce it, to market it, to do all these things. Sometimes they get paid up front, majority of time they get paid once it is sold to somebody else from the royalties at a certain percentage. That’s what we have here. It’s a contingency contract for the distributor to land the project with somebody.
So you have to imagine the distributor has a financial interest themselves. They don’t get paid unless the project lands with somebody. And the distributor, to be very honest, I would say specializes in African American produced content. They have relationships with Peacock that has taken an interest in African American content. You could go on Peacock and you could search for content made by African American producers.
They have a relationship with Peacock. That’s why we feel very hopeful that the series, okay, the series would be on Peacock, but they also have a relationship with Pluto, Prime, Breezy with many other streaming content providers. Right now, everybody needs content. YouTube needs content. Everybody needs content. So these actors, the story WEAR wants to tell is these potential actors were defrauded. Well, look, there’s actors in Hollywood that think that they have deals with HBO and the moment’s notice they don’t, right? Let’s just be straight. Matt Damon didn’t show up for Sacred. Tom Cruise didn’t show up for Sacred. You had an open casting call, I’m speaking to Elrico.
Elrico Tunstall: Yeah.
Chris Crawford: You had an open casting call in Pensacola because you wanted people in Pensacola to be the talent. Is that correct?
Elrico Tunstall: Exactly. Correct. Correct.
Chris Crawford: Why are we not petting him on the back and saying, “Good for you, staying in Pensacola?”
Rick Outzen: So the deal with the distributor is what’s the commitment to Peacock there?
Chris Crawford: Oh, I’m sorry.
Rick Outzen: No. It’s okay. You worked with me long enough. I’m going to stay on the question.
Chris Crawford: I got it. I’ll tell you, I’m fired up. So yeah, it’s a two year shop around deal for the series. The distributor has two years to land the series with a streaming service and then they are to get paid for. They are working with Peacock, but they don’t have anything to fully sell yet. The movie had a sizzle trailer that you can see on the website, and that’s one of the things that helped land the movie deal with Peacock. So we need to produce the content before we can get a final answer.
Rick Outzen: But we have the content on the movie.
Chris Crawford: 100%.
Rick Outzen: And that’s going to come on Peacock or we still-
Elrico Tunstall: Yes. 100%, yes.
Chris Crawford: That’s going to come on Peacock.
Rick Outzen: Okay.
Chris Crawford: And I’ll tell you what, Rick, if you don’t mind.
Rick Outzen: No.
Chris Crawford: Because like I said, I’m fired up. When that does come on Peacock, let’s just say it’s February, late February, early March, mid March, whenever, when it does come on Peacock, I want a personal apology from Tanner Stewart at WEAR because he is insinuated that this is nothing but an illegitimate fraudster type business.
Rick Outzen: Well, time will tell. The clock is running, so we’ll see what happens. I’ve seen the agreement folks. There is there, there a non-disclosure. So now the piece we know is the movie is coming on, the deals there. What we don’t know is the series, and that’s sort of on the … that’s you’re willing to get ahead and invest your money on that on the front end.
Elrico Tunstall: Exactly.
Rick Outzen: All right. You can see some of the confusion out there and you’ve created some of that confusion, Elrico, you know.
Chris Crawford: As his lawyer, 100%.
Rick Outzen:
All right, guys, thank y’all for coming in. Hopefully this will clarify. We’ll create a podcast. We’ll get it out for everybody to listen to. But thank y’all for coming out.
Chris Crawford: Do you mind if I have one last thing?
Rick Outzen: Sure.
Chris Crawford: Thank you. You know lawyers, we got to have that last.
Rick Outzen: That’s right.
Chris Crawford: I want people in Pensacola to be involved with this. I don’t want the story that WEAR is trying to push for whatever reason, to have a negative impact. I want this to be a story of Pensacola working with the community to do something good. Because like I said, he could have gone anywhere else.
Rick Outzen: All right guys, thank y’all for coming in.
Chris Crawford: Thank you.
Elrico Tunstall: Thank you.