Spın̈al Tap Lawsuit Adds Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Rob Reiner; Now Up to $400 Million

As you may recall, this past October Spın̈al Tap co-creator Harry Shearer, who portrays bassist Derrick Smalls, filed a massive $125 million lawsuit against Vivendi, the current rights holder to the movie This is Spın̈al Tap. Shearer alleged that the company “conducted blatantly unfair business practices” with regards to the film.

At the time, I noted that it was somewhat odd that the rest of the brain trust behind Spın̈al Tap — Michael McKean (a.k.a. David St. Hubbins), Christopher Guest (a.k.a. Nigel Tufnel), and director Rob Reiner (who also played ‘Marty Di Bergi’) — hadn’t joined the suit. But that now changed, according to Deadline:

“In an amended complaint filed late Tuesday in federal court, co-stars Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, director Rob Reiner plus their mutually owned Spinal Tap Productions have plugged into the fraud and breach of contract lawsuit. The addition of the actors, helmer and their now-dissolved joint venture — which was supposed to see almost half of net receipts from the pic under a 1982 agreement — cuts Vivdeni’s stance that Shearer lacked proper standing in his suit of October 17, 2016. And now the band is all back together.”

The suit now alleges that Vivendi owe Shearer and company a whopping $400 million… or possibly more: basically, they wanna see all of Vivendi’s books, ’cause they think there’s some shady accounting going on.

I still suspect this will get settled out of court; if Vivendi have to share any “creative accounting” with a court, not only could they end up owing the Spın̈al Tappers money, but it could turn out they owe other people money, too. But least Shearer, Reiner, Guest and McKean will get richer.