The production company behind “The Morning Show,” Always Smiling Productions has $125 million in cast coverage, plus more for imminent peril to their shooting location. But the Apple+ series is now finding it difficult to get any of that money over the COVID-19 delay to the production of Season 2. According to a new lawsuit filed in California federal court, Chubb National Insurance Company won’t pay up.
Eriq Gardner for The Hollywood Reporter:
In March 2020, “The Morning Show” had filmed 13 days of its follow-up season when it decided to suspend in the face of the developing pandemic.
Chubb has agreed to pay $1 million under the producer’s civil authority coverage (meaning, government orders that interfere with the use of facilities), but is taking a harder line with the bigger-ticket items. For example, the cast policy covers “death, injury, sickness, kidnap, or compulsion by physical force or threat of physical force,” and Chubb says nothing like that has happened.
Always Smiling Productions, the plaintiff, asserts that Chubb is taking this position to save hundreds of millions. The production vehicle calculates its own running tab at $44 million…
Thus far, insurers have been wildly successful in court with such arguments. According to Penn Law’s COVID Coverage Litigation Tracker, there have been almost 2,000 lawsuits against insurers since March 2020. And of the 371 cases in federal court that have heard fully briefed dismissal motions, a whopping 93 percent of them have been dismissed.
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck with that, but, regardless of the outcome, keep always smiling!
Although I actually like what I’ve seen so far from Apple, I remember saying that getting into the “production” business would be a Pandora’s box.
The plaintiff is Always Smiling.