Stars Of Bones Sue Fox For Over $100m For Being 'Cheated' Out Of Profits

Stars of long-running TV show ‘Bones’ David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel are suing Fox over claims they’ve been 'cheated’ out of millions of dollars.

Along with the show’s executive producer Kathleen Reichs, they say they’re owed 'tens of millions’ of dollars which were contractually agreed to be paid to them from profits.

The trio is accusing the channel of underpaying them through accounting tricks and 'vertical integration’, where the show is sold and broadcast an affiliate channel, but at a discounted rate.

The crime procedural, which has run over 11 seasons and 220 episodes, is the longest-running show in Fox’s history, having aired its first episode in 2005.

Reichs, the forensic anthropologist who wrote the Temperance Brennan series of books that the series is based on, says that she was promised five percent of the show’s profits, while Boreanaz and Deschanel, sister of Zooey Deschanel who plays Brennan in the series, say they were due to receive three percent each.

Despite this, they have received nothing, and after exercising 'audit rights’ over Fox, say that they 'were being cheated out of more than $100 million in gross revenues and being overcharged many additional millions of dollars in alleged expenses’.

The show’s producer Barry Josephson also filed a similar case against Fox last week.

The suit filed by Deschanel and Boreanaz makes mention of Fox’s previous history of litigation over the profits from shows including ’M*A*S*H’, 'The X-Files’, 'NYPD Blue’ and 'Cops’.

David Duchovny sued Fox in 1999, also claiming that he was cheated out of millions of dollars of profits from 'The X-Files’.

Fox has so far declined to comment on this latest suit.

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Image credit: Fox