Copshop writer Kurt McLeod has settled a lawsuit against his managers accusing them of having a conflict of interest when they negotiated his deal for the movie.

Lawyers for McLeod and Zero Gravity Management founders Eric and Mark Williams on Wednesday notified the court of a deal to resolve the case. Terms of the deal werent disclosed.

The legal battle started in 2022 when McLeod sued Zero Gravity for breach of contract and fiduciary duty, among other claims, related to his compensation for co-writing the screenplay for the 2021 movie starring Gerard Butler. McLeods pay was tied to the films budget (with a cap of $125,000), which he was initially told would be between $3 million to $10 million, according to the complaint filed in 2024 in California federal court. He later learned that it settled at more than $45 million after Butler came on board. The case raised questions surrounding potential conflicts of interest managers may have when theyre also producers on a film their clients are involved in. At the heart of this lawsuit: Were McLeods managers obligated to disclose the bump in the budget and renegotiate McLeods pay, which potentially couldve decreased their own?

In Hollywood, managers, unlike agents, arent allowed to be producers on their clients titles. Still its their fiduciary duty to put the interest of their clients first.

Thats what the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found when it reversed dismissal of the suit from a federal judge. It concluded that McLeod couldve obtained additional compensation had he known about the increase in the budget. The Williamses, for instance, had the option of tapping into their own producer fees, possibly netting the writer hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

There were two deals at issue in the case. In 2011, Zero Gravity and McLeod reached a two year representation agreement, which gave the his managers 15 percent of the writers earnings and the right to serve as producers on any film made from his screenplay. McLeod ultimately wrote the script for Copshop under that deal. After the representation agreement expired in 2013, McLeod struck another arrangement for the Williamses to continue serving as his managers.

In the case, the Williamses maintained that they didnt personally represent McLeod.

The legal saga also included an arbitration with the Writers Guild of America over writing credits for the film over allegationsthat Mark Williams, best known for executive producing and writing Ozark, took undue credit for co-writing the screenplay. The guild concluded that the story by credit should be McLeod and Mark Williams, while the screenplay by credit should be McLeod and Joe Carnahan, Copshops director. McLeod accused Zero Gravity of fabricating documents to credit Mark Williams as an author on the script.

A trial was scheduled to start in March.