Sharon Stone Sues Bob Yari Over Aborted Cuba Trip To Shoot Hemingway Biopic

 

Deadline.com

The actress claims the director-producer wanted her to falsify documents and turn down other jobs to shoot Papa in Cuba in late 2012. Sharon Stone names Bob Yari and his production companies Magenta Light Productions and Sixth Floor Literary Properties as defendants in a lawsuit filed today in LA Superior Court. The suit claims that Yari and his companies “lied to [Stone] and attempted to lure her into being a participant in their fraudulent scheme to avoid the legal licensing requirements of the United States government.” It also alleges that she was induced “to forego other projects and commit to making [Papa] based on Yari’s false representation that Defendants had obtained the necessary documentation to shoot the Picture in Cuba and to enable Ms. Stone to travel to Cuba to render acting services.”

Stone claims she was advised to “check a box on her license application indicating that she was going to Cuba for a ‘cultural endeavor’ rather than” for an acting job. Had she done so, she says, she “would have subjected herself to a host of potential criminal liabilities and placed her passport privileges in jeopardy.” The actress never made the trip to play Ernest Hemingway’s last wife, Mary, and she says the role was recast. Marty Singer and Michael Holtz of Lavely & Singer are representing Stone in the suit, which seeks at least $500,000 in damages. Yari this month lost a seven-year multimillion-dollar court battle with members of the cast and crew of his Oscar-winning film Crash.