Its never a good thing when life time stories are made what the people want to see is not what the person wants to show. Apart from this there is other complications. Which is exactly what happened here. Former NHL star Theo Fleury has filed a lawsuit against the co-author of his autobiography who is claiming to own half the rights to his life story, stalling the production of a Hollywood movie until the matter is settled in court, CBC News has learned. The Stanley Cup- and Olympic gold medal-winning right winger wrote Playing with Fire alongside Kirstie McLellan Day in October 2009.
The book details sexual abuse Fleury suffered at the hands of his former junior hockey coach Graham James and led to Fleury’s post-hockey career of speaking out about trauma, addiction and mental health. James was sentenced to more than five years in prison for repeated sexual assaults against ex-NHL players Fleury, Sheldon Kennedy and three other players he coached in junior hockey in the 1980s and 1990s.
A script for the movie titled Fleury is complete and, after travelling back and forth to California for the last four years, the former Calgary Flames player says three California production companies are ready to move forward but can’t because Day and her company, Pyramid Productions, are claiming ownership over the story.
Fleury quoted “We’re this close to making it happen, I’ll give [Day] lots of credit for the book; she did an amazing job of putting it in my voice and getting all the things I wanted to get out. We’ve built a really good thing and obviously this person was a part of it at the beginning but to think that they can … keep dipping their hand into the wishing well and pull out whatever they want, says a lot about [her].”
