LogFAQs > #965285449

DAY 21

So we kick off the day with Amber's team immediately resting their case. That does not happen often, but I assume they noticed the days left and said eff it and if they had anything planned still, they didn't do it.

Which means that now, as is typical, Depp's team can do a motion to strike on Amber's counter-claim. It harms nothing to try, normally it's never granted, just like the initial motion to strike that Amber's team did to Depp's claim.

Ben Chew gave another speech, but hardly felt as impassioned. I feel like I've explained why I feel it should be dismissed, but to summarize Chew's oral argument he claimed that they didn't prove that Waldman was acting as an agent for Depp and that Heard's team couldn't name any case law to support it. He defended that the restraining order ordeal was a hoax by naming off people who didn't see any bruises so it wasn't false and therefore defamation. He did an awesome job with this honestly. Can't complain too much. Ben Chew is VERY good.

I need to say Rottenborn is actually a good lawyer too, but his case sucks. He made as good of a defense he could as possible and basically put enough doubt in to justify why the counter-claim should exist. That's all he really had to do, and he did a good job of it. He didn't really have any case law defending his position which WAS noticeable. There were a few WTF moments that aren't really worth pointing out in general (such as that all of Amber's friends corroborated her story despite them all being wildly different).

Chew gets back up and gives a really good defense again. Notable moment was "She stiffed the ACLU, which after the travesty they contributed in with this case you can't feel too bad about." ACLU burn yeeeeeah. This felt like a practice for his closing arguments honestly.

Judge upholds the counter-claim, which isn't shocking. I think this is probably the strongest case of throwing out the counter-claim that there could be, but I had a feeling she might want the jury to decide on it. I think having them decide the scope of agency is pretty nutty still, but I think the Judge has a sense for how the jury feels anyway and isn't worried. It's a high profile case, so she probably wants complete transparency and doesn't want to be fucked if it gets appeal. However, the case for the counter-claim is still really horrible and the jury wasn't buying into any of it, so it's fine.

And if the jury didn't believe it before, all of Depp's witnesses today just killed all of the supposed damages entirely. There's just nothing here for the counter-claim anymore after Johnny's rebuttal witnesses today.

So you remember when Amber said that she lost her contract for Aquaman 2 and had to fight hard to get it back and James Wan and Jason Mamoa both loved her and fought for her to come back and that her role went from a lead to a very minor role with each iteration of the script? Well, Walter Hamada, who is the president of Warner Bros.' DC movies, went ahead and testified that none of that is true and that Amber was just lying about all of it. He appeared via video deposition.

Basically, he said that it was a standard contract with an option where she would get $2 million in the next movie. He said the early development of the script was that Mera's involvement would be extremely minor from the jump and that the whole movie was built around Aquaman and Orm having a buddy comedy adventure. And he clearly stated that her compensation was not effected by anything said by Adam Waldman or the situation with Johnny Depp.

He did explain that he felt that Amber and Mamoa had no chemistry at all and they were debating not even including her at all because of it, and that they did have discussions with Mamoa where he didn't want her either. Hamada said that they made it work in the first movie and elaborated it was movie magic where they manipulated the scenes enough in post-production, but it was too much trouble. She was never released from her contract. She just had her option picked up. These came out of Elaine's questions, and even this guy seemed like he wanted to be doing anything other than listening to Elaine.

"It's like what makes a movie star a movie star? You know it when you see it, and the chemistry wasn't there."

Absolutely obliterated Amber.

Elaine brought up that once James Wan texted Amber during a test screening telling her that they loved her in that. That's the most positive thing they could drag out of this guy about Amber's role. And that's it. Anything with the Johnny situation had absolutely nothing to do with Amber's role and contract with Aquaman 2.

Elaine also had a hilarious moment where she said "How do you fabricate Aquaman?" And Hamada was just so confused and asked her to clarify. Does Elaine know that Jason Mamoa cannot actually breathe underwater?

Next was Johnny's treating physician for his hand in a remote testimony. Not the guy who did the initial surgery, but the guy who took care of him when he got back and his hand was recovering. There wasn't much here, but he said his cast would have made it impossible to grab with that hand and that he never saw any bruises on his hand or damage to his soft cast which would have been very noticeable if he were punching people with it. Rottenborn got him to say that throwing bullshit on the ground and making a mess would be possible for him to do with his soft cast on.

Next up is my favorite, Richard Marks who is the guy who testified doing a million deals in Hollywood including a little thing you may have heard of called Star Wars and he was here live. The jury loved this guy. The man came on here and in seconds just immediately said that Amber's Hollywood Expert from yesterday didn't have any experience making deals, she's slick and smooth but doesn't know anything and that her assessment of damage was built on nothing and wildly speculative.

He explained what options are in a contract. Amber had an option for Aquaman 2. WB was never obligated or beholden to a contract with her and could have just said "See ya" without violating her contract. And if they want to accept the option, it's more about give and take, like for Mamoa he had negotiated a bigger contract for his option, but he had to agree that he'd be in more movies should WB want him to be.

The rest is just a takedown of Kathryn Arnold, Amber's expert. He literally just calls her a professional expert, which I think anyone with a brain knew. She's an expert at speaking bullshit but not an expert at anything else. Anything you guys saw that she said that seemed absolutely insane, Richard Marks had you covered and spoke with complete confidence why she was full of shit. I won't discuss all of the details, mostly because it's all just educational for how Hollywood contracts work. But it's worth checking out if you want to know more about Hollywood deals because Marks is just fascinating to listen to.

Amber hated all of this and was scribbling furiously in her notebook and tearing up paper. Bizarrely, according to one of the people there, at one point Marks said it was possible for someone in a supporting role to get bigger parts in the future and he said that Amber and Elaine nearly jumped out of their chairs, sort of cheering because they thought it was a big admission. Apparently the jury collectively gave them a really weird look and then looked back to Marks. I don't think that won over the jury.

And Rottenborn Jr. actually said "It's hearsay like yesterday" and I want to evaporate from the cringe.