Sorry, Charlie

Who knew that actor Robert Wagner (It Takes a Thief, Switch, Hart to Hart) had anything to do with the Aaron Spelling series Charlie’s Angels? Or that, earlier this week, he would lose a lawsuit brought against Columbia Pictures for a substantial share of the profits from the two Charlie’s Angels movies?

The specifics of this lawsuit are evidently rooted in a deal Wagner made with Spelling back in the early ’70s. According to BBC News, Wagner and his now-late wife, the actress Natalie Wood, agreed to appear together in a 1973 teleflick called The Affair (produced by Spelling and Leonard Goldberg), partly in exchange for an interest in “five further TV shows.” “If ABC agreed to produce a series pilot based on one of those ideas, Wagner and Wood were to receive one-half the net profits derived from the ‘exploitation of all ancillary, music and subsidiary rights ... in connection with’ the ‘right to exhibit photoplays of the series,’” reports the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a Los Angeles business newspaper. “One of the concepts was for a series called ‘Harry’s Angels,’ later renamed ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ The series ran for five years.”

However, the California State Appeals Court finally ruled this week that “the unambiguous language of the contract supported Columbia Pictures’ argument that Wagner had no rights in the films.” (To read the ruling, click here.) Wagner has reason to be upset about this decision: The first Sony film, Charlie’s Angels (2000), brought in “more than $125 million at the U.S. box office and grossed over $260 million worldwide,” according to Wikipedia, while its sequel, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003), is said to have grossed $100.9 million at American box offices. Fifty-percent of those receipts is ... well, more than I’m likely to bank in my lifetime.

(Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)