Producer Leonora Ann Darby filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Tea Shop Productions and its two co-founders on August 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging the company cut her out of profits from “Obsession” after she saved the horror film from a troubled edit. The suit names James Harris and Mark Lane individually and seeks a jury trial along with unspecified damages, back wages, and an accounting of earnings across ten Tea Shop titles.
Darby joined the company in 2019 as a development and production executive and rose over seven years to become one of its three producers alongside Harris and Lane. According to the 135-page complaint, she and her colleagues struck a 2024 deal granting her one-third of net profits on films she led, plus visibility into collection account arrangements that track a movie’s earnings. “Obsession,” written and directed by Curry Barker and starring Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston, became the test of that promise.
The suit claims Darby took over the film’s post-production after Barker’s original edit was pulled and handed to another editor, then guided reshoots, credits, and delivery work ahead of its Toronto premiere. Focus Features bought the film for $16.2 million out of that festival, and it went on to gross nearly $500 million worldwide against a production budget under $800,000. Darby was credited only as an executive producer, a title the complaint argues undersold her functional role as lead producer under Tea Shop’s own internal standards.
Once the money started arriving, the filing alleges, Harris and Lane pulled back. Darby says her access to collection account records was cut off, and that Lane told her future payouts would be decided “where we feel appropriate.” A proposed consulting arrangement and later a first-look deal both would have barred her from further Obsession profits, according to the complaint, which frames the dispute as the culmination of a longer pattern of broken commitments. Darby did receive an initial payment plus a separate $300,000 disbursement, the suit acknowledges.
Her attorney, Thomas K. Singh of Singh, Singh & Trauben, said the claims are backed by a detailed factual record. Tea Shop Productions has not responded publicly. Focus Features and fellow executive producer Jason Blum are not named as defendants.
