http://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/prospect-park-releases-statement-about-gh-trio

Quote :

Prospect Park Releases Statement About GH Trio
By SOD • Posted: Feb 4, 2013



Hot on the heels of Michael Easton (John) and Kristen Alderson (Starr) speaking out on the strange state of their GH status (and that of Roger Howarth, Todd), the company behind the reboots of their native OLTL (as well as AMC) has clarified the nature of their licensing agreement with ABC over the rights to the characters. It reads:

"Prospect Park released the following statement regarding its licensing agreement with 'All My Children' and 'One Life to Live.' In 2011, when Prospect Park decided to put everything on the line to reboot these shows, they lent characters to 'General Hospital' until shooting began for the new programs so that the characters could stay alive with the fans and also so that the actors could remain working. Everyone at ABC and on the production staff of "General Hospital" understood that this was a temporary arrangement until production started once again on 'One Life to Live.' Now the time has come to start production and Prospect Park needs to, once again, cast these characters including Llanview transplants Michael Easton (John) and Kristen Alderson (Starr). See statement below:

"Prospect Park understands that ‘General Hospital’ has featured Llanview transplants Michael Easton (John) and Kristen Alderson (Starr) among others while we arranged production of the new version of ‘One Life to Live.’ These characters, who we own under our agreement, are obviously essential to our production efforts, and a large reason we licensed the program. We also understand that legions of ‘General Hospital’ fans have grown to love these actors and characters in a short time. So even though we are paying ABC millions of dollars to license the shows, we have been, and continue to be willing to equally share the characters with ‘General Hospital’ and ABC. It's a win-win for the actors, the shows and fans, who love all of the shows and storylines. We hope to work out these agreements with ABC and the actors."

Their language sounds like schoolyard lawyering. haha

Sounds like a fair deal to me.

Not really. See, how can you really "share" actors who live on the other side of the coast? Unless they plan to have 1 actor play them on one soap and another on the other? Seems to me like PP wants to punish the actors for finding work in the interim while they got their act together.

Forgiveness Man wrote:

Not really. See, how can you really "share" actors who live on the other side of the coast? Unless they plan to have 1 actor play them on one soap and another on the other? Seems to me like PP wants to punish the actors for finding work in the interim while they got their act together.

I was thinking that maybe they could be on the re-boot for awhile then leave the show and go back to GH and maybe come back here and there. Why would they want to punish them if it was in the terms of their agreement before the actors went on to GH?

Tony Marino wrote:

I was thinking that maybe they could be on the re-boot for awhile then leave the show and go back to GH and maybe come back here and there. Why would they want to punish them if it was in the terms of their agreement before the actors went on to GH?

KA and RH never signed with PP. ME signed when it looked like PP knew what it was doing. IMO, PP should take the loss of these 3 characters as punishment for not getting this started when they could. Consider it a late fee, PP.

Forgiveness Man wrote:

KA and RH never signed with PP. ME signed when it looked like PP knew what it was doing. IMO, PP should take the loss of these 3 characters as punishment for not getting this started when they could. Consider it a late fee, PP.

If the Characters were licensed to PP then they have the right to use them. As far as the actors themselves, well its sad they have to be caught up in the mess but whats right is right. I don't think PP should take the loss at all, these are 3 core characters and it will help to launch OLTL once again and I for one would like to see this happen and be a success for PP.

I don't think recasts of Todd and Starr will help to make a relaunch feel like anything but a joke. And honestly, this "the characters were licenced to them" thing feels a bit trite. They have an entire cast of hundreds of characters and they cannot get it off the ground if 3 stay off because their actors moved on while PP took a year to get it's act together? If they can't write OLTL without T/S/J, then I am less confident in their abilities to craft a good show.

I'm fine with a OLTL that's free of John, Todd and Starr. I don't need any of them there to be a content viewer. It sounds like PP has placed a high motivating value on these characters, so why not just have the actors take a brief sabbatical from GH and have them guest at NuOLTL to help get things established and then send them back to GH to continue there? How about we use this revamp to usher in a new era of story and characters instead of retreading the tiredness of OLTL's last decade at ABC?

Jason B. wrote:

I'm fine with a OLTL that's free of John, Todd and Starr. I don't need any of them there to be a content viewer. It sounds like PP has placed a high motivating value on these characters, so why not just have the actors take a brief sabbatical from GH and have them guest at NuOLTL to help get things established and then send them back to GH to continue there? How about we use this revamp to usher in a new era of story and characters instead of retreading the tiredness of OLTL's last decade at ABC?

This GH/PP drama is a storyline onto itself. General Hospital should have known when they had to license these characters from Prospect Park that they could be taken back at any moment, they simply did not count on the reboot ever happening (neither did I) and ignorantly planned to keep them for an indefinite stint. Whatev's. For all I care, GH keep these actors and characters. If they are considered "essential," then the reboots has already failed, because that was the attitude ABC had in the shows final years, and we see what happened.