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6 months ago
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Not sure if Cavalry Media needs someone to come to the rescue, but the shaky shingle may now see its whole house of alleged cards come tumbling down
Already trampled by financial ills, big name exits and lawsuits related to the fatal 2021 shooting on Alec Baldwin’s Rust, the Keegan Rosenberger and Ishan Sakena run company now faces a very dirty laundry lawsuit from former founder Dana Brunetti.
A year and change after the House of Cards executive producer and ex-Cavalry Chief Content Officer headed out the door to pursuit his own projects, as they always say, Brunetti is now suing the company for over $1 million in “wrongfully” withheld wages and more. Or as the pugilistic producer’s lawsuit quotes Brunetti declaring to CEO Rosenberger in a tense digital November 13, 2022 exchange where he learned he wasn’t going to get paid his $750K per year salary: “I’m not going to be rolled over and squeezed.”
“On information and belief, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Rosenberger and Ishan
Saksena raised several million dollars in seed funding for Cavalry Media projects but used that funding for other personal projects instead of using the money to pay Cavalry Media employees, thereby leaving Cavalry Media underfunded including at the time of incorporation,” the Joseph Farzam Law Firm filed Breach of Contract and five other claims complaint details.
“On information and belief, Plaintiff alleges Defendant Rosenberger and Defendant Saksena used seed funding and other monies paid to Cavalry Media for personal use,” the complaint filed in LA Superior Court (read it here).
Having exited the six-year old podcast based Cavalry back in January 2023, Brunetti is now saying the scrawl was on the wall for a while when he was notified by his business manager in September 2022 that he hadn’t been getting paid As the company stopped paying staffers, vendor and slashed health insurance in quick succession, Rosenberger tried to convince Brunetti that he was in the same boat thanks to tight fisted backers.
Today calling out Rosenberger and for acting in an allegedly “deliberate, cold, callous, cruel, and intentional manner,” Brunetti is after a wide range of damages. The 50 Shades producer says in legalizes that he “has suffered and will continue to suffer harm and is entitled to recover, and claims, general damages for emotional and mental distress and aggravation in a sum in excess of the jurisdictional minimum of this Court.”
Cavalry Media was founded in 2018 by Rosenberger and Brunetti with the mission of making moderately priced premium film and TV series for linear and new media platforms in the $40-to $80 million range.
However, Deadline learned exclusively a year ago that Cavalry Media’s small 14-person staff hadn’t been paid in months, and their benefits, including health, suspended. Some staffers were told by senior management that their commission monies were deposited, however, to receive them, they’d have to remove their wage claims.
Some employees were owed as much as $50,000 to a half-million in back pay and commissions. Rosenberger reportedly told staff that a big acquisition in the audio space was afoot to right the ship. Insiders told Deadline that of Cavalry’s $14 million seed money, $9 million was spent on development and overhead. The odd thing, was that coming out of the pandemic, Cavalry didn’t have any offices as staffers were working remotely. At the time of our report, Rosenberger told Deadline, “The company is not in a state of financial distress.”
“We have not been notified of a single wage claim or received anything from third party counsel,” he added at the time. Before Cavalry, Rosenberger previously headed strategy and corporate development at Relativity Media.
Brunetti was the first to leave, with Alec Baldwin’s manager, Matt Del Piano following in addition to SVP of Development, Jason Seagraves.
Cavalry Media didn’t release any TV series or films during its tenure. In the podcast space, Cavalry had Art Fraud, X Marks the Spot: The Legend of Forrest Fenn, and the Oscar Isaac-Edgar Castillo podcast The Rosenberg Case. Art Fraud remains in development with a screenplay by Wells Tower as a movie with Netflix. Other series in development include Motorheads at Amazon Studios and The Devil Within at Epix.
Cavalry Media was named as a defendant in various suits relating to the film Rust, but we’re told they weren’t a producer on the western production. The firm was named due to the fact that Baldwin and Rust director Joel Souza were clients of the firm.
