EXCLUSIVE: Cate Blanchett is owed more than $16,000, and the money is there for her to claim; Abigail Breslin’s owed over $17,000; Steven Spielberg has an uncashed $10,000 cashier’s check waiting for him; there’s $15,000 due Bill Murray, $12,000 for Elton John, Gary Oldman’s owed $8,410, David Geffen $5,471, Barry Diller $3,000, Stevie Wonder’s owed a whopping $91,420 and now-Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone is owed $9,500. Just about all the film and TV companies have cash coming, as do most of the talent agencies and law firms. Even our sister publication Variety ($25,000), and competitors The Hollywood Reporter ($9,000), LA Times ($13,000) Associated Press ($9,000) and The New York Times ($3,000) have money just waiting to be claimed (you’re welcome).
Some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and companies are owed money they earned, funds that were lost and reside in an $8 billion fund held by the state of California’s Unclaimed Property Fund, a Deadline investigation reveals. Now, George Clooney, Aaron Sorkin and Michael Caine might not be concerned about sums around $1,000 they are owed, Bono might not miss the $900 due him, Angelina Jolie probably hasn’t missed the $1,431, Kanye West, Kirsten Dunst and Mila Kunis have survived without the more than $1,500 coming to them, and Rupert Murdoch hasn’t missed the $358 owed him (though the combined $75,000 owed his Fox film and TV divisions isn’t chump change). But some of those unclaimed showbiz dollars have racked up and are only gaining interest for the state treasury.
Sen. Al Franken, for instance, is owed $25,000, meaningful money for a politician not making a big showbiz paycheck anymore. On the corporate side, Disney’s owed $95,000, Sony $75,000; AFTRA’s Health Fund is owed $18,215 and IATSE $13,000; WME $18,000; DirectTV a whopping $130,836, Warner Music $29,000; ad agencies like TBWA/Chiat/Day ($25,000), Ogilvy & Mathers ($18,000) and Saatchi & Saatchi ($16,000) have serious money due them.
I often make a point to write about all the actors owed unclaimed residuals, with the union always claiming they’d like to get the money to the talent that earned it, if only the actors could be located. The state of California is essentially content to let the money sit there. It’s Hollywood’s lost and found, a gigantic piggy bank bulging with free money just waiting to be tapped. The money was paid by employers, venders, insurance companies and business partners, but after sitting in inactive checking and savings accounts for three years, it was turned over to the state for safekeeping until claimed by rightful owners.
To get the money back, all anyone has to do is find the account on the state website and file for it – electronically for claims under $5,000. It’s easy and takes only a few minutes. What follows here is a comprehensive list of companies and individuals who need only follow a few steps to reclaim their cash. (To see if you or someone you know is owed money, click here.)
Among corporations, topping the list is ad agency McCann Erickson, owed $159,000, followed by Walt Disney Co. and Sony. SAG-AFTRA is owed more than $69,000 — including an uncashed cashier’s check for $29,000 — and there is over $60,000 in lost accounts for Technicolor. Even the accounting agencies have missed this: PricewaterhouseCoopers, which counts Oscar ballots, has more than $8,000 in lost checks sitting in 16 different unclaimed accounts; Ernst & Young, which tallies Golden Globes and Emmy votes, has more than $13,000 in lost funds. Hollywood payroll companies Entertainment Partners ($16,000) and Cast & Crew ($8000) also have money waiting. Many of the wayward payments have gone unclaimed for years. The state has been holding onto two payments sent to the Screen Actors Guild more than two decades ago – from before the guild moved to its current headquarters in 1993.
Celebs and industry figures on the state’s IOU list who are owed more than $5,000 include:
Aretha Franklin $8,500
Cindy Crawford $8,385
Hank Azaria $8,294
Sally Kirkland $7,844
Al Roker $7,812
Don Rickles $7,781
Nick Nolte $6,362
Kathy Bates $5,892
David Geffen $5,741
Ali MacGraw $5,718
Graham King $5,221
Chloe Moretz $5,165
Donald Trump is owed $3,000; Bill and Camille Cosby are owed $9,000; O.J. Simpson is owed money, as are Kato Kaelin, Robert Kardashian and daughters Kim and Kourtney Kardashian. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the late Nancy Reagan are owed money.
Fox Broadcasting has more than $48,000 sitting in the fund gathering interest for the state, and 2oth Century Fox has another $25,000. Paramount has about $27,000 parked there, and Viacom, its parent company, has another $8,000. Universal Pictures is owed $25,000, DreamWorks is owed nearly $34,000, and Warner Bros. is due more than $36,000. Netflix is owed more than $10,000; Time Warner has an uncashed check for $8,500, and Youtube is owed $8,300.
The networks have money piling up there too. ABC Entertainment has two lost payments from Sony Music worth more than $12,000; ABC Broadcasting has $8,777 in lost warrants, and the ABC Cable Network Group has a lost check from E! Entertainment Television for $7,100. CBS is owed more than $10,000, and NBC about $8,000. Univision is owed $15,000. Local TV stations are owed money as well. KABC is owed more than $16,000 and KTTV and KCAL are each due about $3,000.
These lost assets can be easily overlooked when media companies are put up for sale. Earlier this month, when a Qatar-based company bought Miramax, it may have gotten a little more than it realized – nearly $15,000 in lost checks being held in the state’s unclaimed property fund. The new owners just have to fill out some paperwork to collect it. Claims of under $5,000 can be filed online.
Many other indie film companies are owed money too. Village Roadshow has a lost refund check totaling $21,040, and Working Title Films is owed $17,400. Castle Rock Entertainment is owed $5,700. New Line Cinema and TriStar Pictures are both owed $5,600, and Relativity Media, which is just now coming out of bankruptcy, is owed $3,700.
The talent agencies are owed money too. WME is owed $18,000, and UTA has $11,000 in lost account. Gersh is owed $1,879; APA $700, and Paradigm $540.
Many of Hollywood’s leading law firms are also owed money. Ziffren Britenham is owed $15,500; Manatt Phelps is due $11,800; Sheppard Mullin $19,000; O’Melveny & Myers $9,000; Loeb & Loeb $7,600, and Katten Muchin $7,400. Mitchell Silberberg Knupp is owed $3,300, Sloan Offer Webber & Dern is owed $1,500, and Greenberg Glusker $1,200.
Hollywood public relations firms are also owed money. BWR is owed $500, and PMK/BNC is owed $13,800, including $10,000 in accounts payable from CBS Radio.
Advertising agencies on the state’s IOU list include Publicis, the giant French firm, which is owed $47,000, and Razorfish, one of its subsidiaries, which is owed $27,000. Ogilvy & Mathers is owed $18,000; Saatchi & Saatchi $16,000, and Grey Advertising $12,600. BBDO has $6,600 in lost funds waiting to be claimed, and Young & Rubicam has $6,100.
A lot of record companies, including many that no longer exist, are owed money too. Warner Music is owed $29,000 and Warner/Chappell $26,000; Universal Music is owed nearly $20,000; Motown Records is owed $17,500; Virgin Records is owed $12,000, and Sony Music is due $11,500. A&M Records is owed $25,000; Arista Records, bought by Sony Music, is owed $5,500; BMG Music is owed $6,800; RCA Records $2,200; Rhino Records $2,000, and Capitol Records $1,500. Warner/Chappell is owed $26,000.
Theater chains and venues: Landmark Theatres ($12,000), Mann Theatres ($25,000), Pacific Theatres ($12,000), Staples Center ($9,500), Wiltern Theatre ($5,660), and Regal Entertainment Group ($1,600).
Hollywood’s unions: the DGA is owed $6,879, and its pension and health plan is owed another $1,992. The AFTRA Health & Retirement Fund is owed $18,215, and the SAG Pension & Health Plan is owed $2,800. The WGA is owed $8,700 and its health plan is due another $7,500. Actors Equity is owed $1,400, and IATSE and its various locals and benefit plans are owed more than $13,000. The Publicists Guild is owed $1,638.
Many nonprofits have money waiting: the Sundance Institute ($5,000); the American Film Institute ($1,360), Women In Film ($3,000), Motion Picture & Television Fund ($3,100), and the city film permit office FilmLA ($3,600). Corbis, the stock footage company, is owed $9,300, the Los Angeles Film School is owed $7,500, and Central Casting is due $1,337.
The heirs of many long-dead celebrities have checks waiting. The estate of Steve McQueen is owed $3,300; the family of Marlon Brando is owed $3,500, and the heirs of director Sydney Pollack are owed more than $11,000. The estate of Phil Hartman is owed $7,300, and the heirs of Robert Mitchum are owed $4,500, including nearly $1,000 in unredeemed stock certificates. The family of voice-over great Mel Blanc is owed over $5,000, and the heirs of Marvin Gaye have more than $15,000 coming to them.
Navigating the site can be tricky. Stevie Wonder has listings under four different names: 13 under Stevie Wonder, his professional name; 13 under his real name, Stevland Morris; seven under Morris Stevland – his first and last names transposed – and five more under Morris Steveland, his first and last names transposed and misspelled.
Ampersands also complicate searches for lost money. Cast & Crew, the payroll company, is listed three different ways – as Cast & Crew, Cast and Crew, and Cast Crew – with different missing accounts under each name.
And then there’s KCBS, which is owed $30,000. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether the money belongs to the Los Angeles TV station, the FM radio station here, the AM radio station in San Francisco, or, for that matter, to the Kansas City Barbeque Society.
Other celebs on the state’s IOU list include:
Ron Perlman $4,638
Geoffrey Rush $4,085
Tom Selleck $3,915
Wesley Snipes $3,607
Quincy Jones $3,600
Shia LaBeaof $2,681
Dustin Hoffman $2,482
Lude Law $2,330
Faye Dunaway $2,300
Tony Plana $2,130
Colin Firth $2,089
Smokey Robinson $1,975
Terrence Howard $1,904
Meg Ryan $1,884
Donald Sutherland $1,830
Tori Spelling $1,785
Charles S. Dutton $1,750
Director Peter Weir $1,746
Owen Wilson $1,619
Graham Green $1,540
Joel Schumacher $1,500
SNL’s Kenan Thompson $1,442
Sofia Vergara $1,413
Dan Aykroyd $1,393
Kurtwood Smith $1,253
Carol Burnett $1,231
The Real’s Jeannie Mai $1,168
Keira Knightly $1,152
Ian McKellen $1,121
Charlie Sheen $1,104
Brian Grazer $1,095
Julie Christie $1,089
Sylvester Stallone $1,089
Producer Edward Zwick $1,067
Gary Sinise $1,057
Mariska Hargitay $1,052
Sarah Silverman $1,033
Tom Conti $1,029
Rachel Weisz $1,003
Yaphet Kotto $1,000
Mick Jagger $919
Katherine Heigl $912
Adrien Brody $904
Bono $900
Katherine Heigl $900
Producer Grant Helsov $892
Jimmy Smits $837
Reese Witherspoon $827
Jon Hamm $827
Queen Latifah $749
Chris Pratt $714
Lisa Kudrow $713
Jerry Bruckheimer $700
Virginia Madsen $688
James L. Brooks $675
Jay Z $669
Sam Rubin $660
Courtney Love $653
Conan O’Brien $648
Linda Blair $640
Stockard Channing $631
Albert Finney $623
William Hurt $617
Gary Busey $617
Eric Braeden $611
Ozzie Osbourne $610
Billy Bob Thornton $599
Common $596
Kenneth Branagh $569
Giovanni Ribisi $568
Yardley Smith $554
Alfred Molina $553
Matt Lauer $539
Britney Spears $528
Andrew Braugher $523
Halle Berry $506
Renee Zellweger $485
Prince $485
Blake Lively $484
Juliette Lewis $484
