Will & Grace, NBC Locked in Catfight

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

While the characters on NBC’s Will & Grace are usually snarky and shallow, at least they get along. Not so for NBC and Will & Grace’s creators, David Kohan and Max Mutchnik.

On Wednesday, NBC filed a promised countersuit against the two, alleging breach of contract, breach of good faith and fraud.

Last December, Kohan and Mutchnik filed suit against the network, accusing NBC and NBC Studios of self-dealing. NBC Studios produces Will & Grace for the network.

In its countersuit, NBC disagrees, saying that Kohan and Mutchnik purposely stayed out of renewal talks in 2002.

"Driven by greed," the suit says, "Mutchnik, Kohan, and their attorneys, agents, and handlers hatched a plan to, at all costs, squeeze every last dollar for themselves out of Will &Grace. [They] were interested only in creating an illusion of cooperation, when in fact, they were totally uncooperative, duplicitious, and guilty of shameless self-dealing in the process."

Paige Albiniak
Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.