was not paid, or even credited as the story writer. Buchwald sued Paramount for breach of contract, as his contract with Paramount stated that he would be paid a certain amount if his treatment were made into a film. Decision The California Superior Court decided in 1990 that Buchwald had demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that his story treatment and Paramount's unsuccessful scripts based on the treatment were "similar" to that of the Coming to America movie. Together with the evidence that Murphy and Landis previously had access to Buchwald's treatment, the court determined that the movie's story was indeed "based upon" Buchwald's treatment. Since Paramount never paid Buchwald, as the option agreement specified would occur if a movie based on his treatment were ever released, Paramount did indeed breach the contract. In the second phase of the trial in which the court determined the appropriate amount of damages to be paid to Buchwald, Paramount testified that despite the movie's $288 million in ticket sales, it had spent so much money on the movie's development and marketing that, according to the formula specified in Buchwald's contract, Paramount had made no "net profit". The court then found that the formula was "unconscionable" and that Buchwald therefore could pursue a separate tort lawsuit against the company. Fearing a loss on appeal and, presumably, a wave of lawsuits by authors claiming they, too, had been wronged by the unconscionable net profit formula, Paramount settled with Buchwald and his producing partner for $900,000. As part of the settlement, the "unconscionability" decision was vacated. Implications The accounting formulas used by the studios have allegedly been designed specifically to ensure that it is mathematically impossible for almost any movie to show a net profit. Specifically, the net profit formula in authors' contracts does not correspond to the net profit formula of generally accepted accounting principles that the movie studios use when creating their financial statements that are reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and to the investing public. What the court described as an "unconscionable" formula in Buchwald's contract effectively double-counts many costs borne by the movie studio. Some commentators have claimed this lawsuit was a watershed that would affect Hollywood's payments to anyone who enjoyed "profit participation" by forcing a change to the net profit formulas. However, a ruling by the California Superior Court in Batfilm Productions v. Warner Bros. regarding