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Jared Leto Sued for Not Making Music

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YOU CAN'T FORCE "ART" Jared
Heavily eye-linered actor Jared Leto, you may recall, also happens to have a band, 30 Seconds to Mars, with his similarly eye-linered brother and some other dude. The band signed a five-record deal back in 1999, but their last album, their second, came all the way back in 2005. It's a productivity problem that hasn't exactly gone over well with their label, Virgin, at least judging from a recent suit the label has filed seeking damages "in excess of $30 million" for breach of contract.

$30 million may seem like a lot to ask for from a band that's not even a real band, but it turns out 30 Seconds to Mars has actually sold 2 million albums.

The Letos are trying to extricate themselves from this legal mess by citing a California law that mandates that you can't be legally bound to a contract for more than seven years (they also claim on their annoying website that they haven't seen a penny from the label), although Virgin is having none of it. Per a label spokesperson: "We hope to resolve these matters amicably and put them behind us so we can continue working in partnership with the band to take them to even greater levels of success." Because nothing says "let's solve this amicably!" like a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

By Neel Shah   08/18/08 2:10 PM
File Under: Jared Leto, On the Docket
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"If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren't they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier....

...Shouldn't a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records?"

Well yeah, they undoubtedly did. I'm pretty sure that the contract they signed stipulated that they paid back the advance EMI gave them through their ROYALTIES though. Which makes me wonder exactly what kind of advance they got? They probably never sold enough records to recoup the ridiculous advance Leto got them to cough up and are now pissed because they don't understand how a major label does business.

Basically they're yet another subpar signing that underperformed. But if the 7 year expiration is true then good luck to them.

Posted by: ihateemo on August 19, 2008 7:51 PM

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