The Rev. Al Sharpton claims documentary-film deals could pour seven figures of profit into his charity, but industry experts say that appears to be fiction.
Sharpton’s National Action Network nonprofit inked a deal last year to buy the activist preacher’s life-story rights for $531,000, with the expectation that it could sell the rights to movie-makers and reap the profits.
Sharpton told The Post he had contracts for two documentaries and another film deal in the works. He refused to release any details or say if he had received the cash.
“This guy’s just full of baloney,” a documentary filmmaker told The Post, adding, “A documentarian who has any scruples would not pay someone for their story. Then it wouldn’t be an honest story.”
Even if someone wanted to buy the rights to video footage Sharpton claims to have with Michael Jackson and others, the filmmaker said such images could be secured for a low price.
“It’s not a big business,” the filmmaker explained. “It’s a big business if someone got the footage of Lady Di’s tunnel accident or the Zapruder film.”
Mark Litwak, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, said a filmmaker might secure life-story rights to guard against defamation or invasion of privacy suits — which Sharpton would have trouble winning as a public figure — or for future product merchandising, which would be rare for a documentary.
But such a deal would be a small percentage of the documentary’s total budget, which is typically no more than a few hundred thousand dollars.
“You don’t want to spend more than 5 percent [of the budget] on acquiring underlying rights,” Litwak said.
NAN spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger said the third potential film would be a commercial project. But one New York City literary agent who has sold rights to Hollywood said $531,000 is high even for that kind of project.
“That’s a lot of money up front in this day and age,” the agent said.
The appetite for Sharpton’s story is also questionable. His 2013 Book “The Rejected Stone” was not exactly a best-seller. It sold 16,627 hardcover copies and another 721 in paperback, according to tallies from the BookScan monitoring service, which represents about 80 percent of sales.
Sharpton told The Post his life-story rights included a possible play, “some things that I’m going to do in writings” and assets like a recording with James Brown.
He insisted Saturday the documentary was “Going to be big.”
“You got to remember, we are talking about me with entertainment, me with politics from the White House to the mobsters that threatened me in the [media],” he said. “They are talking about a docu-drama.”
Noerdlinger told The Post late last month that a private donor had put up the money to buy the rights, but neither she nor Sharpton would identify the contributor.
Sharpton said for the first time yesterday that the deal was structured with unspecified “benchmarks” that need to be met before he is fully paid.
“We have an agreement that there is benchmarks before they give all of the money,” he said. “If they don’t reach the benchmark, they are out of the deal and I’m out of the deal.”