Gabba Gabba hold on!<\/p>\n
A years-long battle over the legal rights to the legacy of punk rock pioneers The Ramones<\/a> has finally been settled after the feud boiled over because of a shelved Pete Davidson-led Netflix biopic<\/a> about the band\u2019s late singer.<\/p>\n But the bitter and personal battle may rage on between the family members of the founders \u2014 who are all now dead \u2014 with a former manager still in the crosshairs now saying he\u2019s unfairly facing the prospect of having to pay millions in legal fees or judgments.<\/p>\n A years-long fight over the legal rights to the legacy of The Ramones has finally reached a settlement. picture alliance via Getty Images<\/p>\n Guitarist Johnny Ramone\u2019s widow, Linda Cummings-Ramone, was transferred the remaining half of the estate company Ramones Productions Inc. from singer Joey Ramone\u2019s brother, Mickey Leigh, as part of the deal finalized Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Ramones were formed in Forest Hills in 1974 and played until 1996 with various lineups. Although they all adopted the surname Ramone, none of the members were related.<\/p>\n The transfer means Cummings-Ramone \u2014 who was Joey\u2019s ex-girlfriend before marrying his former bandmate \u2014 now has \u201cfree rein to fully control\u201d the estate, according to court filings. The settlement was struck as Leigh faced a protracted legal fight where he could\u2019ve been on the hook for millions.<\/p>\n The deal also allows Leigh to keep his brother\u2019s song copyrights and other intellectual property rights, rendering him \u201cfinally free to promote his brother\u2019s legacy without corporate obstruction,\u201d Leigh\u2019s friend and longtime Ramones manager Dave Frey said.<\/p>\n But the highly anticipated movie based on Leigh\u2019s memoir that was intended to preserve the singer\u2019s legacy seems all but dead in the water after the rock \u2018n roll brouhaha \u2014 and still has Frey caught in the middle.<\/p>\n Frey remains a defendant in a $15 million lawsuit alleging he breached his financial duties to the RPI for floating the Netflix plans.<\/p>\n The ex-manager, however, argued the still-unproduced film project was \u201csecured with STX Films solely by Mickey\u2019s attorney, not by me.\u201d<\/p>\n Frey said the movie\u2019s producers have been sent notification of the settlement, and is now awaiting a decision regarding whether it will still be optioned. The film was to be based on Lee\u2019s memoir of his brother, \u201cI Slept With Joey Ramone.\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t have any money to ask for an attorney to go to trial,\u201d Leigh said, adding the \u201cjudge, at every turn, has ruled in [Cummings-Ramone\u2019s] favor.\u201d WireImage<\/p>\n \u201cIt would\u2019ve been good for everybody, it would\u2019ve been good for the Ramones as well,\u201d Leigh said. \u201cBut now we can share with people what they\u2019re walking into, and start to do a lot more work for Joey.\u201d <\/p>\n Frey, a former board member for RPI, was first accused in 2023 of violating the estate\u2019s agreement by reportedly developing the biopic without the full permission of\u00a0Cummings-Ramone, he said. Leigh had argued the film was not a Ramones biopic, but a memoir about his relationship with his beloved brother.<\/p>\n An arbitrator decided the next year that Frey had acted in \u201cdisruptive and negative conduct\u201d in relation to his board position for pursuing the film project, and he was dropped from the board in 2024.<\/p>\n But the ex-manager contends that, \u201cby contract, the film was based exclusively on both Mickey Leigh\u2019s personal memoir \u2026 and the individual life rights\u201d of Mickey and his brother, he told The Post.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore, the project was not and could never be a \u2018Ramones film,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Linda Cummings-Ramone, the widow of late guitarist Johnny Ramone, was transferred the remaining half of the Ramones Productions Inc. on Wednesday. WWD via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a Ramones story,\u201d Leigh previously told The Post of the book, which profiles the iconic singer who battled debilitating OCD before his 2000 death.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a story about growing up with a guy \u2026 who defeated the odds and became an inspiration to millions. That\u2019s what it\u2019s about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Though the flick \u2013 announced in April 2021 \u2013 has since been put on an apparent indefinite hold, Frey remains in court with Cummings-Ramone \u2014 and both sides must hand over \u201cevidence\u201d in the case by the end of the month.<\/p>\n An appeal is pending, Frey said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe likely outcome is that I am going to probably run out of money \u2014 there\u2019ll be a default judgment against me,\u201d Frey told The Post. \u201cThen I\u2019ll bankrupt, and that\u2019ll be bad: but that\u2019s just when I see the real problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The manager argues the case, if decided in favor of Cummings-Ramone, could set a difficult precedent for musicians\u2019 intellectual property in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything [done] on their own in a solo capacity [would] need to get the approval of their band entity or band company,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause anything they do as a solo artist could detract from the band obligations.<\/p>\n \u201cMickey walked away with Michael Jackson,\u201d he added, \u201cand she walked away with the Jackson 5.\u201d<\/p>\n American punk group The Ramones circa 1976. Michael Ochs Archives<\/p>\n \u201cI had hoped that would be the end of this war, and I am disappointed, but unfortunately not surprised that Mr. Frey decided to exacerbate the harm he has caused by making these statements to the Post,\u201d Cummings-Ramone said in an email to a Post reporter.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo be clear, RPI and I are still in litigation with Mr. Frey, and we will let his misstatements and ongoing harm to the company be handled through that process.\u201d<\/p>\n Leigh agreed the fight is \u201cnot really over,\u201d noting one recent instance in which the official Joey Ramone profile tied to the band\u2019s social media accounts was replaced with a \u201cdisturbing\u201d new one created just before the settlement was inked. <\/p>\n \u201cI still have to oversee things, there are still things that can come up that are going to cause conflict,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still apprehensive about my freedom. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m free quite yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gabba Gabba hold on! A years-long battle over the legal rights to the legacy of punk rock pioneers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,2858,88,5871,1253,25785,31954,162865,194],"class_list":["post-640218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-court","tag-entertainment","tag-metro","tag-musicians","tag-new-york-city-life","tag-queens","tag-the-ramones","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}