Producers pay damages to settle libel suit over movie about search for King Richard III

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LONDON (AP) — It was a true story stranger than fiction: The body of England’s King Richard III, missing for centuries, was discovered under a parking lot after a search spearheaded by amateur sleuths.

Now a movie about the saga has been accused of stretching the truth too far.

The producers of “The Lost King” on Monday agreed to pay damages to an academic who sued for libel over his on-screen depiction.

Richard Taylor said he suffered “enormous distress and embarrassment” because of the 2022 film, which centers on amateur historian Philippa Langley’s quest to find the king’s remains despite what the movie depicts as indifference and condescension from the academic world.

A judge at a preliminary hearing last year said the film portrayed Taylor, the former deputy registrar at the University of Leicester, as “smug, unduly dismissive and patronizing.”

The case had been due to go to a full trial, but on Monday a lawyer for Taylor announced that the dispute had been settled. Attorney William Bennett said the defendants — actor-writer Steve Coogan, Coogan’s production company Baby Cow and Pathé Productions — had agreed to pay Taylor “substantial damages” and legal costs. The amount was not disclosed.

The defendants said they would also add an on-screen clarification at the start of the film stating that the depiction is “fictional and does not represent the actions of the real Mr. Taylor.”

Taylor, who is now chief operating officer at Loughborough University, said the settlement was vindication after “a long and grueling battle.”

“There have been moments over the last three years when I thought, when Philippa Langley approached me for the university’s support, I perhaps should have put the request in the bin,” he said. “But I didn’t, and I think I was right not to do that.”

Coogan, who co-wrote “The Lost King” and played Langley’s ex-husband, insisted that “this film is a true story, Philippa Langley’s story. That is the story I wanted to tell, and I am happy I did.

“If it wasn’t for Philippa Langley, Richard III would still be lying under a car park in Leicester,” Coogan said. “It is her name that will be remembered in relation to the discovery of the lost king, long after Richard Taylor has faded into obscurity.”

University of Leicester archaeologists worked with Langley in 2012 to locate Richard’s skeleton in the city in central England, more than five centuries after he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, the last act of a civil conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.

The victor took the throne as King Henry VII, and under the Tudor dynasty he founded, Richard was vilified. William Shakespeare depicted him as an evil, hunchbacked usurper who murdered his two young nephews because they were rivals for the crown.

Some historians, including Langley, believe Richard was unfairly maligned, arguing that he was a relatively enlightened monarch whose short reign between 1483 and 1485 saw reforms including the introduction of the right to bail and the lifting of restrictions on books and printing presses.

Scientists from the University of Leicester worked to confirm the remains belonged to the medieval king, and in 2015 Richard was reburied with royal ceremony in a tomb at Leicester Cathedral.