Kevin Spacey loses arbitration appeal, owes $31 million to House of Cards production company

Kevin Spacey faces paying out more than $30 million to House of Cards producers.

The disgraced actor has been locked in an arbitration case with MRC II and Knight Takes King Productions – a distribution company and production company respectively – for some time and after it was ruled last year that the 62-year-old star’s alleged behaviour caused substantial harm to both firms, he appealed the decision but was told earlier this month that he had lost.

The companies have asked the court to confirm the arbitration award, which would see Spacey and his companies asked to pay out over $29.5 million in compensation and an additional $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees and costs.

MRC II and Knight Takes King Productions had argued there had been an internal investigation carried out following claims Spacey had sexually harassed or assaulted production members working on ‘House of Cards’ – on which he played the lead role of President Francis Underwood – and terminated his contract in 2017 after finding many of the accusations to be true.

In 2019, MRC claimed Spacey’s dismissal cost them millions in producing fees and lost revenue, as well as having to scrap the first two episodes, which he had featured in, and rewrite the entire final season of the political drama, further increasing costs.

And they also received a significantly-reduced fee from Netflix after having to reduce the number of episodes in the season in order to meet their deadlines with the streaming service.

Spacey had made a counterclaim that it was his agreement that had been breached and insisted the allegations he faced – which he has denied – did not constitute a breach of his contracts, but the arbitrator rejected his claims.

Spacey’s co-star Robin Wright, who played his wife Claire, previously insisted she didn’t think the scandal surrounding Spacey’s exit had “hurt” the show’s “legacy”..

Asked if she worries the show is now tainted, she said: “I’ve never even thought about that.

“I don’t think it hurts the legacy of the show. I’m sure there’s a huge collective that will go, ‘Oh, the show was destroyed’, but plenty of people will become, and still are, fans.”