ABC is being sued for killing off some soap opera characters. Prospect Park, the company that’s relaunching All My Children and One Life To Live online, is suing the network, saying that ABC breached its contract by having two characters die during a crossover plot that sent them to General Hospital. That is, if they’re dead at all. (insert ominous music here.)
The two dead characters, One Life To Live’s father-daughter pair Cole and Hope Thornhart, bit it when their car was forced off a cliff during an episode of General Hospital that aired last year. Another OLTL character, Thomas Delgado, was somehow renamed and made into a recurring character on GH.
Prospect Park claims that, in a 2012 license deal it made with the network, it let ABC bring seven characters over to GH while its two shows were off the air. However, the production company says it maintained final say over narrative direction of the characters, meaning it never would have let the network just kill them off. Married to aliens, maybe, but murdered, no.
Prospect Park claims the script action was done maliciously, and that ABC regrets relinquishing the rights to the show to the production company when ratings started slipping. The company also claims the network has yet to turn over either of the show’s URLs.
All My Children and One Life To Live will re-launch online April 29, unless ABC manages to turn them into evil versions of themselves or have them kidnapped by mole people.