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“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” Faces Legal Obstacles in San Francisco

by · Published · Updated

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been captivating audiences all around the world. The show is currently running in London and New York with upcoming premieres in Melbourne, Australia, and Hamburg, Germany. But another scheduled Cursed Child production in San Francisco, California, is currently in the midst of brewing legal trouble.

Cursed Child is set to begin performances at San Francisco’s Curran Theater in fall 2019. However, it’s now endangered by an ongoing rivalry between Nederlander of San Francisco, the group that runs the SHN Orpheum and Golden Gate Theatres, and Carole Shorenstein Hays, the owner of the Curran. Nederlander aims to block Cursed Child as well as the musical Dear Evan Hansen from being shown at the Curran.

The Nederlander and Shorenstein families used to run their theaters together. Since their split in 2014, they’ve clashed in court multiple times. In this latest case, Nederlander claims that staging Cursed Child and Dear Evan Hansen at the Curran would break an agreement between the families and cause “irreparable harm” to the company’s profits.

In light of previous legal disputes, the Curran’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, seems unconcerned by Nederlander’s lawsuit:

The claims alleged by Nederlander of San Francisco were litigated and lost after a full trial in the same court last year. Sour grapes aside, litigation is not a game where the loser may refuse to accept the result and refile the same claims. We are confident that the court will once again reject these claims, and we look forward to presenting ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ at the Curran in December and welcoming ‘Harry Potter’ to San Francisco next year.

Both Cursed Child and Dear Evan Hansen have found huge success on Broadway, so it’s easy to see why they would be highly coveted by theater companies. However, we hope this legal fight won’t cause San Francisco fans to miss out on seeing these amazing shows.

As of now, you can still find information on the San Francisco production of Cursed Child here. We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the battle between Nederlander and Hays.