Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial has been adapted into a film.
The project is set to be rush-released on the Tubi, a streaming service owned by Fox, on September 30.
According to Variety, the film titled Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial will dramatise the events of the trial while also following the “tumultuous relationship” of the exes.
Sarah Lohman directed the film, while Mark Hapka plays Johnny and Megan Davis plays Amber.
The 58-year-old actor launched a $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife back in 2019, after she wrote about being an alleged victim of domestic violence in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed.
Following a six-week trial, which concluded on June 1, and 13 hours of deliberations, the jury sided with Johnny and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages, and a further $5 million in punitive damages.
However, Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the punitive damages to $350,000, which is the State of Virginia’s legal limit, resulting in total damages of $10.4 million awarded to Johnny.
Following the verdict, Amber’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft revealed the actress is “absolutely not” able to pay that much in damages to Johnny.
She has since launched multiple requests to appeal the verdict, as she claimed “a number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed”.
The attorney also blamed the verdict on a “number of evidentiary issues”, saying “there was so much evidence that did not come in.”
In July, Johnny filed a notice of appeal which sought to overturn the $2 million verdict awarded to Amber during their defamation trial.
His appeal comes just two weeks after Amber requested a mistrial, based on her legal team’s allegation that the wrong juror had shown up for jury service – however, her request was denied.
Just one week prior to this, the actress requested the verdict in the defamation trial be overturned, and a new trial be ordered as they alleged the ruling wasn’t supported by the evidence presented over the six-week trial.
During the six-week long trial, Amber detailed multiple incidents of alleged abuse, and told the court that “violence became normal” towards the end of their relationship.
However, Johnny testified that he never hit his ex-wife, and claimed that she was the abuser in their relationship.
In court, the 58-year-old said the allegations that he was a “drunken, cocaine-fuelled menace who beat women” have cost him “everything”.
Johnny and Amber first met in 2009 on the set of the film The Rum Diary and married in February 2015.
Their divorce was finalised two years later.
