Johnny Depp Witnesses Try to Argue Amber Heard’s Career Was Doomed Anyway

Soon after Amber Heard’s protection team rested their scenario on Tuesday, Johnny Depp’s legal professionals opened the past spherical of testimony in the sprawling defamation trial in between the former couple with a rebuttal of the argument that the actor’s former lawyer and Twitter trolls sabotaged Heard’s acting job.

A motion picture executive who labored with Heard on the hit superhero movie Aquaman, as properly as professional witnesses for Depp, took aim at Heard’s personal closing witness from Monday: a motion picture field expert named Kathryn Arnold. Arnold had approximated Heard’s possible losses at $45-$50 million over 5 yrs starting up all over 2018 dependent on her career trajectory just before her conflicts with Depp metastasized in court docket and on the net.

To start with up was Walter Hamada, president of DC Films, the movie wing of the superhero comics imprint guiding the $1 billion-grossing Aquaman, which featured Read opposite Jason Momoa in the title purpose. Testifying in a pre-recorded video, Hamada reiterated the Depp team’s argument that display screen chemistry with Momoa, not destructive publicity surrounding her break up, was accountable for Heard’s diminished presence in the Aquaman sequel owing in March of 2023.

“The actuality is, it’s not unusual on films for two potential customers to not have chemistry,” Hamada explained underneath questioning by Read legal professional Elaine Bredehoft. He explained chemistry could be “fabricated” in article-generation as a result of enhancing and on-display audio, including, “If you check out the movie, they glimpse like they had great chemistry. But I just know through the training course of the submit-production that it took a lot of hard work to get there.”

Hamada said the challenge of chemistry—which he summarized as, “What would make a movie star a motion picture star? you know it when you see it.”—came up in discussions that integrated Momoa and Aquaman producer Peter Safran.

Richard Marks, an amusement contracts attorney who had by now testified for Depp, scoffed on Tuesday at Arnold’s declare of fork out expertise. Not like him—a law firm “in the trenches” negotiating specials for actors such as Chris Pratt and Paul Rudd—she experienced no related expertise, he claimed.

Marks added, of Arnold’s estimates: “They’re not really worth the paper they’re not penned on.”

He also disputed that Read was due for an at any time even larger job breakout, and even bigger paydays, right after the December 2018 release of Aquaman. For the following 16 months, ahead of a person-time Depp attorney Adam Waldman began contacting Heard’s allegations of domestic violence bogus and even a “hoax,” her career was presently plateauing, he argued.

“The ‘Star Is Born’ phenomenon did not materialize,” Marks mentioned.

Depp is suing Listened to for $50 million, saying she defamed him even without having naming him in a 2018 Washington Submit op-ed identifying herself as a victim of domestic violence. Read is counter-suing for $100 million, proclaiming Depp and his previous law firm, Waldman, defamed her by labeling her allegations a “hoax.” Every single has accused the other of violent abuses, from a assert by Depp that Listened to threw a bottle that severed his finger to allegations from Read that he struck her repeatedly and sexually assaulted her with a liquor bottle.

On Tuesday, Judge Penney Azcarate rejected a movement by Depp’s lawyers to toss out Heard’s counterclaim.

Making use of the roles, paydays, endorsements, and job trajectories of actors together with Jason Momoa, Ana de Armas, Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, and Zendaya, Arnold had formerly argued, “It’s extremely probably that Ms. Read should have acquired in between $45 and $50 million above that time period of time.”

But Michael Spindler, an accountant who formerly testified for Depp, claimed he acquired from examining Heard’s 2013-2019 taxes that she earned $10 million in that time interval, and solid doubt on Arnold’s projections for the reason that she applied comparisons to other actors alternatively of Heard’s true money history.

Another returning Depp witness, mental house and media marketing consultant Douglas Bania, said on Tuesday that his have assessment of anti-Listened to hashtagged tweets confirmed “no correlation” concerning Waldman’s “hoax” reviews to information retailers in 2020-2021 and spikes in anti-Listened to social media.

Bania claimed that just 751 hashtagged tweets—or .06 per cent of some 1.2 million in the essential time time period in question—repeated or derived from Waldman’s “hoax” language. As a result, he argued, there was no foundation for the competition that they weakened Listened to economically.

Bania also sought to flip Arnold’s actor comparisons from her by on the lookout at their respective Q Scores, an recognized motion picture business measurement of actor familiarity and enchantment.

He showed jurors a graphic he produced of Heard’s good and damaging Q scores from winter season 2019—after Aquaman and in advance of the alleged defamation. They were being portrayed along with individuals of Momoa, de Armos, Gadot, Pine and Zendaya. Heard’s positives were being the lowest of the team and her negatives were the greatest, he mentioned.