The organizers of Woodstock 50 have filed legal paperwork aimed at Dentsu Aegis, the financier that canceled the festival last week, with the Supreme Court of the State of New York. The paperwork — a petition for an injunction — asks for the Court to place a gag order on Dentsu from speaking with the media, state officials, performers and others, force the company to return $17.8 million to the festival’s bank account, compel it to continue work on the fest, be more transparent in its accounting and add in anything the judge would feel is fair. Attorney Mark Kasowitz submitted the paperwork on Wednesday.
A rep for Dentsu Aegis did not respond immediately for our request for comment.
The legal filing had been anticipated for several days. In a publicly released letter to Dentsu on May 16, Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang claimed the $17 million amounted to funds Dentsu “improperly took” and accused Dentsu of wanting to “suffocate and kill Woodstock.” “These actions are neither a legal nor honorable way to do business,” he wrote.
The beleaguered festival is still currently set to take place August 16 – 18 in Watkins Glen, New York. The lineup includes both veterans of the original festival (Santana, David Crosby, John Sebastian, Country Joe McDonald) and current rock, pop and hip-hop acts, including Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monae, Jay-Z, Halsey, Sturgill Simpson, and Imagine Dragons. The festival will take place in a raceway several hours’ north of Bethel, New York, where the 1969 festival took place.
But problems — and rumors — began soon after the festival was announced in January. A major headliner, the Black Keys pulled out for supposed scheduling conflicts; a few weeks later, ticket sales were postponed. (They have yet to go on sale.)
On April 29, Dentsu Aegis announced it would no longer be financing Woodstock 50, despite having already paid all the acts in advance (a cash layout said to exceed $30 million). “Despite our tremendous investment of time, effort and commitment, we don’t believe the production of the festival can be executed as an event worthy of the Woodstock Brand name while also ensuring the health and safety of the artists, partners and attendees,” the company wrote in a statement. Dentsu thereby said had “decided to cancel the festival.”
The announcement, which Lang claims caught him off guard, set off a scramble to find new investors, although concert behemoths like Live Nation and AEG reportedly passed. Woodstock 50 then lost its production partner, Superfly Productions, the New York –based events company that would handle many of the nuts and bolts of putting on the festival. (Lang has said another company, CID Entertainment, will take its place, but that company has yet to confirm its participation.) A spokesperson for the Department of Health told Rolling Stone that no permit has been issued for the festival.
On April 29, Lang hired Kasowitz, the high-profile New York attorney who briefly represented Donald Trump in 2017. In his public letter to Dentsu about a week later, Lang ramped up his war with the company by alleging that Amplifi Live, an investment arm of Dentsu, “illegally swept” the $17 million from “the festival bank account, leaving [Woodstock] in peril.” Lang also claimed that Dentsu “directly contacted all stakeholders, including the venue Watkins Glen International, insurance companies, producers, vendors and performers (some of whom I am lucky to count as personal friends) and suggested they not do business with me, and violate their contracts with my company.”
In its response to Lang’s allegations in that letter, Dentsu claimed the company was “simply recover[ing] the funds … which we originally put in as financial partner. … We simply recovered the funds in the festival bank account, funds which we originally put in as financial partner.”
Whether Dentsu has the right to outright cancel the festival remains questionable, and it’s also unclear which acts signed paperwork with Dentsu and which with Dentsu and Woodstock Ventures, Lang’s company. It’s possible that acts that only signed with Dentsu.
The $17 million is particularly vital, since Lang has said he has until this Friday to raise the additional $30 million to rescue Woodstock 50.
This story is developing.