Gina Rinehart’s lawyers are taking legal action to ensure Channel Nine does not release an uncut DVD of the hit drama series House of Hancock.
The Australian drama starring Mandy McElhinney as Rinehart was broadcast last month despite an 11th hour legal bid by the billionaire which forced producers to cut four minutes of the story out.
Australia’s richest person is infuriated by the two-part series in which her late father Lang Hancock is portrayed calling her a “slothful, vindictive, devious baby elephant” and is trying to stop Nine selling it or broadcasting it again.
After Rinehart took Nine to court ahead of the premiere in February, the network agreed to edit out several scenes of the miniseries and carry a disclaimer that it is “fictionalised” in an out-of-court settlement which was reached just before the Sunday night broadcast.
But publicity for the DVD – which boasts the House of Hancock DVD contains never-before-seen scenes – have concerned the Rinehart camp who are now demanding to see a copy before it is released on 19 March.
Sources told Guardian Australia the DVD does contain extra material but it is only behind-the scenes action with the actors.
The dramatised account of the life of Rinehart centres on her troubled relationship with her late father Lang Hancock and his much younger wife, Rose. But the Rinehart camp has described the show as “devoid of factual accuracy” and almost entirely fiction and is suing Nine for defamation.
“What was not entirely fictitious, was twisted so as to be incorrect,” Mark Wilks, a solicitor for Rinehart said.
“As a show it has denigrated the memory of Mrs Rinehart’s late parents and husband and wrongly portrayed that it accurately depicted those family members,” Wilks said.
“The show misled that such portrayal was ‘real’ or ‘true’ when it was not. Obviously a portrayal of events that didn’t occur, and or didn’t occur in that way, cannot form a basis for depicting Mrs Rinehart, her parents or her husband.”
Some of the 20 scenes in dispute in the second episode alone are:
- A scene depicting Rinehart confronting Hancock while he was in hospital. It has been labelled by Rinehart’s legal team as “entirely untrue and false”.
- A scene in which Rinehart finds out her father went to America for major surgery after she arrived at his mansion, Prix d’Amour, to visit. Rinehart’s legal team said she was not in Perth at the time.
- A scene in which Alan Camp meets Rinehart at her mother’s grave informing her that her father had changed his will. Rinehart’s legal team say no such scene every took place.
