I’m gonna speak in vague generalities here to protect myself, but more than a year ago, we had to remove an actor/writer from our webseries. There was a major falling out, complaints from other cast about him, people refusing to work with him, etc. and I eventually had to remove him from the project.
He shortly started telling everyone I wasn’t going to give him credit and posted our entire season 1 script online and then messaged me saying I wasn’t allowed to use anything he wrote. (But apparently it was okay for him to publish everything?) He finally disappeared for over a year.
Next thing I know a little over a year later he decides to file a copyright claim against the one episode I’ve released that he actually contributed to, claiming that we had an agreement where I was going to remove all his contributions if he took down the published script. While I did make that offer, he in no uncertain terms told me to “F off” and then blocked me. This was the first I heard from him since the offer was made.
He then tried to post series spoilers on our YouTube channel and I had to disable comments. He disappeared after that. I just found a post from him on Twitter of him saying, “Who wants to watch me tear apart the webseries I helped write? It’s gonna be super fun!”
His contributions consist of little more than ideas and outlines that weren’t ever written down that are in all likelihood going to be scrapped by the time we get that far into production of other seasons, and he rewrote a few scenes of season 1 that I had already written, but the only thing that made it into the final episode was a couple lines of dialogue, which he was credited for.
While I understand trolling is a part of any online project, he legitimately thinks he holds ownership.
What would be the best way to handle this?