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Andre 3000 sued over Cartoon Network show

By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 10 December 2008

Andre 3000 is being sued by a former art student who claims the Outkast man stole his idea for an animated series about a group of young musicians and turned it into ‘Class Of 3000’, the Cartoon Network aired show created, executive produced and starring Andre, two series of which were screened between November 2006 and May this year.

According to the Boston Herald, Timothy McGee, now a Boston postal worker, claims he developed “characters, artwork, storylines and concepts” for an animated series to be called ‘The Music Factory Of The 90s’ which would follow a group of young musicians as they “try to break into Atlanta’s burgeoning music scene”.

He said his pitch proposed a range of characters, including “a young corporate type who wants to become a music producer, a tough full-of-attitude female executive, a young techno-whiz sound engineer, a talented young Asian singer and a central energetic young singer/rapper”.

He says he submitted the programme idea to the Cartoon Network in 1997, proposing R&B star Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds be involved. The proposal, though, was rejected. He alleges his ideas were then repackaged years later to create the Andre 3000 vehicle, pointing out that some of the core characters in ‘Class Of 3000’ match the character descriptions he included in his original pitch.

McGee is suing Andre himself, plus the Cartoon Network and its owners Turner for copyright infringement, breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets, seeking damages “including but not limited to” all the profits from the show.

Cartoon Network told the Herald it was aware of the lawsuit but, as this time, would not comment.