All Elite Wrestling promoted Queen of the Ring so heavily that its sponsorship fee, roughly $350,000, came to more than half of everything the movie earned in theaters. Now AEW is in court trying to collect the part it says never got paid.
The promotion sued Ring Productions LLC, the company behind the Mildred Burke biopic, on June 26 in Duval County, Florida, over an alleged unpaid balance of $105,262.51. The case is docketed as 16-2026-CA-004560 in the Fourth Judicial Circuit, in AEW’s home county. Brandon Thurston of POST Wrestling and Wrestlenomics obtained the filing. A review of the complaint and its exhibits fills in who AEW went after, how the deal was built, and why it landed in open court.
The person on the other end of AEW’s collection emails is a familiar name. The contract lists two Ring contacts, both at Sumerian addresses: COO Paul Leighton and Ash Avildsen, the film’s writer and director, whom the complaint identifies as Ring’s principal. AEW says it emailed both men directly on September 24, October 17, November 17, and December 19 of last year, and heard nothing back.
A Deal Built Around AEW Revolution 2025
The original January 17, 2025 agreement traded $250,000 for a promotional blitz: a sponsored Dynamite match, ringside cast placement, three weeks of Collision mentions, in-arena trailer plays, and five AEW wrestlers pushing the film on social media.
A March 8 amendment, signed for AEW by Tony Khan, added a second $100,000 year and a block of AEW Revolution 2025 tie-ins, a cast member in the pay-per-view pre-show, an interview segment, and a pre-taped backstage package AEW would shoot and post. The same amendment added a clause where both sides pledged to find ways to boost the film’s box office and video-on-demand numbers.
The numbers never came. Queen of the Ring opened across 825 theaters in March 2025 and grossed $657,718 worldwide, per Box Office Mojo. Against that, a $350,000 promotional bill is a heavy line item, and the complaint traces a company falling behind on it.
Ring paid the first $250,000, but only after being chased, closing that half on May 23, 2025. It then never paid the $100,000 second-year fee due March 31, or $5,262.51 in talent travel costs.
The Venue Choice
After the four unanswered emails, AEW’s outside counsel, Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, sent a formal breach notice on March 24, 2026. The complaint says Leighton acknowledged the full $105,262.51 was owed, then went quiet again. The email showing that admission is not attached as an exhibit, which matters, because an on-record acknowledgment of the debt would be strong evidence for AEW’s single breach-of-contract count.
Then there is the venue itself, the most telling choice in the filing. The contract carries two competing paths for disputes: one clause hands exclusive jurisdiction to Duval County courts, another routes disagreements to private arbitration through JAMS in Jacksonville. AEW took the public one.
A promotion that guards its legal business closely, and that is known to arbitrate talent disputes out of view, instead filed an open-court complaint that puts a partner’s unpaid invoice on the record for anyone to read. AEW media relations did not respond to a request for comment on why.
Ring Productions has not answered the suit and had not been formally served as of the latest docket entry. Once served, it will have 20 days to respond.