In the wake of the agreement, Shane claimed that O'Shea had verbally accepted Universal's offer although no official paperwork was signed. O'Shea contested, "I did not make any agreement written or oral ... never told him we had an agreement, nor words to that effect ... never told him that I had the authority ... I am not an employee, agent, or officer at RKO." A few days later, Universal filed suit against De Laurentiis and RKO-General in Los Angeles Superior Court for $25 million on charges of breach of contract, fraud, and intentional interference with advantageous business relations. In October 1975, Universal, which was in pre-production with their own remake with Hunt Stromberg, Jr., as producer and Joseph Sargent as director, filed suit in a federal district court arguing that the story's "basic ingredients" were public domain. Universal had claimed that their remake was based on the two-part serialization by Edgar Wallace and a novelization by Delos W. Lovelace adapted from the screenplay that had been published shortly before the film's release in 1933.