Paramount Ordered to Release Documents : Trials: A judge rules that financial data pertinent to columnist Art Buchwald’s suit against the film studio must be made public.

Paramount Pictures must make public details of comedian Eddie Murphy’s $8-million-plus contract for acting in the 1988 hit film “Coming to America” as well as a dozen other confidential financial documents, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Within a month, 13 contracts, profit-participation statements and other financial data that the studio tried keeping under court seal in the trial of columnist Art Buchwald vs. Paramount will become public record, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Harvey Schneider ruled following a short hearing.

The Los Angeles Times, in a 22-page brief filed last week, formally challenged Paramount’s attempt to keep 17 documents secret. Schneider ruled Wednesday that four of the most sensitive financial documents in the highly publicized case now pending in his court would remain under seal . . . at least for now.

Schneider dismissed Paramount’s claims that disclosure of most of the contracts filed in connection with the breach-of-contract case would do any damage to Paramount’s ability to compete with rival film studios. He cited Murphy’s contract as an example. Schneider said that the contract might show the “nuts and bolts” of how the star of “Coming to America” accrued his earnings, but the actor’s salary ($8 million) plus his 15% gross profit participation in revenues taken in by the movie were both already revealed during trial testimony.

The judge put Murphy’s total take from the movie at between $16 million and $18 million, including TV licensing fees, foreign ticket sales and videocassette revenue. The fantasy about an African prince who comes to New York to find his princess has grossed more than $300 million, according to Buchwald’s attorneys.

Arguing on Paramount’s behalf, attorney Robert Draper claimed that revealing any of the documents would compromise the studio’s “trade secrets” by giving rival studios a glimpse into how Paramount puts together a successful motion picture.

Buchwald and producer Alain Bernheim sued Paramount for $5 million on grounds that the studio used the humorist’s original story, titled “King for a Day,” as the basis for “Coming to America” but refused to pay them in accordance with their contract. According to their 1983 contract, the studio was to pay them 19% of any net profits that resulted from a movie based on Buchwald’s story.

Paramount dropped its contract with Buchwald in 1985. Murphy subsequently went on to claim sole story credit for conceiving the concept for “Coming To America.”

Though the movie ranks among the 20 top-grossing movies of the 1980s, it has yet to earn a net profit, according to testimony in the two-week trial that concluded last week.

The four documents Schneider refused to unseal Wednesday include “confidential documents which disclose the structure of Paramount’s negotiations on ‘Coming to Ameri” according to a declaration by Paramount’s chief legal counsel, A. Robert Pisano. “These documents show the allocation of gross receipts of various persons and entities including Paramount and other third parties” and must remain secret, Pisano argued.

Schneider hinted that those confidential studio papers might still become public, however, if Buchwald wins his lawsuit.

“If the plaintiff prevails in this case, there will be a second phase,” Schneider said. “And in that phase there will be a need for important financial information, and it may be that the balancing test (as to the confidentiality of documents) might come out differently when and if we get to that phase.”

Schneider, who took the case under submission one week ago, had not delivered his verdict as of Wednesday morning.

Paramount has 10 days to reply to Schneider’s ruling, after which the state appellate court will have another two weeks to review the decision before the documents are unsealed.