Game planning for Paramount; The accidental ‘Apprentice’ financier

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As David Ellison’s Skydance merger with Paramount begins, studio executives have been given some serious incentives to stick around through the transition process. Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw examine the latest happenings at the studio.

Then, Kim Masters wraps a two-part conversation between The Apprentice writer Gabriel Sherman and Briarcliff Entertainment founder Tom Ortenberg. Sherman shares how billionaire Trump supporter Dan Snyder helped finance the project without reading the script… And he also shares how Snyder was bought out of the project once he saw an early screening and realized that the film was far too critical for his taste. Plus, Ortenberg reflects on the death threats he’s encountered over the years due to his propensity for distributing controversial movies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.
0:05.2	When screenwriter Gabriel Sherman said out to make his new film, The Apprentice,
0:09.1	he got a chunk of change from an unlikely source,
0:11.9	Trump supporter and former Washington football team owner, Dan Snyder.
0:15.9	I've subsequently learned kind of just through my own reporting on my own film
0:19.6	that Dan Snyder had never read
0:21.3	the script. According to my sources, he wasn't involved in kinematics day-to-day, and Mark
0:25.8	Rappaport never showed him the script. So I don't even understand what Dan Snyder knew
0:30.6	about the movie. In the second half of our two-part conversation, we talked to Sherman and
0:35.7	Briarcliffe Entertainment founder Tom Ortenberg,
0:38.4	who stepped in to release The Apprentice when Hollywood ran away from it.
0:42.2	Ortenberg talks about shepherding divisive films, including magazine dreams,
0:46.6	which searchlight shelved after actor Jonathan Majors was convicted on assault and harassment charges.
0:52.3	And Gabriel Sherman shares how billionaire Trump supporter Dan Snyder freaked out after watching an early cut of The Apprentice.
0:59.8	But first, two buddies banter while I'm away.
1:02.8	Stick around.
1:03.5	It's the business from KCRW.
1:06.8	I'm Matt Bellany, filling in for Kim Masters.
1:09.4	And with me is Lucas Shaw, the head of the
1:11.9	entertainment group at Bloomberg. Welcome, Lucas. Thanks, Matt. Great to be here. All right. So let's
1:16.6	talk a little bit about Paramount because there's been some movement in the past week. As we know,
1:23.0	Paramount was sold. Sherry Redstone, the controlling shareholder, has agreed to merge Paramount with Skydance,
	...

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