Disney Reportedly Lost Producer Who Brought in Billions Over a Theme Park Pass
I understand that cost-cutting at Disney has left those employed by the House of Mouse in a grim situation these past few years.
However, the maxim that you’ve got to spend money to make money still holds sway — and losing billions of dollars over a couple of free theme park passes doesn’t exactly seem like the best trade-off when it comes to skimping on expenses.
Shonda Rhimes is one of the most powerful people behind the scenes in Hollywood. If you don’t know her, you likely know the properties for which she’s responsible if you have any familiarity with popular culture over the past 20 years.
Rhimes was the showrunner, producer and/or head writer on ABC properties “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder.”
She’s now at Netflix, where she’s been the driving force behind “Bridgerton” — and, according to a Saturday piece in The Hollywood Reporter, her breaking point with Disney-owned ABC allegedly came over theme park passes.
The report noted that Rhimes “was producing some 70 hours of annual television in 256 territories; she was making tens of millions of dollars for herself and more than $2 billion for Disney, and still there were battles with ABC.”
“They’d push, she’d push back. Over budget. Over content. Over an ad she and the stars of her series — ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Scandal’ and ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ — made for then-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton,” the outlet claimed.
That’s hardly a dealbreaker in deep-blue Hollywood, however. In fact, THR reported she was in the midst of negotiating a multiyear deal despite the fact that she felt creatively stifled.
“I felt like I was dying,” Rhimes told the outlet. (Actual dying people were unavailable for comment because they were too busy, you know, dying.)
“She knew her breaking point would come, but what it would be she never could have predicted,” THR reported.
“As part of her ABC relationship,” it said, “Rhimes had been given an all-inclusive pass to Disneyland — and without a partner, she’d negotiated a second for her nanny. But on this day, she needed one for her sister, too, as she’d be taking Rhimes’ teenage daughter while the nanny chaperoned her younger two. If the passes had been interchangeable, Rhimes would have been happy to give up hers — when would she have time to go to Disneyland anyway?
“After some unwanted back-and-forth — ‘We never do this,’ she was told more than once — Rhimes was issued an additional pass. But when her daughters arrived in Anaheim, only one of the passes worked. Rhimes lobbed a call to a high-ranking executive at the company. Surely, he would get this sorted.
“Instead, the exec allegedly replied, ‘Don’t you have enough?’”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is officially your sign to get the heck out of Dodge.
Rhimes, despite her political blind spots (really, suborning your cast to do an ad for Hillary?), is still no dummy, and get out of Dodge she did.
“What happened next transformed not simply Rhimes’ career but the television industry at large,” THR said. “That August, the news became official: Rhimes would be leaving her creative hub of 15 years for a first-of-its-kind, nine-figure overall deal at Netflix.”
Now, I don’t want to say that Rhimes wouldn’t have left ABC/Disney if she’d been given 800 passes to the theme park, but let’s think about it for a moment: This is the company that, in 2022, lost roughly a quarter of a billion dollars on two LGBT-tastic virtue-signalling children’s films but couldn’t give one of their top creators an extra Disneyland pass.
We’re not talking about a trip to the cosmos aboard the SpaceX Dragon or getting Rhimes all four of the suits the Beatles wore on the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” We’re talking about a theme park pass.
Rhimes is one of maybe five producers and/or showrunners I can name without looking it up on Wikipedia — and according to THR, when she was asking for an extra comped ticket to Disneyland, a Disney exec was like: Whoa, slow down, honey.
Rhimes wasn’t “issuing clarifications” or anything of that nature regarding the Saturday report, either. Instead, this was her social media promotion of the feature:
WARNING: The following post contains graphic language that some readers will find offensive.
“Why wouldn’t I own my shit? Like, why do I feel like it’s wrong to do somehow?”
Going to start owning it. Starting with this @hollywoodreporter cover. 📸 @kwakualstonHair by @verylynhairdesigns
Styling by @theclothingtherapist
Dress by … https://t.co/lfqKt2QDox pic.twitter.com/t114uDP25h— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) October 21, 2020
Now, to be fair, there’s a lot more in the article about how Netflix wooed her from ABC to the streaming service in 2018 and how it was a multiyear process. However, social media users seemed especially galled at Disney’s priorities in the matter:
It’s not about the ticket, it’s about the principle.
It demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the amount of money she has made for the network.
Shonda Rhimes MADE Thursday nights, the least she deserves is a damn Disneyland ticket. https://t.co/eUmWKL4TRf— Michelle Elman (@MichelleLElman) October 21, 2020
I don’t blame her. ABC executives disrespected her and also didn’t value so she left. Shonda did a lot for their network and they didn’t respect her. Period.
— 𝙱𝚎𝚌𝚌𝚊 ⚡️ (@MJFINESSELOVER) October 21, 2020
Imagine losing one of your top players over $154 💀 I ain’t mad at her https://t.co/C4Meso1Cq1
— The Problem ✨ (@NoirDevereaux) October 21, 2020
ABC lost Shonda Rhimes over a Disneyland pass. A network full of 🤡. https://t.co/RqURBlNMdX
— 💛 KrysMarie (@KrysMarieA) October 22, 2020
Again, I’m not saying Netflix — or any other major streaming service or legacy media outlet — is the paragon of fiscal continence and prioritizes returns to its shareholders over cultural posturing. None of them is, in case you haven’t been paying attention.
However, Disney is the poster child for this kind of penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking, particularly when the foolish pound is rainbow-hued or has a Black Lives Matter sticker attached to it.
Meanwhile, thanks to a string of failures and the inability of the Disney+ streaming service to catch on as the company had hoped, the accountants are busy shaving unnecessary expenses anywhere they can be found in the House of Mouse.
I hope they’re satisfied that at least they tried to save $154 (or whatever) on the comped ticket Shonda Rhimes was demanding.
Shame about losing the creator who helmed properties that earned $2 billion for Disney in the process, but you’ve gotta have priorities — and the money lost by keeping the thoroughly unnecessary lesbian kiss in “Lightyear” to thumb the company’s nose at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was clearly more important than letting one of its biggest cash cows think she could get away with an extra theme park pass.
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