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When it rains, it pours for Harvey Weinstein who should should really be producing ”The Biggest Loser”. In NYC, Judge Richard B. Lowe III ordered that The Weinstein Co could not go through with its agreement with Lifetime and promote, market or show Project Runway or any spin-off in advance of an October 15th hearing. Under The Weinstein Co’s deal with Lifetime, the 6th season of Project Runway was supposed to premiere on that cable channel instead of NBC Uni’s Bravo as soon as November. Well, that’s certainly up in the air now!
Here’s NBC Universal Statement: “NBC Universal is pleased that the court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction against The Weinstein Company. The overwhelming evidence demonstrated that The Weinstein Company violated NBC Universal’s right of first refusal to future cycles of Project Runway. After hearing all of the evidence, the court issued an order prohibiting The Weinstein Company from taking the show or any spin-off to Lifetime.”
The Weinstein Company statement: “We are glad that the court held that NBC Universal cannot exhibit the program on Bravo and that court required NBC Universal to post a minimum $20 million bond. Obviously we will be appealing and remain committed to our partners.”
The decision followed a hearing on July 17th during which NBC Uni bigwigs Jeff Zucker, Marc Graboff and Jeff Gaspin testified, as well as Harvey Weinstein and his EVP of biz affairs Eric Roth. It followed accusations flying last April from NBC Universal that The Weinstein Co lied to Jeff Zucker and engaged in “deception” and “sham negotiations” over Project Runway. This instantly turned into a major showbiz feud — especially after Harvey Weinstein personally assured Jeff Zucker, “I will not embarrass you”.
NBC Universal’s lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court against The Weinstein Company to block Project Runway‘s move. The Weinsteins have argued that NBC “declined to compete” for the right to air the #1 cable reality series. But NBC Universal said it retained a right of first refusal to future cycles of the series, which The Weinstein Company refused to honor. An NBC Uni source explained to me at the time that Zucker was in discussions with Harvey regarding Project Runway 
when all of a sudden the CEO found out that The Weinstein Co had signed the deal with Lifetime. So NBC Uni’s lawsuit accused The Weinstein Co of “deception” among other choice words and claimed NBC had the right of first refusal to acquire additional cycles of Project Runway, plus rights of first negotiation and first refusal with respect to spin-offs. NBC claims TWC didn’t honor those rights and “never intended to negotiate in good faith”.
According to the complaint, negotiations began in January 2007 at a meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills between Weinstein, Zucker and entertainment lieutenant Marc Graboff. Weinstein reportedly threatened to take future cycles of Project Runway to a competitor unless NBC Uni agreed to pay big bucks to acquire the TV rights to a package of second-rate Winstein Co films. It was during this meeting that, according to the lawsuit, Harvey assured Jeff: ”You can only have in your life five true friends and I consider you one of my five friends. And I’m telling you I will not embarrass you.” Only now Harvey is screwed…
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Typical Harvey.
Though usually he loves nothing more than to do a deal with people and then drop out, thus eliminating the chance for his victims to land another deal. Just ask the many filmmakers who have been fucked by Harvey over the years at Sundance.
Personally, I can’t imagine Heidi Klum wanting to haul her ass to Lifetime.
Bravo is more her style.
“Never intended to negotiate in good faith…”
But, when the AMPTP does that on NBC/Uni’s behalf, that’s just good business?
Scumbags pissing on other scumbags. Who cares?
Your photoshop skills are terrible. Take a class already.
Actually, I don’t know who to believe.
Jeff and Harvey are both really good liars.
They were probably both trying to screw each other.
This is good news, for everyone but the Weinstein “fashion designer” consort. And nice photoshop work, Nikki!
I don’t think Harvey realizes that he’s not in any position to bully and screw over anyone, let alone a player as big as NBC-Universal. Because no matter what you think of Zucker, it’s like grabbing a bull elephant by the balls, squeezing, while screaming: “Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you!”
The least they’re going to do is sit on you, and when an elephant sits on you, you’re no longer a player, you’re paste.
Ha ha ha…nice to see Weinstein get a kick in the ass. Hope he loses this one! Zucker is an idiot in the generic biz way…but Weinstein is truly something special.
I lol’d at his “you can only have 5 true friends…” I’d be surprised if he had any.
And I agree with Crystal…why would anyone want to be on Lifetime over Bravo?
Why hasn’t this ended up on network? Do they figure the viewership wouldn’t be there?
How many people do you think Harvey has used the “You can only have in your life five true friends and I consider you one of my five friends” line on?
10, 20??
It will confuse and frustrate everyone to acknowledge that our reactionary blogger Crystal Diane Stevens is absolutely totally completely spot-on and maddeningly right.
If you look up “bad faith” in the dictionary it says “See Harvey”, he has f*cked over so many people through so many years that if there’s any validity to the concept of karma then he’s a got a whole lot of coming-around to get through. As for Zucker, only a putz doesn’t get it in writing, especially when talking to a scumbag like Harvey.
The idiots are Lifetime. They knew the show wasn’t free but Andrea Wong was so desperate to demonstrate that she knew how to run a network out of her background in reality television that she got really greedy here. Her goal is to make Lifetime the home of reality since she has no other skill set. She is utterly tone deaf to the Lifetime audience and the strangest pick. But Bob Iger is nuts for her. Meanwhile since this boneheaded move was made she has accomplished next to nothing over there. Since Lifetime is incapable of making original programming (and Andrea doesn’t know how)this was their best move. Gutsy. But you should always read the fine print.
I can remember when Bravo used to be a good channel with decent shows. Nowadays it’s merely an outlet for unmitigated assholism. Almost every show on Bravo is a monument to what is wrong with Americans today. Each show is about who can be the biggest asshole, well fuck that. Since I am not an asshole, there is nothing on Bravo worth watching.
Comrade Rutherford, you really don’t give yourself enough credit.
It’s a delight for this expatriate American to read the comments by my fellow vitriolists who hit the nail on the head over and over again re the unworthies running too much of our entertainment industry. Bravo Bravisimo, amici. You have given me confidence that you have the smarts to also make the right choices in November. God Bless.
The person above who said that Lifetime is run by a bunch of idiots couldn’t have said it any better. Lifetime has been the laugh of the cable industry for the past 5 years, and it has even become more so with Andrea Wong running the place. She is basically despised within the company. She likes to run the place as a dictator and basically just tells everyone what to do. The only time she communicates with the staff is to tell them the latest ratings on Army Wives — other than that, no one ever hears from her. And she had nothing to do with Army Wives (that was all Susanne Daniels). Ratings have gone down since she’s taken over, and every single new show that has been greenlit since she took over has been a huge flop — Your Mama Don’t Dance, Top This Party, Matched In Manhattan, … can you say embarrassing???
Now Project Runway was a bold move. Gotta give her credit for that. And it was basically done in the hopes of using it as a launch pad for other Lifetime reality fare. However, everyone in the industry knew that NBC had a good case, except the Lifetime lawyers (who completely misjudged the case here). And one can only imagine how much wasted money they have spent on outside legal fees. It’s time for the Lifetime Board to wake up and start paying attention to what’s going on.
Andrea Wong is sort of like Sarah Palin. She thinks she’s smarter than she is. If she opens her mouth to talk about anything more than ratings you quickly realize she has no gift for this at all. No sense of the creative, no sense of the real audience and certainly no vision. She can’t even speak with the passion of a true fan. At a Lifetime/Hollywood Reporter breakfast last year when she spoke she could barely deliver her speech off the teleprompter, then when the prompter went up she was truly lost. It was cringingly embarassing.
Two years ago she spear headed the effort at the Television Academy to remove all awards for Writing off the live Emmy broadcast. She was almost able to get it to pass with the television academy when the writing branch rallied with threatening to pull all clips where actors speak from the show. But this is how kind of crazy and wrong headed her approach is. She doesn’t understand how to build a show, build an audience, market a show. The board of Lifetime headed by Anne Sweeney need to have a long talk about why they made another boneheaded hire over there. At least Betty Cohen let people do their jobs. And she was personal and kind.
In her reality days at ABC Andrea Wong used to call my “Exec producer buddy” at dawn at home the morning after his show would air and say “You went down with boys 18-25 by 2%. What are you going to do about that?” She thinks all TV can be run by statistics. She attended MIT and believes that somehow makes her know something about the television industry. And so of course Lifetime hired her. It’s so sad because it’s another lost opportunity.