CNN’s Settlement Calculus, Lizza vs. Nunes, & Ron Meyer’s O.J. Headache

Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, my private newsletter focused on the legal maneuvering inside Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and Wall Street.

This week, I look at how the former head of Universal Studios pushed to make an O.J. Simpson movie that purports the former football star was framed for murder—a movie that has since become a head-spinning legal drama itself. Plus, news on an unreported subpoena to Donald Trump’s new company; wins for Netflix, Bob Dylan, and Lifetime TV; and a Disney lawyer still rocking it at 85.

But first…

Exit Sandmann

I’m not surprised whatsoever that Nicholas Sandmann’s libel suit against various media outlets got tossed this past week on summary judgment. Nevertheless, when discussing the MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky teenager who briefly found himself the talk of social media for allegedly having “blocked” activist Nathan Phillips at a Native American protest, I want to make one observation...

Ron Meyer, the O.J. Movie, and L’Affaire Charlotte Kirk

One of the most sordid episodes in modern Hollywood enters a strange new phase.

ERIQ GARDNER

Right now, in some lawyer’s office, there is a 2017 audio recording of one of the most powerful Hollywood executives of the past half century saying of O.J. Simpson,“I always thought he was guilty until I read Josh’s script… Let’s make this movie before this guy gets out of prison… We’ll find ways to get this movie financed and distributed.” The voice on that recording allegedly belongs to Ron Meyer, the legendary CAA co-founder, Universal Studios president, and vice chairman at NBCUniversal, who, two years after exiting amid a scandal involving his affair with actress Charlotte Kirk, is now at the center of a $150 million lawsuit almost as unbelievable as the notion that O.J. isn’t a murderer.

On one level, that audio tape—which Meyer’s lawyer, Danya Perry, suggests may violate California’s criminal law against eavesdropping—is a remnant from l'affaire Kirk. She’s the actress who claimed she was coerced into sex with several Hollywood executives and then fought to lift a gag order that had kept her silent. Both Meyer and Kevin Tsujihara, the former Warner Bros. C.E.O. who also stepped down over a Kirk affair, have denied anything but brief, consensual relationships with her. But both were alleged to have sought acting roles for Kirk. One such role was Nicole Brown Simpson in Nicole & O.J., a $65 million film directed by Joshua Newton that purports Simpson was framed for double-murder, based on Newton’s own reexamination of the evidence...