The first time I set foot in MGM’s headquarters, in Beverly Hills, I was struck by its unglamorous sterility. The dark entryway and long, vacant walls suggested a financial services company of a quasi-dystopian future, not a surviving link to Hollywood’s glorious past. Louis B. Mayer, MGM’s co-founder, famously touted “more stars than there are in heaven.” To me, though, it looked like a place where the stars’ accountants might work.
It was summer 2016, and I had been summoned to MGM by its then-C.E.O. Gary Barber, himself a tight-fisted accountant by training. Barber wanted to berate me in person about The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage of his pricey Ben-Hurremake, which, according to THR, was on course to lose about $120 million. The story’s opening line: “Ben-Hur? More like Ben-Horrendous.”
