Apple had a deal with The Weinstein Company for an Elvis Presley biopic series, but the iPhone maker decided to pull the plug in light of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
The Elvis project was in the very early stages, but it was months in the making, the report notes.
The Weinstein Company, which Weinstein co-founded in 2005, fired him soon after a The New York Times published an exposé last week. The report revealed that Weinstein has been sexually harassing women in the industry for years, and paying many of them off to stay quiet. Weinstein did not deny the allegations.
Apple, meanwhile, scored the Elvis biopic even before the former Sony execs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg joined Apple, according to Deadline.
The report says there was also an idea to grow the deal into an anthology franchise that would focus on other artists, including Prince and Michael Jackson. Weinstein was supposed to be an executive producer on the show, alongside Pricilla Presley, Jerry Schilling, and David Glasser.
Glasser, TWC’s COO, is now looking to sell the Elvis series to another network that also bid on the series.
Other ongoing TWC projects where Weinstein served as an executive producer will proceed as planned, but his name will be removed from all of them. Maybe TWC should also consider changing its name altogether.
As for the Elvis biopic, we’ll probably see it but on a different network. Weinstein Television had partnered with the Elvis Presley estate in 2016 for an eight- to 10-part series. The company was granted rights to all his music and access to the artist’s Graceland estate, automobiles, clothes, and jets.
