“Hellboy” director Neil Marshall has denied the allegations
Two film directors, both of whom have dated actress Charlotte Kirk, were trying to express veteran Hollywood executive Ron Meyer, according to two people with knowledge of the drama that led to the mogul’s abrupt resignation as vice president on Tuesday. NBCUniversal.
Neil Marshall, the director of the “Hellboy” of 2019, which is currently coming out of Kirk, and Joshua Newton, a former friend of Kirk’s, whose credits separate the 2009 Roy Scheider film “Iron Cross” in 2009 have separated contacted Meyer in the past year with money demanded and threatened to expose Meyer’s extraterrestrial affair with Kirk eight years ago, the individuals said.
Meyer had been in individual negotiations with the directors for nearly a year, each threatening to file lawsuits that exposed his affair and named Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, in an attempt to push Meyer into to greenlight one of their film projects, the insiders said.
Meyer and NBCUniversal both declined to comment for this story.
Marshall flatly denied the allegations. “The allegations against me, Ron Meyer and Comcast really have no basis,” he said via email. “They are malicious and harmful, and you should not be a party to spreading false statements that you now know are not true.”
Newton, who dated Kirk for five years and starred in his film “Nicole & OJ,” did not respond to an e-mail or phone calls seeking comment.
Also read: Affair with Actress Charlotte Kirk Leads to Dismissal of Ron Meyer From NBCUniversal
Charlotte Kirk and Joshua Newton in 2016 (Photo by Bennett Raglin / Getty Images for American friends of Magen David Adom)
On Tuesday, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell announced that Meyer had announced the launch efforts at the end of last week and that the 75-year-old would retire from the company after a 25-year run.
Kirk is the same actress whose later affair with Kevin Tsujihara between 2013 and 2014 led to his own ouster as Warner Bros. CEO last year after word of the relationship and Tsujihara’s subsequent efforts to advance Kirk’s acting career surfaced in the press.
Meyer, who had an affair with Kirk when she was roughly 20 years old and new to Hollywood, advised the young actress when she sought a settlement from Tsujihara and other related people who claimed she was casting her film roles had promised, according to two persons with knowledge of the case. A lawyer for Tsujihara denied that he had ever made a settlement with Kirk.
However, a monetary settlement was eventually struck with James Packer, the financier of the billionaire film that works closely with Warner Bros. and was then collaborating with director Brett Ratner on the production company Ratpac-Dune Entertainment, a third expert told TheWrap. Kirk had also dated James Packer, according to texts published by The Hollywood Reporter.
The amount and timing of that settlement are not known. Reps for Packer and Kirk did not respond to requests for comment.
According to two occupants, Kirk later regretted the terms of that settlement and Meyer owed the debt for the amount she received. She demanded that Meyer pay her to give the score herself, she said, and threatened to expose her affair to the media if he refused. Instead of risking a public embarrassment, Meyer chose to pay Kirk a non-public amount of money – and did not tell Comcast at the time, two insiders said.
Meyer reached out to the FBI for assistance in trying to oust the directors, two people familiar with the matter told Variety. The FBI would not confirm or deny if there is an investigation into the case.
Also read: Who is Charlotte Kirk, the actress at Center of Ron Meyer’s Ouster
Neil Marshall (Getty Images)
According to THR, there was an ‘increasingly desperate struggle’ among Tsujihara, Packer and Ratner to ‘manage Kirk’s driving demands in the movies and TV series. ‘She was subsequently cast in small roles in two Warner Bros. films, 2016’s “How to Be Single” and 2018’s “Ocean’s 8.”
Genre director Neil Marshall first broke out with the indie horror cult classic “Dog Soldiers” in 2002 and followed that up with the 2005 ‘The Descent’, which cemented Marshall’s place under “The Splat Pack” – an indie collective filmmakers who write, direct and produce R-rated horror films known for their low budgets and use of force. Marshall went on to make television episodes and directed the hugely popular “Blackwater” episode of “Game of Thrones.”
Marshall’s direction of ‘Game of Thrones’ in the penultimate episode of season 4 ‘The Watchers on the Wall’ earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a drama series. Marshall soon followed up with last year’s Hellgate’s wedding-breaking Lionsgate reboot, a revived production that TheWrap exclusively reported on. Marshall would continue to rule Kirk in the horror film “The Reckoning”, which is scheduled to screen this Thursday at the Fantasia Film Festival in Canada.
In 2019, Newton told the Daily Mail that he was deeply in love with the actress, but cast her as Nicole Brown Simpson in his OJ Simpson film for professional reasons: ” Charlotte and I were together for five years and it would be hard to arguing that it did not affect me. But she got the role on merit and for all the right artistic reasons. ”
Umberto Gonzalez contributed to this report.
