This is a bomb. Veteran NBCUniversal executive Ron Meyer leaves the company after a quarter of a century.
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell announced the news just in a company memo.
‘I’m writing about some unfortunate news. Last week, Ron Meyer informed NBCUniversal that he had acted in a way that we believe is inconsistent with our company policies or values, ”said Shell. “Based on Ron’s revelation of these actions, we have mutually concluded that Ron should leave the company, effectively leave. We thank Ron for his 25 years of service, and for his important contributions to NBCUniversal. ”
Meyer issued his own statement, elaborating on the reasons behind his abrupt dismissal:
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It is with a heavy heart that I announce my departure from NBCUniversal.
I recently revealed to my family and the company that I made an amount, under threat, with a woman outside the company who had made false accusations against me. Sure, this is a woman with a very short and consensual affair many years ago. I made this revelation because other parties to the settlement knew and continually tried to depress me to pay their money or otherwise intended to implicitly implicate NBCUniversal, which had nothing to do with this case and false accusations about it. to publish me. After I revealed this matter to the company, we mutually decided that I would resign from my role as Vice President of NBCUniversal.
I have spent 25 years growing and supporting an amazing company in a job I love. It is the people at this company that I will miss the most. I regret what happened and I regret for all the people in my life that I may have, in particular and most importantly, let my family down.
Ron
When the morning news broke, Meyer’s bio was already scrubbed from the company’s NBCUniversal website.
Meyer joined Universal Studios as President & COO in 1995, replacing Sidney J. Sheinberg, who received a production deal. Meyer was promoted to NBCUniversal Vice President in 2013. In that new position, he provided strategic guidance and advice on all aspects of the conglomerate, including film and TV assets, such as the theme park company, and worked alongside Universal Filmed Entertainment President Jeff Shell and Universal Pictures Chair Donna Langley. Together they saw Universal set a then-industry box office record of $ 6.9B WW in 2015 (a record that has since been broken by Disney). Meyer brought Spielberg and Amblin back into the Universal fold in 2015 after the director’s DreamWorks went to Disney, where the Oscar-winning director made such films as Lincoln, War Horse, Bridge of Spies en The BFG. Meyer’s renewed contract in 2016 was originally intended to keep him at the studio by the end of 2021.
He co-founded CAA in 1975 with Mike Ovitz, Bill Haber, Rowland Perkins and Michael Rosenfeld. A former Marine, Meyer, came through a family connection his first entry-level job as a messenger at the Paul Kohner Agency, and worked there from 1964-1970. He then jumped to William Morris as a junior agent, and worked alongside Ovitz.
Meyer was known as a people, a cool-headed diplomat who personally led the careers of Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep and Cher, among others. Stars have looked to Meyer for Universal as their champion: He’s the guy who encouraged Dwayne Johnson to move from WWE wrestler to leading man, giving Angelina Jolie all the support for her first major studio directing appearance at 2014’s Unbroken. Jolie’s connection with Meyer went all the way back to her childhood when he repeated her father Jon Voight at CAA.
Originally, in the mid-1990s, Meyer was to become an independent producer, but Ovitz persuaded him to join Universal Studios after he was hired by then-Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. While conversations went sideways between Ovitz and Bronfman, David Geffen, the billionaire co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, Bronfman talks about hiring Meyer.
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Anthony D’Alessandro contributed to this report
