Bob Bakish sure would have liked for his Paramount to be the one distributing Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.”
Instead, the new(ish) Viacom boss saw the highly profitable thriller slip to Universal Pictures, despite the “Key & Peele” sketch team member first becoming a big name on the now Bakish-run Comedy Central. The same exact thing happened not too long with Amy Schumer and her feature film, “Trainwreck.”
“We certainly made her famous, and then when she went on to grow in the film business, she went and did a film with Universal,” Bakish lamented of his “Inside Amy Schumer” star’s long-form landing spot.
Bakish’s comments came Tuesday morning from the Deutsche Bank 2017 Media & Telecom Conference. Well, Bob, what can we tell you? At least she’s still on the cable channel; “Key & Peele” walked away in 2015.
“We have a real opportunity to grow our talent relationships, create opportunity,” Bakish said of the changing philosophies inside his publicly traded company.
One such priority is not making the same mistake with Trevor Noah and “The Daily Show.” Viacom is currently trying to extend both the IP and its 11 o’clock star. That said, they missed out on Noah’s new stand-up comedy special, which ended up at Netflix.