Patrisse Cullors, the former leader of Black Lives Matter, was quietly “dumped” from a multi-year deal with Warner Bros. Television Group.
According to the New York Post, not a single show was ever produced throughout the deal, which began sometime in 2020. In the multi-year agreement, Cullors was supposed to help develop programming that would include black stories for children’s content and scripted and unscripted series, among other material, Variety reported in 2020.
“Black voices, especially Black voices who have been historically marginalized, are important and integral to today’s storytelling. Our perspective and amplification is necessary and vital to helping shape a new narrative for our families and communities. I am committed to uplifting these stories in my new creative role with the Warner Bros. family,” Cullors said in a statement at the time. “As a long time community organizer and social justice activist, I believe that my work behind the camera will be an extension of the work I’ve been doing for the last twenty years. I look forward to amplifying the talent and voices of other Black creatives through my work.”
But according to the Post’s sources, the deal ended in October of 2022.
The end of her contract in October 2022 was in stark contrast to an interview she gave to The Hollywood Reporter in January of that year.
She said that she was working on documentaries on how the idea of “landback” — in which Native Americans have former tribal lands returned — could work as reparations. Another was on black social mobility in the US.
Cullors also said she was working on a scripted project about marijuana, and others on female black leaders and what she called “the toll” of life “under a system that doesn’t see us, or makes us hyper-visible and also hyper-invisible at the same time.”
Cullors, 39, an artist and activist, resigned from Black Lives Matter in May 2021, a month after The Post reported that she had gone on a $3.2 million real estate shopping spree, buying up properties in California and in Georgia.
She said at the time that she did not use any of the non-profit’s cash to make the purchases, and that she was resigning to focus on a book and TV deal.
“I’ve created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,” Cullors said, adding that her departure had been in the works for a while and was not tied to what she described as “right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character.”
A year after signing the deal with Warner Bros, Cullors bought a sprawling 2,500-square-foot home in Los Angeles’ Topanga Canyon in 2021 for $1.4 million, public records show. (New York Post)
Commenting on the report, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley noted how Warner Bros. was eager to "grab its own piece of Cullors" to virtue signal about its anti-racist values.
"Some are now wondering if Warner Bros. ever intended for this contract to produce anything other than a public relations pitch or whether Cullors took the money and ran without producing even a trailer for an actual product. Indeed, both explanations may be true," he wrote on his blog. "Paying money to Cullors was likely viewed as a type of insurance to protect the company from accusations of racial" insensitivity.
...Cullors once declared that “while the COVID-19 illness is tragic, what’s more tragic is capitalism.” These companies seem to be trying to prove her point. Yet, at least for Cullors, they fulfilled their slogan that this is all “The stuff that dreams are made of.”
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 28, 2023