Rolling Stone on Bill Simmons

Not a ton of new ground broken here, except for this revelation:

Wow.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-simmons-big-score-20140429

Also recently learned he's an executive producer of the new Jon Hamm movie "Million Dollar Arm."

Say what you want about the guy (and I'm sure you will), but he's made a hell of a career for himself.

 

I admire Bill's entrepreneurship, willingness to experiment and commitment to big ideas very much. Can't say the same for his writing, but that's become the least important part of his career.

 

If Reilly is making $3.75 million a year, Simmons is a bargain at $5 million per.

 

And what % of that readership is simply the same Bill Simmons columns people always read when it was part of ESPN.com?

I suspect -- I do not know for sure -- that Grantland hurts ESPN's bottom line. That it is the WNBA, for lack of a better word, living off a bigger, actually-popular product. ESPN can claim it to be anything it wants, because ESPN can move around the chairs however it pleases.

That Simmons is an executive producer of the movie could be meaningless. Executive producers sometimes have the most tangential of contributions to the event. It's under the Disney umbrella, it may have started out as a 30 for 30 doc that morphed into a semi-fiction story, it's hard to say. Another 30 for 30 contributor is also an executive producer of the movie.

 

He said on his podcast he came in late and wasn't involved in the development process.

My point was that (A) he's got enough money to invest in a major Hollywood film and (B) he stands to make quite a bit more if it's successful, which most of the Disney sports movies have been.

 

Being an executive producer doesn't mean at all that he put money up to finance the film, or has any stake in the profits. It could simpky mean he gave notes on the director's cut.

 

Alma, I suspect 90 percent of all hits on ESPN.com are people checking for scores. Grantland was created to earn the organization prestige and awards. As long as it doesn't lose TOO much money, ESPN will be content. And it's hardly the first news organization to chase reputation and awards at the expense of profits.

 

Apps are better for scores.

 

Exec producers don't always invest money. They may have been attached to the project at one time, or consulted on it, and thus get a credit somewhere along the way. Sometimes they get decent credit billing, sometimes they don't. Depends on contribution and how much it can help the BO.

I'm not attempting to diminish Simmons here. He has good-to-very-good Hollywood connections that have indisputably assisted the 30 for 30 series.

Within five years, I expect ESPN has a division inside of Disney's house of to-the-theater movie distribution. It's one hell of a way to make a profit if you play it right. Make a movie for $15 million, get a $30 million gross, rinse and repeat. I could see Disney wanting to try.

 

I don't.

 

$416,666 a month. That is alotta fucking cash.