Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has exited Eddie Murphy's upcoming Peacock series "The Chairman" as writer and showrunner, Variety first reported, and Deadline has confirmed. Sources say the split was "creative," decided by Peacock, Universal and 101 Studios execs after his pilot script, with the writers room now on a two-week hiatus while a replacement is sought.
First, the machine. A comedian with his own production company wants a first scripted series. The series needs a prestige name, the way a boardroom needs a font. So they hire the Mad Men guy, the man famous for making studio execs feel small, to write a show about a studio chairman, played by Eddie Murphy. That is not a hiring. That is a séance. They are summoning the ghost of Don Draper to bless a press release.
Then the funny part. Per Deadline, the idea had already been conceived and pitched to Murphy before Weiner was brought in. He was hired to write it. He wrote it. His version was, in the careful language of the trade, "a departure from that." Translation: he made it a show. The executives, who are not writers, called it a "creative" parting and sent the writers room home for two weeks. That's the sound of a room going quiet while a spreadsheet looks for a bigger adjective.
What happens next you already know. New showrunner, same premise, same name. The follow-up release will say the project is "moving forward." It is moving forward. It has nothing else to do. Murphy gets his first scripted series, the industry gets a boardroom panic to retell at festivals, and the pilot script becomes the ghost story: the one where the writer actually wrote something.
YOUR TURN: If you hire a prestige writer to develop your idea and fire him for developing it, is that a firing or a receipt?
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