R.J. Cipriani was photographed on March 9 at Churros Calientes in Santa Monica, CA. Photographed by Daniel Prakopcyk F. Scott Fitzgerald declared, in his posthumous Hollywood novel The Last Tycoon, that there are no second acts in American lives. Jeff Shell, now felled from his presidency of Paramount, is living proof.
The catalyst for his departure is R.J. Cipriani, who amid a $150 million legal dispute with Shell over a stymied TV pitch, made the scorched-earth decision to publicize documentation showing that the executive had been indiscreet about in-progress dealmaking at the public company, allegedly violating SEC disclosure rules. In its statement about Shell’s departure, Paramount noted, “The facts demonstrated that these allegations do not establish a securities law violation.”
Shell’s fight with Cipriani, a notorious provocateur, may have been the proximate cause for his undoing. But he couldn’t survive it because he was already arguably the odd man out within Paramount when the scandal emerged in February.
At the outset of a call with The Hollywood Reporter after Paramount’s announcement on Wednesday morning, Cipriani jubilantly sang his rendition of an Elvis Presley hit: “If you’re looking for trouble, you came to the right place, if you’re looking for trouble, just look right in my face … My middle name is ‘Misery.’ Yes, I’m trouble. So don’t you mess around with me.”
Turning serious, he added that it was clear Shell had been fired, “no matter how he and Paramount are trying to paint the narrative,” and he believes that full disclosure of the internal investigation would prove that “they know he violated SEC regulations.” (Paramount stated that Shell had stepped down to focus on dealing with the lawsuit.)
For Shell, who presided over mass layoffs at Paramount, the job had been his resurrection after his 2023 termination as NBCUniversal CEO for what the company described in a filing “as inappropriate conduct with a female employee, including allegations of sexual harassment.” Cipriani precipitated that ousting, too, by first surfacing the allegation which led to his dismissal. It’s a plot twist which likely wouldn’t survive the first notes pass on a hack’s script about the Shell shock.
Skydance owner David Ellison elevated Shell in 2024 from his brief perch at RedBird Capital, a financing partner in the Paramount deal. The thinking at the time was that Shell would bring his seasoned studio know-how to the new organization as Ellison, still a novice at true moguldom, himself became more adept with large-scale operations. But then Andy Gordon, a longtime Goldman Sachs banker and another RedBird partner, joined as both chief strategy and chief operating officer.
Shell then became redundant within the Paramount Skydance C-suite. Anxiety about his position may be why he turned for help to, of all people, the self-styled fixer Cipriani. Perhaps the most bizarre part of this saga is that the two were in contact in the first place. Discredit can go to veteran industry attorney Patty Glaser, who happened to have represented both men and brokered peace between her clients after Shell left NBC Universal. Of course, their amity turned out to be a time bomb.
As for Cipriani, a hidden history of run-ins with power players seems to have presaged this Shell game. So, too, his attempts to finally obtain a green light for a trail of producing projects long stuck in development hell.
Cipriani observed to THR that his attorney had already been contacted by law firms considering class-action and derivative suits connected to Shell’s disclosures. “That’s what’s happening next,” he assured.
Then he noted: “I’m sure if there were a time machine, Jeff would like to give me three shows and a five-picture deal. But it’s too late now.”
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