Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly scuttled Apple TV+'s Gawker TV series after learning about it

The New York Times

Vanity Fair reported last May that Gawker alum Cord Jefferson, who won an Emmy in September for his work on Watchmen, and former Gawker editor in chief Max Read were developing an Apple TV+ scripted series based on the snarky blog that died in 2016 after Hulk Hogan sued it "into oblivion" with the backing of billionaire Peter Thiel. The New York Times' Ben Smith reports that the Gawker show is no longer at Apple and is now being shopped around after Cook personally intervened. "The show was called Scraper, but it was clearly about Gawker Media, the network of aggressive, transgressive blogs that created mischief and headaches for America’s powerful until its targets sued the company into oblivion in 2016," reports Smith. "Two Gawker veterans sold the idea to Apple TV+, the new streaming service: Cord Jefferson, who left the site for a career writing for TV, and Max Read, Gawker’s former editor in chief. Apple hired two more former Gawker editors, Emma Carmichael and Leah Beckmann, as writers, and they had completed several episodes, people close to the production said. Then, an Apple executive got an email from the company’s chief executive, Tim Cook. Mr. Cook, according to two people briefed on the email, was surprised to learn that his company was making a show about Gawker, which had humiliated the company at various times and famously outed him, back in 2008, as gay. He expressed a distinctly negative view toward Gawker, the people said. Apple proceeded to kill the project. And now, the show is back on the market and the executive who brought it in, Layne Eskridge, has left the company. Gawker, it seems, is making trouble again." As Smith notes, Gawker "was always a canary in the cultural coal mine, mostly because of its mission of heading farther along the coal face than others wanted or dared to." Despite its controversial reputation, Gawker went after Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Louis CK and Jeffrey Epstein years before they were widely known for their sexual misconduct. "But now, from beyond the grave, Gawker is revealing another reality in this era of media consolidation: that the chief executive of one of the biggest companies in the world, who testifies before Congress and negotiates with China, also decides what television shows get made," says Smith. "A spokesman for Apple, Tom Neumayr, declined to comment on the show’s demise. But Hollywood is now firmly in the grip of giant companies with singular leaders — Mr. Cook and Apple; Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos; the Netflix C.E.O. Reed Hastings; and AT&T’s top executive, John Stankey — with big consumer brands and other pressing priorities, like their lucrative other businesses and their access to international markets. So far, Apple TV+ is the only streaming studio to bluntly explain its corporate red lines to creators — though Disney, with its giant theme park business in China, shares Apple’s allergy to antagonizing China’s leader, Xi Jinping." Smith reports he was told that "Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services, who has been at the company since 1989, has told partners that 'the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China.'" In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cook personally killed a Dr. Dre biopic because it contained too much violence and nudity. ALSO: The Good Place creator Michael Schur says the Gawker series "sounds like a very good subject for a TV show."