Does sound like McKay's a bit of shitheel, how do you fuck up a 25 year working relationship with Will Ferrell?
Quote:
While McKay’s interest in producing more was the start of the end, the director told Vanity Fair that the final blow was his decision to cast John C. Reilly over Ferrell in his upcoming HBO drama series about the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers. Lakers fan Ferrell was originally cast in the role of team owner Jerry Buss, but he was not McKay’s first choice.
“The truth is, the way the show was always going to be done, it’s hyperrealistic,” McKay said. “And Ferrell just doesn’t look like Jerry Buss, and he’s not that vibe of a Jerry Buss. And there were some people involved who were like, ‘We love Ferrell, he’s a genius, but we can’t see him doing it.’ It was a bit of a hard discussion.”
McKay wanted to cast John C. Reilly, whom he worked with on “Step Brothers” and who is also Ferrell’s good friend. McKay ended up making the casting change and hiring Reilly behind Ferrell’s back.
“I should have called him and I didn’t,” McKay said. “And Reilly did, of course, because Reilly, he’s a stand-up guy…I fucked up on how I handled that. It’s the old thing of keep your side of the street clean. I should have just done everything by the book.”
McKay said the last time he spoke to Ferrell was the phone conversation they had talking about breaking up. “I said, ‘Well, I mean, we’re splitting up the company,'” the director said. “And he basically was like, ‘Yeah, we are,’ and basically was like, ‘Have a good life.’ And I’m like, ‘Fuck, Ferrell’s never going to talk to me again.’ So it ended not well.”
Vanity Fair notes that “McKay says he’s written emails to Ferrell, attempting a rapprochement, but has never heard back.” The director concluded, “In my head, I was like, ‘We’ll let all this blow over. Six months to a year, we’ll sit down, we’ll laugh about it and go, It’s all business junk, who gives a shit? We worked together for 25 years. Are we really going to let this go away?’ [But Ferrell] took it as a way deeper hurt than I ever imagined and I tried to reach out to him, and I reminded him of some slights that were thrown my way that were never apologized for.”
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/11/adam- ... 234681904/if West wants to push it he could maybe get a jury to rule in his favor--popular sports icon vs faceless corporation. If a judge would even allow it to go that far. Maybe they could argue HBO played fast and loose with the format and made it too much like a documentary and that would be enough to get it beyond summary judgment and in front of a jury. But I still think at the end of the day/appeals West ends up spending seven figures on lawyers and getting at most 12 Angelenos to agree he was wrongly aggrieved by HBO.