Entertainment

Matthew Weiner Exits Peacock Drama "The Chairman" Over Creative Differences

Putri ArdhanaPublished 3m ago2 min readBased on 2 sources
Matthew Weiner Exits Peacock Drama "The Chairman" Over Creative Differences
Photo by SAMHSA from Rockville / Public domain

Matthew Weiner is no longer involved with "The Chairman," a drama in development at Peacock, the streaming service run by NBCUniversal. Variety reported on Friday, 30 October, that Weiner left the project after creative differences with its producers.

Weiner is the creator of "Mad Men," which ran for seven seasons on AMC and won 16 Emmy Awards. "The Chairman" was his next TV project, and it would have been his first TV writing credit since "The Romanoffs," his 2018 series for Amazon Prime Video.

The show is not dead, and it has a star. Eddie Murphy is attached to lead the cast, and he is also a producer. If the series is picked up to a full season, it would be the first live-action series Murphy has starred in since "Saturday Night Live."

Variety reported that a new showrunning team, the group of writers who run a series day to day, is already in place. Its names will be announced in the coming days. The writers' room, where the scripts are drafted, has been put on a two-week break while the new leads come on board.

The project is being made by Universal Television and 101 Studios. 101 Studios is run by David Glasser, the executive producer of the hit Western "Yellowstone." The studio works under a first-look deal at NBCUniversal, meaning NBCUniversal gets the first chance to buy its projects. That agreement began in January. "The Chairman" will be the first project to come out of a deal that ex-Paramount chief Chris McCarthy struck with NBCUniversal.

The timeline is short. Peacock first reported the show was in the works less than a month before news of Weiner's exit. Development is still at an early stage, and no episode order has been announced.

For the people who would work on it, the news means a pause rather than an end. Writers and crew on a show in development are paid for their time, and a two-week break gives the new creative team room to rebuild the scripts. Whether that leads to a full series, and when viewers might see it, has not been decided.

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