BLM leader Patrisse Cullors secretly dumped from Warner Bros TV deal
Warner Bros Television Group secretly ended a multi-platform deal with Patrisse Cullors, the former leader of Black Lives Matter, The Post has learned.
The Post can reveal no shows were produced under the deal, despite Cullors saying she planned dramas, comedies, documentary series and animated programming for children.
“The studio signed an overall deal with BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors at some point in 2020,” said a source familiar with the studio’s contract negotiations Friday.
“Deal expired at end of October 2022.
“The deal unfortunately did not result in any produced shows.”
The multi-year agreement was to develop and produce original programming to include black stories across streaming, cable and broadcast platforms.
It encompassed animated and children’s content as well as scripted and unscripted series, according to Variety, which reported on the deal in October 2020.
The agreement was meant to draw on Cullors’ experience as a leader of the movement which started in the courtyard of her Los Angeles home in 2013, according to a statement from the studio at the time.
The value of the deal was not disclosed at the time, Variety reported.
A spokeswoman for Warner Bros, now part of Warner Bros. Discovery, declined comment Friday.
Cullors did not respond to requests for comment.
The end of her contract in October 2022 was in stark contrast to an interview she gave to The Hollywood Reporter in January of that year.
She said that she was working on documentaries on how the idea of “landback” — in which Native Americans have former tribal lands returned — could work as reparations. Another was on black social mobility in the US.
Cullors also said she was working on a scripted project about marijuana, and others on female black leaders and what she called “the toll” of life “under a system that doesn’t see us, or makes us hyper-visible and also hyper-invisible at the same time.”
Cullors, 39, an artist and activist, resigned from Black Lives Matter in May 2021, a month after The Post reported that she had gone on a $3.2 million real estate shopping spree, buying up properties in California and in Georgia.
She said at the time that she did not use any of the non-profit’s cash to make the purchases, and that she was resigning to focus on a book and TV deal.
“I’ve created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,” Cullors said, adding that her departure had been in the works for a while and was not tied to what she described as “right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character.”
A year after signing the deal with Warner Bros, Cullors bought a sprawling 2,500-square-foot home in Los Angeles’ Topanga Canyon in 2021 for $1.4 million, public records show.
Last year, she spent tens of thousands to install a fence around the property, and has lately began refocusing on art projects, with gallery shows opening in Los Angeles in the last few months, according to reports.
Cullors’ art work was recently featured in a show at a Los Angeles gallery.
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