Bellum Entertainment Group

At its peak, Bellum Entertainment had 80 television shows in production.

True crime, murder, corruption, criminals doing unbelievably stupid things.

But behind the scenes, things were getting weird.

Paychecks bounced, a cameraman took an expensive camera home as collateral, one producer lent his Christmas tree to a shoot at someone's home, and when the homeowner never got paid, they held the tree hostage.

Another filmmaker who was owed money bought the domain of the CEO's name and built a website featuring her head on a pig's body.

Turns out the strangest true crime story at Bellum Entertainment was the one happening off camera.

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What makes today's topic especially wild is that we're talking about a production company known for telling true crime stories that ended up at the center of one itself, the cult of Bellum Entertainment.

I just want to talk a little bit about why I even wanted to do this topic in the first place.

first things first, I'm in a group chat that helps employees, marginalized groups, specifically women.

This came across the group chat.

It was posted by one of the users basically talking about how she has experienced predatory behavior by the hands of this one company.

And this company, Bellum Entertainment, its charismatic leader and founder, Mary Carol McDonald, has been known over the years for telling these wonderful, wonderful very famous true crime stories.

And ultimately she started this company and didn't pay a lot of the people.