Peter Chernin

When they made the announcement, one, that he was moving there from Slow Ventures, thought big check mark.

He has the experience, uh, was previously at Chernin.

Um, but they're also launching this fund around creators where at a time it felt like everyone from Tubi to now YouTube and many others are investing in them.

But Fox had a unique proposition for the creators f- for...

And eventually, a private equity group called the Chernin Group buys 51%.

This private equity company is run by the former president of News Corp, which is Fox News, Peter Chernin.

And they move their HQ to New York City.

Cue the Britney Spears song, Peace of Me.

And they came in and they were like, you need an actual adult who's running this.

Yeah.

She is seemingly handpicked by Peter Chernin.

They worked on other projects together before and after this.

But I'll tell you where it really started and it took off in a big way for me.

And I'm j- gonna jump ahead, but it was working for Peter Chernin.

That was the first time where I got to sit in a room and see somebody who was the head of the studio, but he could sit with a writer and give notes to a writer or look at a cut of a movie and give notes on a cut that were so perceptive and smart.

And I just soaked all of that up for the two years I worked with him at Lorimar, and then I went to the Fox Network.

Yeah

... scripts.

And Scott was very, very helpful to me and encouraging, and I went from him to Peter Chernin.

So I feel like early on I zeroed in on some of the people who I think are the best in the business and-

Again, anticipating it to be a less commercial film.

And so he took this pitch to 20th Century Fox, so the hierarchy of which, Rupert Murdoch at the very top, then you've got Bill, uh, Bill Mechanic, and then its president at the time was a guy called Peter Chernin, who rep- would report into Mechanic, Mechanic would report into Murdoch.

This is important information for later on.

And the pitch that he took in, he show, he, I mean, he didn't formulate it with multiple decks and stuff like that, decks, you see.

Um, instead he took in some, uh, illustrate, he took in some books and then just basically [laughs] said to Chernin, "It's Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic." And yeah, Peter Chernin sat in front of this massively commercial filmmaker who is pitching him his next project.

Fox had backed True Lies, uh, brought in Universal as a funding partner when the budget started escalating, but was he gonna say no? And there were sticking points to the decision.

Well, you're gonna need all these dives you're talking about in the budget.

And so then the shoot moves to Mexico, but 20th Century Fox is having a wobble.

So when Fox sort of saw what was being asked, they felt like it was kind of an impossible ask and they couldn't see the budget.

I remember, you know, hearing from Peter Chernin like, "We're gonna make this very expensive show."

[laughs]

"It's gonna have a million dollar visual effects budget." A $1 million visual effect.

The source material provides a deeply revealing audit of Chernin Entertainment's current operational slate, giving us a clear view of their overarching master plan.

The announcement lists Peter Chernin and Tracy Cook as executive producers alongside Aviard, with Rachel Moore overseeing the development for the studio.

Right.

But the true character of the company is revealed in the list of projects they are currently managing and acquiring.

But, you know, this strategy of managing such a massive diversified slate introduces a unique operational hazard for the executives tasked with shepherding Tempest through development.

Oh, for sure.

What is the specific hazard for Peter Chernin, Tracy Cook and Rachel Moore on this project?

Well, they are forced to manage two contradictory scales of production simultaneously.

That's why we're talking to you.

And once I got confident on that, then the scale said, I don't think we could have gotten to this point without hiring the business side, Eric Nardini and Peter Chernin, who I didn't know at the time.

I had no idea who he was.

added a level of credibility to us that let us kind of take the next step and

Mm-hmm.

The article highlights Chernin Entertainment, specifically noting that Peter Chernin and Tracy Cook will executive produce alongside the author, Nevessa Allen.

And the slate of shows Chernin has produced is heavy.

We are talking about the madness for Netflix, the Apple TV series, Chief of War, Truth Be Told, and See.

It signals a radical shift in how Hollywood values this specific genre.

Okay.

By bringing in Peter Chernin and Tracy Cook, Netflix is applying heavy prestige drama infrastructure to a story born out of internet subculture.

Wow.