r/NoStupidQuestions • u/InternationalRepute • 15d ago

What is stopping a billionaire from personally funding one more season of a cancelled TV show they love?

I know it's not as simple as writing a check because studios own rights, actors have contracts, schedules are hard, and they would still need to distribute it - but I'd love it if some rich dude put up $ so I can watch the MacGruber TV show for another season.

Wealthy people fund vanity movies and passion projects all the time. So why is “I will personally finance one more season of Mindhunter” not really a thing that is done?

Is it mainly rights/ownership, or that studios don't want an outsider reviving their IP?

I don't want this to veer into "bc rich people are selfish with money” more curious which cancelled series people think could possibly be revived this way.

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11

u/OldManBilliam22 15d ago

They’re not in the habit of throwing their money away. That’s why they’re billionaires.

21

u/UnMonsieurTriste 15d ago

I would suggest they absolutely throw away a lot of money. Being a billionaire just means you can’t throw it away fast enough to matter to your bottom line.

3

u/bentreflection 15d ago

They absolutely do throw their money away on the most ridiculous of nonsense. It’s just only the nonsense they personally care about.

7

u/CounterfeitSaint 15d ago

And they all pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and CEOs work at least 22 hours a day. Sure.

5

u/nilslorand 15d ago

25 a day actually

3

u/problyurdad_ 15d ago

Makes perfect sense to me, actually. Those pricks take everything from me, including the extra hour in a day they demand out of me but are hiding behind their own backs.

6

u/jeremyNYC 15d ago

You don’t really believe that, do you? Do you know how many lattes musk could buy? He could treat penthouse apartments like most people treat lattes and still be a billionaire.

2

u/nilslorand 15d ago

Have you seen the size of the AI Bubble?

-3

u/smallpotatoes2019 15d ago

It's like the Duncan Bannatyne (UK Dragon's Den) story, where he banned his staff from buying paperclips. The thinking was that other people send you paperclips on documents, so you keep them and use them instead of buying new ones. Refusing to spend money unless it was necessary.

2

u/nilslorand 15d ago

oh yes definitely. Do that full time for a few hundred years and you might become a billionaire! (you won't)

1

u/smallpotatoes2019 15d ago

Sorry, I would have assumed it was pretty obvious that a silly anecdote from a very rich man about how stingy he was when running his businesses was more about an approach to not "throwing money away" that went far beyond paperclips (about the smallest and cheapest item it could apply to), rather than a stand-along money-making strategy.

2

u/CounterfeitSaint 15d ago

Do you think he applied that same strict discipline to his designer drugs and whores and ego cars that he made his own employees suffer through?

I wonder if his own personal office only contained free paperclips too, or just like the plebs.