David Simon is a prolific television content creator. What launched his career was a seminal show considered one of the greatest of all time–THE WIRE. It lasted for 7 seasons and was followed by TREME as a series and the THE DEUCE which ended in 2019. Since then, he’s got a miniseries THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA and the 2022 miniseries WE OWN THIS CITY as notches on the creative belt.
He also happens to be a self-rightous know-it-all who lacks the self-awareness to realize his misguided rants and nonsensical legal stances may have permanently damaged his career. Exhibit A of the legal nonsense? Suing CAA at the WGA’s behest over a packaging fee controversy he’d already settled with CAA nearly two decades prior. He bit the hand that fed him once in the past, and then he bit the hand a second time for no reason other than hubris.
And then in another act of what will end up being career suicide, he left CAA and went agent-less just like all the others blind faith saps who followed orders from the WGA. Side question: how many writers without agents are regretting the decision to fire their agents? To the public and non-agents working in the film/tv industry, they do not understand how hard it is to get a large agency to agree to assign several agents to a writer/director and to spend a lot of time making little to no money until the client lands a successful tv series or big studio film.
All these years later, David has now signed with an agency. It’s not the big three because none of them would touch him with a thirty yard pole. No, it’s a leap into a middle tier family run agency that put familial control over business. Good for the family. Not good for the business.
To its credit, the Gersh Agency negotiated for David a two year first look deal with HBO and a premium script deal with Sony TV as well. Good on him for these deals, but let’s face it—any agent or manager could secure these non-committal commitments to commit to maybe airing one of David’s ideas.
Below The Lines predicts a regular series will not get greenlit because networks and streamers are in bed with big agencies and these seemingly unconnected entities have a habit of scratching each other’s backs. The big agencies hate David and that will be taken into consideration by those who greenlight projects. Just watch.