How Did I Get Here?: The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO

Chapter 10. HOW TO NEVER GET A MOVIE MADE: Hollywood will break your heart, or at least piss you off

I know for sure that there are a couple of things I do better than most people. One of them is ride a skateboard. The other is take meetings for movies that never get made. I've been doing it for decades, and I've become an expert at it.

Here's a Hollywood heartbreaker: In 2003, I got asked to star in a follow-up to the Warner Brothers hit movie Space Jam, which had teamed a real-life Michael Jordan with WB's Looney Tunes cartoon characters. This one would be titled Skate Jam. I'd be the featured human, acting alongside such two-dimensional icons as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. I don't remember exactly how many times we met, but I do recall that the group pitching the project brought a lot of energy to every meeting. They set up storyboards illustrating the action-packed plot, and even had a cartoon-voice actor read lines from proposed scenes.

When it came time to have our last big meeting to finalize the deal, I was already scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to Australia, so they met me for dinner at that big tower-top restaurant at LAX. Everyone, including the WB contingent, was giddy with optimism. By then, they had the whole story fleshed out, and I liked what I heard. When the meal ended and we all shook hands, everyone was confident that we had the green light. As my agent walked with me toward the terminal, he claimed that the studio planned to offer me at least $1 million. I laughed ...