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Cannes Lions 2019 : Day Four

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If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who act like a company or corporation’s money is their own. And while you might think that happens at lower levels, apparently it takes place at one of the richest companies in the world: Disney.

Recently, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Shonda Rhimes, writer, producer and creator extraordinaire, shared that the reason she ended her relationship with ABC after more than a decade, amounted to a $154 ticket to Disneyland.

Rhimes shared that for years she had felt stifled by the realities of working for network television.

“I felt like I was dying,” she explained. “Like I’d been pushing the same ball up the same hill in the exact same way for a really long time.”

And while one foot might have been out of the door in terms of her creativity, it was an ABC executive who gave her a shove.

In 2017, Rhimes’ sister was visiting her. As a perk of working for ABC, which is owned by Disney, employees get free all-inclusive passes to Disney theme parks. But she needed an additional ticket for her sister.

When she requested the additional pass, there was some pushback from the network.

She was told, on more than one occasion, “We never do this.”

Eventually, Rhimes got the pass. But when she got to the entrance of the park, with her children, nanny, and sister, the pass did not work.

Rhimes called a high ranking executive at the network to help solve the problem. But he wasn’t enthused about helping her.

Instead of getting Rhimes the additional pass, he said, “Don’t you have enough?”

Rhimes, who brought shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” and “How To Get Away With Murder” among other shows to the network, collected herself.

She called her lawyer and told them she was moving to Netflix and if she couldn’t do it, she would “find new representatives.”

She got her wish.

Rhimes reportedly inked a $300 million deal with Netflix.

Unfortunate, really. That executive let $154 stand in the way of any future millions Rhimes could have brought to the company through her creativity.

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