Jen Salke, the DEI hire who became an out-of-touch embarrassment, has finally stepped down as chief of Amazon/MGM Studios.
Undoubtedly, her legacy will be spending a half-billion dollars to woke-rape Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power into a national joke. Additionally, she signed Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who?) to a $60 million TV deal that has resulted in nothing. The final straw appears to have been her epic mishandling of the James Bond franchise, which Amazon spent billions to acquire through the purchase of MGM Studios in 2021, primarily to get its hands on the Bond franchise. Various reports claimed Salke repeatedly alienated Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the creative team that has overseen the franchise for decades.
At one point, Broccoli described Salke as an “idiot” who did not understand the franchise at all. Salke didn’t even consider James Bond a hero. In her fascist eyes, I guess she saw him as a white, hetero-colonialist.
Apparently, these disagreements led to the lack of a James Bond movie being put into pre-production, which did not sit well with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is eager to get the 007 ball rolling. In the end, Broccoli and Wilson accepted a $1 billion payoff to fully release the 007 franchise to Amazon.
Give Amazon credit for at least off-loading this failure, while Kathleen Kennedy remains firmly entrenched at Disney as she woke-rapes Star Wars and Indiana Jones into flops.
What kind of moron puts someone who hates a franchise in charge of that franchise? Well, that moron would be Disney.
Putting Kathleen Kennedy in charge of Star Wars and Jen Salke in charge of Lord of the Rings is like handing your child over to a nanny who hates your child.
Amazon seems to have understood just how big a problem this was and off-loaded Salke before she turned James Bond into a humorless and smug bisexual righting all the wrongs of Great Britain’s colonial past.
Watching all the woke chickens come home to roost with these firings and box office flops is beyond gratifying. Hollywood thought it could change human nature rather than appeal to it, and the results have been permanently catastrophic to once-bulletproof brands like Disney, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings.
Thankfully, we have home video, a treasure trove from the past when Hollywood was run by storytellers instead of neurotic white women and leftists who despise their own customers.
Amazon did offer Salke the fig leaf of a production deal, so we will probably see a lousy movie or two from her before she disappears forever.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
