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- Apple has canceled plans to make a TV series about Gawker Media after its CEO Tim Cook expressed a negative view about the media company, The New York Times reported Sunday.
- After finding out about “Scraper,” Cook emailed an Apple executive, the Times reported, citing two people briefed on the email. Cook was surprised to hear about the Apple TV Plus series, they said.
- Apple then canceled plans to make the show, which it had acquired in January 2020, per the Times.
- A Gawker Media site outed Cook as gay when he was appointed Apple’s CEO in 2008.
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Apple shut down a TV series about Gawker Media that it was making for Apple TV Plus after an intervention from its CEO Tim Cook, the New York Times reported Sunday.
After Cook found out about the show – called “Scraper,” sold to Apple TV Plus in January 2020 – he sent an email to another Apple executive expressing a negative view about the media company, the Times reported. He was surprised to hear about the show, according to two people briefed on the email, per the Times.
Apple then subsequently killed the show, the Times reported. Several episodes had already been written, it reported.
Gawker Media, which filed for bankruptcy in 2016 before being bought and renamed Gizmodo Media Group, outed Cook as gay in 2008, six years before he came out in an essay for Businessweek.
In 2010, Gizmodo, then part of Gawker Media, got its hands on an iPhone 4 prototype in 2010 after an Apple software engineer left it at a bar just months before it was publicly launched. This led to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs ordering the prototype’s return and the police raiding a Gizmodo editor’s house to find it.
Two Gawker veterans sold the "Scraper" series to Apple TV Plus in January, the Times said. They included Max Read, Gawker's former editor in chief, and Cord Jefferson, a former Gawker editor.
Two other former Gawker editors, Emma Carmichael and Leah Beckmann, had been assigned as writers for the series and had finished writing several episodes, people familiar with the production told the Times.
Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment to the Times. Business Insider could not reach Apple for comment.
"Scraper" is now back on the market and looking for a new production partner, the Times reported.
Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, who was also outed by the publication as gay, secretly financed the lawsuit that brought down Gawker for publishing a sex tape featuring the wrestler Hulk Hogan. Gawker Media was then bought by Univision in 2016, which renamed the publication Gizmodo Media Group.
Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president for internet software and services, who oversees Apple's programs on Apple TV Plus, has told partners that "the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China," per the Times.
Apple TV Plus celebrated its one year anniversary in November, and data from research company Parrot Analytics showed that its "second wave" of original shows was more popular than its launch titles.