In the annals of Madison Avenue and its Hollywood adjacencies, there exists a particular species of dealmaker who, having tasted corporate life once, develops what might be called an institutional intolerance — a kind of professional lactose sensitivity to corner offices and organizational charts.
Ben Silverman appears to be a textbook case. The producer, who walked away from the co-chairmanship of NBC Entertainment in 2009 after what he described to his boss Jeff Zucker as a "stomachache," has spent the intervening years building Propagate Content into one of those independent production companies that seems to have a hand in everything without quite yet having produced the show that defines an era.
"I feel like a sports car in a parking lot of Tauruses," Mr. Silverman recalls telling Mr. Zucker at the time of his departure. (One imagines the Ford Motor Company's marketing department might have wished for different automotive metaphors.)
The 56-year-old producer, who began his career at William Morris discovering that foreign television formats could be profitably repackaged for American audiences — a business he describes as having previously attracted "a couple of hustling, Willy Loman-type players" — is currently juggling a portfolio that includes the Fox drama "Best Medicine," an adaptation of the British series "Doc Martin"; a comedy series for Apple TV+ starring Ben Stiller and Benicio Del Toro; and an Amazon documentary about Sam Bankman-Fried titled, with appropriate caution, "The Boy Who Stole Billions?"
Mr. Silverman's path to this particular parking lot began with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," which he brought to ABC, and continued through "The Office," which his company Reveille produced for NBC. He sold Reveille to the Murdoch family for $125 million; they later sold it for seven times that amount, a detail Mr. Silverman notes with the studied equanimity of someone who has done the math more than once.
Mike Hopkins, who runs Prime Video and Amazon MGM, credits Mr. Silverman with possessing "a diverse set of relationships" and "the ability to work across a number of dimensions and genres."
"And then he delivers," Mr. Hopkins added.
The phone calls from media companies still come every few years, Mr. Silverman says. His response remains consistent: "Wait, that sounds like a job. I don't want a job!"
His golf handicap, for those keeping score, is 8.1. His son Meyer, a high school freshman, recently won a Colorado state championship and carries a plus-2. Some legacies, it seems, improve with the next generation.
Original story published in The Hollywood Reporter: "Ben Silverman Still Doesn't Want a Job -- But He's Busier Than Ever"