Producer Joel Silver paid $ 1.7 million to Wynn Casino in Las Vegas to cover Ron Meyer’s gambling debt in July 2014, several sources confirmed. Variety.
At the time, Meyer was the vice president of NBCUniversal and Silver – his close friend – had a distribution agreement with the studio. A few months earlier, Silver had received a $ 4 million advance from NBCUniversal for his share of the proceeds from “Non-Stop,” an action movie starring Liam Neeson.
The casino transaction has caught the attention of NBCUniversal over the past two weeks, prompting the studio to ask attorney Daniel Petrocelli to investigate it, according to a source who spoke with Petrocelli about the matter.
Silver’s payment was specifically designed to pay for Meyer’s marker at the casino, according to a source who saw an email confirming the transaction.
Anthony Pellicano, a former private investigator who works for Silver as a negotiator, confirmed Variety that Silver paid the casino on behalf of Meyer. He also confirmed the exact amount of the payment: $ 1,736,000. But he said the payment was unrelated to Silver’s $ 4 million advance on “Non-Stop” earnings.
“One had nothing to do with the other,” said Pellicano. “The amount of money that Joel Silver sent to Wynn Casino did not come from Joel Silver and had nothing to do with his advance.”
Pellicano said the funds came to Silver from a third party that he refused to disclose, and that Silver only transferred the funds to the casino. He said the third party had no connection to NBCUniversal. He did not explain why Silver agreed to serve as a transfer to the funds.
“There is a great and long history with all this that I am not going to tell you,” said Pellicano. “There are other things going on. It is a matter of convenience. It is not a sinister thing. It’s simple. It is an accommodation. That is all.”
Meyer and NBCUniversal declined to comment on the story. Petrocelli, an outside litigator at O’Melveny and Myers, responded on behalf of the company, although he declined to discuss the situation.
“I represent NBCUniversal on a variety of issues and I will not discuss any specifics,” said Petrocelli.
“Non-Stop” was the first film produced under Silver’s agreement with NBCUniversal. Silver jointly produced the film with StudioCanal, and it was released in February 2014. That month, NBCUniversal gave Silver $ 4 million as an advance against its back-end profits. The film grossed $ 222 million worldwide.
According to Pellicano, NBCUniversal ended up recovering about three quarters of the advance, leaving about $ 1 million that was not recovered.
Meyer was one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures until he resigned last August amid a sex scandal. He was a co-founder of the Creative Artists Agency and worked at NBCUniversal for 25 years.
His gambling problems have been documented before, most recently in “Powerhouse”, the 2017 book that tells the story of CAA. Author James Andrew Miller wrote that Meyer has repeatedly “faced huge and frightening debts, once in the hole for several million dollars”. The book also reports that Ray Stark, the legendary independent producer who died in 2004, once lent Meyer money to pay off a debt.