With the upcoming death of Sumner Redstone (any day now based on how he looked in recent photos) and the increasing dementia of Rupert Murdoch, it’s clear there is soon to be only one true Hollywood mogul remaining.
And that is me.
As with the “Last of the Mohicans,” moguls in Hollywood used to be a large tribe.
Brothers from Poland and Bulgaria and Kansas City and New York, etc. etc. – all coming to Hollywood with a dream and the sociopathic guts to do whatever it took to succeed (and a whole lot of luck).
Jill Kennedy – a writer for the Manka Bros.’ business blog OnMedea – wrote that 2013 is Endgame for Moguls. She’s absolutely right.
It’s the end of a great and powerful era.
When Sumner Redstone dies (I’m gonna say by mid-summer) and hundreds of people are forced to go to that funeral (who would will willingly want to go unless they’re trying to pitch some new idea to Brad Grey) it will be down to me and Rupert.
And we all know Rupert is certifiably insane – so he doesn’t count anymore.
I don’t even want to hear arguments about Spielberg and Katzenberg and Geffen being moguls. They tried. They failed. Next.
Harvey Weinstein? [spit take]
Many may say I don’t deserve to be called a mogul because I wasn’t a founder of the company and didn’t build it from scratch. In fact, I was given the job of Chairman and CEO right out of high school after my father died. I didn’t even want the job. I was very happy in my band, King Khan. We were awesome and on our way.
But I took the job and built Manka Bros. into the global media powerhouse it is today.
In 1976, when I took over – the company didn’t even have its own plane or free food and car allowances for senior management. I took care of that immediately.
Without that shit, we would have had no chance to land a super executive like Lloyd Grohl to run operations.
I only hope that I live another 40-50 years so that those who are young now at least have a small idea of how great things used to be when, like mafia families, studio heads would be willing to kill in order come out on top.
The FBI has a file cabinet full of all the things my father and uncles did in order to survive in early Hollywood. (The FBI needed an entire warehouse to store the files on Louis B. Mayer!)
Those days are gone and things are very passive-aggressive and “nice” in Hollywood. On the outside, everyone appears to be happy for everyone else’s success while they all kill themselves on the inside.
And that’s bullshit, man.
Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company