FORBES.COM
TYLER^ PERRYSTUDIOSThe new network needed content, and Perry had it. He went
back to Hollywood, this time armed with 10 full episodes
of television shot, paid for and ready to air. CW bought it
and aired it as House of Payne, which pulled in ratings wildly
above expectations. Executives at the much larger TBS net-
work took note. Before Perry had filmed another scene, he
landed a guarantee that TBS would air at least 90 new epi-
sodes of his show that he would own outright. The network
offered $200 million to get him away from CW, pure gold
for such cheap productions—“primetime programming on
a soap opera budget,” as one top agent calls it—that spent
nothing on writers, directors, producers or showrunners.
Perry pocketed a huge haul: an estimated $138 million.
“It was so out of the box, such a different paradigm,” says
entertainment lawyer Dan Black, who says Perry’s deal is
still referenced in negotiations today. “You can get meaning-
ful fees and meaningful back-end, but if you own the con-
tent, that’s very, very impressive and not an easy thing to do.”
Though he was clearly drawing huge crowds, the over-
whelmingly white Hollywood executive set still didn’t quite
get it. Perry’s attempt to rework Diary for film yielded lit-
tle more than suggestions for rewrites and plot turns that
would be more palatable for “mainstream” audiences.
“ ‘Black people who go to church don’t go to the movies,’ ”
Perry recalls one executive telling him at the time. “I came
from a place where Black people had already embraced me
and loved me. I was completely happy there, and still am.”
So he forged opportunity out of others’ ignorance. He made
Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer a proposal: He would put up
half the money, collect half the profits and keep control of the
content. The studio held the right
to deduct all marketing costs
from his cut, which Perry knew
would be minimal, considering
his following, as well as another
12.5% in distribution costs. The
sweetener: Perry would eventu-
ally own it all outright.
“ ‘What do you want [Diary]
to do?’ ” Perry recalls asking.
“Well, if it makes us $20 mil-
lion I’ll be very, very happy,” Fel-
theimer replied, referring to its
lifetime box-office haul.
“I said, ‘OK, great—$20 mil-
lion the first weekend?’ ”
Diary, which cost $5.5 mil-
lion to make, grossed $51 mil-
lion in theaters and has since
brought in an additional $150
million in video rentals, on-
demand viewing, DVD sales and
TV licensing.
While most of Hollywood
shrugged off the movie’s suc-
cess as a fluke, Perry and Lions-
gate began pumping out Ma-
dea movies—11 of them over 14
years, all made on speedy production schedules and min-
imal budgets. By the time Perry decided to retire the fran-
chise in 2019, it had grossed more than $670 million at the
box office and netted him about $290 million in fees and
profits, Forbes estimates.
That’s all now starting to come home, as those Lionsgate
titles begin reverting to his control. With the help of finan-
cial adviser John Cary at Atlanta’s NextGen Capital, Perry is
starting to exploit the films more aggressively overseas, with
early success in South Africa, South America and parts of
Europe, all while continuing to self-finance hundreds of new
TV episodes and at least one new feature film every year.R EVENGE ON
R EBEL SOILoetically, Tyler Perry Studios, America’s most
prolific production venue for entertainment for
Black audiences, was once a Confederate mili-
tary stronghold. Renamed Fort McPherson, the
army base was used to house prisoners during
the Spanish-American War and World War I. Its historic brick
homes and structures have hosted luminaries including Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt and Colin Powell, and its rutted 18-hole golf
course, Perry says, once rivaled Augusta. The challenge for Per-
ry, who once lived in a car he parked nearby, is to make it the
setting for the denouement of his Horatio Alger narrative.
From the outside, it’s a hard piece of real estate to be excit-
ed about, bordered on the north by a long stretch of barbedP
Trade Talk
Perry is known to shutter himself
at his Wyoming hideout for six
weeks, returning with three
seasons’ worth of TV. Here he
gives notes to Kathy Bates for the
2008 film The Family That Preys.