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The sky’s the limit for Tyler Perry!
ET’s Nischelle Turner visited Perry at Tyler Perry Studios, on the set of his new movie, “Six Triple Eight”, where he revealed that there’s truth to the rumours about him buying a majority stake in BET — in fact, he’s very interested in purchasing the network.
“Rumour? No, it’s not a rumour,” Perry shared. “I’ve been there for four years now and had tremendous success. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, so, yes — if that is possible, I’m very, very interested in taking as much of it…”
He continued, “If it’s possible, I’m gonna take as much of it as I can.”
Perry isn’t the only one who wants a piece of the network, with both Byron Allen and Diddy vying to buy into BET.
“Part of it is — and I’ve read about Byron Allen and Puffy and everybody wanting to bid and so on and so forth, and I think it’s really great,” the filmmaker began. “This is what I love about it — when Bob Johnson sold it in 2000, I think it was, there wasn’t one Black person who could buy it. So now, to see all of these Black people, men and women, who are able to be in a position to buy it? Man, that makes me feel really, really excited.”
Perry, who already has the No. 1 show on BET+ with “All the Queen’s Men”, is looking forward to the network being Black-owned again.
“I think there was sadness when Bob sold it, and I think there’ll be happiness when it’s Black-owned again,” Perry said. “And even though Shari (Redstone) and what is it? Viacom and Paramount? They’ve done a phenomenal job with it. They didn’t let it fall by the wayside; they didn’t let it go into dust. They nurtured it and took care of it.”
He continued, “And to see Shari at this position saying, ‘I think it should be returned to a Black owner?’ I figured, ‘OK, see, that’s my kind of person.’”
As for a time frame for when a sale will go down, Perry kept his lips sealed, maintaining again that a resolution is near.
“We can very much say that there are conversations. I am beyond interested,” Perry added.
The 53-year-old film star is already very much involved in the network, and is currently a minority stakeholder in the company, in addition to Kenya Barris, Rashida Jones and Aaron Rahsaan Thomas. Perry also helped launch BET+ in 2019, two years after he signed a film and TV deal with BET.
In addition to “All the Queen’s Men”, which is on the network’s streaming platform, he currently has four shows on BET, including “Oval”, “Sistas”, “House of Payne” and “Assisted Living”.
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