Bankrupt Hollywood studio calls a story about its big-spending founder 'defamatory'
The article, written by Benjamin Wallace, exposes the once-promising company's dive into bankruptcy and Kavanaugh's alleged business practices, including spending money on lavish expenditures like a lease on a 20,000-square-foot hanger at Santa Monica Airport. According to Wallace, the hangar served as Kavanaugh's office, and "housed a luxury RV, huge sectional sofas facing big movie screens, exotic cars, old arcade video games, a boxing ring, a climbing wall, and an archery range."
"To work at Relativity in the last several years was to live in the palace of a magical-realist king," Wallace writes, where Kavanaugh used a Segway to maneuver the halls and his private bathroom featured toilet paper covered with Barack Obama's face.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 30, 2015, but will seek to bring the remaining company assets out of bankruptcy in a February 1 hearing.
The statement released by Relativity said:
David Haskell, New York magazine's deputy editor, told Deadline, "The piece speaks for itself. The response [from Kavanaugh] was vague and expressed his displeasure about the piece. We feel as confident in it now as we did before it went to press."
Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti, who earlier this month were named chairman and president of the company, respectively, have yet to comment on the story.