According to new reporting from Puck‘s Matt Belloni, Jimmy Kimmel and ABC/Disney brass met Thursday in hopes of finding a path to returning Jimmy Kimmel Live! to the air, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement.
Disney TV co-chair Dana Walden and ABC late-night chief Rob Mills reportedly met with Kimmel at the Century City office of his lawyer, Andy Galker, with Kimmel’s longtime manager James Dixon joining via Zoom.
“I’m told the meeting was cordial but ended this evening without Kimmel agreeing to do more than what he wanted to say on Wednesday,” Belloni wrote Thursday night, citing a Disney source.
As we’ve reported, Kimmel was planning to address the controversy surrounding his remarks Wednesday night before ABC pulled the show from its schedule. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the host had intended to clarify that he never believed the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk was aligned with MAGA, while also calling out right-wing figures he feels distorted his original comment to stir backlash.
Disney felt then (and reportedly continues to feel) that Kimmel’s planned response would only further inflame tensions, when what’s needed to broker peace between Kimmel, the network, and its affiliates is to find a way to turn down the temperature.
Though Disney announced Wednesday night that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be preempted indefinitely, its guidance to its affiliates at the time noted that only Wednesday and Thursday night’s tapings had been canceled. As of Thursday night, the network had not officially canceled any of next week’s episodes.
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I imagine Kimmel would rather quit than give in to Sinclair’s outrageous demands.