The Sleazy, Slimy Drama Behind the Redstone Succession Fight

It hardly comes as a revelation that the media and entertainment mogul Sumner Redstone—who controlled two of the planet’s most influential companies, Viacom and CBS, almost until his death in 2020 at age 97—was something of a monster; he evoked, by most accounts, an oversexed combination of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Children.”

Nor is it big news anymore that disgraced former CBS chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves—in his heyday the Redstone empire’s most successful and richly compensated executive, until his forced resignation in 2018—stands credibly accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and worse.

To be sure, co-authors James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams faced an epic challenge in making their book Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy, a must-read for anyone who followed the juicy saga in real time.

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