John Krasinski has defended his decision to sell his lockdown web series Some Good News to Viacom.
The A Quiet Place star announced last week (May 24, 2020) that the network would host the program with a new host after a bidding war, with many people accusing him of “selling out” by moving the show from its former free platform to a bigger organization.
However, speaking to former The Office co-star Rainn Wilson on his Hey There, Human live broadcast, John explained it wasn’t a matter of money, but of how little time he knew he’d have once the coronavirus lockdown comes to an end.
“I knew the two options were always gonna be that I leave it off with eight in my office — which I would love to keep doing this show from my office forever, (but) it just wasn’t sustainable,” he explained. “So I’d need a partner coming on. And it’s funny, in the first episode I said, ‘Why isn’t there a news show dedicated entirely to good news?’ and now we have one of the biggest news programs in America, CBS News, saying that they want to make it part of their permanent news cycle, which is insane.
“The fact that we were able to accomplish that – in eight weeks it went from not existing to now being on one of these huge news networks – is honestly one of the most amazing honors I’ve ever been able to pull off. And again, it was all due to the community and to the people.”
John added the decision was fuelled by the fact he has to shoot the upcoming third series of Jack Ryan, among various other commitments.
The first new episodes of Some Good News will be shown on the rebranded CBS All Access this summer before other ViacomCBS networks get the second run of installments.
