In the not-publicly-released trailer for the pilot Doug Ellin hopes to sell, Kevin Connolly pursues an entertainment industry hustle alongside Kevin Dillon. At first glance, it looks like a reboot of Entourage, Ellin’s early-2000s show about a rising actor and his team that starred Connolly, Dillon and others. Then halfway through the trailer, Charlie Sheen shows up.
Connolly, playing a version of himself, needs a hit for his podcast studio. So he approaches Sheen, who is also playing a version of himself. “This could be an amazing opportunity for both of us,” fake Connolly tells fake Sheen. “It could be your get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Ellin has described this project, Ramble On, as being about second acts and redemption. Perhaps those themes are on Ellin’s mind 20 years after Entourage premiered on HBO. He has attempted other projects since then. But that was before the renewed attention Entourage seems to be getting, thanks largely to a podcast Ellin did through Connolly’s real-life company. “I know why it resonates, because it was an authentic show,” Ellin says in a phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills. “It’s about loyalty and friendship, and I think people appreciate that.”
Ellin, 56, is used to the hustle, though he doesn’t like it. Raised on Long Island, he arrived in Hollywood in the early 1990s by way of Tulane. He initially worked in the mail room at New Line Cinema while attempting stand-up, until he raised money to make a short featuring David Schwimmer. That got him into the American Film Institute. From there, he directed 1996’s Phat Beach as well as 1998’s Kissing A Fool, again with Schwimmer. (Good luck finding the latter movie on streaming.)
Then came Entourage. Ellin’s Tulane friend Stephen Levinson was Mark Wahlberg’s manager, and those two approached Ellin about doing a show based on Wahlberg and his crew. After many iterations of the pilot script, HBO gave the green light, around the time that Sex and the City was ending. The show followed actor Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), his half-brother Johnny “Drama” (Dillon), his hometown friends Eric “E” Murphy (Connolly) and “Turtle” (Jerry Ferrara), and his agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven). The guys cruise down Sunset, eat at Urth Caffé and Koi, and mingle with models, while Vince’s career accelerates. Nothing goes horribly wrong, and there isn’t much drama besides Drama. Feuds between the guys are squashed with, “Let’s hug it out, bitch.”
The first season reportedly averaged 4.7 million viewers. By 2010, that figure was 8.1 million. “It was, in my mind, a very, very realistic look at what Hollywood was like at that time, and a very realistic look at male friendship that you don’t see that often,” Ellin says. In a 2011 Hollywood Reporter cover story, THR described the series as “a cult favorite not only with its slightly male-skewing 18-to-49 demo…but also with the industry it depicts.” By its final, eighth season in 2011, the show had won six Emmys and a Golden Globe, even as it was, perhaps increasingly, parodied, even scorned.
Ellin attempted two more pilots. One, a comedy that was to star Michael Imperioli, was about four friends grappling with being 40. The other, a boxing drama with Spike Lee directing and John Boyega starring, was to be loosely based on Mike Tyson’s early career. Neither got picked up. Then in 2015, Ellin and the Entourage guys returned with a movie (and another THR cover story). Grenier said at the time, “It’s the best job on the planet. We get paid to show the world what it’s like to live the lives of guys who are on top of the world.”
Not everyone thought the guys were so cool anymore. Some reviews were brutal. A comparatively benign one by THR said the movie “plays like a compressed season nine — a season that has its moments but wouldn’t rank among the show’s finest.” It seemed like the exact wrong time to resurrect a show whose episodes typically failed the Bechdel test (in which two women characters talk to each other about something besides men), among other late-Obama-era sins.
Then the culture shifted once again. During the pandemic, Ellin, Connolly, and Dillon launched Victory the Podcast, named after one of Drama’s slogans. On air, they talked through Entourage episodes and brought in other alumni, including Ferrara, Piven, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Rex Lee, and, after much anticipation, Grenier. They did more than 100 episodes, surpassing the series’ 96. Entourage loyalists ate it up. According to Ellin, when they were in Hawaii for a live taping, “you would have thought the show was on and bigger than ever…. People were just like, ‘Victory!’”
Then Victory abruptly ended. Ellin now points the finger at Dillon, whom he says is like a brother. “He wasn’t motivated to show up every day, and that’s fine.” (Dillon could not be reached for comment.) Ellin now hosts a different show, Is That Something You Might Be Interested In, its name a reference to another memorable Entourage line, the catchphrase of an over-the-hill, Robert Evans–type producer played Martin Landau. In late November, Ellin and Connolly released the first Victory episode in more than a year, without Dillon, though they did not go so far as to say the podcast is back for good.
Talk of an Entourage reboot made good podcast fodder, but nothing is in the works. (In August, JD Vance tweeted a photo of himself and his team and wrote, “This Entourage reboot is going to be awesome.”) Meanwhile, that other HBO show about four friends spawned two movies and a new series. But Ellin says he’s urged the Entourage guys not to equate the shows. “I’m like, ‘Guys, this is not Sex and the City. Sex and the City is a romantic comedy. Sarah Jessica Parker is a movie star. Let’s not keep comparing it.’”
Ellin is pleased that viewers, especially young ones, are still discovering Entourage. At his daughter’s college, “they call all the pledges in the fraternity Lloyds,” he says, referring to the assistant on the receiving end of Ari Gold’s extremely non-PC tirades. Now a special “20th Anniversary” label appears on the show’s streaming page. Part of the allure now is nostalgia. It’s also escapism. A 2023 GQ article, “Entourage is for the Girls,” quoted comedian April Clark explaining the post-revisionist appeal: “It’s a show about what it’s like to be awesome.”
Ellin is happy about the new fans. Days before Halloween, he texted a photo of five young-looking dudes dressed as Entourage characters: “I guess the young people [are] still finding it.”
Source: Hollywoodreporter
