Paramount Skydance President Jeff Shell has accused the “fixer” who demanded $150 million from Shell for a contract purported to be crisis communications consulting to try to blackmail and defame him by fabricating “an entirely false story that Shell leaked confidential information about Paramount’s business.”
Shell was sued on March 9 by RJ Cipriani, who alleges that he had a relationship with Shell for 18 months, informing Shell about upcoming news stories and providing public relations advice. The complaint also alleges that Shell shared nonpublic information about Paramount’s plans with Mr. Cipriani.
On Monday (March 16), Shell’s lawyers filed a cross-complaint in California’s Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeking unspecified monetary damages against Cipriani and an “injunction restraining Cipriani from further defaming Shell.” A copy of the submission can be found at this link.
“Shell refuses to be policed. He has done nothing wrong,” Shell’s countersuit says. “Shell owes nothing to Cipriani and brings these counterclaims to seek redress for the damages he has suffered as a result of Cipriani’s persistent and malicious campaign of extortion and defamation. Shell further expressly reserves the right to supplement these counterclaims in order to seek full compensation and recourse against Cipriani and his agents for knowingly participating in Cipriani’s defamatory and outrageous scheme.”
Mr. Cipriani’s lawsuit alleges that there was an oral agreement between Mr. Cipriani and Shell to help produce the TV show “Star Serenade” in exchange for crisis communications services. Shell’s legal filing said it “respectfully declined” Mr. Cipriani’s request to produce the show because “Paramount does not produce reality television,” and that “Shell has not made any commitment to produce programming in general, much less to people it barely knows.”
The lawsuit filed by Cipriani alleges that Shell shared confidential information with Cipriani about Paramount Skydance, including Shell’s belief that Paramount was overpaying Warner Bros. Discovery. “We’re paying Warner Bros. too much money. If we could have waited another year, we could have gotten it for less,” Cipriani’s complaint quoted Shell as saying. After Netflix signed a deal in December to acquire the Warner Bros. studio’s streaming business, Paramount was the winning bidder in late February, in a deal valued at $111 billion, but Netflix rejected a counteroffer.
Additionally, Cipriani’s lawsuit claims that Cipriani “edited” a June 23, 2025 article in The Hollywood Reporter about a dispute between Shell and “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Cipriani claimed the article “exposed the greed” of Parker and Stone, who had accused Shell of interfering in “South Park” streaming rights negotiations with third parties.
“Because Cipriani had previously indicated to Shell that he had done work for the FBI, Shell asked Cipriani about certain online death threats he had received in connection with the dispute between Skydance and the creators of ‘South Park,'” Shell’s cross-claim documents state. Cipriani offered no meaningful insight or perspective, and Shell declined Cipriani’s offers of assistance. However, Cipriani later claimed that he had planted articles about the conflict in Shell’s favor without Shell’s knowledge or consent. Schell did not believe him and Cipriani admitted that Schell never asked him to do so, but Schell thanked him nonetheless. This was Cipriani’s hook. ”
According to Shell’s counterclaim, on February 2, 2026, then-Shell attorney Patricia Glaser arranged for executives to meet with Cipriani at Glaser’s office in Century City. (Mr. Glazer had originally introduced Mr. Shell to Mr. Cipriani.) At that meeting, Mr. Cipriani demanded that Shell pay him money for “certain ‘services’ that he allegedly provided without Shell’s knowledge,” but Shell refused to pay “a dime,” according to Shell’s counterclaim.
Cipriani then made “fabricated claims that Shell disclosed to him confidential information about Paramount’s transactions with UFC and Warner Bros. Discovery, in violation of federal securities laws,” according to Shell’s legal filings. Although these false accusations have no legal or logical connection to Cipriani’s breach of contract claims, Cipriani embedded them in the draft complaint and made ominous threats. If Shell fails to pay to resolve the alleged issue, report the suspected securities violation to the SEC and other law enforcement agencies. ”
“While Cipriani’s accusations were false, the threat of a federal investigation was real. Cipriani had gambled that Shell, which had been the subject of bad publicity during his time as his former employer, would pay large sums of money to avoid federal scrutiny and a new media storm. But Shell did not relent. Instead, he immediately told Paramount of the criminal threats and false accusations and rejected Cipriani’s accusations,” Shell’s counterclaim continued. An outrageous overture. ” Mr. Cipriani then “sought to ratchet up the pressure” and “leaked the draft complaint to various media outlets, thereby shaping the story in such a way as to cause maximum damage to Shell’s reputation and livelihood,” Shell’s legal filings say. “When that did not result in a quick settlement, Cipriani amplified the story on social media and began spreading false and defamatory lies about Shell. All the while, he continued to make settlement offers in hopes that Shell would pay up and stop, which Shell did not do. In turn, Cipriani began filing false reports with the SEC accusing Shell of violating securities laws based on the non-existent conversations.”
In August 2025, Paramount Skydance announced a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with the UFC that makes Paramount+ the exclusive U.S. rights holder for the MMA promoter’s events starting in 2026.
According to Shell’s cross-complaint, “RJ Cipriani did not come to court to enforce a purported oral agreement; he came to complete a crackdown. Cipriani’s strategy works like this: Use trusted mutual connections to befriend high-profile targets, while creating the illusion of intimacy. They infiltrate the fringes of their targets’ worlds by pretending to be helping their targets from behind the scenes, then go on strike and demand reparations for unsolicited acts.”They strive for huge rewards, and if they don’t, they weaponize that fiction with the added threat of publicly exposing equally false and despicable lies. ”
“Cipriani followed this script in order to sway Jeff Shell. But Cipriani, an avid gambler and self-proclaimed ‘fixer,’ took things too far. Cipriani was the president of Paramount Skydance Corporation. “He believed he could manipulate Shell into paying millions of dollars in hush money to keep Cipriani from damaging Shell’s reputation. He made a high-stakes gamble that if he fabricated the incident,” Shell’s legal filing continued. In a totally false story that Shell had revealed confidential information about Paramount’s business, Shell claimed it would pay Cipriani a ransom to stop him from going public with his heinous lies. Shell never released any such information, and under California’s shadowy laws, the false and inflammatory accusations Cipriani made to the press and countless others were extortion. The very fact that Shell violated securities laws is defamation. ”
Regarding the March 9 lawsuit filed by Cipriani, Shell’s counter-complaint states, “In a last desperate bid for leverage, he named Shell’s wife, Laura, as a defendant and published the Shells’ home address in the published complaint, which is unrelated to any of the allegations and is clearly a sanctionable measure designed to harass and intimidate them. Cipriani’s claims against Laura are based solely on the following trumped-up accusations.” Shell’s alleged transfer of assets to Laura to avoid paying Cipriani under a fictitious contract has no basis in fact or law. However, Cipriani’s actions made it clear that the complaint he filed was also just a means to continue his defamatory and outrageous campaign against Shell and his family in order to take advantage of the settlement. ”
Schell served as chairman of Redbird Sports & Media since February 2024 before being hired by David Ellison as president of Paramount in mid-2024. Redbird Capital Partners supported Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and was an investor in Skydance Media’s deal with Paramount Global.
Prior to that, Shell served as CEO of NBCUniversal. Comcast fired Shell in April 2023 after an internal investigation found that the company had an “inappropriate” relationship with an NBCU employee who had accused Shell of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
