“Entourage” creator Doug Ellin has spoken out against an ad reuniting Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier, calling it a “cheap, shitty imitation” of his beloved HBO comedy.
While Piven and Grenier are technically playing themselves in the ad — not super agent Ari Gold and movie star Vincent Chase — their performances, dialogue and dynamic are certainly reminiscent of “Entourage.” (Piven snakes his way through a mansion party to find Grenier on a yacht, where he pitches him a new movie role.)
“Many people worked really hard to make our show as good as it was,” Ellin wrote on Instagram. “When I see cheap, shitty imitations that try to pass for what we did it makes me puke.”
On Wednesday, Variety broke the news of Piven and Grenier’s on-screen reunion, which took place in a three-minute spot for Jake Paul’s gambling app Betr. Ellin said in a video message that he received “400 messages” about the “god-awful commercial,” clarifying that he was not involved in its creation.
Ellin said he’s not bitter over not being paid for the ad. He simply wishes the writers of “Entourage” would get more credit for the hard work they put into the scripts and character development, only for their work to be distilled into an “embarrassing” emulation of the HBO hit.
