NEW YORK – File the O.J. Simpson calendar and video game under the same heading as the O.J. Simpson book and television appearance: not yet ready for prime time and most likely never will be.
The scheduled release of the Simpson calendar and video game on Black Friday this week was abruptly canceled last night, a News Corporation spokesperson announced.
The move came as no surprise since earlier in the day News Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch, had announced the cancellation of the new O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened, as well as two, one-hour interviews with Mr. Simpson on the Fox network.
News Corporation owns HarperCollins (the book’s publisher) and the Fox network, where the Simpson interviews would have been aired. News Corporation also owns the companies that produced the O.J. Simpson calendar and video game.
Like If I Did It, the O.J. Simpson calendar and video game of the same name were hypothetical accounts of how Mr. Simpson would have killed his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman twelve years ago if he had wanted to do so. The calendar, which targeted a fashion-oriented, upmarket audience, contained twelve images shot by celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz. In the photographs Mr. Simpson models various articles of clothing associated with the unsolved double killing of his wife and Mr. Goldman.
According to an insider at News Corporation who has seen the calendar, “Even though he’s no longer in fighting trim, O.J. still cuts a dashing figure in a watch cap (January) and Bruno Maglis (August).”
The O.J. video game, snippets of which have been posted already on YouTube, pits contestants against one another in a race to see who can kill Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman in the shortest time possible while leaving behind the fewest clues and not arousing Kato Kaelin’s suspicions.
Mr. Simpson said in a telephone interview late Monday that he could not comment on the multiple cancellations “until I know legally where I stand.
“I would like nothing better than to straighten out some things that have been mischaracterized,” Mr. Simpson added, “but I think I’m legally muzzled at this point.”
Mr. Simpson’s attorney, Yale Galanter, said he did not know whether the deal between Mr. Simpson and News Corporation was contingent on a television interview being shown or a book arriving in stores, nor did he know if Mr. Simpson had been paid a reported $3.5 million in advance.
Any hopes that Fox had of reaping a commercial reward from the O.J. interview–scheduled to run at the end of the November ratings sweeps–were quickly dashed by near universal revulsion toward the Simpson project. The network was deluged with criticism from those who knew Mr. Goldman and Ms. Simpson, from booksellers and advertisers, and even from Fox News Channel personality Bill O’Reilly.
A spokesperson for Public Outrage.com, a company that provides “templates for e-mails to protest any occasion,” said it had received more requests for “irate e-mails to television executives” than at any other time since Paula Abdul was accused of sleeping with contestants on American Idol.
In related news, a source at ESPN said the cancellation of O.J. Simpson’s appearance during half time of its Monday Night Football game last night had nothing to do with the cancellation of other O.J. Simpson appearances.
“We didn’t have The Juice on because, quite frankly, the game has passed him by,” said one ESPN executive.
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