In the entertainment industry, Richard Nanula was known as one of the top financial executives. In the adult entertainment industry, he was known as Mr. Rich. Now he’s known as the disgraced former chairman of Miramax Films.
Nanula’s downfall had nothing to do with lack of intelligence. The 53-year-old Harvard Business School graduate was widely regarded as one of the brightest in his class. After completing his MBA, Nanula went straight to work for Disney.
“Nanula started out as a senior planning analyst and was promoted quickly,” The Los Angeles Times reported last week. “A certified public accountant, Nanula was adept at conceptualizing financial matters and struck Disney colleagues as intelligent, articulate and funny.”
After five years with Disney, Nanula was named the chief financial officer, which made him one of the youngest ever Fortune 500 company CFOs.
Nanula continued to have success in that role. One of his greatest accomplishments was refinancing the Euro Disney Resort, which likely saved it from failure.
“It was about Disney protecting its brand image, fixing a very real financial problem and buying itself some time,” Laura Martin, a Needham & Co. analyst who covers Disney, told The L.A. Times. “Richard was instrumental in keeping the park solvent.”
Nanula’s aspirations eventually outgrew Disney, so he moved on to executive positions with Starwood Hotels, biotechnology firm Amgen and Colony Capital. He also held various board positions, including the recent one with Miramax Films.
Although he was wildly successful in professional terms, Nanula’s home life was very different. He married an executive assistant while working at Disney. They went on to have three children together, but she filed for divorce in the early 2000s, alleging Nanula spent thousands of dollars on prostitutes and had a sex addiction.
He completed a six-day stint in rehabilitation for that addiction in 2003. Court documents reveal Nanula’s wife decided to go forward with the divorce because she “could not escape the realization that [Nanula] had been having sex with prostitutes and other women for some 16 years and lying to me about our lives together.”
A single man again, Nanula seemed to find a loophole in his desire to pay for sex without getting in trouble: If he filmed the scenes with the females’ approval, the acts would be considered pornography, not prostitution.
“The thinking would seem to be, ‘OK, there is a camera there, it’s a shoot,'” Dan Miller, executive managing editor of the industry trade magazine XBiz, told The L.A. Times. “But everybody knows this footage isn’t going anywhere.”
^Adult film actress Sarah Shevon, who claims to have made a film with Nanula in 2012.
It’s impossible to know how many times Nanula did this. At least four professional porn stars have claimed to meeting with Nanula for “private sessions,” and the footage from one of those sessions was leaked to TheDirty.com earlier this summer. (The video was later taken down without explanation.) Once Nanula was identified as the man in the scenes, he took a leave of absence from Colony Capital and Miramax. He officially resigned less than two weeks later.
Now, as more details emerge about Nanula’s double life, serious questions are getting tossed around. One of the biggest concerns for many people is how someone with a previously documented penchant for prostitution was able to hold high-ranking positions with Fortune 500 companies. The fact Nanula’s name is linked to Disney is also disturbing, even though there’s no evidence his sex addiction interfered with his work life.
Thomas J. Barrack Jr., founder of Colony Capital and the person selected to replace Nanula on the Miramax board of directors, said in an email to The L.A. Times on July 8, “This is a personal matter for Richard and unrelated to Miramax.”
