Get the latest gossip

Chuck Lorre Gives Up Penning His Production Company Vanity Cards for ‘Bookie’: ‘Max Actively Dissuades Viewers from Reading End Credits’

Chuck Lorre has stopped writing vanity cards for his Max series "Bookie," beyond one more in the show's Season 2 opener.

Lorre’s referring to the now-standard practice by most streamers of shuffling viewers to the next episode of a show, or another series, as closing credits start to roll — shrinking to a small picture-in-picture box as a timer counts down to the next thing. Lorre began the tradition with “Dharma and Greg” in 1997, when he was given a second at the end of each episode to flash a vanity card — which is usually a logo of the writer’s production company — and he decided to use that real estate to have some fun by writing his thoughts down. Several cards were censored by the network over the years, including an open letter to then-Viacom executive chairman Sumner Redstone, and another that referenced a lawsuit between CBS and the studio behind his shows, Warner Bros. TV.

Get the Android app