Back in 2019, AT&T/Warnermedia’s cable network TNT hosted the Shaqtoons contest encouraging animators to submit animation for a new documentary tv series about NBA star Shaquille O’Neal.
The winning animation would receive $500. O’Neal’s pitch to artists was that money wasn’t important. “That’s right animators, I’m going to make you famous,” he said in a video. (His personal net worth is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.)
The concept was so ill-conceived that Shaq and his conspirators eventually raised the prize total to $10,000 for the winner(s). And that’s the last anyone ever heard about the contest.