After ABC gave Dan Aykroyd's Soul Man the pink slip, the show's producers at Wind Dancer Production Group thought they had found a savior in UPN. Negotiations with the fledgling network got under way and Soul Man seemed all but certain for a mid-season slot and a two-year committment.
Now Soul Man hasn't a prayer, and the two sides are pointing fingers. According to UPN president and CEO Dean Valentine, talks broke down over money. Soul Man, he says, "was something we were passionate about and thought could work for us." Fellow start upnetwork the WB has had some moderate success with the ABC refugee Sister, Sister, and UPN thought it could take a similar route with Soul Man. "But at the end of the day, we couldn't agree on a price," Valentine says. Althought he wouldn't say what the price was, industry sources say that Wind Dancer Production Group was asking for more than $750,000 an episode, a figure at least $100,000 higher than the standard sitcom fee.
But a source at Wind Dancer says money wasn't the problem. Or at least not entirely. "The problem was Dan," says the insider. "He said he didn't want to do the series anymore if it was going to UPN." A source close to Aykroyd says the comic didn't want to continue Soul Man on either network. "He was just tired of it."