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Matthew Belloni, Eriq Gardner, Julia Alexander, Kim Masters & Scott Mendelson
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Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday
An essential, insider-friendly Hollywood tip sheet from Matthew Belloni, who spent 14 years in the trenches at The Hollywood Reporter and five before that practicing entertainment law. What I’m Hearing also features veteran Hollywood journalist Kim Masters, as well as a special companion email from Eriq Gardner, focused on entertainment law, and weekly box office analysis from Scott Mendelson.
THE LATEST ARTICLES
Matthew Belloni
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July 18, 2025
CBS in Distress: Colbert’s Exit & The Rhodes-Weiss Era
As Paramount prepares to remake itself, David Rhodes has emerged as a likely successor at CBS News, possibly advised by Bari Weiss. And company insiders suggest that the Colbert cancellation was purely economic, but is that buyable?
Matthew Belloni
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July 11, 2025
Sam Altman Is Getting ‘Social Network’-ed
I got my hands on ‘Artificial,’ Hollywood’s new version of ‘The Social Network’ for the A.I. age. Altman and Elon Musk will probably hate their portrayals, but it’s a small miracle that Amazon, itself a player in the A.I. race, is making this $40 million movie in the first place.
Matthew Belloni, Ian Krietzberg & Eriq Gardner
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July 3, 2025
A.I.’s Independence Day Terror
A frank conversation about the real and immediate impacts of the incipient and ubiquitous technology on entertainment—Midjourney implications, job wipeouts, licensing realities, and what to expect in the next decade versus what’s science fiction.
Matthew Belloni
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June 27, 2025
HBO Just Dramatically Changed How It Pays Everyone
The prestige outlet is moving to a “bonus” system based on thresholds of “success” in different categories. It’s all dependent on HBO’s definitions of success, and not dissimilar to how other outlets calculate payouts. But it raises a troubling question: Why?
Matthew Belloni
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June 20, 2025
The Mail Room: Bond Directors, Blumhouse’s ‘Saw’ Deal & Apple’s Post-F1 Strategy
With the first half of 2025 nearly behind us, let’s open up my inbox for reader questions on everything from the 007 director bake-off and why Warner Bros. didn’t win the ‘Matrix’ auction, to Baldoni-Lively aftershocks and Tom Cruise’s honorary Oscar.
Matthew Belloni
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June 12, 2025
Is Warner Bros. Ready for Its Close-Up?
'Superman' (or any single movie) won’t move a media company’s stock price like its overall television business does. But now that David Zaslav is spinning off his linear assets, there’s about to be a lot more pressure on the film studio to perform.
Matthew Belloni
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June 10, 2025
Sun Valley Mogul Retreat ’25: The Invite List
No Elon or Shari Redstone, but the annual Allen & Co. gathering of tech and media leaders will include Disney C.E.O. candidates, Apple’s Tim Cook, and three separate Murdochs, in addition to a who’s who of Silicon Valley players.
Matthew Belloni
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June 10, 2025
David Zaslav Has Admitted Defeat
By splitting Warner Bros. Discovery in two, its C.E.O., as well as chief architect John Malone, finally acknowledged that the math never worked on their declining TV business, and the thesis of combining prestige (HBO) and populism (Discovery) was doomed from the start.
Matthew Belloni
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June 6, 2025
The Incredible Shrinking Studio System
Disney’s layoffs and the coming consolidation of Hulu, in addition to cuts at WBD and Paramount, all coalesce around a dreary reality: Less content requires fewer people. The studios avoided these cuts for years. Now, they don’t have any other choice.
Matthew Belloni
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May 30, 2025
The Never-Ending Michael Jackson Movie Saga
International distribution is up in the air as ‘Michael’ faces a legal setback, rewrites, and reshoots. But the real problem is that nobody seems to have any idea what the heck the movie is actually going to be, or even if it’s going to be released as a single movie at all.
