Hello and welcome back to What I’m Hearing...
Hello and Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate.
Heading into the holidays, I anticipate the volume of emails and texts and DMs will slow, so don’t forget to send me your smart takes and news tips at matt@puck.news. Remember, this email is a community for all of us. Not a member? Sign up here, or gift a membership to only the quality people on your holiday list.
Discussed in today’s email: Scott Stuber, Ann Sarnoff, Channing Tatum, Bob Iger, Jeremy Zimmer, Nancy Tellem, Adam Silver, Bill Block, and Disguised Toast.
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There are big hurdles—including a potential $2 billion price tag. But if everything falls in place, Iger could get that gracious Disney exit he has coveted. It’s crunch time for Bob Iger if the outgoing Disney executive chairman wants to announce another gig before he leaves the company at the end of the year. Several options are still on the table, I’m told, but one potential scenario could be particularly interesting: NBA owner. Iger has told at least a couple friends that he’d love to front a bid for the Phoenix Suns if the hoops team were to become available, which it just might in the next couple months.
To be clear, there haven’t been any formal conversations, and Iger’s Disney rep declined to comment. But if you haven’t been following, Robert Sarver, the Suns’ controlling owner, was the subject of a damning ESPN report earlier this month that alleged a bunch of bad behavior, including using the n-word in front of a Black head coach, passing around pictures of his wife in a bikini, and asking a female employee if he “owned” her. NBA commissioner Adam Silver launched an investigation of Sarver, the results of which are expected in the next few months.
If the probe fails to unearth additional bombshells, most NBA people believe Sarver won’t be forced to sell. But smoke often signals fire, and the investigation is being handled by the Wachtell Lipton law firm, which also looked at L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s use of racist language before Sterling was forced to sell the team in 2014. Steve Ballmer then bought the Clippers for $2 billion as his follow-up move after stepping down as Microsoft C.E.O.
Could Iger follow that path? It makes sense, according to a couple NBA insiders I asked. He’s close with Silver, thanks to years of Disney’s ABC and ESPN broadcasting games. And he’s even closer with Chris Paul, who was president of the NBA Players Association when the Covid “bubble” games were staged at Disney’s compound in Florida, and who happens to play for the Suns. “I consider him a very good friend,” Iger said of Paul last year. Iger has long harbored sports ambitions, at one point pursuing an NFL team in his L.A. hometown, which, of course, is just a short 45 minute private flight to Phoenix. And Iger and his family are close with billionaire private equity mogul Tony Ressler and his wife, Jamie Gertz (yes, the actress), who own the Atlanta Hawks. I’m sure Silver and the NBA owners would love to welcome a guy like Iger into the fold.
But there are big hurdles. First, the team isn’t currently for sale. Even if the Wachtell report comes back damning, and Silver moves to oust Sarver (a big if), the Suns have co-owners, and two sources tell me there is a right of first refusal on Sarver’s interest. That would have to be dealt with. Plus, the NBA would be obligated to go through a normal sale process to maximize the purchase price. The Suns have been valued at $1.7 billion and would likely sell for more than $2 billion, meaning Iger would almost certainly need partners.
But Silver holds a lot of power over the process, and what he wants tends to happen. If everything falls in place, Iger could get that gracious Disney exit he has coveted. My Puck colleague Dylan Byers reported last week that Iger has extended his exit date by a month to the end of January—which is right before the NBA All-Star break, where the announcement of a sale would make big headlines. If that happens, Iger could enjoy a sweet irony: Disney’s ESPN journalism might have paved the way for his post-Disney life as a sports owner.
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Miramax Just Won an Interesting Pulp Fiction Battle (But Not That One)
As I argued last week, I’m skeptical about Miramax C.E.O. Bill Block’s recent lawsuit against Quentin Tarantino over Pulp Fiction NFTs. Two law professors now agree with me, writing that “it looks to us like Tarantino is acting within his reserved rights to publish the screenplay (or portions of it).” But Block has another reason to celebrate with his lawyers. He just won an entirely different Pulp Fiction lawsuit, this one brought by celebrity photographer Firooz Zahedi over the famous poster image of Uma Thurman lying on a bed with a gun, a cigarette and a pulpy novel.
You know the poster. If you’re a man in your 30s or 40s, you probably hung it in your college dorm. Zahedi was paid $10,000 to shoot the image in 1994 and, depending on who you believe, either his work-for-hire agreement was lost or it never existed because, as one former executive testified, Miramax under the Weinsteins “didn’t do contracts.” Cut to 2019, Zahedi claimed he saw his Uma photo on a pair of socks, so he ran to the copyright office and sued in 2020 alleging infringement.
On Wednesday, federal judge Dolly M. Gee shot down the suit on statute of limitations grounds—and Zahedi has Instagram to blame. Zahedi alleged he was unaware his photo had been commercialized until he saw those socks in 2019, well within the three-year statute of limitations for discovering infringement. But Miramax litigator John Gatti produced evidence that in 2015, Zahedi’s stepson had posted a photo on Insta of Zahedi holding a Pulp Fiction “Mia Wallace” action figure with the caption “Happy birthday to my stepdad @fitzphoto. Turns out he didn’t get toy royalties for his famous photo of Uma. But at least he has the toy now.” The action figure packaging prominently featured Zahedi’s image.
Oops. It was a smoking gun literally with smoking and a gun. The judge ruled “Zahedi actually knew that Miramax was exploiting a photograph of which he claimed ownership without giving him credit or royalties,” so “his failure to bring suit to assert his ownership rights is fatal to his case.” Summary judgment granted.
Now Miramax can go after Zahedi for attorney’s fees and costs… and perhaps use them to help fund the Tarantino lawsuit. Email me if you want the full ruling.
Quote of the Week "If you have the budget to make 14 movies and you only have 11 great ones, let’s just make 11.” – Scott Stuber, the Netflix film chief, in the Times, explaining his shift to fewer, “better” movies. As one producer texted me: “Movie industry solved!”
Bonus: I discuss the Netflix film strategy shift with Kim Masters on The Business. Listen.
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UTA Quietly Filed for a $200 Million Games SPAC
Among the major talent agencies, UTA is known for trumpeting publicly even the most minor signings or agent promotions. Nothing wrong with that; they play the perception game, and they usually play it well. So I was a bit surprised that UTA has kept quiet about its recent filing for a $200 million S.P.A.C. UTA Acquisition Corp., the new blank-check company based in the Caymans, is targeting businesses in “the gaming, digital media, creator economy, entertainment and technology industries,” per a Nov. 10 filing that was shared with me (not by someone at UTA). The agency declined to comment on it.
Sure, everyone and their grandmother has a S.P.A.C. these days, but UTA’s play has lined up some well-known names in the games world: Reggie Fils-Aimé, former president and C.O.O. of Nintendo of America, is chairman; Jamie Sharp, a former business developement executive at Google with tons of games experience, is co-C.E.O. alongside Clinton Foy, UTA’s investment leader (the agency’s head of video games, Ophir Lupu, is president; and chief accounting officer Chris Jefferis is C.F.O.). The board includes former CBS and X-Box leader Nancy Tellem, as well as Reddit co-founder and investor Alexis Ohanian. Connaught, the merchant bank, is sponsoring this effort as well.
It makes sense that UTA would want to own something in the games world. The agency has often touted its digital division, and Lupu’s games group already reps pro players and streamers like Nickmercs, Scump, Disguised Toast and Grandmaster Hikaru. (No, those names don’t mean anything to me, either; I took them from the UTA filing.) The agency recently signed the e-sports organization FaZe Clan, which I had heard of, mostly because it is attempting to cross over into TV, podcasting, and brand partnerships.
The “metaverse” isn’t mentioned in UTA’s prospectus, but it’s clear the agency’s C.E.O. Jeremy Zimmer sees what Mark Zuckerberg and everyone else sees, and he wants a piece of the coming convergence of entertainment, social media, and gaming for UTA and its clients. At this point, all the major agencies are positioning themselves to capitalize—either via client partnerships or standalone investments—in whatever entertainment becomes in 10, 20, or 30 years. Because it certainly won’t look anything like the current ecosystem.
My Reading List
Today I’m excerpting another column from Puck contributor and streaming video analyst Julia Alexander, who dove deep into those “hours consumed” Top 10 lists that Netflix has been publishing…
I Dug Into the New Netflix “Ratings” Data So You Don’t Have To The next “Squid Game,” warning signs for Disney, and why “binge mode” might be overrated.
By Julia Alexander
Bad news for cinephiles: Red Notice, the critically panned art-heist caper in which Ryan Reynolds appears with Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and a bunch of C.G.I. cityscapes, is poised to overtake Sandra Bullock’s Bird Box as the most watched original film in the history of Netflix.
That’s interesting, and speaks to the persistent gap between elite consensus and popular appeal in the streaming age. But the more surprising data point, and something we wouldn’t have known had Netflix not recently begun releasing weekly Top 10 lists based on an “hours consumed” metric, is how Red Notice helped 6 Underground, another Ryan Reynolds Netflix original from 2019, net another 3.6 million household streams in the week following Red Notice’s release—or 7.77 million hours of “engagement.”
As a streaming video analyst, I spent the Thanksgiving week luxuriating in months’ worth of new Netflix data. (While the service only started publishing its new lists last week, data beginning at the end of June was included.) There’s still a lot that Netflix isn’t revealing—we don’t know how many people watched 6 Underground in Egypt, for instance, although we do know it appeared in the country’s Top 10 list not long after Red Notice—but there is enough to better explain the decisions Netflix makes, from renewals to casting choices and more. For that reason, it’s valuable.
Below are the four most enlightening trends I found:
1. South Korea Has Become a Global Content Engine
Squid Game gets all the attention, and rightly so, but what about Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha? The rom-com show, the top broadcast series in South Korea when it debuted this summer, is a massive hit for Netflix. Cha-Cha-Cha has remained a Top 10 non-English TV series globally for 12 weeks—longer than Squid Game—and has amassed 258.5 million hours viewed during that time.
Yes, Squid Game probably helped Cha-Cha-Cha, as the algorithm likely recommended other popular Korean series, but Cha-Cha-Cha was already a hit in markets like Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, India, Vietnam, and Qatar. By the week of Nov. 1, it was charting all over Latin America. A week later, it was trending in Morocco.
This isn’t a one-off event, either. Korean shows routinely dominate Netflix’s Top 10 Non-English Global lists. Most recently, Hellbound, a dark thriller from the director of Train to Busan, dethroned Squid Game as the most-watched title globally, including among English content. Hellbound saw 43.48 million hours viewed. It was the No. 1 title for the week in Jamaica, Martinique, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Korea, Indonesia, and trending Top 10 in dozens more.
This is crucial knowledge for Netflix. Co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos has invested heavily in Korean content, reportedly spending more than $500 million in 2021 alone, up from $700 million between 2015 and 2020, according to CNBC.
The Asia Pacific region (APAC) is Netflix’s biggest growth sector. In Q2 alone, APAC accounted for roughly two-thirds of Netflix’s total new subscribers. At a time when some are concerned about a subscriber slowdown, continued APAC growth is a big priority. If that content also travels globally, all the better. It helps justify the local spend, distinguishes Netflix from its competition, and helps to retain customers in places like the U.S. and Brazil, where churn rates are higher. All, I should add, for less than the cost of a typical high-caliber U.S. series with American actors.
2. Sorry, Disney, Netflix’s Kiddie Content Is Working
Click here for the rest of Julia’s column, it’s fascinating stuff…
The Feedback
A brief hodgepodge this week. First, on Thursday I questioned the media’s box office boosterism…
“I share your disbelief. The industry media is pretending these box office numbers are great, while behind the scenes everyone knows we’re in big trouble. Now Omicron? I hate to be Biblical, but the End Times are here.”–An executive
“What you got against Gaga? The Gucci numbers are soft, for sure, but imagine if she wasn’t in it? MGM would have been looking at King Richard or Last Duel numbers.”–A publicist
And finally, a response to my Sunday item on the Academy Museum’s Jewish problem…
“It’s easy to say the museum ignores the Jewish founders of Hollywood. But this is only a symptom of what you are probably too afraid to point out as the real problem: This omission was deliberate. The Academy leadership wants to deny its actual history. The museum is just a half-billion dollar venue in which to signal their 2021 virtues. Forget what’s actually important to movie history, or what an average movie fan might actually want to come see.”–An Academy member
Have a great week, Matt
Got a question, comment, complaint, or a news tip? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.
FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 
Netflix is finally, subtly lifting the veil on its ultra secretive streaming data—in a way that benefits Netflix, of course. MATTHEW BELLONI 
It’s a wild paradox: Harris is the second-most powerful office holder in American history, but suddenly facing nothing but downside PETER HAMBY 
One of the country’s most respected copyright experts joins the Quentin Tarantino's battle with Miramax over script NFTs. MATT BELLONI 
Inside the dynastic politics, boardroom dramas, and M&A land-grabs that are reshaping the media-tech-financial landscape. WILLIAM D. COHAN AND DYLAN BYERS 
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