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Hello, I'm Matt Belloni.
Greetings from Half Moon Bay, where I’m celebrating my 10th wedding anniversary (and, alas, talking to sources). Reminder: My emails are for members of Puck, the new media community for insiders in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and Wall Street. If this email has been forwarded to you, please sign up for a membership here. (Yes, we have group subscriptions, just email fritz@puck.news for details.) But first...
Who Won the Week: Peyton and Eli Manning–the retired NFL brothers’ “Manningcast” of Monday Night Football on ESPN2 is luring about 2 million viewers and helping popularize a new genre of sports broadcast. More on this phenomenon (and details of Peyton’s unique deal) below…
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Disney leadership was clearly rattled by the personal allegations in the lawsuit, which made Disney the villain—and highly incentivized to make the headlines go away. If you had 73 Days in your office’s Scarlett Johansson settlement pool, congrats and collect your prize. Many gasped when Disney and the actress jointly announced a deal on Thursday to resolve her $80 million litigation over Black Widow debuting on Disney+ concurrent with theaters, but few in the entertainment law community seriously thought this would last long. Johansson’s CAA agents were seeking a deal before the lawsuit. And after a short break following the filing drama, they quickly resumed talking with Disney. Litigation as negotiation.
Here’s how it went down, based on conversations with sources on both sides of the dispute. (Nobody’s commenting, per the settlement.)
Disney leadership was clearly rattled by the personal allegations in the lawsuit, specifically the claim that Bob Chapek and Bob Iger were stiffing Disney stars to pad their own stock-incentive-laden salaries. That led to a rare communications misstep—Disney’s unusually mean-spirited statement suggesting that Johansson was greedy and insensitive to Covid. CAA’s Bryan Lourd smartly jumped on this error, putting out his own statement decrying the “salary shaming” of his very famous female client. All of a sudden, Disney was the villain—and majorly incentivized to make this go away. Point, Johansson.
But despite the public criticism, Disney studio chief Alan Bergman knew that if he was gonna pay Johansson a chunk of her lost box office bonuses, he should roll the money into a deal for another Disney movie. Note the inclusion of her commitment to Tower of Terror in Bergman’s statement announcing the settlement. Point, Disney.
While Lourd and Bergman talked, the litigation proceeded. Many have noted that Disney would want to settle this before invasive discovery requests started flying. But I’m told that John Berlinski, Johansson’s lawyer, actually did serve discovery on Disney, demanding all kinds of information about Disney+ and the financials behind the Avengers movies. Exactly the kind of stuff Disney wouldn’t want to hand over.
Disney was preparing to fight those requests, with lead lawyer Dan Petrocelli arguing that his request to move the whole thing to private arbitration necessarily paused any attempt to obtain discovery. Probably not coincidentally, a hearing on that issue was coming up soon. I asked an independent litigator I know, and he said that Disney probably would have won on the discovery issue. (He wasn’t sure about the arbitration.) So, a point for Disney.
But it didn’t help Disney’s overall cause that Shang-Chi, a “lesser” Marvel title starring a largely unknown actor that was released over the usually dormant Labor Day weekend, has stormed past Black Widow at the box office. The difference? Shang-Chi was a theatrical exclusive, of course. So that’s a point for Johansson.
With all that in mind, Lourd and Bergman reached the key deal terms at the end of last week, Chapek approved the terms, and everything was handed over to the lawyers to paper. I’m surprised nothing leaked over the next few days, especially after an upcoming hearing was pushed on Monday by mutual agreement, often the sign of a pending settlement. By Thursday midday, everything was ready to go, and the cookie-cutter statements were released. Johansson got paid (though likely not what she sought), Disney got another Johansson movie, and the lawsuit that was supposed to redefine Hollywood was quickly buried and forgotten.
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Quote of the Week:
“You are playing a dangerous game with the truth.”
–Brad Bessey, the veteran talk show producer, in an email resigning from The Carlos Watson Show after he discovered that the project wasn’t being made for A&E, as Watson’s Ozy Media had promised. Ozy shut down Friday after an expose, and a series of follow ups, in The New York Times.
ICM Agents Are Lawyering Up Pre-Merger
ICM Partners agents and employees are scrambling for options in the wake of CAA’s deal this week to acquire the agency. The expectation is that most people—particularly those not attached to marquee TV creator clients or the coveted books and sports departments—will be cut loose in the transition. Some shared services employees—IT, finance, communications, legal and business affairs—were even told this week that they should prepare resumes, I’m told. (ICM says “not true.”) And Ted Chervin, the agency’s No. 2, is said to have told agents in the lucrative TV lit department that he’s “no longer in charge” and can’t protect anyone. It’s gonna get ugly.
So it’s not surprising that a couple top entertainment litigators tell me they’ve been fielding calls from ICM people (and a few vulnerable CAA folks) all week. Anyone with a contract wants to know their rights, particularly since ICM positioned itself as a “partnership” with shared ownership, and CAA is acquiring the company in a stock transaction. There’s a rumor going around that ICM teed up employee deals to end around the time that the acquisition is expected to close, but ICM says that’s “preposterous,” and I agree, it seems to ascribe a bit more forethought to this transaction than my sources say existed.
Meanwhile, an underappreciated player in the deal is Crestview Partners, the private equity firm that invested $150 million in ICM for about a one-third stake in December 2019. That was right before the pandemic, which really hurt all the agencies, and apparently agitated Crestview about its new position. So when ICM’s Chris Silbermann began getting serious with the CAA guys, Crestview was more than happy to push for the deal. (ICM says that’s “completely false.” Also: TPG, the majority owner of CAA, is an investor in Puck.)
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My Reading List (Part 1)…
The Manningcast Is Already Changing Televised Sports
Speaking of agencies, the rush is on at the big shops to replicate the “Manningcast” on ESPN. Will Serena and Venus Williams soon be debating tennis during the U.S. Open? How about Boston sports idiots Ben Affleck and Matt Damon simulcasting Red Sox-Yankees games? It’s all on the table, say agency sources.
For those not following, retired NFL stars Peyton and Eli Manning have been presiding over an amusing simulcast of ESPN’s Monday Night Football on ESPN2 featuring guests and back-and-forth banter between the brothers. About two million people watched last week, which is tiny by NFL standards but huge as an ancillary add-on to the traditional broadcast. Eight more “Manningcasts” are planned for this season.
It’s a fun show, and an interesting business story. Simulcasts could be the future of sports television, and potentially all live TV. They provide a value-add option for casual viewers and, more importantly, a reason to watch live. Young people increasingly consume sports via clips on social media and league-owned apps, and ratings are declining for everything except the NFL (and even football viewers are getting older, per Nielsen). Stunts like college coaches yakking over the game, or Nickelodeon airing touchdowns accompanied by slime cannons and SpongeBob, have shown early success.
ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro knows this, but the right talent is soooo essential. Peyton, who has topped the wishlists of sports broadcasters since he retired in 2015, held out for something exactly like this. He’s got a three-year deal worth a little less than $10 million a year, I’m told, but it’s less about the money and more about leveraging the platform to build a LeBron-style business. He’s producing the Manningcast via his Omaha Productions, which makes the Peyton’s Places shows for ESPN+, and he’s already expanding into other content for ESPN. I’m told that Omaha also has sold a kids competition show to NBC and a docu-series to Netflix (neither has been announced yet). It’s a smart model for everyone.
Hence the scramble to replicate it. Basically every retired athlete with a big personality is being examined, I’m told. And there’s no reason why the format can’t work for non-sports programming. Imagine Disney simulcasting the Oscars on ESPN with Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley and some dishy friends? Or on Freeform with fashion influencers? A&E canceled Live PD, its top-rated show, last summer amid the George Floyd protests. What if the broadcast was relaunched with a simulcast on another A+E-Networks channel, with a host exploring issues of police brutality and abuses of power? Again, the right talent is essential.
As cord-cutting accelerates, the pressure is already building on cable networks to justify their carriage fees and inclusion in a shrinking bundle. Simulcasts can help keep people in the bundle and remind them that some of these lesser cable channels still exist, and might even be worth watching.
My Reading List (Part 2)…
Can the H.F.P.A. Have Its Silly Awards Show Back Now? So, has the Hollywood Foreign Press Association done enough to appease the publicists? That’s the question hanging over the Golden Globes after the H.F.P.A. announced a new crop of 21 members on Friday that’s about 30 percent Black.
Regular readers know my take on this one: Since coming under fire for its odd practices and lack of Black members in January, the H.F.P.A. has reformed its membership process, enacted anti-perks and -graft policies, ousted legendary bonehead Phil Berk, and generally set about doing exactly what has been asked of them. Can this silly group have its silly awards show back now? An awards show that, incidentally, provides jobs for thousands and a valuable promotional platform for Hollywood movies and TV shows?
That’s apparently up to a group of militant talent publicists, led by Kelly Bush, Cindi Berger and Marcel Pariseau (all of whom run P.R. firms with very few Black publicists, it has been noted). They teamed with Time’s Up—yes, hilariously, the same Time’s Up whose board resigned after it’s leadership was revealed to be helping Andrew Cuomo fight harassment claims—to push for a full boycott against the H.F.P.A. When Netflix and others signed on, NBC canceled the 2022 Globes telecast, and that’s where we are today.
I’m told that the H.F.P.A. has been meeting with less aggressive publicists lately, winning support that may help neutralize the more militant wing, whose actual agenda always seemed to me to be less about diversity and more about ending the kooky H.F.P.A. press conferences. Those Q&A events, which are required for Globes consideration, and sometimes feature bizarre or even offensive questions, are nonetheless one of the few media venues that modern talent publicists don’t control, so naturally the flacks want to eliminate them. Anyone who cares about press freedom—including these studios and streamers that are, you know, in the media business—should be against that effort, regardless of what they think of the H.F.P.A.
No doubt raising new concerns is the appointment on Friday (conveniently announced just after the diverse members reveal) of Todd Boehly, owner of the Globes producer formerly known as Dick Clark Productions, as interim C.E.O. of the H.F.P.A. Boehly is a white, male, billionaire hedge funder with a financial interest in the Globes—not exactly the picture of reform and independence that the H.F.P.A. needs these days. (A big disclosure here: Boehly owned THR for many of the years I worked there, and he was always great to me personally and professionally.)
The alarm I’m hearing in the awards community about potential bias and cronyism is real. Boehly has an incentive to make decisions that benefit Dick Clark, for instance. And the film and TV divisions of the production-finance company MRC, also owned by Boehly, should probably recuse its shows and movies from Globes consideration while Boehly is in this role. Last thing the H.F.P.A. needs is a perception of favoritism with such a huge microscope on the organization.
But that said, I’m told the plan is for Boehly to serve only briefly, until a suitable permanent C.E.O. can be found. (They’ve been trying.) And is it such a bad thing to have a professional manager with a huge stake running things? Dick Clark’s conundrum over the years has been that it produces the Globes telecast but has no control over the H.F.P.A. or its self-sabotaging practices. Now it does. Boehly clearly has an incentive to fix things for the benefit of all stakeholders, including everyone who benefits from the Globes returning to NBC in 2023. Some no-B.S. oversight is probably long overdue.
Knowing Todd, the last thing he’s craving is public attention. He just knows that MRC without a thriving Golden Globes is simply a less valuable asset, and things have spun out of control. This seems like a financial salvage operation when the rest of his managers couldn’t get it done.
Will it work? Let’s see what the publicists do next.
The Feedback Writing about talent agencies really brings out the agent haters. I’ll spare you the vitriol (well, one person referred to ICM as “a catacomb of half-dead blood-suckers,” which I can’t not share). Here’s some intelligent feedback:
“There are too many agencies, and there are too many agents. The business has changed, the managers do all the work, and agencies are basically there to use their size to exert a little pressure on the studio so the client doesn’t get completely screwed over. So R.I.P. ICM, we won’t miss you.”–An executive
“You nailed it: This is the Great Consolidation, and ICM won’t be the last agency to sell. Gersh, Paradigm, APA, I predict they are all gone in a decade.”–An agent
“What’s not mentioned in any of these stories is how agents are treating their clients. Remember us? We’re the ones generating the actual money. Personally, I don’t care where my agent works as long as he’s doing a good job for me, and most of the time he’s not. Mergers like this lead to less competition and provide fewer options for representation, and that’s a bad thing for talent.”–An actor
“Jeff Berg must be rolling in his grave. Wait, he’s still alive?” – an agent
And Finally… The Gary Ginsberg book release party train stopped in L.A. last Thursday for an exec-and-lawyer heavy event at the home of Warner Bros. general counsel John Rogovin, and wife, Jaye. Ginsberg, the attorney and Clinton political operative turned Murdoch and Time Warner communications chief, released a fun book this summer called First Friends, on presidential best pals and the influence they wield. Following a New York party with Mike Bloomberg, Ginsberg came to L.A. for a chat with investor and News Corp. alum Peter Chernin on relationship-building, and why people are drawn to politics and media.Also in attendance: Sony’s Tony Vinciquera, Mattel C.E.O. Ynon Kreiz, Snap’s Julie Henderson, departing Netflix PR exec Richard Siklos, and Warners C.O.O. Carolyn Blackwood.
See you Thursday, Matt
Got a question, comment, complaint, or some Dodgers playoff tickets? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.
FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 
The rest of Hollywood is consolidating and bulking up in the face of domination by tech companies. Can CAA play the same game?
MATTHEW BELLONI 
for all the public accolades—and in quintessential Washington fashion—Woodward inspires a surprising amount of eye-rolling in this town, at least in private. JULIA IOFFE 
Emerson Collective was an early investor in the portentously named digital media company—and among the first to raise red flags. THEODORE SCHLEIFER 
If you want to understand the conundrum of the financial markets these days, all you have to do is look at the insanity in junk bonds. WILLIAM D. COHAN 
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