Hello and welcome back to What I’m Hearing.

For those new here, I’m Matt Belloni, a former entertainment lawyer and editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter. My private emails come twice a week—Thursdays and Sundays—to members of Puck, our new media company covering the centers of power and influence in America. Sign up here, or gift a membership to your smartest friend.

Discussed in today’s email: Mathew Rosengart, Kathleen Kennedy, Barbara Broccoli, Karen Bass, Rick Rosen, David Zaslav, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Bob Chapek, and The Price Is Right.

First, a feel-good story…

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Britney’s Lawyer Celebrated Her Freedom with Steak and Tequila

Mathew Rosengart ran circles around the clowns controlling Spears’ life for the past 13 years.

The man who made #FreeBritney a reality hasn’t slept much in four months. He’s worked almost non-stop. He’s lost 10 pounds. So I’m happy to report that Mathew Rosengart took his wife, the publicist Mara Buxbaum, and some friends (including Jeff Ross, Conan O’Brien’s longtime producer) to the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills on Friday night, hours after an L.A. judge terminated Britney Spears’ infamous conservatorship. Rosengart had a steak and some Don Julio.        

I’ve known Mat for years, care of his legal work for clients like Sean Penn and Casey Affleck, and I predicted back in July that the former federal prosecutor would run circles around the clowns controlling Spears’ life for the past 13 years. Even so, his success was surprisingly swift and total, leveraging Jamie Spears with the threat of sitting for a deposition and responding to interrogatories. Jamie quickly petitioned to end the entire conservatorship rather than answer probing questions about his role in it.

Hopefully Jamie and Lou Taylor, Jamie’s close friend and Britney’s former business manager, will still face accountability for their actions—and the money they personally siphoned out of the estate. Rosengart subpoenaed both of them, and—shocker—Jamie doesn’t think any further discovery is necessary, given that he’s no longer a conservator. As Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino noted this week in The New Yorker, Taylor is so far refusing to turn over even basic documents, like her contract with the estate, and it’s never been made public exactly what she was paid during her decade of management. I’d love to see that number—as would a judge, I imagine. She also hired infamous Hulk Hogan and Trump media attorney Charles Harder, who, besides being a blowhard (he told me to “Fuck off” during my last chat with him, when he was spinning for former Amazon executive Roy Price), is not a very good lawyer, in my opinion.            

As for Rosengart, he’s not planning a victory lap just yet. He’s been turning down interview requests, including 60 Minutes and the various Britney documentarians. (I may do something with him down the line, but for now, he’s not on the record in this story either.) But I can reveal that Rosengart did accept one media opportunity. He’s a Bruce Springsteen superfan (70 shows and counting), so he agreed to do a guest DJ set on SiriusXM’s E Street Radio. That tapes this week.

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Who Won the Week: Taylor Sheridan

Sure, Britney was freed, Taylor Swift scored with a re-recorded album, and Peter Jackson sold his VFX unit for $1.6 billion. But did you see those Yellowstone numbers? Sheridan’s contemporary cowboy soap returned to 8 million live viewers and 14.7 million after three days—on the impossible-to-find Paramount Network, and without a next-day streaming play.

Now, on to a topic that is often discussed at Disney, but few want to do so publicly...

It’s Time to Take Star Wars Movies Away from Kathy Kennedy

I’m betting I wasn’t the only one who chuckled when the news broke on Tuesday that the Patty Jenkins Star Wars film—the one that Disney trumpeted with a video of the Wonder Woman director saying her goal was the “greatest fighter pilot movie ever made”; the one that had a title, Rogue Squadron, and a release date, in 2023; and the one with the it’s-really-taken-this-long? designation as the first Star Wars film to be directed by a woman—was not happening. Well, not not happening, just delayed indefinitely, if you believe Disney. Scheduling problems, prior commitments, we’ll regroup next year, yadda yadda.

I talked to a few insiders this week that said the real culprit was the dreaded “creative differences”; specifically, Jenkins couldn’t agree on the script with Lucasfilm executives, including senior V.P. Michelle Rejwan. That’s not unusual, of course, but it’s a laughably recurring problem at Lucasfilm under president Kathleen Kennedy, say agents: Top filmmakers are dying to make a Star Wars movie—until they sign on and experience the micromanagement and plot-point-by-committee process. It happened to the Game of Thrones guys, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who were hired to create a new trilogy but bailed. It also happened to Rian Johnson, writer and director of 2017’s The Last Jedi, whose own planned trilogy was shelved. Jenkins wasn’t willing to dick around, and she has other projects, notably Wonder Woman 3 at Warner Bros., where she enjoys more creative freedom. (Disney and personal representatives for Jenkins and Kennedy declined to comment.)

You’ll forgive my skepticism when it comes to Kennedy’s management of the Star Wars film franchise. Since 2012, when Disney paid $4 billion for George Lucas’ company and installed Kathy (everyone calls her Kathy) as his handpicked steward, Disney has sold billions of dollars in toys, books, games and merchandise; incorporated Star Wars lands into its theme parks; pioneered virtual production techniques at Industrial Light and Magic; and generated a slew of TV projects, including The Mandalorian, by far the most important series to Disney+. But when it comes to the Star Wars films—the basis of the franchise, and the skillset that Kennedy, one of the most successful and prolific film producers of all time, brought to the company—what a mess.

It might seem hyperbolic to say that, given that the five Star Wars movies under Disney’s umbrella, beginning with 2015’s The Force Awakens and ending with 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, have collectively grossed about $6 billion. But the litany of botched productions and missed opportunities could form the curriculum for a film school seminar called Franchise Mismanagement. Let’s briefly revisit:

• A dormant franchise: After the commercial and creative disappointment of 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, there isn’t a single Star Wars film project on track to make it to release before 2024, so at least five years between movies. Sure, there are 10 TV projects in the works—mostly for Disney+, which is what Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek cares most about—but an extended absence from theaters isn’t exactly what then-C.E.O. Bob Iger wanted when he initially declared that fans could expect a new movie every year.
  
  
• The production chaos: Remember when Kennedy was forced to bring in Tony Gilroy to completely overhaul director Gareth Edwards’ cut of 2016’s Rogue One, the first standalone film, which was “a mess,” at least in Gilroy’s words? Or when, on the second standalone, 2018’s Solo, Kennedy actually fired the comedy filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller mid-production, reportedly for injecting too much…wait for it….comedy during shooting? She then enlisted late-career Ron Howard, and the bland version of Solo failed to crack $400 million worldwide, becoming the first Star Wars movie to lose money, while Lord and Miller went on to win an Oscar that same year for the brilliant Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Then on 2019’s Rise of Skywalker, she fired filmmaker Colin Trevorrow, scrapped his script, and desperately convinced Force Awakens’ J.J. Abrams to return—for a hefty price. One source told me that Abrams ended up making tens of millions of dollars on the project, and he would have made more if the film had performed as expected, which it didn’t because many found the story—bringing back the long-dead Emperor, for instance—to be a series of cynical retreads.
  
  
• Which brings us to the baffling creative choices: Star Wars is tough because fans feel such personal ownership over the characters and mythology. Everything is scrutinized. But Kennedy’s management of those expectations seemed to shift film-to-film. Force Awakens, after a rocky development, was considered a well-executed mix of fan service and fresh characters. But after allowing Johnson to kill off Luke Skywalker and the villain Snoke in Last Jedi, Kennedy and Co. freaked when superfans didn’t like some of the creative deviations from the Star Wars canon. So rather than defend or extrapolate on his ideas for Episode IX, Lucasfilm just minimized or ignored them. The Force could inhabit anyone, until it couldn’t... that kind of thing. It all contributed to a sense that even though this is the premiere, A+ Hollywood franchise, the overall story wasn’t mapped out, and nothing really mattered to its overseers.

That’s what really baffles the film executives I talked to: The apparent lack of long-term planning or I.P. management for which Disney is typically the standard-bearer. Kennedy made five films based on the most beloved property in the galaxy and then…there was nowhere to go, no storylines to follow, no characters that demanded more, no filmmakers whose next installment the fans were jonesing to see. And because Solo flopped, everyone is going to be skeptical about any character-based standalones. Kennedy seemed to approach the franchise like a producer; just finish this movie, make it as good as you can, and then deal with the next one later. And it caught up with her big time.

I know it’s unfair to compare Lucasfilm to Marvel, a unicorn hit factory that is blessed with thousands of characters from decades of comics. But Lucas’ Star Wars galaxy isn’t exactly bereft of stories, as Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have proven with the Mandalorian spinoffs like the upcoming Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka series. (And yes, if I’m criticizing Kennedy for the Star Wars film output, I need to also give her credit for what Favreau and Filoni have accomplished, which is pretty stunning.)

But it’s obvious that Marvel’s Kevin Feige, a fanatic for his genre, sees the bigger picture, and anticipates what his fans want before they want it. He’s also got a group of creative lieutenants that can manage all the projects, allowing Marvel to release three movies a year, plus the Disney+ series, and successfully enable filmmakers like the Russo brothers (Avengers), who were directing episodes of Community, or Taika Waititi (the Thor sequels), who was known only for tiny projects; or Nia DaCosta (Captain Marvel 2), off the Candyman horror reboot.    

After nearly a decade in charge, it seems clear Kennedy isn’t that person, and doesn’t have that team in place, for Star Wars  to thrive as a film franchise. If Feige, who is working on his own Star Wars film, can’t take on all the movies, and Favreau and Filoni don’t want it, then Chapek needs to find some new blood.

Kennedy has a lot of good things happening at Lucasfilm, and I’m told she recently re-upped her deal for another three years. She’s a producing legend, up there with the best who have ever done it. But Star Wars as a film franchise is a disaster, and someone else should be given a chance to fix it.

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Quote of the Week

“He was tyrannical. He was disturbed. I started crying….He wished I was dead. Destroyed me. Destroyed my soul.”

–Sheila Nevins, the former HBO documentaries executive (now at ViacomCBS), describing her frayed relationship with former HBO programming chief Michael Lombardo, in James Andrew Miller’s new HBO oral history Tinderbox.

The David Zaslav Media Tour: An Update

From the glowing Vanity Fair profile, to the investor conferences and earnings calls, to this week’s Paley Center appearance, the David Zaslav media train is picking up steam. Next stop: The incoming Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. agreed to participate in an upcoming Variety cover profile (with photos!) that will call Zaslav the “Dealmaker of the Year.” Is it a great idea to wave that bit of personal press in front of federal regulators when the deal on which it’s predicated is not yet approved? Sure, why not.

Your Real Box Office Champion of 2021 Is…

Last year, most of the personal achievements in professional sports came with an asterisk due to the Covid-shortened seasons. The M.L.B. pitcher who won the Cy Young that year, for instance, started calling himself the Mickey Mouse Cy Young Award Winner on social media.

So who’s taking the Mickey Mouse Box Office Award for highest-grossing movie of 2021? It’s not Disney, actually. With its strong opening this weekend in Australia, No Time to Die is now projected to cross F9’s $721.1 million global number sometime around Thanksgiving, according to both MGM, its domestic distributor, and Universal, which handled most overseas territories. With neither Eternals nor Venom: There Will Be Carnage getting a China release, and nothing major coming before year’s end (except Spider-man: No Way Home, which drops Dec. 17 and will earn mostly in 2022), it’s safe to say the Bond film played a long game and came out on top.   

That’s a win with a big asterisk—2019’s champion, Avengers: Endgame, grossed between three and four times the likely Bond number. And if producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson were satisfied with the gross, they wouldn’t have signed off on MGM offering the movie on premium V.O.D. after just 30 days, well short of the 75-90 day window for Spectre. But it’s still notable, given the geezer-skewing audience for the franchise. Studio research showed that 25 percent of the over-35 audience said this was their first movie back in theaters, I’m told.       

Of course, this is just the Hollywood movie of the year. The actual top grosser will almost certainly be The Battle at Lake Changjin, a three-hour Chinese war film that has grossed $874 million and was released in only one country.

My Reading List

• Shade alert: CBS would like to remind everyone (and especially Netflix) that Americans still watch a shit-ton of broadcast television. Gotta love that they picked The Price Is Right (8.6 billion minutes of viewing in the fall) to compare to Squid Game (10.45 billion minutes). [THR] 
  
  
• Turns out people really like watching reality TV, even on streaming services. [Bloomberg] 
  
• A MoviePass co-founder has bought the company and plans to relaunch it. Subscriptions have got to be the future of the exhibition business, right? [Insider] 
  
  
• Death to Nielsen! Unless Nielsen agrees to our contractual terms! [NYT] 
  
• Today in business irony: Universal Music is lengthening how long artists must wait to re-record their music, even as one of its biggest artists Taylor Swift, makes millions off re-recorded music. [WSJ] 
  
  
• A great look at the Succession production design, and how they create lavish spaces for a super-rich family with “little regard for taste or beauty.” [Ringer]

Hollywood Picks a Favorite in L.A.’s Mayoral Race

The political donor class in Hollywood traditionally doesn’t get too involved in unsexy L.A. politics. But I feel like that’s changing a bit. I saw people like Damon Lindelof and Ava DuVernay and Mike Schur posting on social media about last year’s L.A. city council race, and now it seems the industry is lining up behind Karen Bass, the congresswoman (my congresswoman, actually) who has declared herself a candidate for L.A. mayor in next November’s election.

Jeffrey Katzenberg is all-in for Bass, who was on Biden’s shortlist for running-mate, and on Thursday, Sam Fischer, the Ziffren Brittenham lawyer and fundraising ringleader, hosted a Bass event with his wife at their Hancock Park home. The host committee included WME’s Rick Rosen, Searchlight’s David Greenbaum, manager Brian Dobbins, and producers Stacey Snider, Jenno Topping, Marta Kaufman and Gail Berman. More Bass events are planned, I’m told. 

The Feedback

The Disney+ subscriber slowdown and stock dive dominated my emails, texts and DMs this week. Some examples:

“Folding Hulu and ESPN+ into Disney+ is really the only path for Disney to compete globally. One service, one price, one message. It’s so simple.”-A strategy executive 

“Dopesick on Disney+? Are you high? I know everyone wants Disney+ to compete directly with Netflix, but the Disney brand has lasted 100 years because it hasn’t been sullied chasing whatever the platform of the moment is.”-A media buyer 

“Sell Hulu to CBS?  Spin-off Hulu? Seems like taking the short term hit (billions?) of divesting Hulu is in the best interest of a clear, centralized, globally consistent long term strategy. In 5 years, won’t it still look funny that they have two streaming services?  If you are going to compete with Netflix, at least compete on the same playing field.”–A professor

Have a great week,

Matt

A correction: I misspelled Jim Gianopulos’ name last Sunday. Apologies to Jim G. 

Got a question, comment, complaint, or a holiday party invite? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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