Welcome back to What I’m Hearing...
This is my last email of 2021, so I’d like to thank subscribers, tipsters, lunch dates, drinks purchasers, and all the smart people who have helped me report and write this email twice a week. It’s been quite a year. We soft-launched the Puck brand in May with me sending a short note to 300 friends announcing that I’d be writing about “what I’m hearing” in Hollywood. Within weeks, thousands of insiders had signed up, and the list has grown exponentially even as we became a subscriber-only site in September and added coverage of Washington, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. For that, I’m very grateful.
We’ve got cool stuff planned for 2022 as Puck expands even more. Look to this space for announcements. And if you’re not a subscriber, you can click here and fix that.
Now it’s on to Part 1 of my year-end predictions for 2022…
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I polled some of my best sources for predictions that most people might not be thinking about, both big picture and small. Herewith, Part I... Nobody needs me to make the same big-picture Hollywood predictions that we’ve all seen year after year: The “streaming wars” will lead to consolidation; Shari Redstone will sell ViacomCBS; Apple will (or won’t?) buy a legacy studio. Blah, blah. Someday those will come true and everyone will feel smart, just as we all did this year when AT&T predictably unloaded WarnerMedia and Amazon finally pulled the trigger on MGM.
Instead, I polled some of my best sources for predictions that most people might not be thinking about, both big picture and small. Some of these actually are happening, I just can’t report them definitively yet. And if you disagree, tell me why at [email protected]. Here are my first 11, and I’ll be back with the other half on Sunday…
1. The great theater contraction begins: I’m already hearing this from exhibition and distribution sources: In 2022, movie theater shrinkage will become a significant narrative...
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FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 
Love her or hate her, Bela Bajaria has been key to turning Netflix’s international content into globalized hits. MATTHEW BELLONI 
David McCormick is the G.O.P.’s fantasy candidate of a bygone, bipartisan, pre-Q era. But can he placate the Trumpists in PA? TINA NGUYEN 
Many of the hopes for a resurgent 2021 in the media business didn’t come to pass, but the year was hardly a disaster. BRIAN MORRISSEY 
Notes on McCormick’s 2022 playbook, Chamath’s SPAC folly, more meme-stock insanity, and the passing of a Wall Street icon. WILLIAM D. COHAN 
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