Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, a little late because I’m flying to a family event this weekend. Nothing like being screamed at by a Hollywood publicist while standing in line at a Whataburger at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Thanks to the True Detective: Night Country stars and creator Issa López for a great event on Monday at the Aero. And congrats to my colleague John Ourand, who is launching a sports media podcast called The Varsity (same as his newsletter). Sign up here and here.

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Let’s begin…

• Ari vs. Casey: Behind the Billie Eilish poaching: Much to the disappointment of some readers, What I’m Hearing generally doesn’t concern itself with who’s shtupping whom in town. But when Billie Eilish took her lucrative touring business from the Wasserman talent agency to rival WME this week—soon after its founder and L.A. Olympics chair Casey Wasserman was the subject of a Daily Mail exposé on his “serial” affairs—the WIH curiosity was piqued. Turns out there’s a backstory here.

  Yes, Eilish and her mother are indeed telling people they were upset by the article, and that it I.D.’d Casey as the “mastermind” of her career when Eilish’s actual agents since she was 14 have been Sara Bollwinkel and Tom Windish, who only joined Wasserman via its 2021 acquisition of Paradigm. But multiple sources told me today that Eilish and her brother/collaborator, Finneas, have been unhappy at Wasserman for a while, even minimizing the agency in a recent Live Nation deal. The duo signed with financial advisor Paul Wachter and his Main Street Advisors during the pandemic, and they’ve since made several changes to their team—for instance, hiring Don Passman as their new lawyer (his clients also include Taylor Swift and Beyoncé). Wachter apparently endorsed the move to WME.

  WME also had its sights set on Eilish’s music business long before the tabloid piece dropped on August 1. That’s a big reason why the agency’s Max Maulitz signed her for non-music endeavors in the first place—a classic move for the big agencies: get your foot in the door via work the smaller shop doesn’t really do, and then slowly prove your worth/marginalize the existing team to win the bigger business you wanted from the outset. So while the tawdry sex details may have been a last straw (or a convenient peg) for Team Eilish, the Wasserman relationship was almost certainly ending anyways.

  Plus, for the past year or so, Ari Emanuel, C.E.O. of WME parent Endeavor, has been locked in one of those only-in-Hollywood frenemy feuds with Wasserman. I don’t think Ari has ever been a big fan of Casey, whom some believe has ridden the coattails of his legendary grandfather, Lew, of MCA and Universal fame. And earlier this year, Ari and Endeavor president Mark Shapiro caught wind that Wasserman had been taking potshots at their company and its various businesses among the investor and billionaire circle in which Casey travels.

  It got so testy that, at one point, Ari went full Ari Gold, calling and berating Casey, threatening to come after him if the trash-talking persisted. There’s also been that persistent rumor that Wasserman would merge his agency and its decent-sized music and sports business with CAA, WME’s archrival. (Both sides have denied it, and that’s never made sense to me; Wasserman recently bought Brillstein, a management company, which wouldn’t really fit under CAA. Plus, CAA shares a bunch of clients with Brillstein.)

  Still, despite the strained relationship, Ari and Casey are in business together in a major way. Endeavor’s On Location unit bid for, and won, the contract to host events and offer special ticket/experience packages for the Paris, Milan, and L.A. Olympics. (Per the terms of his deal to run LA28, Wasserman isn’t allowed to steer any Olympics business to his own company.) That On Location business is potentially major, and there’s a profit-sharing element—the more money the company makes on Olympics activities in Los Angeles, the more money that flows to Wasserman’s LA28, which is under intense pressure to turn a profit like the 1984 Olympics did in L.A.

  The point: These guys kinda need each other, despite being competitors in the agency business. So to mend the rift, Emanuel, Shapiro, and Wasserman organized a sit-down in Paris during the Games. According to two sources, Casey apologized to Ari for the perception that he was trash-talking, and Ari apologized for the situation getting out of hand. I know. Very adult of them.

  Then, a few days later, the Daily Mail story dropped. I don’t think even Wasserman believes Emanuel is responsible for the leak of Casey’s dirty laundry. Who knows, but there were 11 separate women cited in that story, and I’d guess that between running two public companies and trying to take them private, Ari has better things to do than coordinate a tabloid hit piece on a business partner. Regardless, the expose gave WME’s music team, led by Lucy Dickins, new urgency, and they pounced. Billie and Finneas didn’t even meet anywhere else.

  Now, the question: Will there be more fallout for Wasserman? Maybe at his agency, if other artists or athletes—like Chappell Roan or Kendrick Lamar or Megan Rapinoe—see the bad headlines and follow Eilish out the door. Rival sharks are certainly circling. But the Eilish situation was pretty unique. And for LA28? I doubt it, unless more revelations of damaging personal and professional behavior emerge in the media. To that end, Wasserman just hired Risa Heller, the crisis P.R. person, to deflect. (Disclosure: Heller also represents Puck; WME also reps Puck but not me personally.) A former Ron Meyer assistant at Universal, who worked for Wasserman for eight years and now makes $350,000 a year as a V.P. at LA28, was one of the women alleged to have had an affair with Wasserman. But she denied it on the record in the story. That, so far, is the only detail connected to the Olympics.

  So for now, at least, this is another Hollywood tabloid scandal with some business repercussions. Let’s see how it unfolds. (Reps for Endeavor and Wasserman declined to comment.)

• Mattel wants to illuminate Barbie: In more not-great news for Warner Bros. Discovery, Mattel has been talking to Illumination C.E.O. Chris Meledandri about potentially making an animated Barbie movie, per two sources. Despite the $1.5 billion success of last year’s live-action Barbie at Warners, Mattel retains animation rights, and C.E.O. Ynon Kreiz is said to believe that if Illumination can turn Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. into a major animated franchise, imagine what it could do with Barbie? Potentially awkward for Warners, which has its own feature animation division, and for the Barbie filmmakers Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, who are apparently aware of the talks and aren’t thrilled. But it’s early, Mattel talks to a ton of filmmakers about a ton of projects, and while Illumination is housed at Universal, I reported last month that Meledandri’s deal is up next year and CAA is evaluating his options. Maybe he could take Barbie for his next gig? (Reps for Mattel and Illumination declined to comment.)
• Box office over/under: First, a moment of silence for Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter Two, which should have opened this weekend had Chapter One not bombed so badly in June. (Alas, production on Chapter Three still hasn’t restarted due to financing issues.) Also, I’ll take the over on $35 million for Alien: Romulus, just based on Disney’s perfectly disgusting billboard image. Walt would’ve been proud of that one.

Sigh. Just five years later, the company has been sold, its interim leadership just wrote down $6 billion in evaporated value, and the three C.E.O.s we aren’t calling the Pep Boys began laying off 2,000 more employees, another 15 percent of the company. At the same time, Paramount’s supposed white knights—David Ellison, the billionaire Skydance C.E.O.; his centibillionaire father, Larry; and their backers at RedBird Capital—must sit and wait for months as the deal proceeds over various hurdles, both financial and regulatory, toward a closing date next year. Meanwhile, like renters in an aging duplex that’s been pegged for redevelopment, the C.E.O.s are executing their “strategic plan” despite not being able to do much of anything besides cut costs without approval from the Skydance team. Not ideal.

And that’s if Skydance ends up with the company. The so-called “go-shop” period ends on Wednesday, and at least one potential alternative suitor wants to bid. Sony says it’s out; Barry Diller announced as much too, if Barry was ever in. Byron Allen is just happy I wrote the words “Byron Allen” in the context of a deal so far out of his reach. Blackstone looked at making a complex bid, I’m told, a possible salvage of its bad bet on Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs’ Candle Media. But Blackstone has moved on.

So barring a last-minute entrant, that leaves Edgar Bronfman Jr., the Seagram heir and former music mogul, as a possible bidder for both Paramount and its parent, National Amusements—though it’s not even clear Bronfman can put together a coherent offer. He’s been doing due diligence on the assets, and the Journal reported today that he has Fortress, Roku, and Baby Geniuses producer Steven Paul as possible partners, though none is committed.

On the one hand, there’s certainly a lane here. The Skydance bid was never perfect, as investor Mario Gabelli will tell any media outlet that calls him, and as Paramount’s former C.E.O. Bob Bakish made clear to Redstone—right before she fired him. All someone needs to do is offer the same terms as Ellison minus the $4.5 billion of dilution from Skydance and it’s potentially a much better deal for Redstone and the Paramount shareholders—at least in theory. Some see the math differently.

But there’s a reason why the Skydance/RedBird team doesn’t seem to be sweating go-shop suitors. First, the Bronfman financing isn’t locked, and they’re confident that the bird in Shari’s hand looks a lot better than one that’s scrambling to make the deadline. Then there’s that $400 million breakup fee, a big tax on any rival acquirer. Plus, the certainty of closing is very high with the Ellisons as backstops. No disrespect to Bronfman, who is very rich and is having a nice moment of relevance over this, but would you bet on him? It’s been years since he was in the traditional film and television business. And FuboTV, his current company, isn’t exactly a growth rocket.

And let’s be honest: The Bronfman bid will likely fail for the same reason every other bid failed in the months leading up to the Skydance deal: Shari doesn’t want it. That has been the guiding star of this entire months-long saga. The special committee of the board has so far delivered what she wants, even if the offer had to be sweetened to fend off shareholder anger. There’s little reason to think the committee won’t deliver again.

Skydance has the right to counter any go-shop suitor, so if another offer materializes, we will quickly learn how much Larry loves his son. You and I might buy our kid a car or take him to Europe. When you’re worth more than $150 billion, throwing in a couple extra billion to close the movie studio deal is pretty much the same thing. For that reason, looking elsewhere would “likely do little for Shari Redstone after she has already agreed to hand the keys to the family firm over to David Ellison and his backers,” J.P. Morgan wrote in a research note last week.

In the meantime, as I’ve written, the Paramount C.E.O.s are effectively neutered by the limitations in the Skydance deal. For instance, I’m told they were actively shopping the international rights to Paramount+ when Skydance shut it down. Per the contract, they can’t even enter into any first-look or overall deals if they exceed $15 million a year. (Not that any traditional studio is really doing those kinds of deals these days.)

As tragic as this week’s layoffs were, Paramount seems to be doing a lot of the integration work that probably should have been done when Shari initially combined CBS and Viacom. There was little reason for Paramount TV to exist as a studio alongside CBS Studios and MTV Entertainment Studios, other than as a remnant of the fief-driven management style of Sumner Redstone. I’m sure the C.E.O.s would like to do more, but I don’t think anything major will happen until Ellison, Gerry Cardinale, and Jeff Shell get into the assets this fall and figure out what they want to do after the deal closes. Now that Par+ is profitable, should it merge with Max or Peacock? Does co-owning Miramax with the Qataris still make sense? Which of the C.E.O.s, George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, and Brian Robbins, will be invited to stay with the company, if any? (My money is on Cheeks.) That’s when everything is on the table. For now, it’s a waiting game.

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