Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, with a few shorter items tonight. Before we start, Jonathan Handel sends in this labor nugget:

• As SAG-AFTRA talks are continuing and ratification ballots for the WGA deal are due back tomorrow, reports of an imminent actors strike against the video game industry are premature. Despite the recent strike authorization vote, I’ve learned that further talks are being scheduled.

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Discussed in this issue: Bryan Lourd, Taylor Swift, David Zaslav, Peter Chernin, Judd Apatow, Thomas Tull, Reese Witherspoon, Steven Mnuchin, Beyoncé, David Nevins, Ron Meyer, Kevin Huvane, James Murdoch… and Drew Carey’s Bob’s Big Boy tab.

But first…

Runner up: Thomas Tull — He’s back! A big return welcome to the prickly billionaire who tortured Warner Bros. executives for 15 years, then offloaded his Legendary Pictures to the Chinese for “$3.5 billion” in 2016 (narrator: it wasn’t actually $3.5 billion), and then seemed to swear off Hollywood entirely. He’s since been focused on investing, getting himself on the Forbes list, playing in his rock band, Ghost Hounds, and, recently, Teton Ridge, a “western culture” company named after his Idaho ranch. (My far more fashionable Puck colleague Lauren Sherman has been all over that story.)

But now Tull is (quietly) back in film and television. You’d have to get to the fourth paragraph of a Deadline story to even know that Teton Ridge Entertainment, run by Tull’s Legendary cohort Jillian Share, is backed by the guy who financed The Dark Knight and Inception. So what kind of movies will he make this time? Unclear, but one hint—it’s weird he left it out of the announcement—is that he did a first-look deal with Meghan McCain, which she’s “so excited” about.

Now a little follow-up to Thursday’s item on the content contraction…

I’m not trying to pick on Apatow. It’s rough out there, particularly for comedies but for everything now. Many thought the floodgates of new projects would open post-WGA strike. At least so far, that hasn’t happened.

I’ll probably go deeper on this soon, but the flashing-red warning signs are everywhere in the Hollywood economy. The layoffs and cancellations and pullbacks are obvious, but when you look a little closer it’s even more stark. Consider today’s layoffs at DreamWorks Animation. Yes, 70 positions were eliminated, but as the animation website Cartoon Brew first noted, DWA told employees in Glendale something far more anxiety-inducing: the unit will rely more heavily on third-party studios and outsourced work, with the goal of reducing overall costs by 20 percent. That move leaves Disney as the only studio making at least some of its films exclusively in L.A., and even Disney is looking longingly at Vancouver.

Over in the representation world, consider those managers at Steve Cohen’s Range Media Partners that left this week. Susie Fox, Mackenzie Roussos, and Chelsea McKinnies asked for big raises when their contracts were up, and in good times, reps with hot clients like Ramy Youssef and Michael Che would expect to get them. Range said no, so the trio shopped themselves and, I’m told, several firms found the price to be too steep. Management 360 may bring them on as early as this week—that company is bulking up as it explores a possible sale or investment—but it’s hardly a bull market for talent reps.

Then there’s Candle Media, the Blackstone-backed Kevin Mayer-Tom Staggs roll-up that may be remembered as the peak of Peak TV. Lucas Shaw reported this week that Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, the belle of that ball with a $900 million valuation in its 2021 sale to Candle, is expected to deliver just 10 percent of projected earnings this year, or less than $10 million when it promised more than $80 million. Yikes. The strike hurt, of course, but that money spigot hasn’t exactly been turned back on. Nobody ever thought the numbers from Candle made sense—and that was when streamers were paying huge premiums, which many of them are not now.

We could go on. But let’s not. I think the point is clear.

Not a fun quote, but an important one:

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds Israel alone responsible for the current escalation due to this ongoing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people…”

That’s a statement from Qatar, which, along with Saudi Arabia and Iran, blamed Israel for this weekend’s surprise attack by Hamas. Hollywood angles seem unimportant here, but let’s all remember that Paramount is in business with Qatar’s state-owned beIN Media on Miramax; James Murdoch, currently waging a morality war on Fox News, got $1.5 billion in backing from the Qatar Investment Authority for his venture with Uday Shankar; just this year, Peter Chernin’s North Road Co. took $150 million from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund (David Nevins, North Road’s C.E.O., was given a “Human Relations Award” from the American Jewish Federation); Ron Meyer, who once received the highest honor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was reportedly getting $6 million a year to consult for the Qatar royal family; Steve Mnuchin, honored in 2018 at the “Champions of Jewish Values” gala, has a bunch of Qatari money in his new fund (not to mention Saudi cash), and it just bought a bunch of Lionsgate stock. I know the politics here are complicated, but it’s also kinda not complicated.

I had Warners’ streaming chief JB Perrette on The Town this week, and he said he’s willing to make a deal to neutralize this issue. “Part of the reason we wanted to give the long runway of this trial is to provide us with enough [time] to engage with our partners on how best we can actually work with them to upsell and potentially cut them in on some of the economics,” he told me. So, paying the distributors? I asked. “We’re open to having a conversation with them about that,” he said.

So no, there isn’t a blanket right to simulcast. But it’s all a negotiation. After all, NBC and CBS are simulcasting sports on their streaming services for no upsell (although the distinction between Turner’s cable networks and the free over-the-air broadcast networks is not insignificant). And the linear carriers know that the leagues need to be placated in order to keep live sports within the cable bundle for the long term. And to keep the leagues happy, the rightsholders need to reach younger fans through streaming.

It’s the same issue that we saw with the Disney-Charter standoff, where Charter demanded (and ultimately got) the right to include the ad-supported version of Disney+ in some bundles. The ultimate goal of the MPVDs is to get Max in their bundles, rather than being sold as a stand-alone service, and both Perrette and Warner Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav are more than willing to oblige—at the right price. “We love the fact that if they want to integrate billing and upsell their customers, that’s a great outcome for us,” Perrette told me. “We’re very open.”

Ted Sarandos has recently “softened” his disinterest in NBA rights, says Alex Sherman, thanks to Netflix’s push into advertising. [CNBC]

Makan Delrahim, former D.O.J. antitrust enforcer, explains how a change in the law led to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé cutting out Hollywood from the upcoming concert film bonanza. [Dealbook]

Speaking of Swift, just follow these simple lessons and you will be as successful as her. [WSJ]

Drew Carey, the real hero of the writers strike, spent about $600,000 all-in on food for WGA members at Bob’s Big Boy and Swingers, according to the new L.A. Magazine.

R.I.P Marshall Grossman, the lawyer who hired me out of law school and, among other accomplishments, helped force the Jonathan Club to accept Black and Jewish people in 1985. [Daily Journal]

“There’s only one solution to this problem: Reparations. CAA reaped millions of dollars from what you correctly call its ‘special’ relationship with Harvey. Arguably that relationship took the agency from a shaky position after Ovitz left to what it became and still is today. Bryan, Kevin, and Richard [Lovett] should create a $100 million fund to pay its former clients who were physically and mentally abused by Harvey (enable an outside law firm to evaluate claims and apportion the payouts). If they won’t do it on their own, their clients and [Francios] Pinault [the agency’s new majority owner] should require it. This is the only way to truly atone and move forward.” –A retired agent

“What you don’t know is that CAA poaches clients by talking about how great they are with actresses. It’s literally part of the sales pitch.” –A (rival) agent

“The hypocrisy in this story knows no end. Nobody except you will say it out loud because they are all afraid of CAA.” –An actress

“What some people don’t remember is this: Julia Ormond was in a very tenuous position after the alleged Weinstein assault. She had left a loyal agent at Paradigm in the great raid of 1995 that Lourd, Huvane and others had pulled off. I’m not sure if Ormond back then really had much of a choice other than to be quiet. God knows what promises were made to her before she dumped Paradigm. She’d gone all in on CAA and Miramax, and the result was sort of a tragedy.” –A publicist

Got a question, comment, complaint, or suggestion for who should host the inevitable U.S. version of Naked Attraction? (My vote is Sarah Silverman.) Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.