Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, Friday morning instead of Thursday night because I was at the Bloomberg Screentime conference yesterday. Shout-out to Lucas Shaw for hosting another A-list event, complete with David Ellison, Ryan Coogler, and Leo’s Tacos, and for staging our annual Hollywood Stock Exchange episode of The Town that may get one or both of us canceled (tune in Monday to find out!).

Anyway, today I dive into how Disney’s Trump-reaction human resources rebrand opens a window into how the company is approaching its C.E.O. race. Plus, theater owners aren’t loving all this Paramount–Warner Bros. chatter, and the president’s former agent thinks he should win a Nobel.

Discussed in this issue: Ari Emanuel, Sonia Coleman, David Zaslav, Greg Peters, David Ellison, Josh D’Amaro, Ben Affleck, Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy, James Gorman, Michael O’Leary, Jimmy Kimmel, Brendan Carr, Dana Walden, J.K. Rowling, Mark Shapiro, and… J.Lo’s Spider-bomb.

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Thursday Friday Thoughts…

Ari told Trump he deserves a Nobel: With an apparent end in sight to the Israel-Hamas war, negotiator-in-chief Donald Trump has said he thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. His former agent agrees. I chatted with Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro on today’s episode of The Town, and I asked what Ari and Trump discussed on their most recent call. “I talked to him on Thursday a week ago, and I said to him, ‘If you can actually get this peace deal done, you actually do deserve a Nobel Peace Prize,’” Emanuel told me. “He said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and I said, ‘Mr. President, this conflict has been going on for 3,000 years, and if you can actually get it done where there is a place for the Palestinians to have a homeland, and peace for Jews, and coexistence in the region, then you deserve it.’ And he does.” Question: Would Ari commission the $1 million prize that comes with a Nobel? Maybe he deserves it.
No, Netflix was never buying Warner Bros.: Netflix co-C.E.O. Greg Peters made that pretty clear at the Screentime event, noting that big media mergers “don’t have an amazing track record over the history of time.” So can we—and by we I mean Warner Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav and his bankers—stop talking about that now?

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Fun side note: Yes, David Ellison did bump into Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy backstage at the Bloomberg event. They said hello and shook hands, according to an eyewitness, despite the awkwardness of everyone knowing Ellison is trying to put together a bid for their parent company. At least now, having just had their contracts re-upped, Mike and Pam would get a big payday in any sale.
Theater owners prepping for studio merger fight: Speaking of Paramount–Warner Bros., movie theater execs met this week in L.A. for the annual fall summit, and two sources told me that chief lobbyist Michael O’Leary specifically discussed with the group the possibility of the Ellison family buying Warner Bros. and potentially merging it with Paramount. The exhibition industry may need to mobilize as a unified voice challenging any deal, O’Leary suggested to the group. After all, Ellison might be telling people that he would keep WB separate and release a full slate of movies theatrically—he said yesterday his goal in any deal would be to “make more, not less”—but there’s no guarantee that would happen. Theater owners didn’t put up much of a fight against the merger of the Disney and Fox studios back in 2019, in part because Fox was considered to be in such bad shape. But Paramount gobbling Warners? Ellison should expect the theater industry to scream loudly if and when he pulls the trigger.
U.S. losing ground in content war: Are international shows enjoying a Trump bump, or are global producers just getting better at local content? The minutes viewed of U.S. film and TV on the major global streamers has fallen below 50 percent, a decrease of 7 percentage points since 2020, according to new data from Digital i.

Box office over/under: Tron: Ares is tracking for about $45 million domestic, which seems simultaneously low for a $200 million Disney tentpole, and high for a Tron movie in 2025. Not a great place to be, so let’s take the under.
Meanwhile…: Let’s also pour one out for Kiss of the Spider Woman, a $35 million Jennifer Lopez extravaganza—sorry, daring musical adaptation of a book that was previously adapted back in 1985, with this version made possible by funding put together by ex Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity—that is set to open to less than $3 million domestic, despite pretty good reviews. Ooof. The fact that this movie went to Sundance in the first place was a sign of poor product-market fit. The fact that it didn’t sell at Sundance and was forced to take one of those Lionsgate/Roadside limited theatrical releases (1,300 theaters) with a focus on V.O.D., borders on cautionary tale. Thoughts and prayers to Mark Scheinberg and the rest of the Spider Woman backers.

Now to the main event…

Disney’s C.E.O. Race Amid the Great Hollywood Walk-Back

A new H.R. tweak, which comes in the wake of Kimmelgate and an MPA sponsorship of the group behind the president’s military parade and rallies, provides the latest sign of just how far the once proudly progressive entertainment industry has pivoted during Trump II. Implications for the Disney leadership bake-off are becoming clear.

Matthew Belloni

“D.E.I. is for everyone now!” So went the first response in my text chain of Disney friends when I asked what they thought of the new human resources overhaul at the company. It was never announced externally, but last week, Sonia Coleman, Disney’s top H.R. executive, sent a companywide email revealing a broad rebrand of her unit and its terminology. A lot of it was the usual silly corporate-speak about the large, publicly traded company’s “people-first philosophy” and “innovative approach to enabling success,” language that likely resulted from dozens of meetings and millions of dollars in consulting fees. “Human Resources becomes People & Culture,” Coleman’s email read. “Talent Acquisition becomes Talent Connection.” And so on.

But hidden among all the feel-good pablum, Coleman also fulfilled a promise Disney made back in February. In her note, she revealed that the company had scrapped its internal “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” efforts in favor of… wait for it… “Opportunity & Inclusion,” which Coleman explained now means “empowering all through access, opportunity, and a culture of belonging” (emphasis mine). I know. This is how scared Disney is of Trump, Elon, and the culture wars. (A Disney rep told me: “We’re continuing to evolve our holistic approach to align with our business goals and company values, a process we began nearly two years ago.”)

It’s happened all over Hollywood, of course. One by one, the studios have neutered the aggressive diversity initiatives that had been building for a decade and hit overdrive in 2020 as the George Floyd protests raged. Paramount publicly announced the end of its D.E.I. initiatives, including a CBS mandate that, at one point, wanted people of color to comprise 40 percent of some TV writers rooms. (At this point, would it really shock you if David Ellison named J.K. Rowling as a new CBS News correspondent covering gender?) Warner Bros. Discovery even dropped its “Diversity Digest,” a little internal publication highlighting projects featuring people of color. It’s wild to think back to the Hollywood of just three to five years ago, where seemingly every day would bring a new press release about Disney launching a fund at Howard University for Black filmmakers, or MGM rebooting Orion as a label for diverse projects, or one of the agencies touting a new mentorship program. A lot of that was performative B.S., of course, but plenty of it wasn’t. And now…?

Regardless of whether you think the D.E.I. push went way too far or not far enough, the industrywide about-face is pretty crazy. Have you seen the new signage outside the Motion Picture Association headquarters in D.C.? The lobbying group for the seven major studios and streamers is now touting its “supporting partnership” with America250, the nonprofit that began as a bipartisan effort to celebrate next year’s anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but has since been co-opted by the Trump administration to celebrate… Trump. As The Atlantic recently noted, this past summer’s military parade and Trump rallies under the America250 banner are likely only a prelude to next year’s supersized events, which will serve as giant megaphones for the president and Republicans ahead of the 2026 election. And it’s all sponsored by Hollywood. (An MPA rep told me the group’s America250 partnership does not include financial support—yet. I pointed out that the Trump people are 100 percent transactional, and that the asks will come. Likely soon.)

The comical wagon-circling seems most acute at Disney, whose brand makes it more vulnerable to political attacks. After all, C.E.O. Bob Iger had once made progressive politics part of both his and his company’s narrative. Revisit The Ride of a Lifetime, his 2019 memoir, for a sense of how important diversity and other liberal causes were to the one-time almost maybe presidential candidate. Gone is the “Reimagine Tomorrow” website that served as a hub for its diversity initiatives. Film development slates have been purged of projects that may embroil the company in the culture wars that plagued Lightyear and Snow White and Win or Lose and The Little Mermaid. (Netflix is now manning a front in that war via the Elon-fueled backlash to an animated show that features a trans character—despite the show being canceled a few years ago.) Onyx Collective, Disney’s TV studio division devoted to diverse voices, is hanging by a thread.

Iger’s willingness to yank Jimmy Kimmel off the air when threatened by Brendan Carr at the F.C.C. was surprising to many, but it was also a natural outgrowth of his public declaration last year that Disney content won’t “advance any kind of agenda.” That message has definitely been received internally and has manifested itself throughout the content operation, I’m told. Disney is about to cast a new Rapunzel in the revived live-action remake of Tangled. I’ll bet you the price of that long, braided wig that the gig will go to a white actress.

The D’Amaro Angle

All of which is to say: Josh D’Amaro is probably getting the C.E.O. job. Last week, Bloomberg noted that “D’Amaro has been looking like a C.E.O. in waiting, through interactions with investors, employees and the broader entertainment industry,” citing his recent appearances at conferences and other events. Dana Walden, the TV chief and the other top internal candidate, has been doing those things too. But D’Amaro’s performance at a recent presentation for top managers was “especially inspiring,” according to the report.

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It doesn’t hurt that D’Amaro’s parks and experiences division has generated more than $8 billion in profit so far in fiscal 2025, way more than Disney’s combined content and sports operations—and it’s growing. D’Amaro really flexed for board chair James Gorman this week, raising prices again at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. $40 to park your car? In Anaheim?? The near-constant hikes enrage the company’s core customers but pad the bottom line and cover recent struggles in film and TV while funding the transition to streaming. (Additional discounts for park visits on certain days are being offered.) That insane pricing power in parks and cruises was behind Iger’s decision to allocate $60 billion over the next decade to grow the experiences division, and to expand with a licensed park in Abu Dhabi. Likely, it will be the cited rationale for naming D’Amaro as Iger’s successor early next year, unless the board follows the emerging Netflix-Spotify-Comcast model and names co-C.E.O.s.

But unmentioned in that report was the thing people are talking about within Disney: the Trump angle. At a company so clearly terrified of repeating the Ron DeSantis dustup in Florida on a grander scale, D’Amaro is now the safe choice. Walden, famously friends with Kamala Harris and on Trump’s radar after the ABC News debate last year, would be noisy—so noisy that Walden probably wasn’t thrilled that Kimmel said this week that he would “love” her as C.E.O. An endorsement from a guy who brought the wrath of a Trump pit bull to Disney’s door is probably not gonna be welcomed by a nervous board. Dana’s probably thinking, Thanks, Jimmy, but I’m good!

The larger point is that Iger, and now his head of H.R.—sorry, head of People & Culture—seems to be operating Disney from a place of fear: fear of political boycotts, fear that a punitive government could screw with pending deals like the Fubo acquisition or taking over NFL Media, fear of losing the company’s own narrative to a media-savvy president. It’s certainly not unfounded, and Bob’s not alone in corporate America. But if the Disney board is thinking similarly, the C.E.O. race that will determine the company’s future may have already been won.

See you Monday,
Matt

Maya Tribbitt contributed research for today’s issue.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or other Nobel prizes that Trump should win? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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