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What I’m Hearing: How Cruise Can Make Nine Figures
Hello, I'm Matthew Belloni, and this is What I'm Hearing...  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 
What I'm Hearing

Greetings from Scottsdale, Arizona, where I’m getting an early start on Memorial Day Weekend. Sunday’s What I’m Hearing will arrive on Monday, and if you’re looking for something to listen to as you float in a lazy river, might I recommend my podcast, The Town. This week we debuted the Summer Blockbuster Confidence Scale, checked in on SNL with a Lorne-ologist, and picked some Hollywood “stocks” to bet on.

Thursday Thoughts…
  • Buzz the $100 million tower: Given the great reviews and strong marketing, I’ll take the over on the $100 million prediction for the four-day Top Gun: Maverick domestic opening. I’ll actually go further and predict the haul will be closer to $125 million.

  • Warners Layoff-Watch: There’ll be no Memorial Day Massacre at Warner Bros. Discovery, I’m told. Tomorrow might be Hollywood’s second favorite layoff day (after the Friday before Labor Day), but the next round of the long-planned cuts aren’t coming until next week at the earliest. C.E.O. David Zaslav was at Cannes, then was headed to Ari Emanuel’s lavish wedding nearby, so those optics wouldn’t have been ideal.

  • Harvey’s literary opus: Did you know convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein wrote an autobiography? I didn’t until a tipster sent me this link to buy Harvey Weinstein: My Story, which was quietly dropped on Amazon a couple weeks ago. Looks like an image salvation play, perhaps to get in front of the Ken Auletta biography set for release in June. The book jacket promises “candor” and says it “not only tells of his unconventional (some say ‘inappropriate’) methods but of the accusations that inevitably followed his success.” Oh man, I might need to order this thing so you don’t have to—and to check if it’s a parody.

  • The WeWork guy’s crypto comeback, sponsored by Euphoria: Tucked into the announcement that the nutty WeWork founders Adam and Rebekah Neumann have raised $70 million for Flowcarbon, their startup that sells tokenized carbon credits, was this peculiarity: Joining V.C.-ers Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Samsung Next, and others, among the backers are Sam Levinson, son of Barry and creator of Euphoria, and his wife Ashley. Have the Levinsons not watched WeCrashed on AppleTV+?

P.S. As a reminder, you're receiving the free version of What I’m Hearing at {{customer.email}}. For full access to Puck, and to each of my colleagues, you can subscribe here.
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The Tom Cruise Back End Anomaly
The Tom Cruise Back End Anomaly
Hollywood old timers hope that Top Gun’s retro appeal will resuscitate the box office, and if so, Cruise and producer David Ellison have set themselves up for huge windfalls.
MATTHEW BELLONI MATTHEW BELLONI
In conversations and calls around town these past few weeks, it was hard to find someone not actively rooting for the success of Top Gun: Maverick. A few reasons for that, none of them altruistic, of course:

  • First, it’s not a comic book movie, and its success would tell Hollywood people that, post-pandemic, there’s a chance for big-budget, non-comic book movies, and thus maybe there’s a chance for my movie.

  • Second, it’s the first older-audience wannabe blockbuster since March 2020, so its success would signal that over 40, infrequent moviegoers will return to theaters for the right offering… and thus maybe there’s a chance for my movie.

  • Third, the original Top Gun is a movie that most of the middle-aged white men running the business grew up loving, so a successful reboot would mean there is an appetite for this kind of throwback action spectacle…and, say it with me now, maybe there’s a chance for my movie.

Whatever the reason, all of Hollywood seems to be invested in something that will almost certainly make less than Minions: The Rise of Gru, and will end up far less profitable...
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FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT
Mitch's Agony
Mitch's Agony
The G.O.P.'s 80-year-old minority leader has seen it all—and he’s in for the election season ride of his career.
TARA PALMERI
Tech's Rightward Drift
Tech's Rightward Drift
Silicon Valley’s ostensible “liberal” sheen has been punctuated by the rightward political drift of Musk, Ellison, and Bezos.
THEODORE SCHLEIFER
Allred vs. Cosby
Allred vs. Cosby
Cosby's civil trial is about to begin, so why might Allred, not the disgraced comic, take the witness stand?
ERIQ GARDNER
The Twitter Chronicles
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The Twitter proxy statement revealed the dealmaking foreplay behind Musk’s $44 billion Twitter blockbuster.
WILLIAM D. COHAN
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