Mar 19, 2026

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, hope you’re properly celebrating March Madness and the passing of the gold-plated mouse ears from Bob Iger to Josh D’Amaro.

Tonight, I’ve got details on the big KPop Demon Hunters sequel deals, which represent a new frontier for Netflix on its biggest film franchise. Plus, a Wasserman—sorry, The Team—sale update, and fallout from Disney’s boyfriend-battering Bachelorette. Oscars ratings winner!: Congrats to Dominic Caddy, a finance executive in the U.K., for guessing 17.79 million viewers, right under the actual 17.86 number. (Bob Barker would be proud.) A white Puck hat is in the mail. Thanks to all who entered! Mentioned in this issue: Maggie Kang, Josh D’Amaro, Dan Lin, Taylor Frankie Paul, Shonda Rhimes, Chris Appelhans, Pete Docter, Debra OConnell, Ejae, Cynthia Pett, Adam Sandler, Audrey Nuna, Bela Bajaria, Bob Iger, Danya Jimenez, Casey Wasserman, Ari Emanuel, Rei Ami, Sandy Wernick, Hannah McMechan, Hannah Minghella, and… Spicy Queen ramen. Not a Puck member yet? Just click here. Got a news tip or an idea for me? Just reply to this email, text me, or message me on Signal at 310-804-3198. Let’s begin…

Thursday Thoughts…

Welcome to the job, Josh!: So much for Disney’s carefully choreographed, touchy-feely leadership transition. Josh D’Amaro’s first ugly controversy as C.E.O. arrived on his second day in the job, resulting in the swift scrapping of an entire completed season of The Bachelorette—tens of millions of dollars in production and marketing costs to write off, I’m told, not to mention all those Jardiance and whole-body deodorant ads that must be directed elsewhere on ABC. All because Disney execs wanted so badly to cross-promote Hulu’s hit The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives with its struggling ABC franchise that they were willing to bet on Taylor Frankie Paul, whom they knew had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, and about whom the Mormon Wives cast had expressed concerns. Disney sources say it was newly promoted TV chief Debra OConnell’s call to yank the entire season after the awful video of Paul hit TMZ, but I’m sure someone had to explain to D’Amaro that in reality TV, the goal is to work with dangerously crazy people… occasionally they’re just too dangerously crazy.
Speaking of Disney’s transition…: If the celebration of outgoing C.E.O. Bob Iger seems a bit more muted than his first farewell, back in 2020, the company’s stock price could be to blame. Between Iger’s return to Disney in late 2022 and the market close on Tuesday, shares have underperformed the S&P 500 by 60 percent, Guggenheim noted.
Wasserman sale heats up: The deal book went out this week on the auction of the Wasserman sports and music agency (now called “The Team”… Yes, for real). There’s a ton of bad info floating around, but I’ve triple confirmed that revenue for 2025 was $994 million, and EBITDA for the year was $185 million. Providence, the majority owner, is projecting a 10 percent increase for 2026, which would take EBITDA over $200 million. If the goal is to get a valuation that is 15x that number—all dependent on how consistent those financials are, plus other diligence issues, of course—that’s about $3 billion and change. There’s a fair amount of debt as well. One source pegged it at about $800 million. (A rep for The Team declined to comment.)Moelis is handling the sale, and of the 100 or so interested parties, I’m told more than 10 have signed N.D.A.s and are getting a look at the books. Some private equity, some high-net-worth individuals, UTA is in (backed by its private-equity owner, EQT), but CAA is out, and WME/Silver Lake is interested but mostly for the music group. (It is conflicted by certain aspects of sports representation; plus, Casey Wasserman and Ari Emanuel hate each other.) Range, the P.E.-backed management company, is trying to get a financial backer in place to bid as well. Providence and Wasserman want a big number, and there’s speculation that if they don’t generate one, they’ll sell only Casey’s stake—said to be about 30 percent—and then run another auction in a few years. Or they could walk away completely, but that would cause other problems, given that the client exodus only stopped when Casey said he would sell.
More: Brillstein, the talent management firm owned by The Team, is preparing for the distinct possibility that one of the strategic bidders will need to divest management for conflict purposes. (Talent agencies typically can’t own talent managers.) They’re discussing options with Moelis, which repped Brillstein in its sale to Wasserman in the first place.
Speaking of Brillstein…: The great Sandy Wernick’s funeral was last week, and there’s speculation in the rep community about how—or if—Adam Sandler will replace his longtime manager. Sandler, still one of the highest-paid stars in town, is said to have a great relationship with other Brillstein partners, like Cynthia Pett and Marc Gurvitz. But since he was so close for so long to Wernick—who, even at 86, was still reading scripts a week before he died—Sandler could go manager-less. (He’s also with WME.) Nobody I’ve talked to thinks he would sign elsewhere. We’ll see…
Box office over/under: Amazon’s $200 million Project Hail Mary has been surging this week, with NRG tracking now at $67 million domestic. I’ll still take the over, based on the strong reviews and kid-friendly buzz.

Now, on to the KPop negotiation…

Netflix’s KPop Sequel Megadeals

The runaway success of the animated musical was so unexpected that the streamer didn’t have its creators locked in for a follow-up. Now, thanks to all those streams and dolls and even Demon Hunters–branded ramen, the filmmakers (and producer Sony Pictures) are getting rewarded. Here’s what the deals look like.

Matthew Belloni

Funny that during the speeches at the Netflix party last Saturday at Tower Bar, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans were nowhere near the makeshift stage. As film chief Dan Lin toasted the company’s Oscar nominees one by one, the duo stood in the back near the bar, mostly cheering for everyone else. You’d hardly know Kang and Appelhans were, by far, the most important talent at the party—and, based on their outsize success this year, pretty much at all of Netflix.

Having delivered KPop Demon Hunters, the biggest movie ever on the world’s biggest streaming service, Kang and Appelhans, the film’s directors, are now overseers of Netflix’s first Disney-style movie franchise: More than 325 million views in the first three months of release, nearly 100 million more than the next-most-popular title. In the most recent Nielsen streaming chart, it was still No. 4 on the movies list. Full cultural penetration, as evidenced by all those makeshift Halloween costumes (most official merch wasn’t available yet). Two Oscars. Five Grammy nominations. A Billboard No. 1 hit. About $25 million in box office for a sing-along stunt two months after the movie hit streaming. Dolls, playsets, and accessories via Mattel. Monopoly and Nerf games via Hasbro. Huntrix flavors of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Saja Boys glow sticks. Squishmallows. Shrimp crackers. Multiple ramens (Reddit review of the Spicy Queen flavor: “Spicy and intense!”). Okay, I’ll stop there. At this point, if you ask someone on the street if they can name one Netflix movie, it’s probably gonna be KPop Demon Hunters. So now, the rewards. Last week, Netflix finally announced the sequel we all knew is coming—likely by 2029 or 2030. (The deals were actually closed in December, but Netflix held off on the reveal until after the Oscar campaign ended.) Sony, whose animation studio produced the first movie—and which, as I’ve written, made only around $20 million (plus a $5 million fee for keeping the film on the platform) due to some Covid-era dealmaking—is getting a raise to about $40 million for the sequel, plus a retroactive “bonus” that brings the fee on the first movie up to that same number, and a royalty on merchandise. Plus there are now separate bonuses if the sequel performs, a perk that Sony business affairs executives really wish they had inserted into the original deal. Not bad, though obviously a pittance compared to the outsize value Netflix already has and will reap from the franchise. And the filmmakers are in line to potentially earn much more. Without options for a sequel, Kang and Appelhans held extraordinary leverage. In fact, Sony first attempted to negotiate a follow-up deal with them, but the numbers were so big, and Netflix wanted them to be involved in the overall franchise, which Netflix controls, so the streamer took over the deal. And last fall, the duo seriously considered bailing during the heated negotiation, I’m told. (Kang, who originated the KPop story and co-wrote the film with Appelhans, Danya Jimenez, and Hannah McMechan, had offers to write and direct other projects.) But after a months-long process, in which Netflix’s Lin was joined by animation head Hannah Minghella, with an assist from content chief Bela Bajaria, the filmmaker duo scored deals that are pretty unique for Netflix. It certainly helped that during the negotiation, the movie kept getting bigger and bigger on the service, as did the Oscar buzz and overall merch deals. (So much so that Netflix is currently looking for an executive to join its franchise management team and specifically oversee KPop Demon Hunters.) Because animation takes so long, the Kang and Appelhans contracts look more like TV showrunner overall deals than one-off film pacts. Both are exclusive to Netflix for about five years, and together they are making about $10 million annually during the term, guaranteed, per sources. Both Kang and Appelhans also scored a share of ancillary revenue from the franchise, including merchandising. And that starts now, so it includes all those makeup kits and glow sticks branded with the first film. They don’t share in the music revenue from the first movie—Sony made that deal with Republic Records, which released the soundtrack—but Kang and Appelhans will participate in music money on the sequel. The process for selecting songwriters or performers hasn’t begun, though I’m told a murderer’s row of K-pop artists have made their interest known. (Netflix and reps for the talent declined to comment on all of these figures.)

Franchise Players

Kang and Appelhans will consult on merch and offshoots, similar to the role that the Duffer brothers (Stranger Things) and Shonda Rhimes (Bridgerton) play on their franchises. That could include a KPop-branded concert tour, which Bloomberg reported yesterday is in the works, though any “unauthorized” concerts by the Huntrix trio—Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami provide the singing voices in the movie but were not a performing group before that—would be on their own, so they couldn’t use any imagery from the film, logos, or even the “Huntrix” name to promote it.

And while additional projects could be spawned during the term of this deal, the plan is for Kang and Appelhans to focus specifically on this one sequel. In success, additional deals would follow as they build out the franchise—or if they can build out the franchise. That’s the goal. Six years elapsed between Frozen and its sequel. Moana 2 took eight years. Both sequels outperformed their originals in theaters. Will the same trend apply to the first all-audience film franchise born on a streaming service? Netflix is betting that it will. This weekend is the big BTS comeback concert in Seoul, which is airing live on Netflix. Kang will be there, of course, and her tickets are courtesy of Netflix.

Finally… one fun thing…

Of all the silly Disney celebrations of Bob Iger this week, my favorite is the cartoon Thank you, Bob! pin drawn by Pixar’s Pete Docter. About 30,000 of them were available for employees yesterday and were gone before noon…

See you Monday, Matt

Clarification: Taylor and Travis also hit the Madonna/Guy Oseary post-Oscars party. On Monday I implied that they didn’t. Apologies. Got a question, comment, complaint, or things you’d have done with the $80 billion Mark Zuckerberg wasted on the Metaverse? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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