Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, now home in L.A. after a great week in London, where I nearly finished the new memoirs from Tom Freston (man, MTV in the ’90s was wild), Cameron Crowe (great if you love Almost Famous), and the late Jon Landau (smart tips from someone who managed to keep Jim Cameron happy). Thanks for all your food recommendations, and sorry we didn’t get to meet up.

💫💫 While I was gone… Puck bought Air Mail! The Times has more details, but the Air Mail brand and fancy-looking newsletter will live under the Puck banner, just like the flagship What I’m Hearing. (WIH is unchanged… and at some point your membership will entitle you to all the French wine tips and rich people murder stories that Air Mail subscribers currently enjoy.)

More: There’s one unfortunate and hilarious side effect of this deal. When Graydon Carter was first putting together Air Mail, he solicited friends and family to invest, including a few media/Hollywood figures… like David Zaslav. Yes. So now, via this transaction, the C.E.O. of Warner Bros. Discovery is a personal investor in Puck. A tiny backer—Puck is calling it de minimis, and he has no visibility or input in the business—but it’s a relationship I will need to note when I write about him… which, as you know, is a lot. Hopefully, Zaz will either put his shares in a blind trust or donate them to charity. (David, I can easily provide a list of worthy causes!) Until then, expect to see a little disclosure in items about him—and obviously, this won’t affect my coverage at all.

Tonight, David Zaslav is a genius! I’m kidding. Tonight, it’s the latest from the slow-moving Warner Bros. auction: What was Comcast’s Brian Roberts doing in Saudi Arabia? Plus, why the celebrity press tour seems so broken, and… are we really surprised Ryan Murphy made a bad show?

Programming note: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I parsed the power dynamic in the Disney–YouTube TV standoff and picked our teams for the 2025 Franchise Movie Draft, and I delved into why Disney passed on the Steven Soderbergh Star Wars movie. Subscribe here and here.

Event note: We’re almost locked on the guest list for Stories of the Season this Friday in Hollywood. We’ve got a fantastic lineup of the stars of the awards season, plus a live taping of The Town with Hamnet filmmaker Chloé Zhao. Email Fritz@puck.news to snag one of the final spots.

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.

Discussed in this issue: Brian Roberts, Graham King, Sydney Sweeney, Dwayne Johnson, Timothée Chalamet, Mohammed bin Salman, Jennifer Lawrence, John Branca, Ryan Murphy, Jay Snowden, Robert Pattinson, Halle Berry, Bruce Springsteen, Trey Parker, Channing Tatum, David Ellison, Rachel Maddow, Gerry Cardinale, Mark Woodbury, Teddy Schwarzman, Gene Siskel, and… Scientology’s M.V.P.s.

But first…

His Predator: Badlands reignited a theatrical franchise for Disney with $40 million domestic ($80 million worldwide) and strong reviews. Also, a shout-out to star Elle Fanning for appearing in the top-grossing and highest-per-screen-average movies (Sentimental Value, $50,000 per in four theaters) on the same weekend.

Runner-up: Kendrick Lamar, for earning the most Grammy nominations (nine total) and walk-up songs in my kid’s Little League lineup.

Second runner-up: Halle Berry, who exited the now-infamously bad Kim Kardashian opus All’s Fair before the Hulu show went into production.

Honorary shout-out: To the Disney/Hulu publicists who got the trades to run a press release trumpeting All’s Fair as “Hulu Originals’ biggest scripted series premiere in three years.” I know the goal was to counter the atrocious reviews, and 3.2 million views in three days isn’t bad for Hulu. But let’s see whether the Kim K. lookie-loos stick around past the first few episodes.

If you’re keeping score: TV megaproducer Ryan Murphy’s output for Disney since his much-heralded return in 2023: Doctor Odyssey (one and done at ABC), Mid-Century Modern and Grotesquerie (ditto at Hulu/FX), 9-1-1: Nashville (the 68th-most-watched show last week in Live+Same Day, per Nielsen), and the FX limited series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (one Emmy, for costumes) and American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez (zero Emmys). And now, All’s Fair.

Speaking of disappointments…

Remember about a month ago, when Sydney Sweeney’s indie boxing drama Christy was tracking to open at just $3 million? Sweeney then owned the internet for a few weeks. She became a meme for shutting down a clickbait question from GQ. She narrated a Fox hype video for the World Series. She showed up in a see-through top on the red carpet of a women’s event. All the usual content-creation publicity stops allowed her to “break through,” as P.R. people like to say, with buzz that few stars can even hope to generate. It was a dream for the first domestic release from Teddy Schwarzman’s Black Bear. Then… Christy flopped spectacularly this weekend, grossing just $1.3 million in 2,000 theaters, less than the tracking suggested before the whole media blitz started. It all amounted to nothing.

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Same thing with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson—two very big stars who seemingly made all the right moves on their recent rounds for the difficult drama Die, My Love, which opened to just $2.5 million on nearly 2,000 screens. Dwayne Johnson was everywhere for The Smashing Machine; it failed. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere had Bruce F-ing Springsteen on the campaign trail, showing up at four separate premieres in Telluride, London, New York, and L.A. Disney made that $55 million movie in part because Bruce agreed to tell his fans to see it. But despite the blitz, regular moviegoers could sniff out that Deliver Me was about depression and an album they don’t care about. In the end, even Springsteen himself didn’t matter.

Maybe the lesson is that these movies shouldn’t have opened wide to begin with. Seriously, between Christy; Die, My Love; the faith-based Sarah’s Oil from Amazon; and Nuremberg from Sony Classics, there were four separate lower-budget titles opening wide on the same weekend! But it’s too easy to say that stars simply don’t matter anymore, or to point to great promoters like Timothée Chalamet or Ryan Reynolds as exceptions to that rule. I think it’s more nuanced: Selling a movie has always been about finding the right product-market fit, and moving the consumer from affinity for the star to willingness to check out their work. But the truth is that the consumer now tends to just skip over the product and enjoy the promotion if the product is so niche that the media noise isn’t justified. As one veteran marketer told me today, “A star alone can’t eventize something whose very DNA rejects it. So the publicity and buzz serves the personality only, not the product.” Great if you’re selling “good jeans,” bad if you’re selling Christy.

It’s such a fine line for stars and studios—especially since these press tours can now cost millions of dollars. If we can all watch Channing Tatum being fun and cool on Hot Ones, the product he’s actually selling—Roofman—has to feel bigger and more interesting than that. And if it doesn’t? Should he just not do Hot Ones? Should the studio not let him?

It’s a tough conversation, but one that all these failed press tours should spark. Too little press risks burying a project in obscurity. Too much—or the wrong kind of press—risks minimizing the allure of paying to see the movie. And in the age of algorithmically amplified video, nobody really knows what is too much or too little or good or bad. It all comes back to the old Gene Siskel question: Is this movie more interesting than a documentary about the same actors having lunch? The modern equivalent is now, Would I rather sit in a theater to watch these actors or just let the algo feed me endless videos of them promoting the movie? We got our answer this weekend.

“It’s not that we got all political. It’s that politics became pop culture.”
—Trey Parker, the South Park co-creator, talking to the Times about this season’s Trump-bashing, adding that New Paramount is “letting us do whatever we want, to their credit.” Why? The company revealed today that South Park generated the most new subscribers to Paramount+ last quarter.

Those in attendance at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s big dinner honoring Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav on October 30 may have noticed a semi-conspicuous absence: Brian Roberts, the Comcast C.E.O. who has known Zaslav for years and kinda maybe wants to buy his company. Turns out Roberts was unable to attend that event in Los Angeles because he was in Saudi Arabia with the Public Investment Fund, the kingdom’s highly capitalized (and often courted) investment vehicle. It was a curious sojourn, given that Zaslav would like to generate a bidding war for Warner Discovery—a bidding war that, he very much hopes, will include Comcast and some deep-pocketed backer. Could that backer be Saudi?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Roberts was ostensibly in Riyadh for the PIF’s Future Investment Initiative, the annual gathering launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for invited C.E.O.s, investors, and others that want to “translate debate into action across capital, technology, and policy.” The leaders of several other big U.S. companies were also there. This is one of those conferences that executives who want to play on a global stage think they should attend these days.

But two sources told me Roberts took at least one meeting with PIF officials during his time there, though it’s not clear what they discussed. Roberts also visited Qiddiya, the under-construction “megacity of play” in Riyadh where Six Flags and Dragon Ball Z theme parks are in the works. Roberts and NBCUniversal parks chief Mark Woodbury are said to be considering whether to build or operate a Universal theme park in Qiddiya, hence the personal visit. (A Comcast rep confirmed Roberts attended the PIF event and visited Qiddiya but declined to comment on any specifics or conversations. A source emphasized that Comcast has not decided whether to invest in Qiddiya.)

It’s all sensitive, of course, because Comcast is trying to figure out how to get into the Warner Discovery sweepstakes for an asset that, if bought outright, could go for $60 billion or more. Paramount, backed by the wealth of the Ellison family, has already been rejected after bidding as much as $24 a share, and my colleague Kim Masters reported that the Ellisons and their backer and board member Gerry Cardinale made their own trek to the Middle East last week, though it’s not clear with whom they met or why. (I’m told they did not meet with the Saudis.) Depending on what kind of transaction Roberts proposes, if any, Comcast, which is currently worth less than $100 billion, would likely need a partner.

It’s also sensitive, of course, because Comcast owns news channels, and even after its planned spinoff of CNBC and MSNBC—sorry, MS NOW—it will still operate NBC News. So any business alliance with the journalist-dismembering Saudis, whether it be a theme park or a PIF-backed bid for all or part of Warner Discovery, might not go over well with, say, Rachel Maddow or Savannah Guthrie. To say nothing of the CNN staff if the network is part of a WBD-Comcast tie-up. Roberts, who now has Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley advising on the Warners situation, is said to have met with Zaslav last week. He would already face a pretty steep uphill battle against Trumpy regulators in the U.S. That path likely wouldn’t be easier with Saudis involved.

21 percent
Predicted share of U.S. households with a traditional TV subscription at the end of 2028, down from about half of households in mid-2022. [Convergence Research Group/LA Times]

16 percent
Year-over-year increase in domestic Imax ticket sales, compared to a 2.6 percent lift in domestic ticket sales overall. [WSJ]

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Puck sponsors include the Paramount+ drama series

LANDMAN

starring Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Andy Garcia, Ali Larter, and  Sam Elliott

TV’s biggest phenomenon is back, with an explosive new season navigating the intersection of money, power, and politics in the modern energy boom. Academy Award® winner Billy Bob Thornton leads an all-star ensemble as fortunes rise and fall overnight, and the line between the boardroom and the rig gets blurrier by the day. 

For Your Consideration in all categories including Best Drama Series.

Season 2 Premieres November 16

Only on Paramount+

EXPLORE MORE

43 percent
Share of Gen Z that prefers YouTube and social video over subscription streaming and traditional TV [Activate Consulting]

$166 billion
Estimated annual audience/visitor spend on live events and experiences by 2029, up from $136 billion this year. [Activate Consulting]

116 million
Trailer views for Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic, in its first 24 hours online, which explains why Lionsgate moved up the release to the same day as its earnings revealed a net loss of $114 million this quarter. [YouTube]

A little more on this: Producer Graham King has started showing a cut of Michael around town. (Gotta love that King name-checked himself in the trailer’s first title card, as if “FROM GRAHAM KING, THE PRODUCER OF BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY” needed the Graham King part.) It’s long— extensive performance sequences may still be trimmed—and it’s clear from sources who have seen the cut that any semblance of the child abuse allegations against Jackson are gone, thanks to that legal settlement with an accuser. No flashing police sirens in the opening shot, no reference to the downfall of the entertainer during the ’90s. Estate executor John Branca just participated in a Financial Times profile, where he confirmed he hired King and others involved in Michael only if they pledged 100 percent loyalty to the approved MJ narrative: “Unless you understand that Michael’s innocent, we can’t have you,” he said. So it looks like what I reported this summer is confirmed: We will need to wait for the planned Michael: Part Two for any engagement with the controversial side of Jackson’s life.

To my ear, David Ellison seemed fine on his first earnings call today as Paramount C.E.O. The only real news was that the cost-cutting is deeper than first announced, and 600 staffers decided to peace out rather than schlep to Hollywood five days a week. [Paramount]

Penn Entertainment C.E.O. Jay Snowden, who just announced the failure of his company’s ESPN Bet partnership, has made $120 million in total compensation over the past five years as Penn’s stock has declined 90 percent. How does this guy not work at Warner Bros. Discovery? [Huddle Up]

Lucas Shaw explained why the heck Netflix is slumming it in podcasts. [Bloomberg]

Ian Krietzberg explored exactly how much the tech overlords are spending on A.I. initiatives. [Puck]

R.I.P., White House screening room popcorn machine. [Vulture]

CAA offered a peek at its CAAVault initiative to digitally clone clients, who—fingers crossed!—will be paying 10 percent commission long after they die. [ABC News]

Meta made $16 billion from ads for fraudulent products that would get legacy broadcasters canceled or sued. But sure, Big Tech just “innovates” better than traditional media. [Reuters]

I didn’t spot any Hollywood names in the most recent list of top Scientology donors. (Let me know if I missed someone.) [Underground Bunker]

Light feedback while I was gone…

Wicked: For Good is winning the war for “awareness” (but not “interest”) over fellow Thanksgiving combatant Zootopia 2, according to the latest early tracking chart from The Quorum…

Have a great week,
Matt

Got a question, comment, complaint, or a confirmation that Scooter Braun “staged” these make-out photos? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

Unique and privileged insight into the private conversations taking place inside boardrooms and corner offices up and down Wall Street, relayed by best-selling author, journalist, and former M&A senior banker William D. Cohan.

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