Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, and happy holiday weekend, hopefully you’ve already checked out. Today I’ve got an all Thursday Thoughts issue of WIH, with news and notes on everything from the NBA rights circus to the Scarlett Johansson A.I. saga to the most gag-inducing sighting at Cannes...

Programming note: Monday’s WIH will still come on Monday, but in honor of the holiday, I’m doing a Mail Room issue. Send me your burning questions for a shot at newsletter immortality. Also, if you missed Julia Alexander’s recent chat with The Traitors’ Alan Cumming, find it online here.

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• Zaz’s NBA air ball: Man, is Adam Silver annoyed with David Zaslav and the Warner Bros. Discovery team, per two sources familiar with his thinking. At this point, the NBA commissioner is basically Ferris Bueller after the credits roll: Go home, David… it’s over. As my colleague John Ourand reported, the league has selected its preferred broadcast partners, and they’re not Warner Discovery/Turner. Disney/ESPN gets the A package for $2.8 billion a year, Comcast/NBC swipes the B package for about $2.5 billion—a big increase from the $1.2 billion that Turner is paying, and for far fewer games—and Amazon Prime Video lands a new C package for just under $2 billion. That’s about $7 billion a year for the NBA, waaay up from $2.6 billion in the current deals, and it allows the league to escape the cable TV quicksand for more broadcast, with the favorable demos of streaming and the financial heft of Amazon. Not bad.

  But Zaslav won’t let it go, today floating in a CNBC story that WBD might try to match not the package he’s losing but Amazon’s—a position previewed on Sunday by my partner Bill Cohan. Once the three deals are presented to Warner Discovery (the NBA still needs clarity on All-Star Weekend and a couple international and local issues, I’m told), Zaz & Co. will have five days to match—but it’s unclear what that even means. The packages awarded and the platforms offered look very different from the current deals—and the “matching rights” language is old and doesn’t contemplate the disparity of assets.

  What’s clear is the NBA no longer wants Turner. Comcast’s Brian Roberts is reportedly offering the prime real estate of two primetime games a week on NBC, which WBD can’t “match” because it doesn’t have a broadcast network. Nor can Zaslav likely “match” Amazon’s offer because he would never put all the games exclusively on his streamer, even if he could scrounge together the huge fee for a small selection of games. Zaz wants to upsell Max subscribers to watch some games, limiting their reach. Why would the NBA want that?

  Silver has been irked by Zaslav since his “We don’t have to have the NBA” comments back in 2022, a clear misstep. During the exclusive negotiation window, Disney’s Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro locked in a handshake deal while Zaz and his sports guy, Luis Silberwasser, whined about the cost, according to two sources familiar with the negotiation. Bloomberg reported the disparity was just $200 million, a number that Warner Discovery shareholders might soon put on placards if they start picketing on Olive Avenue for Zaslav’s removal. Having bungled the negotiations, Zaz now wants to prevent the NBA from getting into business with Amazon? And if Silver says no, Warners might sue? That would be one of the all-time loser moves. (And remember, this is a company that threw finished movies in the garbage to write them off.)

  CNBC even noted that WBD might try to use the uncertainty over matching rights to extract a settlement to go away. I haven’t confirmed that, but if true, it suggests that Zaslav sees the writing on the wall and is looking for backup plans. This week’s sublicense of a few College Football Playoff games from ESPN suggests the same. It’s never a good sign when your marquee broadcaster, in this case Charles Barkley, compares your company to Boone’s Farm.

  Zaslav and Silberwasser could still match one of these deals, or they could somehow finagle a tiny fourth package to keep some NBA. But why would Silver allow that to happen? He’s got great deals at the finish line that will grow the game and serve his owners, his players, and his fans. It’s not like Zaslav is bringing him a platform or an audience he can’t get elsewhere. Inside the NBA can be reconstituted. And will Warner Discovery exist in 18 months? Just yesterday, former WarnerMedia C.E.O. Jason Kilar predicted that it won’t.

  Faced with these grim options, the right move here for Zaslav is to wish the NBA well, walk away, scream fiscal prudence, pray the shareholders understand, and invest some of those billions elsewhere in sports to keep the cable channels at least semi-viable. UFC, more baseball, whatever. The fact is, when the NBA decided it didn’t want Turner, the relationship was over. Zaz should admit it and move on.

• Speaking of Zaslav: I’m heartbroken to report that Peltz Beckhams vs. The Wedding Planners, the documentary about the nasty litigation sparked by actress Nicola Peltz’s $3 million nuptials to Brooklyn Beckham, is not coming to Max in the U.S., despite its release overseas. Loyal readers know that I’ve been looking forward to this film for months, and yes, it’s what you suspect: Nelson Peltz, the billionaire activist investor and Nicola’s dad, asked Zaslav for a favor. If only Kevin Spacey and the Michael Jackson estate had that kind of pull. (A Max rep declined to comment.)
• Feds vs. Live Nation: The surprising claim: As you and every Taylor Swift fan knows, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a blockbuster lawsuit today to force Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster. (Read it here.) But you might not know what went down just yesterday, when Live Nation C.E.O. Michael Rapino jetted to D.C. for a high-stakes meeting with D.O.J. antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter.

  With a D.O.J. press conference looming and leaks already setting the stage, Rapino was forced to plead his case to the feds. Was there any chance Kanter would back down? Probably not. Yet, Kanter kept his cards close, according to one insider, who speculated he might have been sizing up the smooth-talking Rapino as a potential trial witness.

  Just hours after their meeting, the D.O.J. dropped the hammer with a sweeping complaint that caught even close observers off guard. It hit the expected notes about Live Nation allegedly strong-arming venues into using Ticketmaster. But it also threw in a bombshell: Rapino allegedly threatened Silver Lake, the private equity firm and Endeavor owner. According to the feds, Silver Lake had invested in both Oak View Group, an Irving Azoff venture that works with Live Nation, and TEG, an Australian upstart eyeing the U.S. concert promotion business. Rapino wasn’t thrilled about the TEG investment and allegedly warned Silver Lake that he might pull support from Oak View. “I can assure you the OVG investment is a much bigger win than TEG,” Rapino reportedly told the investors. Soon after, TEG backed off from the U.S. market, and Silver Lake sold its stake.

  Not a great look. But Live Nation lawyer Dan Wall slammed the Silver Lake allegation as “deep hypocrisy” by the government. “The current DOJ and FTC have been vocal critics of private equity companies making multiple investments in the same industry due to competitive ‘entanglements,’” he argued. “So was Rapino. ... It created a conflict.” See, Live Nation just wanted everyone to play fair! —Eriq Gardner

• And the highest-paid media C.E.O. is…: Congrats to Chris Winfrey at Charter, the other wildly overpaid C.E.O. of a John Malone-backed media company, whose $89 million package for 2023 landed him at No. 4 on the Journal’s annual ranking of executive compensation at S&P 500 companies. Cable might be a dying business, and broadband growth is slowing, but nobody seems to have informed Malone or the Charter comp committee. Alas, on the “return v. industry” performance metric, Winfrey is tied for lowest in the top 10 with… David Zaslav, Malone’s C.E.O. at Warner Bros. Discovery, whose $50 million package ranked ninth. For those measuring at the urinal, here’s the rest of this year’s media presence in the top 100 (weirdly, Disney’s Bob Iger is not included; not sure why, his $31.6 million would rank in the 20s):

• 8 – Ted Sarandos, Netflix ($50 million)
  13 – Greg Peters, Netflix ($40.1 million)
  19 – Brian Roberts, Comcast ($35.5 million)
  30 – Bob Bakish, Paramount Global ($31.3 million)
  82 – Michael Rapino, Live Nation ($23.4 million)

• Breaking Boz: Bozoma Saint John joining The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is like when Donald Trump hired Rudy Giuliani as his personal lawyer. There’s no joke, it’s just a head nod and a Yeah, that seems right. Boz basically treated her C.M.O. jobs at Netflix and Endeavor as opportunities to market herself, so why wouldn’t she glom on to the preeminent self-marketing opportunity in television?
• Speaking of Endeavor: It was a bit rich to see boos and walkouts during Ari Emanuel’s speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center dinner last night. Ari disappointed a lot of Israel hardliners by attacking Benjamin Netanyahu in front of a room full of Power Jews, but his views weren’t exactly a secret. “From my opinion, a morally corrupt Bibi Netanyahu exposed Israel and its people to rape, death, beheadings of children,” Ari said back in October. “And he did it to stay in power.” SWC’s new leader Jim Berk chose to honor him anyway, no doubt knowing he’d bring starry names and millions raised. He also—shocker!—brought that same opinion.
• And speaking of the Hollywood Jewish community: Ari’s event was on the same night as a Shari Redstone dinner at the Nova Music Festival Exhibit, the Oct. 7 memorial in New York. There’s now an effort to raise money to bring that exhibit to L.A., where CAA is doing an all-day event on May 29 called the “Countering Antisemitism Summit.” (Insert your own Will Maha Dakhil attend? joke.) I’m wondering if one topic at the summit might be the International Criminal Court’s effort to seek arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders for war crimes, given that one of the legal experts who advised the I.C.C. to do so is Amal Clooney, a CAA client. More awkward: Amal’s husband, George—also a CAA guy, of course—is co-hosting a major fundraiser in a couple weeks for President Biden, who has come out hard against the “outrageous” I.C.C. ruling.
• Speaking of Biden: It’s a mixed bag of Hollywood people for tonight’s State Dinner in honor of the president of Kenya: TPG’s David Bonderman, LeVar Burton, the NFL’s Roger Goodell, Lester Holt, “American Pie” singer Don McClean (78) and girlfriend Paris Dunn (30!), Walking Dead star Danai Gurira, CNN’s Bianna Golodryga, Sean Penn, Sheryl Sandberg, MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend, the NBA’s Adam Silver, former MGM C.E.O. Harry Sloan, Alex Soros, Michaela Coel with UTA’s Darnell Strom, Wilmer Valderrama (!!), producer Nicholas Weinstock, Brad Paisley and actress wife Kimberly, and Quibi co-founder Meg Whitman, who is apparently the ambassador to Kenya now.
• Best Cannes sighting so far: Brett Ratner, cruising around the lunch patio of the Du Cap hotel like he owns the damn place.

• ScarJo’s A.I. endgame: You’ve gotta feel a little for the actress who thought she had scored a decent gig as Sky, a voice assistant from OpenAI, the red-hot tech company behind ChatGPT. Her agent told The Washington Post today that the lengthy casting process and recording happened last summer, well before C.E.O. Sam Altman reached out to Scarlett Johansson to collaborate. Then, once Johansson passed, Sky was released with the anonymous actress’s own voice, without enhancement or training, according to the agent. Neither Johansson nor the movie Her were ever mentioned by OpenAI. She just thought it was a gig.

  That’s the vexing issue here. As much as ScarJo has now become the face of resistance to the Silicon Valley boogeymen sucking up all of humanity to train their vampiric A.I. models, this is actually a garden-variety soundalike case. Like when singers Bette Midler and Tom Waits once sued over impersonations of their voices in TV and radio ads. It’s the free speech of that actress and OpenAI vs. Johansson’s right to protect her name, image, and likeness from knockoffs that intentionally confuse. The product here just happens to be an A.I. assistant.

  We went through those legal issues on The Town yesterday (in short, litigator Aaron Moss thinks Scarlett has a decent right of publicity and trademark case—at least decent enough to get past a motion to dismiss), but it’s sort of moot. I’m told Johansson’s legal team, led by John Berlinski at Bird Marella, has no plans to sue, unless the Sky voice reappears. (Altman has said it won’t; Berlinski and OpenAI’s litigator, David Kramer at Wilson Sonsini, both declined to comment when I called them this week.) Johansson, in a back-and-forth of legal letters, did not ask OpenAI for any money. Rather, she and her agent, Bryan Lourd, see this as an opportunity to plant a flag on the A.I. issue and generate tons of attention. It worked.

  Berlinski, if you remember, did the same thing in ScarJo’s 2021 war with Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek over her pay on Black Widow, which Disney sent to home video and theaters at the same time, kneecapping her box office bonuses. That fight was about more than the $50 million she was supposedly shortchanged. The suit highlighted the tech-enabled shift in the social covenant between studios and talent. The rule had always been, You make money, we make money. But streaming changed that calculus, incentivizing Disney and others to grow digital subscribers at the expense of the box office that benefits its creative partners. That’s an issue the industry is still dealing with today.

  SAG-AFTRA, the talent agencies, and even President Biden have now picked up the A.I. rights baton, which was Johansson’s goal all along. Even as the studios deliberate about whether to allow their libraries to train A.I. models in exchange for much-needed cash, Altman found a worthy adversary in a Very Famous Actress. If the creative industries hope to survive the onslaught of well-financed, tech-enabled automation, that kind of ability to influence how the public perceives these issues will likely be as important as how the law evolves to interpret them.

• Box office over/under: Furiosa is tracking at an underwhelming $42 million for the four-day weekend, and still I’m gonna take the under. Despite its female lead, the gender numbers suggest few women will show up, and Warners is sweating Latinos as well. I’ve been saying for a while that Sony’s The Garfield Movie would overperform, so I’m gonna take the over on $30 million, despite the cat piss-poor reviews.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or the funniest data point buried in today’s Netflix ratings dump? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.