Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, and cheers to 2023! I hope this email can take your mind off the very sad Damar Hamlin injury on Monday Night Football. Here’s wishing him all the best.

I’m at C.E.S. this week, moderating a SAG-AFTRA panel called “A.I. Goes to Hollywood” on Thursday with some great guests. If you’re in Vegas, stop by and say hi, or maybe we can go see Wayne Newton together.

As always, if this email was forwarded to you, join the WIH community by clicking here. Start the year by taking care of yourself!

Discussed in this issue: Bob Iger, Brian Robbins, Hope Hicks, Miguel Sapochnik, David Zaslav, Timothée Chalamet, James Mangold, Lorene Scafaria, James Cameron, and the behind-the-scenes blowup of the year.

But first…

Runner up: “You’re off 30-something percent and you’ve got 30 percent less movies, right? The math kind of works.”
–Brian Robbins, the Paramount film chief, summing up the 2022 box office to the LA Times.

Second runner up: “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys chapter.” –Hope Hicks, the former Trump aide and 21st Century Fox chief spokesperson, in a recently released text to an aide on Jan 6, 2021, adding: “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed.” (No, Hicks has not lined up another high-profile gig.)

The bottom line: This year’s gonna be bad. The ad market hasn’t yet hit its low, inflation and interest rates have stunted dealflow, the movie business is expected to improve but there aren’t enough releases planned to match pre-pandemic box office, it’s unclear if the advertising tiers will reverse the fortunes of the streamers, and the Wall Street investors who have killed the entertainment companies’ share prices are the same people who encouraged them to go all-in on streaming in the first place. Not great!

You don’t need me to predict all that, so instead, for the second year in a row, I polled sources for more offbeat observations and areas of preoccupation in 2023 that you might not be thinking about, both big picture and small. Some of these are very specific, and some are just representative of trends that I care about heading into the year. Here’s last year’s list, so you can check me (I did OK!). And if you disagree, tell me why at matt@puck.news. Here are my first 11 items. Part two will drop on Thursday.

At this point, we’re waaay past deepfakes. Dozens of well-funded startups are able to recreate professional-quality performances and even generate new ones. James Earl Jones signed over his voice to a Ukrainian cloning company, which will allow Darth Vader to live forever. And SAG-AFTRA is already insisting on language prohibiting digital reproductions without the guild’s consent. If you’re a star, or you represent one, 2023 is the year you need to figure out how to safeguard your digital rights.

This stuff is moving super-fast. Spend some time with the new ChatGPT tool and you’ll understand why the Writers Guild should be freaked out about A.I. scripts. If they don’t insert protections into the next studio contract, as one plugged-in reader emailed me recently, “when the next negotiation comes around, they won’t have a position to negotiate from. It’ll be an order of magnitude worse than the streaming transition.”

2. Can Timmy C. open a movie?

For all the hope placed on Timothée Chalamet that movies can still create movie stars, the 27-year old actor has never actually been asked to open a studio movie. Dune was sold as Dune, and his other films have been either small indies, supporting roles, or Netflix.

That changes in 2023 with Wonka (Dec. 15). Yes, it’s well-known I.P., but it’s not a remake of the 1971 and 2005 movies, the latter of which grossed $474 million worldwide as a Johnny Depp vehicle. Instead, it’s a concept-plus-star original musical prequel, and I thought the footage shown at Cinemacon wasn’t great. With Dune: Part Two set to open in November, Warner Bros. is hoping for the kind of one-two-punch effect that Tom Holland’s Uncharted got from Spider-Man: No Way Home. But Wonka will serve as a big test of Timmy’s appeal, especially to young moviegoers.

Related: Per agency sources, a few big-get roles up for grabs in 2023:

• Ridley Scott is looking for the key actors in Gladiator 2.
• If Disney figures out its Pirates of the Caribbean situation, those roles will be hot.
• Same with Paramount and the Bee Gees movie. Hustlers’ Lorene Scafaria just stepped in as director, and she’s seeking Gibb brothers that don’t play like the SNL sketch.
• Agents are salivating over Marvel’s Fantastic Four, which is complicated by all the multiverse stuff. And the ongoing DC reset should bring big opportunities for new men in tights, especially someone to replace Henry Cavill as Superman.
• And, obviously, the granddaddy of casting coups: James Bond. The Aaron Taylor-Johnson rumors are true—he sat with producer Barbara Broccoli, and the meeting went well, per sources. But while Taylor-Johnson fits the bill—great actor, British, fits the younger direction the Broccolis want to go, accomplished but not particularly famous—he’s about to be a much bigger star. If Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff Kraven the Hunter or Universal’s Ryan Gosling two-hander The Fall Guy works, Taylor-Johnson might end up, ironically, too famous to take on Bond.

This is already happening, and it makes sense. For many talent deals, the Netflix model—forever ownership, full buyout instead of backend—contemplated a closed SVOD ecosystem without advertising or re-sales. Now that’s changing, so it’s only natural that deals will shift as well. UTA’s Jeremy Zimmer basically said as much on my podcast last month. “They’ve changed the rules,” he told me. “They will have ad breaks, they’re getting additional revenue from outside the original bargain, and it’s only a matter of time before all the streamers start selling not just the shows they don’t want… but also the shows that are most successful, because there will be a revenue model that will be very successful.” That’s all code for Pay me.

4. Scrutiny on the Disney board

If anyone is to blame for the Bob vs. Bob C.E.O. circus of the past few months, it’s the Walt Disney Co. board of directors, which endorsed Bob Chapek in June (and unanimously so, though we later learned it wasn’t exactly unanimous) only to discard him and his beard in a dumpster outside the Starbucks on West Alameda five months later. Bloomberg reported the Chapek go-away money will be “at least” $23 million, but it could be much more, and we will learn that number this year. I’m guessing that chair Susan Arnold and her 12-person board, which still doesn’t include a single member with significant entertainment experience (other than Bob Iger), will come under much more scrutiny then, when investors and the media learn how much the June renewal through 2025 ended up costing the company.

5. Disney animation on the hot seat

Speaking of Disney, if Pixar’s Pete Docter and Disney Animation Studios’ Jennifer Lee were in an animated movie, they’d probably be hyper-visualizing some unfamiliar feelings these days: fear and anxiety. After twin $200 million bombs in Lightyear and Strange World, I’m not quite ready to hit the panic button on Disney’s animation creative engines. But… the 2023 movies better work.

Pixar’s Elemental trailer has Inside Out vibes, and Wish, the Disney Animation movie for the holidays, is a traditional fairy tale musical, its sweet spot. But there’s a larger question of whether families actually want these movies in theaters, especially after Chapek trained everyone to expect them on streaming. The 2022 numbers are scary, and the holiday returns for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish aren’t great ($67 million domestic; $134 million worldwide)—and that movie’s actually good.

Another uncomfortable question for Disney: Why do these movies still cost so much? Most of Universal’s animated movies are half as expensive. I know, artistry. But Pixar and WDAS make their movies mostly in California, with high labor costs, while Universal’s Illumination, for example, outsources a lot of the work. It didn’t matter when Disney was a hit factory. Now?

6. Fallout from the behind-the-scenes blowup of the year

When HBO’s House of the Dragon co-showrunner and pilot director Miguel Sapochnik announced his surprise (yet totally amicable!) exit in August, he left with a very nice first-look deal for future projects. I wouldn’t bet on those happening. It was never reported, but Sapochnik bailed after a protracted standoff over his wife and her involvement in the show. Alexis Raben was a credited producer on Season 1 and had appeared in a couple episodes, but when Sapochnik requested that she be included on his and co-showrunner Ryan Condal’s producing team for Season 2, HBO politely said no, citing her inexperience, according to two sources close to the show. (HBO declined to comment.)

It was a whole blow-up, and HBO even brought in a mediator to try to de-escalate the situation. Sapochnik ultimately decided he couldn’t work on HotD after his wife was essentially told to stay home, bailing on the show and leaving millions of dollars on the table. He then fired his agents at WME and went to CAA—with his wife.

7. The NBA can’t quit Turner

Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav was negotiating in the press when he announced in November that “we don’t have to have” the NBA. But with the league reportedly seeking a combined $50 billion to $75 billion from WBD’s Turner and Disney in negotiations, Zaz knows he probably can’t compete with the streamers. I don’t think he will need to. The NBA will likely carve out a third or even fourth package of games, so commissioner Adam Silver can jump into bed with Big Tech but also keep that linear TNT audience (and Charles Barkley) in the mix, albeit in a lesser position.

8. Avatar does well enough for more Avatar

It’s funny: Nobody would be talking about Avatar: The Way of Water needing to gross $2 billion if James Cameron himself didn’t announce that the number was the threshold. It’s at $1.4 billion as of today, so the movie will officially be profitable for Disney, and it could eventually top the Cameron bar as well. (The China number, $153 million after a slow start and all the Covid fears, is especially encouraging.) That’s good enough for Disney to exhale (and all of Hollywood, really, considering that 2022 box office ended down about 35 percent from 2019). Avatar 3 is far along and was never in doubt, but the fourth and fifth movies likely weren’t gonna happen if audience demand wasn’t proven with Way of Water. Hopefully Cameron will shave an hour off the running time of the next one.

I’ve been hearing from independent film people lately that the international players are back. How so? In the wake of Korea’s CJ Entertainment snapping up Endeavor Content (now Fifth Season), and France’s MediaWan buying into Brad Pitt’s Plan B, several European companies have made it known they’re interested in big-ticket film investments. Outfits like Newen, the French TV company owned by the TF1 Group, and Fremantle, are looking to buy up and aggregate production companies. So look for more deals like that in 2023, which could make up for the dip in U.S.-based deals.

10. Indiana Jones and the outsized expectations

I’m not gonna predict, sight unseen, which movies will or won’t exceed projections this year (except maybe Cocaine Bear, which will definitely gross a bazillion dollars). But I was a bit surprised to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June 30) on a bunch of lists as a possible top-grosser of 2023. It’s a big franchise, no doubt, and the first time the Disney machine has had a crack at an Indy movie, via Lucasfilm. But it’s James Mangold directing, not Spielberg; and Harrison Ford is now 80 and—if we’re being honest—looks it, and the marketing is off to a bit of a bumpy start.

Because the trailer debuted at Brazil Comic Con on Dec. 1, the same day as two other high profile summer trailers—Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (June 9) and Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 (May 5)—rival studios were able to compare views to gauge relative strength out of the gate. After two weeks across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, here were the numbers, per a studio source:

Transformers 7: 506 million views
Guardians of Galaxy 3: 187 million views
Indiana Jones 5: 79 million views

There’s still time, of course, and it might be that the Indy audience isn’t the most online. But the coronation seems premature.

11. Peacock’s Girls5Eva will be big on Netflix

How many times does this have to happen for NBC Universal to see its future as either a supplier to bigger streamers or a target for consolidation?

After some brawls, Disney is asking parks guests to “treat others with respect.” No, that doesn’t apply to the parks’ own pricing policies. [LAT]

Speaking of Disney, Eriq Gardner has a good explainer of the copyright issues involved in Mickey Mouse and how the company could end up arguing against strict protection. [Puck]

Analyst and former WarnerMedia executive Doug Shapiro goes long on what happens when A.I., virtual production, and other factors all cause the cost of producing high-quality content to drop just like the cost of distributing the content has. [Medium]

Congrats to Warner Bros. Discovery and Dish for making the list of the worst-performing stocks of 2022. The prize is angry shareholder letters and Tums. [Marketwatch]

Trust me, Caitlin Flanagan writing about Netflix’s Harry & Meghan is worth your click. [Atlantic]

Does David Miscavige live in Florida, California, both, or neither?? Scientology’s local newspaper tracks his hilarious attempt to avoid service (allegedly!) in a child trafficking lawsuit. [Tampa Bay Times]

Cindy Adams on Barbara Walters. [NY Post]

“It’s perfectly reasonable to applaud the successes of a rich kid who was smart enough to play the long game and make good investments. But what’s missing is a true sense of the economics of the company—I’m not saying they don’t work, just that they’re opaque. Is the business profitable; is it one or two bad bets away from needing a cash infusion; basically, is it a company built for the long haul that can succeed with or without Ellison’s capital?” –An executive

“David has worked hard and showed incredible judgment and taste. Great of you to call it out. You’re so right on Skydance.” –Another executive

“If Ellison weren’t as rich, he’d be getting tons more attention for what they are doing at Skydance.” –A producer

“Dude, come on. Call me when [Ellison] does something original.” –An agent

“…Attaching yourself to winning I.P. is now heroic? For a guy with so much money he could afford to fail and fail until he finally made it work? The Ellison business would have washed out many others, so… good for him. Money wins.” –Another producer

Have a great week,
Matt

Correction: Miramax produced Halloween Ends this year, not Scream, as I mentioned in Thursday’s Hero of the Year email. Apologies to Miramax and to Spyglass, which actually produced Scream.