Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, and happy late August—when nobody’s available, when Lionsgate releases its annual slate of theatrical bombs, and when the news (hopefully!) slows down before the fall festivals kick up. Reminder: I’ll be at TIFF, so be sure to invite me to the good movies (no need to include me at the bad ones!).

Today we’re wrapping up Lesley Goldberg’s Best and Worst Deals of the Peak TV Era with the Home Runs, a segment that should enrage fewer agents and publicists than parts one and two. (Fun fact: In this, the year of our lord 2024, one flack actually sent an email to Lesley with the subject line “You are a vile, untrustworthy human.” Not classy!) Plus, in honor of Blink Twice, a look at how the MGM slate has performed in theaters since Amazon took over.

Programming note: This week on The Town, Bill Cohan and I argued why the Ellisons’ bid for Paramount is better than Bronfman’s (apparently Edgar listened), Lesley compared TV overall deals to MLB contracts, and Joe Chianese offered a power ranking of states with the best film production incentives. Subscribe here and here.

Not a Puck member yet? Click here this instant. Got a news tip or an idea for me? Just reply to this email or message me anonymously on Signal at 310-804-3198.

Discussed in this issue: Mike De Luca, Shonda Rhimes, Dana Walden, Jon Favreau, Bozoma Saint John, Shaboozey, Taylor Sheridan, Jay Penske, Brad Pitt, Zoë Kravitz, Bob Iger, David Zaslav, Eddie Egan, Dick Wolf, Shonda Rhimes, Pam Abdy, Josh D’Amaro, and… Kamala’s Hollywood stylist.

But first…

In possibly related news, Bronfman is headed for an all-expense-paid vacation on Lanai. I’m kidding, but as predicted, the prospect of getting into a bidding war with Larry Ellison and his $160 billion fortune seems to have been a big factor in Bronfman’s exit. I’m also told his presentation to the Paramount board’s special committee did not go great, with some open speculation about whether he’d be able to close the deal. (A rep for the special committee declined to comment beyond a lame statement; Bronfman’s rep went silent beyond his statement.)

Sadly, a few dishonorable mentions this week:

Lionsgate’s marketing team—WTF? The studio was quick to cut ties with consultant Eddie Egan over the now-infamous Megalopolis fake blurbs trailer, but didn’t this thing get scrutinized internally? Like, by everyone in the marketing department multiple times? It was an unusually stunty trailer to begin with. Nobody said, “Wow, are these highly incendiary quotes attributed to real critics actually authentic? How about we double-check that?”

Kathleen Kennedy—Yep, she’s still running Lucasfilm, despite another misfire in The Acolyte, which Disney+ quickly canceled after one underperforming season. Besides “continuity” and “she was George’s choice,” nobody at Disney seems to have a good answer for why Kathy’s still there.

Harvey Levin—Man, what’s going on at TMZ? Blowing the Beyoncé/D.N.C. “scoop” is only the latest misstep for the brand, as we discussed on The Town a couple months ago.

Runner-up: “I think Paul or Ringo, I can’t remember which one, got up and said, ‘This is a pinch-me moment for us, too.’”
—Bob Iger, recounting how excited the Beatles were to have dinner with him, in that Kelly Ripa interview I mentioned on Thursday. Come on, Bob, which one was it, Paul or Ringo? Big difference.

Second runner-up: “Y’all act like you behave differently in the boardroom than these women behave on TV.”
—Bozoma Saint John, the former Netflix and Endeavor C.M.O., when asked for her response to her C-suite friends questioning why she’s joining The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Not a great quote but…: What’s the over-under on how long until Trump goes after Disney’s Dana Walden by name for her 30-year Kamala Harris friendship? He came close yesterday in a post on Truth Social suggesting he won’t participate in the upcoming ABC News debate and asking if contributor Donna Brazile would give Harris questions in advance: “Will Kamala’s best friend, who heads up ABC, do likewise?”

Now, on to part three of Lesley’s Peak TV deal analysis… (Yes, I know we didn’t include everyone, so maybe there will be a Part 4 at some point.)

That alone makes Rhimes worth the investment. The Netflix relationship then expanded in 2021 with a five-year extension that includes more money, a film component, and live events, with multiple bonuses built in that could elevate its value from $300 million to $400 million. Next, the Scandal creator will return to the White House with The Residence, a murder mystery that recast the late Andre Braugher with Giancarlo Esposito.

Dick Wolf (Universal)
On the other hand, volume can also be very lucrative. The procedural king kicked off 2020 with back-to-back NBCUniversal deals worth an estimated $1 billion. The pacts included streaming rights to six shows—covering more than 1,000 combined episodes of Law & Order plus spinoffs Criminal Intent and SVU, and all three Chicago shows: Fire, P.D. and Med—as well as a five-year overall deal extension that is still considered the largest in TV history. Three years later, Wolf extended the rich pact for another two years, keeping him with NBCU past his 80th birthday and into 2027.

Wolf now has eight shows on broadcast across two networks, with CBS’s trio of FBI shows, co-productions between Universal TV and CBS Studios, as well as Chris Meloni’s L&O: Organized Crime, which moved to Peacock as an original. Exhausted yet? Outside of his Universal deal, Wolf has a pair of unscripted true crime docs at Netflix. His shows may be by-the-numbers procedurals, but they’re accomplishing something very few still can in the streaming age: They generate revenue from both syndication and global licensing.

Taylor Sheridan (Paramount)
The Yellowstone cowboy, a year into his 2020 Paramount deal, added another five years with a nine-figure arrangement that keeps him at the company through 2028, regardless of who owns it. That deal set the stage for Sheridan and Paramount to franchise Yellowstone with prequels 1883 and 1923, merchandising, and even a pop-up steakhouse at the Wynn Las Vegas this fall. At the same time, he’s brought in stars like Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm (Landman), Jeremy Renner (Mayor of Kingstown), Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldaña (Special Ops: Lioness), and Sylvester Stallone (Tulsa King) to his myriad other shows. Now, as the final episodes of Season 5 shoot this summer, plans for Yellowstone have morphed. Michelle Pfeiffer will star in the latest spinoff, The Madison, alongside Patrick J. Adams and Matthew Fox, and sources say that Yellowstone O.G. will not end with season five—it will simply continue without Kevin Costner but with stars Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly, who are closing deals to return.

How important is Sheridan to Paramount? He gets away with billing his bosses to film on his Texas property. “When you’re charging for the horses on your ranch, you’re taking them to the cleaners,” joked a source.

Bill Lawrence (Warner Bros.)
Lawrence isn’t cheap—the veteran comedy showrunner re-upped with Warners in 2022 as part of a five-year, nine-figure extension—but he continues to deliver. Jason Sudeikis has blessed a fourth season of Ted Lasso, which Lawrence co-created, and Apple TV+ also has Lawrence’s critical breakout Shrinking and the new Vince Vaughn comedy Bad Monkey. Next up, Lawrence has a college-set comedy starring Steve Carell that landed at HBO after a bidding war. His 2023 revival of Clone High (produced by MTV) might not have worked, but another update of a beloved Lawrence show—Scrubs—is indeed in the works, per sources.

John Wells (Warner Bros.)
“Wells is one of the smartest deals to make. He knows how to make money and how to produce shows on a budget,” said one rival executive about the TV veteran, whose credits include ER, The West Wing, and Shameless. Wells started his career with Warners in 1986(!) as a story editor, and his 2019 deal—a five-year, $100 million extension—delivered the limited series Maid (one of Netflix’s biggest hits of 2021), MGM+’s Emperor of Ocean Park, and Fox’s fall lifeguard drama Rescue: HI-Surf. He quietly signed another long-term extension a couple years ago.

Wells nearly made an ER sequel series starring Noah Wyle, but the project morphed into an original concept (Max’s upcoming The Pitt) after HBO passed on it, Warner Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav wouldn’t let NBC/Peacock take it, and Michael Crichton’s widow declined to bless it. A medical procedural from two of the best to do it, and it’s on time and on budget? Yeah, Wells is a winner.

Alex Kurtzman (Paramount)
“He’s like John Wells—he’s capable of running multiple shows at one time and can deliver a show on budget,” noted one studio exec of Kurtzman, best known for steering the Star Trek franchise on Paramount+. Kurtzman last renegotiated his overall deal in 2021, when he sought a sizable bump from the $25 million a year he’d earned before the showrunner market exploded. The deal that resulted keeps Kurtzman and his Secret Hideout company in the captain’s seat of Trek for CBS Studios through 2026 with Strange New Worlds, Starfleet Academy, and the final season of Lower Decks, plus the upcoming live-action comedy from Justin Simien and Tawny Newsome. (When Ron Moore was eager to make Trek shows as he shopped for a new overall deal, Paramount instead stuck with Kurtzman and passed on the Outlander boss.) Meanwhile, the full runs of his Star Trek: Discovery, which relaunched the franchise, and Picard join The Man Who Fell to Earth and Clarice as library titles on Paramount+ while the kid-focused animated series Star Trek: Prodigy awaits word on its future after moving to Netflix.

Robert and Michelle King (Paramount)
Eight years after concluding The Good Wife, the franchise remains alive at CBS with the Kings’ second spinoff, Elsbeth, returning for its second season. Midway through a five-year, mid-eight-figure deal signed in 2021, the married duo recently wrapped Evil, the CBS-turned-Paramount+ drama, after five seasons and turned to the thriller Happy Face, set to debut on Paramount+ in 2025. The Kings will now return to the legal world with the Silicon Valley-set Cupertino for CBS. “They’re worth the money because the ideas are nonstop,” noted one studio executive. “They’ve gotten good at finding fresh voices to supervise and let them do the lion’s share of the work—yet the shows have their unique sensibility.”

Dan Fogelman (Disney)
Fogelman’s Only Murders in the Building returns tomorrow as Hulu’s No. 1 show, and the This Is Us creator is reteaming with star Sterling K. Brown on the drama Paradise, described as a modern mix of Lost and 24 with Fogelman’s emotional core. A favorite of Disney TV chief Dana Walden, Fogelman left her in 2015 after Galavant, Grandfathered, and The Neighbors failed. Still, Walden, then running 20th TV, lured Fogelman back with an eight-figure deal, and in 2019, after her move to Disney, she re-upped him with a five-year, nine-figure deal at the height of the This Is Us phenomenon. A new overall deal has been in the works for months, sources say.

Chuck Lorre (Warner Bros.)
Lorre, who famously delivered Two and a Half Men in the final six months of his first deal at Warners, is proof that one hit can pay for years of development—and then some. Hey may no longer control an entire night of primetime on CBS, but the super-secretive Lorre—he continues to quietly re-up his deal and has a couple years remaining on his current agreement—wrapped Young Sheldon and has a new spinoff of the Big Bang Theory prequel coming to the network, plus a Netflix comedy starring Leanne Morgan and the second season of Max’s Bookie. While recent broadcast entries like Bob Hearts Abishola haven’t come close to Big Bang levels of success, Warners still retains full ownership of all of his shows.

Mindy Kaling (Warner Bros.)
After calling Universal home since her days on The Office, Kaling jumped ship to Warners in early 2019 with a six-year, $51 million deal—downright reasonable by Peak TV standards—for which she has delivered the breakout Sex Lives of College Girls, which is heading into its third season on Max. Next up, Kaling has Kate Hudson running the Lakers in the Netflix comedy inspired by the life of Jeanie Buss. In addition, Max has yet to make a decision on a third season of Kaling’s animated Scooby-Doo offshoot, Velma.

Jon Favreau (Disney)
The captain of The Mandalorian is earning $125 million over five years in a pact that was signed after the Star Wars drama took off in late 2019. Insiders describe it as a deal that featured a sizable upfront payment because Disney declined to offer a backend payout. Favreau has expanded the franchise with The Book of Boba Fett, Ashoka, and the upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, starring Jude Law, as well as feature film The Mandalorian & Grogu, slated for summer 2026.

Side note: No, there’s zero chance Wolfs makes any financial sense on a service the size of Apple TV+, especially minus a theatrical release. With director Jon Watts’ $15 million fee, that’s $85 million out the door for three guys to make a TV movie. Great for them (and CAA’s year-end bonuses), but not great for Apple’s willingness to justify its Hollywood experiment long-term. We’re already starting to see the pull-back.

Disney parks superfans are pissed about plans to pave over the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island at Disney World. If they really turn on Josh D’Amaro, could it impact his C.E.O. succession profile? [NBC]

Two-thirds of TV viewers are now using FAST channels, according to a new Horowitz Research report. [Broadband TV News]

Kamala Harris has hired the Hollywood stylist Leslie Fremar, whom I once spilled a drink on at a party. [Puck]

Shaboozey, who’s got the No. 1 song six weeks running, is suing music publisher Warner Chappell and his former record label claiming they’re stonewalling his efforts to get out of his terrible deals. [Billboard]

News you probably won’t read in Jay Penske media: Abdulaziz al-Muzaini, a Saudi-American who helped create a satirical Netflix series called Masameer, is being persecuted by the Saudis on charges that he “sponsored and supported terrorism and homosexuality.” [Washington Post]

Rowena Chiu, the former Harvey Weinstein assistant, writes about Matthew Perry’s assistant pleading guilty: “It’s far too easy to turn the butler into the scapegoat.” [NY Times]

And now here’s Scott on Blink Twice and the MGM movies left by prior management…

From August 2022, when Amazon acquired MGM, through this past weekend, the studio released copious theatrical features of varying shapes and sizes, with 10 greenlit by De Luca and Abdy before they left. (Two more remain: The Fire Inside, a biopic of Olympic boxing champion Claressa Shields, and Preparation for the Next Life, a drama about a Chinese Muslim immigrant smuggled into America, set for some time in 2025.) How did the slate perform?

In two words… not great. Presuming Don’t Blink eventually passes $40 million worldwide, the 10 films left on Amazon’s doorstep by De Luca and Abdy have grossed $538 million worldwide. Of those films, two (Zach Braff’s A Good Person and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing) were acquisitions. Per sources, the combined production budget was $291 million, not accounting for marketing expenses and however much MGM was on the hook for with Miller’s $60 million-budgeted (!) fantasy romance, which grossed just $20 million worldwide. By these generous calculations, that gave the overall slate a not-great 1.85x rate of return. If we’re just counting the De Luca-Abdy movies that were not acquisitions, those eight features earned $515 million worldwide on a combined $291 million budget, giving the previous regime’s slate a mere 1.76x rate of return.

Plenty of prestige plays didn’t pan out at the box office. Till, featuring Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett Till’s mother pursuing justice for her murdered son, earned $9 million in North America and $11.5 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, a romantic drama starring Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell as some not-so-fine young cannibals, earned film nerd buzz but grossed just $7.8 million domestically and $15.2 million worldwide on a reported $16 million budget. Women Talking, about women and girls in a Mennonite colony, won writer-director Sarah Polley a best adapted screenplay Oscar and was among that year’s best picture nominees, but earned just $5.5 million in North America and $9.1 million worldwide on a $20 million budget. A Good Person, featuring Florence Pugh as a young woman wrestling with having caused a fatal accident, grossed a mere $2.2 million in North America. Further, the (likely) cult favorite Bottoms, about two lesbian teenagers (Rachel Sennott and The Bear breakout Ayo Edebiri) who start a female fight club, earned just $13 million worldwide on an $11 million budget.

Yes, there were hits: Creed III grossed $156 million in North America, in March 2023, selling more tickets than any movie in the franchise since Rocky IV in 1985, and earning $276 million worldwide on a $75 million budget. Challengers, starring Zendaya, opened to comparatively solid figures in late April. Sure, $55 million was too much to spend on a non-franchise, star-driven romantic drama about tennis, but $95 million worldwide is impressive even by pre-streaming standards. Similarly, The Boys in the Boat, directed by George Clooney, opened with $5.7 million on Christmas Day and legged out $52.6 million domestic on a too-high $40 million budget. And finally (for now), the $20 million original Blink Twice is on course to earn around $40 million worldwide.

These figures are hardly blow-out successful, even if you note the periodic cushion provided by an overperformer like Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper ($152 million globally on a $40 million budget, though not greenlit by De Luca and Abdy) in early 2024. However, as Amazon’s Jen Salke learned in 2019 when she watched her buzzy Sundance buys (Late Night, Brittany Runs a Marathon, etcetera) play to empty auditoriums, the theatrical marketplace for non-event releases has been ruthless over the past decade. As consumers have more aggressively consolidated their annual moviegoing spend around fewer event films, the old-school studio programmer was hanging on by a thread even before Covid. Yet De Luca and Abdy continued to greenlight these movies for theaters.

However, with new revenue streams like PVOD and substantial streaming-specific opportunities all predicated on a first-run theatrical release, the math can be slightly more generous (especially for reasonably budgeted non-event films) than box office or bust. Before the Amazon takeover, MGM was in a perpetual state of avoiding bankruptcy or trying to be sold. At the very least, its new home provides the stability it has arguably lacked for most of my (44-year-long) natural life.

And yes, Amazon, with its $1.84 trillion market cap, may be able to play by a different set of rules. As long as non-franchise, non-I.P. films that debut theatrically continue to outperform titles that go straight to streaming, Prime Video and Valenti will have a financial incentive to leverage theatrical to boost the profile of acclaimed non-tentpole/franchise movies (while still sending some franchise entries, I.P. plays, and thumbnail-friendly flicks like Road House and The Idea of You straight to Prime Video). Unlike the old days at MGM, the Prime Video safety net allows commercially suspect awards contenders and less-surefire, mid-budget movies to roll the dice on theatrical glory.

It also allows buzzy and prestigious originals like Challengers to potentially qualify as relatively successful if they earn double their budget. The De Luca/Abdy reign happened in an era of shifting metrics for success, both for streaming viewership. Now, Amazon MGM Studios can be a safer studio for the kind of films that otherwise wouldn’t have a shot in hell in theaters. In fact, there’s a case to be made that almost every modern theatrically inclined studio can (should?) be graded on a comparative curve, especially as some of the “disruptors” like Amazon often offer theatrical engagement as a carrot for A-level talent. Time will tell if we must grade the Valenti era on a similar commercial curve, especially if Amazon continues to offer at least as many “regular movies” as it does Red One or Masters of the Universe-level franchise/tentpole plays. With any luck, the deep pockets and secondary benefit of theatrical exhibition may finally allow MGM to be more than just the home of James Bond.

“Fuck you, man, you know how hard it is to get a show on the air—[overall] deal or no [overall] deal? You make it sound like it’s the creator’s fault when a show doesn’t go. Where’s the list of the most inept executives?” —A writer-producer

“As someone who ran one of these peak deals, I think these people are all part of the problem. Sure, get the money while you can, but it creates a canopy over the business where less-experienced people can’t get through. The door might not be slammed shut, but no one’s making it easier to get in or stay in.” —An executive

“You have correctly noted the market economics that gave rise to the elevated value of talent deals from 2017-2023. But to say these people are grossly overpaid [Ed. note: We didn’t say that.] is flat out wrong. The market is the market; nobody was forcing these studios to pay what they paid. In addition, you neglect to discuss the impact of the buyout model, where backend compensation, once the lifeblood of the television business, was phased out in favor of upfront payments. In that context, these large overall deals largely served as a compensatory remedy for a lost revenue stream.” —A professor

“You forgot Howard Gordon at Sony—definitely eight figures. But they paid a lot to steal him from Dana [Walden and 20th TV] and got an anthology show [Fox’s Accused] as their reward.” —Another executive

“The phone-it-in business is over.” —An agent

Correction: Due to a miscommunication, the numbers in the entry for The Rings of Power showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne were wrong on Thursday. The duo originally signed a two-year, $7 million deal with Amazon in 2018, then quietly renegotiated to $10 million a year before the show debuted, and Amazon extended them in February at $12 million a year. Payne and McKay split with their reps in advance of that last deal in part because they thought they could get more, according to sources. They didn’t. Apologies for the error.

One more: On Monday, we said that Netflix’s unscripted cooking and polo shows from Harry and Meghan had already come out. They haven’t yet. A royal apology for that one.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or an over-under on how many reunion dates Oasis will play before one brother hurts/maims the other? Email me at [email protected] or call/text me at 310-804-3198.