Welcome back to What I’m Hearing...
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Discussed in today’s email: Ryan Reynolds, Bela Bajaria, Reese Witherspoon, Tom Rothman, Ryan Murphy, Kevin Ulrich, the Murdochs, Shelly Miscavige, and the worst holiday card of the year.
In this issue, we're continuing my year-end takes. And for more, I broke down 2021 with Kim Masters and Lucas Shaw on The Business. Listen here.
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Who Won the Year: Ryan Reynolds
Anyone else check these boxes? Starred in the no. 1 Netflix movie of all time (Red Notice). Starred in and produced the top-grossing non-franchise movie of the year (Free Guy, $331 million). Reaped millions from the sale of his marketing agency, Maximum Effort, which seems to go viral once a month. (His $660 million deal for gin brand Aviation was last year, but still impressive.) Endorsements, a corporate board seat at Match, and he bought a soccer team with texting buddy Rob McElhenney. Setting the standard for the modern movie star.
Runners up: Kevin Feige, Hwang Dong-hyuk, Reese Witherspoon, David Zaslav, Taylor Sheridan, Scarlett Johansson, Adele, Mathew Rosengart, Awkwafina, Aryeh Bourkoff, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Goodell, the Manning brothers, and the TikTok algorithm.
Quote of the Year: “I want to thank Lorne, who went to go take a dump. Perfect.” —Jason Sudeikis, accepting his Emmy for Ted Lasso in September and name checking his SNL boss in absentia
Runner up: “These streaming services have been making something that they call ‘movies.’ They ain’t movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so.” –Barry Diller at Sun Valley in July
On Thursday, I revealed that he Hollywood Villain of the Year is AMC Entertainment C.E.O. Adam Aron, for reasons explained here. Today it’s the Hero of the Year. This is not who won (see above). This is the person most influencing what the future of entertainment will look like.
Love her or hate her (and she’s got her share of detractors), Bajaria has been key to turning Netflix’s international content into globalized hits. You don’t need me to tell you that Squid Game was the biggest piece of professionally-created entertainment this year. Those staggering numbers—sampled by 142 million accounts in 90 countries (and finished by 87 million of them) in its first 23 days; 1.5 billion hours viewed in its first 28 days; the kind of global fandom usually reserved for soccer stars and Avengers movies—speak for themselves. The nine-episode, South Korean sci-fi thriller that Netflix bought for $22 million has created $900 million in value, according to internal documents that were revealed in October by Bloomberg, and its stars became subjects of everything from TikTok memes to Halloween costumes to a talent agency frenzy to sign them.
What’s most interesting to me isn’t that Squid Game happened, it’s that this kind of foreign super-breakout was inevitable...
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FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 
AMC's C.E.O. was given an extraordinary lifeline—which he used to benefit himself, mostly. MATT BELLONI 
Joe Biden's staggering unpopularity among younger voters suggests that Democrats don't have any idea what matters to their kids. PETER HAMBY 
Many of the hopes for a resurgent 2021 in the media business didn’t come to pass, but the year was hardly a disaster. BRIAN MORRISSEY 
The C.E.O. of Morgan Stanley dishes on Goldman and succession, among other topics, over bespoke sushi. WILLIAM D. COHAN 
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