Welcome back to a post-election edition of What I’m Hearing, where I’m getting pretty exhausted by people calling me to trash-talk the Democrats. I did ask Jeffrey Katzenberg, who raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Biden and then Harris, if he’d like to do a little postmortem. He declined, saying he’s moving on. “In the words of my former boss, Barry Diller, ‘They won, we lost, next,’” Jeffrey emailed. On that note, tonight I’ve got some thoughts on Hollywood’s next few years under Trump 2.0, as well as news on Skydance, Star Wars, and more.

On a happier note, I’m excited to announce the full lineup for Puck’s big Stories of the Season awards and networking event, presented by Polestar, which takes place next week. I already told you our headliner is Dune filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who will participate in a live recording of The Town. Other guests include:

• Mikey Madison (Anora) in a Breakthrough Actress chat with me
• Going There: The Fearless Performances, a panel discussion with Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez), Peter Sarsgaard (September 5), and Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice), moderated by Peter Hamby
• The Documentary Truth-Tellers, a filmmaker conversation featuring Josh Greenbaum (Will and Harper), Shiori Ito (Black Box Diaries), Morgan Neville (Piece by Piece), and Matt Tyrnauer (Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid), moderated by Baratunde Thurston
• Slaying the Screen: The Costumes and Fashion of the Season, with Jonathan Anderson (Challengers, Queer), Colleen Atwood (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), Virginie Montel (Emilia Pérez), and Janty Yates (Gladiator II), moderated by Lauren Sherman
• Plus drinks and bites and more fun surprises

💫 Programming note: I’m back on CNBC’s Squawk Box tomorrow at 7:20 a.m. ET talking Warner Discovery earnings and more. And as always, if you’re not yet a Puck member, click here. Got an idea or a news tip? Just reply to this email or message me anonymously on Signal at 310-804-3198.

Let’s begin…

• Star Trek vs. Star Wars: Not mentioned in today’s news that X-Men producer Simon Kinberg has joined the increasingly farcical parade of filmmakers developing Star Wars movies: Kinberg was already signed to reboot and shepherd the Star Trek franchise at Paramount. According to two sources, the new Trek script, by Seth Grahame-Smith, is done and on its way toward a green light, possibly by the end of the year, for a shoot in the first half of 2025. Toby Haynes (Andor) is directing the origin story, set well before the U.S.S. Enterprise era. So any Star Wars obligations for Kinberg would need to wait until after that.

  If a Paramount/Disney franchise face-off sounds familiar, remember that a post-Star Trek J.J. Abrams was signed to a huge overall deal at Paramount, in 2013, when he abruptly bailed to make Star Wars: The Force Awakens for Lucasfilm and Disney. Then, four years later, Abrams abandoned his Paramount deal again to make The Rise of Skywalker, which prompted then-Paramount chief Jim Gianopulos to demand—and receive—a kickback from Disney.

  But that’s not the situation here. Kinberg let Paramount know in advance that a Star Wars trade announcement was coming today. And the supposed trilogy he’s planning for Lucasfilm is, uh, far, far away from happening. With Lucasfilm and its president Kathy Kennedy, that usually means the project will languish in development, get bogged down by notes that over-rely on “canon” and conflict with what was initially agreed upon by all parties, and ultimately never actually proceed to production. Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian & Grogu made it and is still set for May 2026, but let’s all repeat the long and distinguished list of filmmakers hired on Star Wars and then summarily fired or replaced: the Game of Thrones guys… Lord and Miller… Patty Jenkins… Damon Lindelof… Colin Trevorrow… J.D. Dillard—okay, I’ll stop.

  Regardless, inside Disney, the spotlight on Kennedy is even brighter after the failure of Disney+ series The Acolyte and the exit of writer Steven Knight from the planned Daisy Ridley film to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, which isn’t officially delayed but seems to be teetering. Kennedy, normally press-shy, has been doing a few lunches lately with media people—likely on the advice of her longtime personal publicist, Simon Halls—which is probably a good idea if the pressure on her really ratchets up. (Reps for Disney and Paramount declined to comment.)

• A lifeline for LeBron and Mav?: More than a few people are scratching their heads around town over the news that Fulwell73, the U.K.-based production company behind reality hits (The Kardashians), specials (Adele: One Night Only, the Friends reunion), and live events (the Grammys), is merging with SpringHill Entertainment, the decidedly less successful production company of LeBron James and Maverick Carter. Fulwell is a leader in the unscripted space, and its co-founder Ben Winston has a great reputation as a producer. SpringHill consistently loses millions of dollars, per two sources familiar with its financials, and despite carrying about 200 employees, its slate in film and TV doesn’t include much more than the stuff LeBron is in, a Fat Joe talk show on Starz, and the 2023 House Party remake you forgot happened.

  But Winston and Carter are friends, and they’ve been plotting this team-up for a while with Paul Wachter, the financial wizard behind the curtain of the LeBron business (among others). SpringHill also has decent commercials and branded-content divisions that Fulwell finds synergistic, and a merger will allow both companies to cut costs for leaner times. Remember, back in the heyday of 2021, SpringHill was valued at a crazy-sounding $725 million after an investment from Nike and RedBird Capital. It’s safe to say that valuation is lower today, given how the contraction is impacting independent producers. Maybe, after he retires from basketball, LeBron becomes Peyton Manning, whose Omaha Productions is now a legit player in sports media. Maybe… but for now, this feels more like a lifeline.

• Skydance investors are in for $1.4 billion so far: My journey through Paramount’s big S-4 proxy filing this week has arrived at the Skydance Media balance sheet and income statements, required disclosures for the pending acquisition. A couple interesting stats: As of June 30, the “Skydance Media members’ equity,” which is the total equity raised from the Ellison family, RedBird Capital, Tencent, CJ, KKR, and other investors, totals $1.4 billion. That’s a lot of capital that was needed to get Skydance from launch to where it is today (plus about $485 million borrowed from the bank).

  At the same time, the income statement reveals that Skydance suffered a $52.5 million operating loss in 2023, at least partially attributed to the Hollywood labor strikes. By contrast, the company reported $10.5 million in operating income in 2022. Its “adjusted EBITDA” for 2023 was only about $25 million, down from $126 million in 2022. Again, the strikes. Skydance expects to double its revenue and triple its adjusted earnings by 2026, the Journal reported. And revenue coming into the company was nearly $1 billion for both 2022 and 2023.

  Also interesting: I’d always considered Skydance the rare producer with success in the theatrical film space. That may be true, but the filing reveals how dependent the company is on the three major stand-alone streaming services. In 2023, Skydance received 43 percent of its revenue from Apple, 29 percent from Netflix, and 16 percent from Amazon, according to the filing. That leaves just 22 percent from other sources, including Paramount and its other distribution partners.

  Of course, none of this matters as long as Larry Ellison is willing to back Skydance with that nearly $200 billion fortune. But it does show just how much the Paramount sale is a case of a minnow swallowing a whale.

• Box office over/under: Hollywood punted on this weekend, fearing post-election riots. No riots, and nothing beyond an A24 horror movie (Heretic) and another Lionsgate oddity, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, neither of which I care enough about to bet on. Instead, let’s marvel at the initial $135 million tracking for Moana 2 over Thanksgiving, which could end up eclipsing the $155 million for Inside Out 2 over three days in June.

Not bad, actually. A rosy yet somewhat couched outlook, positioned generally and not about his own desperate company, yet aimed at frustrated investors looking for Zaslav to provide some answer for the declining financials of TV, and certainly short of the shameless butt-kissing on display by tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Marc Benioff. Still, it’s been clear since Zaslav openly begged for the opportunity to consolidate at Sun Valley in July that he and his C-suite colleagues were all quietly hoping for this electoral outcome. Biden’s Department of Justice and F.C.C. chairs have both made clear that they see big-media M&A as anticompetitive and harmful to consumers. Trump’s equivalents in his first term generally took the opposite position—notwithstanding the costly challenge to AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, which most believe was motivated by Trump’s hatred of CNN. Now, Trump 2.0 provides Hollywood a possible financial lifeline, even as many of the people who work in Hollywood hate him.

After all, we know from my report last Thursday on the Paramount sale process that Zaslav aggressively courted a merger of the two companies over many months. And today, after Zaz revealed yet another quarter of shrinking sales at Warner Discovery, he all but hung a hand-crocheted For Sale sign on the Friends couch. “You know, these are great companies,” he continued, “and if the best content is going to win, there needs to be some consolidation in order to have these businesses be stronger and have a better consumer experience.” Translation: Merge or die.

Sure, one could make the argument that WBD and its shareholder/engineer John Malone are potential acquirers of other entertainment companies. But far more likely, Zaslav and Malone are sellers, or mergers, or architects of a complicated transaction that would set the Max streamer, the Warner Bros. studio, and HBO on a new path with less dead weight from the dying cable TV networks—whatever that deal may be, if it exists at all. Maybe Comcast/NBCUniversal is the savior. Maybe Paramount’s cable albatrosses are combined with the Turner nets and NBCU’s E!, Bravo, USA, and Oxygen and floated away on the S.S. Andy Cohen, a separate garbage barge loaded with cash flow and debt. We all know the scenarios that have been suggested.

The point is that Trump 2.0 makes these scenarios more likely, which is good news if you care about a) David Zaslav’s salary and bonuses, which of course we all do, or b) the long-term viability of these entertainment companies, even if mergers almost always equal layoffs. The Warner Discovery stock shot up 12 percent today, a result of both stronger guidance in the direct-to-consumer business thanks to recent Max launches overseas, and the prospect that the crocheted For Sale sign will lead someone to consummate a transaction on that Friends couch.

Unless, of course, nothing changes, and Trump looks as skeptically at Hollywood as Hollywood has looked at him since he descended that tacky gold escalator back in 2015. Unlike in Trump’s first term, when Hollywood became ground zero for the #Resistance, it feels like the entertainment industry—at least the business side of it—is at least gonna try to make nice, which is both sad and a reality of doing business when the president has become so openly vindictive, transactional, and unchecked. Shari Redstone and David Ellison, for instance, shouldn’t have much trouble with the Paramount/Skydance transaction. Shari’s a Trump friend and has said nice things about him publicly, and Larry Ellison has been a Trumper, even if David popped up on the list of California’s 100 most active political donors this cycle, having given nearly $1 million to the Harris Victory Fund. (Incidentally, I never thought Jeff Zucker was seriously being considered to run CBS for Skydance, but the former CNN chief and Trump antagonist is definitely not getting that gig now.)

The TV station industry is even more excited about deregulation and the possible end of limits on station ownership in media markets. See if you can spot the Trump love language in this comment today from Perry Sook, C.E.O. of Nexstar: “We believe that there is value to be created for our shareholders through further consolidation, while driving true and new benefits to the American people who want and deserve fact-based, unbiased local news.” Translation: Let us buy up all the stations and their diverse news perspectives and we’ll program whatever singular message you want.

It’ll be interesting to see how Comcast and Disney handle Trump. Comcast’s NBCUniversal, home of NBC News, MSNBC, and Saturday Night Live, managed to avoid much regulatory harassment during Trump’s first term. But what if it goes after Warner Bros. Discovery or another big media asset? Might Trump direct his people to intervene or delay? Might the Roberts family order NBC News to stand down if it helps get a transformational deal done?

Disney is certainly on the enemies list thanks to its Florida fight, its ABC News unit, which Trump is suing, and its TV leader, Dana Walden, a close friend of Kamala Harris. Elon Musk, poised for vast power at Trump’s side, is certainly no fan of Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger, whom he told to “go fuck yourself” last year after Disney pulled advertising from Twitter/X. Might Iger reinstate ads on the increasingly toxic platform as a gesture of goodwill? And might Walden’s political baggage impact her chances of succeeding Iger as C.E.O.? I’d normally say no way, but who knows what kind of Trump culture war controversies will erupt for Disney in the next year or so. Remember, there will be no congressional check on Trump or his allies.

Scary, but the Democrats brought this on themselves. I’m no political analyst, so I’ll leave the campaign postmortem to my Puck colleagues. But it’s a stark wake-up call that the party of the entertainment industry misplayed its messaging so badly. Yes, those authentic podcast hosts and digital influencers are now far more important than contrived late night TV interviews and CNN. Political propaganda, misleading tweets, and TikTok vids travel a lot faster and with a greater penetration than a New York Times link. And, for the love of God, nobody in the real world cares who a Hollywood celebrity is voting for.

Correction: Bob Iger’s recent political donations were in his name only, not wife Willow Bay’s, as I mentioned Monday. Apologies.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or a viable path to 270? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.