What I’m Hearing: WBD Layoffs and a Billionaire Report Card

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing. It’s August, so I hope you’re reading this on a boat or a beach. If this was forwarded, click here to become a Puck member. We spend our Augusts on boats and beaches.

Last reminder: I’m doing a panel and reception with The Dropout’s Emmy-nominated star Amanda Seyfried, creator Liz Meriwether, and producer Rebecca Jarvis on Wednesday in NYC. The event is almost at capacity and only avaible to Puck members, so subscribe ASAP and email [email protected] for a shot at the guest list.

Discussed in this issue: David Zaslav, Janet Yang, Walter Hamada, David Ellison, Pam Abdy, Dan Friedkin, Will Smith, Mike Tyson, and John Lasseter’s publicist.

But first…

Who Won the Week: Janet Yang

The new Academy president was elevated by the board despite being an at-large governor, meaning she was never elected by her own producers’ branch. It’s the first time this has happened, and I’ve heard some grumbling about that issue among Academy traditionalists. But most just seem happy that new C.E.O. Bill Kramer has set an all-member input meeting for Sept. 17—something his predecessor, Dawn Hudson, was reluctant to do. It’s “an opportunity to join Academy leadership to discuss the future of our organization,” according to the invite. Given the sorry state of the Oscars...

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Zaslav’s Next Move: Here Come the Layoffs

The rolling reductions will begin with smaller groups between Monday and Labor Day, followed by a ramp-up in bloodletting in September and October.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Not a great week for the Hollywood rumor mill, right? I think the combination of industry-wide anxieties and some bad trade reporting led to a freak-out in advance of a pretty uneventful Warner Bros. Discovery reveal. No, HBO Max is not shuttering. Or pulling back from international. Or becoming a tile on Discovery+ (though I’m told one name being discussed for the planned combined streaming service is HBO Discovery). Someone actually came up to me at The Grill and asked which outlet I thought would pick up the sure-to-be-dumped Hacks. Really? An Emmy winner? I even heard from an otherwise rational person at Warners who believed the company was 100 percent selling DC, as if that made any sense.

In fact, as I noted in my Batgirl dispatch, the big surprise on Thursday was the increasingly grim financial situation of the combined company as a whole. A $2 billion decline in projected EBITDA for 2023, a worsening outlook for the linear networks, and, of course, that $50-something billion in crushing debt. All entertainment companies are in a weird place right now, caught between the cratering TV business and the Great Netflix Correction. But WBD, despite all its great assets, is in an especially weird place because of its financial situation. Meaning that while Peacock might be losing nearly a half a billion dollars a quarter for Comcast, and Disney’s direct-to-consumer division bled $887 million, those companies haven’t been bought and sold multiple times in the past decade...

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