Can you hear it? That's the sound of two studio C-suite org charts jostling for position as Paramount and Warner Bros. merge early next week. David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz are set to greet the staffs, the press and unveil a vision for what the next gen Hollywood empire will prioritize first (along with those feared staff cuts). — Erik Hayden
Ticker: J.A. Bayona leads Jurassic sweepstakes; Chase Infiniti picks first film role after One Battle; Bradley Cooper takes an IP paycheck; Laurene Powell Jobs levels up Anonymous Content.
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After surviving the David Zaslav era at Warner Bros. Discovery and the rumor mill that seemed to be saying every other month "they're on their way out," Warner Bros. film co-chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy were ankled in a way that suggests the duo were blindsided by the incoming Skydance team. A three-byline THR report sets the scene:
Mike De Luca began hearing the rumor over a month ago: He and his Warner Bros. film co-head Pam Abdy were on the chopping block. The source of the rumor was not David Ellison, whom the duo had met months earlier and seemed to indicate they would stay on in a post-merger world. No, De Luca was hearing that this was coming from Josh Greenstein, co-chair of Paramount Pictures. De Luca, never one to sit on his hands, decided to go head on and called Greenstein: "Are you seriously saying this?"
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In Wednesday's early hours a corporate shake-up raised eyebrows: Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch abruptly left the magazine giant to run Mattel, the Barbie toy giant that also saw its top exec Ynon Kreiz depart for an unnamed role at another company. Alex Weprin soon put the pieces together and broke that Kreiz was heading to David Ellison's Skydance, where he'd be named co-CEO (in what appears as a similar role that Jeff Shell had occupied before his ouster). Weprin has more detail here on his five-year deal, including a $31.5 million signing bonus.
+ Mark Thompson seems safe at CNN for now, so too is James Gunn and Peter Safran at DC, while George Cheeks ascends in Ellison's TV land.
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Who'd have thought that Warner Bros.' final movie as a standalone studio before its takeover by Paramount would be an Alejandro G. Iñárritu comedy featuring an unrecognizable Tom Cruise — that also happens to be one of the most polarizing major studio titles in recent years. So far the intrigue doesn't seem to be helping the movie's box office prospects. "The film's initial production budget was $125 million but has been reported to have risen to closer to $180 million, although a Warner Bros. spokesperson disputes this figure," Ryan Gajewski reports. Can it survive at the box office?
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"It's open every time. He chooses not to have a home; we're just fine with that." — Donna Langley, on Universal courting Christopher Nolan's next project.
"It's not super intelligence. It's not sentient. That's just old bullshit." — Ben Affleck, who sold his AI VFX company to Netflix for $587 million.
"We're not growing as fast as I want us to." — Ted Sarandos, as rumors of potential cuts swirl at Netflix, which spends about $20 billion annually on content.
"The truth is, it's a very challenging daypart." — Dana Walden, in not a particularly encouraging remark on Jimmy Kimmel's Disney late-night future.
"We remain highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise." — Josh D’Amaro and Hugh Johnston, in a Disney shareholder letter in August, ahead of layoffs now underway.
"[Y]ou wrongly assume that Warner Bros. holds any rights whatsoever in a falling roses motif or in the words The Bachelor." — Fox News' attorneys, in a punch back at WB over a cease-and-desist it received over Chris Harrison's new Fox dating show.
Next Big Thing
20-year-old pro dancer Hailey Bills has already been eliminated from this DWTS season, but that hasn't diminished her star power. Just ask her one million followers.
Logline of the Week
[Future Housewives / Peacock]
"In the decadent asteroid colony of New Beverly Hills, wealthy socialites juggle bioengineered beauty regimens, ruthless rivalries and interplanetary scandals. But when a young, starry-eyed outsider unexpectedly upends their glamorous world, it exposes just how far they’ve drifted out of touch."
By the Numbers
(Most-read stories on THR.com this week)
1) "DWTS Caps Yacht Rock Night With a Shock Elimination"
2) "Tom Cruise's Digger Reviews Are Brutally Split"
3) "Jon Watts to Direct Next Star Wars Movie"
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Next week, Aaron Sorkin will see the theatrical release of The Social Reckoning, his long-awaited follow-up to The Social Network, as well as the start of the Broadway revival of A Few Good Men. The leadup is stressful, and not just because of the workload, the film premieres, the press frenzy, or, as Sorkin jokes to Caitlin Huston, "the potential for career immolation." The director's big bet.
+ Frances Haugen, whose memoir The Power of One was adapted into Social Reckoning, speaks with Seija Rankin about giving the rights to Sorkin and the one thing in the film that made her cringe.
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Since ditching high school, the 21-year-old Australian actor Joseph Zada hasn't stopped working. And this fall, he'll be pulling a double shift with two star-making turns — James Dean's old part in Netflix's East of Eden remake and Woody Harrelson's in The Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping. Benjamin Svetkey's profile.
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Ryan Murphy has a big overall deal with Disney's 20th TV and a long working relationship with FX. Is that enough to ensure a renewal for The Shards, a show that wasn't a ratings breakout? As Rick Porter notes, "Compounding the mystery is the fact that no one outside of Disney really knows how well The Shards performed for FX and Hulu. Linear ratings were small — an average of 237,000 viewers for initial airings on FX — but that's par for the course for a scripted cable series now." The report.
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A box office milestone: The operator of the Cranford Theater in New Jersey battled back from the pandemic and a ceiling collapse — and is now planning to mark the centennial. Doreen Sayegh, who owns the five-screen cinema, will mark the moment with a throwback screening of Padlocked, the silent film that opened the theater’s doors in 1926, with an accompanying organ player. Etan Vlessing's profile.
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Restaurateur Josh Loeb has turned Rustic Canyon into a beloved Santa Monica classic. Now, he’s turned to a similarly precarious second act: indie filmmaking, with his directorial debut, In Spite of Ourselves, debuting in limited release at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan and the Westside’s Landmark Nuart Theatre. Gary Baum's profile.
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Mike Faist, Zoe Kazan, Florence Pugh and Christopher Abbott premiered East of Eden in NYC. Josh Hartnett, Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Ismael Cruz Cordova brought Verity to NYC. Miles Teller, James Gray, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver kicked off New York Film Festival with Paper Tiger. Mubi hosted a NYC tastemaker event for Sandra Hüller’s performances in Rose and Fatherland, with support from Katie Couric and Tovah Feldshuh. Morgan Neville, Paul McCartney and Judd Apatow came together for a L.A. FYC screening of Man on the Run. Demi Moore and Ali Larter were honored at Step Up's Inspiration Awards in L.A. Catherine Hardwicke was honored during opening night of the Catalina Film Festival. All 59 photos from this week's events and premieres.
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One-liners from THR's team of critics
Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger is "dead and buried, or ought to be." In Michael Showalter's Verity, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, "truth is stupider than fiction in this literary misfire." Director-screenwriter Tony Gilroy's Pedro Pascal-starrer Behemoth! is "adagio when it needs to be agitato." Director-screenwriter Jeremy Garelick's Rolling Loud comedy, starring Owen Wilson, is "a bad idea, terribly executed." Paul Thomas Anderson's concert doc Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall is "beautifully done, though not for all tastes." Director Janus Metz's Unabomber thriller, toplined by Russell Crowe and Jacob Tremblay, is "a faint sketch of a killer as a young man." Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero is a "crackling kaiju epic every bit as exciting as its predecessor."
And finally:
A Hollywood Flashback...
20 years ago today, Friday Night Lights premieres on NBC — "The series, inspired by the captivating book by H.G. Bissinger, draws you in with its deceptively simple focus."
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