May 22, 2025

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, hope you’ve got big plans for the long weekend. I’ll be in St. Louis and Chicago on a baseball trip with my dad and kid. Send tips for restaurants that can span three generations. 👏👏 Great seeing everyone who came out to Hollywood on Tuesday for our Stories of the Season Emmys event. My colleagues Julia Alexander, Kim Masters, and Lauren Sherman all led great panels (Puck posted pics and videos here), and my chat with John Mulaney will be on The Town’s feed next week. Thanks to sponsors Max, Paramount+, Wondery, Amazon Prime Video, ILIA Beauty, and National Geographic. ➡️ Tonight, it’s the return of Hollywood’s high school report card, with my extremely non-scientific poll of what L.A. teens think of the summer movies. Plus, Zaslav gets downgraded, Cruise vs. the alien (not Xenu), and the biggest losers from the Biden cover-up book. Discussed in this issue: David Zaslav, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Bela Bajaria, Ari Emanuel, Larry David, Conan O’Brien, Florence Pugh, Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Tobey Maguire, Steven Spielberg, Michael Rapino, Zendaya, Benson Boone, Tom Holland, Egon Durban, Margot Robbie, Richard Weitz, George Clooney, Christian Muirhead, and… Hot Ones but with agents. Still not a Puck member? Just click here. Got a news tip or an idea for me? Just reply to this email or message me on Signal at 310-804-3198. Let’s begin…

Thursday Thoughts…

Zaslav shoots and scores… a downgrade: Maybe let’s make a rule that media C.E.O.s can’t sit courtside at NBA playoff games the same week their stocks are downgraded to junk status. That would have prevented David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery from taking his semi-usual spot (and getting Curb-memed) with Larry David at the Garden about 36 hours after S&P lowered the company’s rating to BB+. It’s not a total disaster—Moody’s and Fitch both still have Warner Discovery above the threshold for investment grade, and the stock barely moved from its already anemic $9 or so—but the outlook for linear TV revenue keeps getting scarier, even with all the debt reduction and supposed “momentum” in streaming. And Zaslav continues to publicly posture like a baller while his company plays like… well, like the Knicks in the fourth quarter last night.S&P isn’t a big fan of the potential WBD split, which Zaslav keeps teasing, into streaming and studios (good) and linear TV (bad). That would be a “credit negative,” it insisted. But Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall put out a report this week that, among other things, suggested a WBD split could be a “major upside event”—especially if the dozens of cable networks owned by Warners, Comcast’s Versant spinoff, AMC, and A+E Networks are all smashed together into one big CrapCo. that allows for some debt to be offloaded or brings new money into the overall ecosystem. “Combined, such a Mega Cable Co. could have more than $6 billion in EBITDA, cost synergies, and, if well capitalized, generate lots of free cash flow,” Cahall wrote. It doesn’t solve the problem of how the “good” company will function without all the revenue from the “bad” TV networks, but I guess that’s what bankers are for, and as Cahall wrote, the “devil’s in the details.”
All the president’s Hollywood enablers: I finally spent some time with Original Sin, the new Joe Biden “cover-up” book, and it’s hard to pick whom to feel most embarrassed for. Jeffrey Katzenberg, of course, whose participation in the collective obfuscation of Biden’s cognitive decline goes far further than all those breakfasts and fundraiser events he held with Hollywood people (myself included) insisting Biden was “fine” and his old age was “his superpower.” In addition to recruiting Spielberg to improve Biden’s visual optics (man, Steven hates press like this), we now know Jeffrey, as late as July 17, 2024, when most Democrats were urging Biden to step aside, was pitching the president on a “high risk, high reward” salvage strategy that “would get him out and about and vigorously answering questions.” Four days later, Biden dropped out.Honestly, George Clooney doesn’t look great either. Yes, his Times op-ed (along with Damon Lindelof’s urging) was influential in getting Dems to accept reality, but he and many other important Hollywood figures—the Pod Save America guys, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Jon Favreau, are singled out in the book—were alarmed by Biden’s condition far before they said much publicly. From the reporting by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Clooney and the CAA crew should have known better than to plan that infamous L.A. fundraiser that served as a wake-up call to so many. Amazingly, it’s Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel, so often a victim of foot-in-mouth disease, who comes out looking prescient. At his Aspen conference back in September 2023, Ari is quoted screaming at a panel featuring Biden advisor Ron Klain: “Joe Biden cannot run for reelection! He needs to drop out! He can’t win! What’s the plan B?” Emanuel then ghosted Katzenberg and the Biden campaign, and on the eve of the election, he was publicly supportive of Kamala but privately still complaining about Biden—and Katzenberg, of course. Ari and Jeffrey’s icy relationship has grown even colder since Election Day.
Speaking of Emanuel (and spicy wings)…: The newly re-privatized WME Group held its first company-wide retreat of the post-Ari-and-Patrick Whitesell era this week. The usual executive luminaries gave cheerleader-y talks in Palm Desert—Netflix’s Bela Bajaria interviewed by WME co-chair Richard Weitz; Live Nation’s Michael Rapino with WME Group president Mark Shapiro; an A.I. investor and the Silver Lake benefactor Egon Durban with WME co-chair Christian Muirhead—and there were the requisite backflips by client Benson Boone. But I was mostly interested in hearing about the live edition of Hot Ones with client Sean Evans. Agents Nancy Josephson, John Marx, and Henry Glascock took part in the truncated chicken-eating show, enduring five increasingly spicy wings. They all made it to the finish line (Josephson, who swapped in extra-spicy vegan wings, handed out emergency Tums to everyone beforehand), and I’m pleased to report there was sweating but no vomiting or medical attention required.
Box office over/under: What a weekend! Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is tracking for about $160 million over four days, and I’ll still take the over. And Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning is headed for around $80 million, though Paramount is lowballing a bit at $75 million, so let’s set the line at $77 million for the four-day, and I’ll take the over on that one, too.

Okay, now to me and the high schoolers…

Hollywood’s Report Card, According to High School Kids, Pt. 2

A reprisal of my conversation with a group of teen movie watchers about what they like, the stars they watch, and the franchises that move the needle.

Matthew Belloni

If you remember, last summer I got a group of high school students together to re-create one of my favorite media stunts from the early 2000s: the “summer movie posse.” That’s what L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein used to call his annual focus group. In those days, he’d show the season’s big movie trailers to a group of L.A.-area teens—I forget how he found them; I really hope it wasn’t in AOL chat rooms—and then use their feedback as an informal barometer of how the studios were appealing to that fickle demo. As a young reader, I always found the kids’ opinions on point. Emerging stars like Will Ferrell and Matt Damon meant way more to me than established players, like Robin Williams or Denzel Washington. And the studios always seemed a bit out of touch in their marketing to the under-25 quadrant. This survey, however informal and unscientific, publicly exposed that gap.

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Maybe because I’m old now, or maybe because movie marketing is remarkably different in the digital age, I was a bit surprised by the results when I conducted my own summer posse last year. These days, the older stars still resonate most with young people—Robert Downey Jr., Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise. And even as study after study tells us that kids care less and less about movies—and particularly movies in theaters—these high schoolers all said they love going to the cineplex, visit them at least once a month and usually more, and consider movies in theaters special and better than what they watch at home. Yes, they all live on the Westside of L.A., and many are at least tangentially related to people in the business, but still… Of course, today’s kids are also far savvier about those movies, and about being marketed to. There’s no need for me to show them trailers because they’ve already seen most of them, either in theaters or, more likely, on their TikTok, Snap, or other social feeds. But I learned a lot from last year’s group sit-down, so heading into what is likely gonna be a record Memorial Day weekend at the box office, I figured I’d order some Domino’s and revisit the same group—well, almost the same, a few kids couldn’t make it and were replaced—and update my questions to reflect the big narratives of this summer, as well as some of the movie stars that matter (and don’t matter) to them. So let’s go to Amelie, 15; Carter, 16; Eden, 16; Elise, 16; Sloane, 16; and Wyatt, 16. I edited our conversation for length and clarity.

The Marvel Question

Matt: Heading into summer, what are you guys particularly excited about? Elise: I Know What You Did Last Summer. It was the first horror movie I ever watched with my mom, and I’m really excited for the revival. Does Jennifer Love Hewitt mean anything to you? Elise: Not really. But the new stars are Madelyn Cline [from Netflix’s Outer Banks] and Lola Tung [from Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty], and all of them mean something to me. So you’re most into the horror stuff this summer? We just had Final Destination: Bloodlines, there’s the zombie sequel 28 Years Later, another Conjuring over Labor Day. Megan 2. More… Carter: I’ll watch them. Wyatt: 28 Years Later. I’ve seen the originals. They were pretty cool. Mission: Impossible is this weekend. Is Tom Cruise in this role a meaningful draw to see it in the theater? Carter: Yeah. I watched Dead Reckoning Part One and I left pretty excited to see Part Two. Wyatt: I loved the sixth one, Fallout. That was like one of my favorite movies. It’s so great. The ladies are shaking their heads. Eden: A big name, but he’s not that influential. Sloane: He’s just kind of reheating nachos. (Laughter.) He’s just taking his old stuff and remaking it to do another Mission: Impossible. I know Top Gun did really well, but like, “Let’s make another Top Gun.” And yes, he’s been in other stuff, but that’s pretty much all he’s known for now. How do you discover trailers typically? Carter: At the theater. Amelie: TikTok. Sloane: I feel like the main movie content on TikTok is edits of movies that are already out, or no longer in theaters, so it only influences you to see stuff that’s already been out for a while. Amelie: I only see trailers for [upcoming movies] online. Like streaming [sites] where I don’t have premium subscriptions, so I can’t skip the ads. I keep seeing the How to Train Your Dragon videos on my For You page, like every 10 videos. Does that make you more or less likely to see that movie? Amelie: Honestly, more likely, because it just gets imprinted in my head. I can tell it’s marketing but I don’t really care. Where are we with Marvel these days? Carter: I don’t think I’ve seen a Marvel movie in theaters since like, the second Doctor Strange. Wyatt: I would see Thunderbolts. That’s the first Marvel movie that I’ve been interested in. Elise: I still see them all. I saw Thunderbolts the day it came out with my dad. We’re gonna see Fantastic Four. It’s more cool [than last year]. It’s picking up steam. We’re headed toward an Avengers movie with Robert Downey Jr. coming back. And all the characters coming back together. They’re trying to do quality over quantity now, and I think we’re headed in the right direction. That’s interesting. “Quality over quantity” is the Disney messaging, and it sounds like that messaging has reached you. Elise: Yeah. Well, they’re putting out fewer TV shows, which I think is a good idea. Eden: I don’t watch a lot of Marvel, but I agree it’s better that they’re making [fewer] higher-quality things. Sloane: If you don’t watch the most recent movie or two that came out, you feel like you’re behind, and you have to watch those before you see the new one in theaters. Amelie: I just saw Thunderbolts and I had no clue what was happening at all. What’s the Julia Dreyfus character? Who’s the guy from The Avengers who was helping the Thunderbolts? I didn’t get why that was important because I didn’t watch any of the recent movies. Sloane: That’s how I feel about Star Wars. They’re weird and out of order or something. It’s hard to get into the realm. Elise: I was most excited for Thunderbolts, but that’s just because I really like Florence Pugh’s character. But I’m more excited for Fantastic Four than I was for the new Captain America that came out in February. Same question with DC movies. How are we feeling? You’re all shaking your heads. Wyatt: I’ve never had any motivation to watch any DC. The Christopher Nolan [Batman movies] were like the peak of it for me. Then nothing else. Carter: I liked Joker 2. (Laughter.) Like the whole thing with the music, everyone said that made it bad. But it showed what Arthur Fleck was feeling in that moment. How about the Superman movie? DC has a lot riding on that, and people in Hollywood are curious whether young people will care about this character. Wyatt: I went to the theater to see the Minecraft movie and the Superman trailer was like seven minutes long. Too long, it didn’t work. Eden: I was fully interested in the trailer. It looked really good to me. And I think that it’s good that they’re making one high-quality movie a year instead of pumping out a bunch of stuff like what Marvel does. Elise: But what happened to that Flash movie that incorporated everyone in DC? It just flopped so bad that they were like, “We’re scrapping it all”? Basically. So, are you guys more or less interested in DC now than you were a year ago? Wyatt: Indifferent. The Superman movie, I guess it makes it a little bit more interesting. But not interesting enough for me to probably go watch it. Various: Yeah/Yes.

Live Action vs. Animation

This summer there are a couple of live-action remakes of animated films, Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon. How do you feel about that genre? Carter: I think it’s lazy. Eden: It’s a cash grab. But what I will say about Lilo & Stitch is that Stitch is CGI, and I think that’s interesting. But they’re not coming up with anything new. Sloane: I agree. I feel like the animated versions are something I watched when I was younger, and I’ve kind of grown out of that. Not that I don’t go back and watch them, but it just feels like I [should be watching] higher-quality movies. Wyatt: It feels kinda unnecessary, like something that at most I would watch at my house but never in theaters. Like with Snow White. I had no desire to watch that at all. But maybe if it was on in my house, I’d watch it there.

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They’re doing a live-action Moana. Eden: That’s just stupid. They just came out with the second [animated] one. Which I also heard was awful. Have the reasons you want to go to movies in theaters changed at all? Wyatt: Action. Like an Imax sequence. Eden: Also horror. Me and Elise watch a lot of horror together, and when we watch it at one of our houses, it’s like, “Oh, it’s cool, like whatever.” But in the theater it’s so much more interesting and captivating. Sloane: I love 3D. Elise: If there’s hype around a movie, you’re more likely to see it in theaters because you don’t want it spoiled, or you want the vibe of a theater. Like the Minecraft movie. Everyone wanted to see it in the theater because there was such hype and an atmosphere in the theaters. I don’t think there’s been something like that since the last Spider-Man movie. When everyone was suspecting that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would come back, they all went to theaters because they wanted to see that in person. What is your impression of Pixar right now? They’ve got a movie this summer called Elio. Amelie: It looks good. Eden: I like that they’re not being lazy and like, doing [sequels]… Well, they did an Inside Out sequel last summer. They’re doing another Toy Story. Eden: But [Inside Out 2] was pretty good. And they didn’t do it immediately after the first one… Amelie: Yeah, Inside Out 2 is really good because the character grew up with its audience, whereas the live-action [remakes] are the same content. It’s not appealing in a new and different way. They’re just nostalgic.

The New Star Stock Market

There was just a study published on the stars that are meaningful for Gen Z audiences to get them to go to theaters. Can you guess who Gen Z named as the number one star? All at once: Pedro Pascal. Zendaya. Timothée Chalamet. Tom Holland. None of these people. All at once: Glen Powell. Austin Butler. Sydney Sweeney. Leonardo DiCaprio. Tom Cruise. Ben Affleck. It’s The Rock. (Laughter.) Elise: That list isn’t accurate. Wyatt: I don’t think I’ve seen a movie with The Rock in it in over a year. Eden: The last movie I saw with The Rock in it was Jumanji. Only a few stars under 40 were in the top 25 for Gen Z. Number seven, the top-rated star under 40, was Zendaya. Amelie/Sloane/Elise/Eden: Love her. Yes. She’s great. Carter: I’ve only seen her in Spider-Man. Sloane: And The Greatest Showman. At number 13, Tom Holland. Elise: I feel like he’s just attached to Zendaya. He’s only Spider-Man and then what else meaningful? Carter: Uncharted. Elise: Uncharted was terrible! Eden: I don’t really remember anything else besides the lip sync battle where he cross-dressed. Number 17 is Chalamet. Carter: He was really good in A Complete Unknown. Wyatt: He was great in Dune and stuff like that. He’s a good actor. He’s cool. Amelie: I think he should be higher on the list. Someone lied. I’m a fan. Then number 18 is Margot Robbie. Eden: That makes sense. Elise: I don’t think she has the appeal among women to draw them to the theater. It’s not that they don’t like her, I just think she’s not like Zendaya or like Timothée Chalamet, where you’ll watch a movie just because she’s in it. Amelie: But what about Barbie? Barbie wouldn’t be the same without her. Elise: No, but you’re watching Barbie because it’s Barbie. You’re not watching it for Margot Robbie. I feel like the majority of Gen Z people watching A Complete Unknown are not going because it’s Bob Dylan, they’re going because Timothée Chalamet is playing Bob Dylan. Carter: I went because of Bob Dylan. (Laughter.)

Streaming, More or Less

What do you think about the movies you see on Netflix versus those you see in theaters? Amelie: The acting is just not that good. It’s like, how did they make this? What was it? You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah? How is this a movie? Eden: I just think that most of them are bad quality and the acting is bad. Netflix original TV is good sometimes. Wyatt: I think Prime [Video] TV is really good. Fallout and The Boys. Eden: Hulu TV is great. Sloane: I just think more thought goes into the TV shows. Wyatt: Yeah, like all the most recent stuff. Like Severance and The Last of Us. Do you have any feelings toward the F1 movie? Carter: I will watch it because Brad Pitt is in it. I really like Brad Pitt. Wyatt: I just think it looks like a cool movie. Eden: I have a lot of female friends that are into F1, but I am not one of them. How about Ballerina? That’s the John Wick spinoff with Ana de Armas. It’s coming out in like two weeks. All at once: What is that? Never heard of it. What? You guys say you don’t really watch YouTube, which is surprising, given the viewership numbers in your demo. What are you watching on streaming? Carter: I’m watching Conan O’Brien Must Go on Max. Wyatt: Oh yeah. That’s really funny. Carter: I love Conan O’Brien. Conan’s 62 years old. Carter: Yeah. But I’m so happy he hosted the Oscars this year and he’s going to do it next year too. Do you find yourselves watching more or fewer movies now than you did a couple years ago? Elise: More movies. Carter: Yeah, probably more. Elise: I just feel like there’s a lot more accessibility to good movies and there’s a lot more stuff. I think also a couple years ago was like, coming out of Covid, everyone was still a little bit scared. Like, now people are unfazed. They’re more willing to go into more public places. And also, studios are trying a lot harder to get you to go to their movies and theaters. A lot harder.

See you Monday, Matt Got a question, comment, complaint, or advice for Tom Cruise on how to properly eat popcorn? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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