Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, a little earlier tonight because I’m a man in my 40s going to a Taylor Swift concert. (Also I’m apparently the last person to realize that her opening act, 23-year-old pop singer Gracie Abrams, is J.J. Abrams’ daughter. Huh!)

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Let’s begin…

• A little more on Mayer/Staggs at Disney: Anyone who thinks that Disney’s Bob Iger enlisted former C.F.O. Tom Staggs to consult on ESPN as a do-nothing courtesy package deal with Staggs’ Candle Media partner and D-to-C expert Kevin Mayer might have done a double-take at the Beverly Hills Hotel this week. Staggs was spotted deep in conversation over lunch at the Polo Lounge with Disney general counsel Horacio Gutierrez, a key player in, yes, Disney’s ESPN strategy. (Staggs also is on the board of Spotify, where Gutierrez was G.C. before Disney.) Apparently this consultancy begins now.
• Big Ken-ergy in Hasbro’s eOne sale: It’s gotta sting Hasbro C.E.O. Chris Cocks that Mattel, his company’s archrival, will cross $1 billion in box office for Barbie the same week he offloads the failed $4 billion Hollywood play he inherited, eOne, to Lionsgate in a deal valued at just $500 million. (Hasbro keeps kiddie brands Peppa Pig and PJ Masks.) It’s especially embarrassing because Lionsgate only wants eOne to beef up its film and TV production unit, so someone will someday—someday??—buy that company.
• Brad enlists ScarJo lawyer in war of the rosé: Brad Pitt is switching up his legal team in the nasty litigation with his ex Angelina Jolie over their ownership of Chateau Miraval, the French purveyor of every Bravo Housewife’s favorite mid-tier rosé. (Eriq Gardner has a great breakdown of the dispute here.) According to a court filing this afternoon, Laura Brill of L.A.’s Kendall Brill & Kelly firm is out, and John Berlinski at Bird Mirella is in, joining a team at New York’s Wachtell Lipton. You might remember Berlinski as the fiery face of Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit against Disney regarding her Black Widow pay. That case settled quickly, but the Miraval matter—Pitt claims Jolie improperly sold her share of their winery to Russian oligarch Yuri Shefler—looks like it’s just heating up.
• More turnover at Imagine: The Jax Media executive exodus continues from Imagine Entertainment following Imagine taking 100 percent control of the production and physical production unit in December. Brooke Posch, president of Jax, quietly bailed a couple weeks ago, following previous presidents Tony Hernandez and Lilly Burns, who left in January. Imagine president Justin Wilkes has been squeezing the unit lately, which is funny considering that he was quick to brag in a trade interview last month about “Imagine’s 14 Emmy nominations,” even though the vast majority of those came from Jax physical production shows like Emily in Paris, A Black Lady Sketch Show, and The Other Two. I’ll do a deeper dive on Imagine soon, send me your tips.
• Box office over/under: Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem has a—checks notes—95 percent on RottenTomatoes?! It opened strong yesterday and should easily outgross the $35 million tracking for the 5-day, so I’ll take the over. Meg 2: The Trench, which I’m sure is the Godfather Part II of giant C.G.I. shark movies, is tracking to about $30 million. I’ll take the under, thanks to fanboys flocking to Oppenheimer and the few Meg fans with actual girlfriends being redirected to Barbie.

Yet the studio-streamer coalition executives—especially, I’m told, Sony Pictures C.E.O. Tony Vinciquerra and the team from Amazon Studios—pressed Lombardini to get back in a room. Vinciquerra, the only major studio leader without a streaming platform, has emerged as an unflashy communicator and a voice of de-escalation among the key AMPTP members. It’s been three months, the argument went. After all the pain inflicted on both sides, let’s just have an initial meeting to see if we are actually committed to working toward a middle ground. “Talks before talks” sounds like an absurdity out of Veep or The Office, but with the fall TV season vanishing and Summer ’24 movies sitting unfinished, the alternative is becoming more and more punishing.

So, after a bunch of back and forth, Lombardini deferred to her bosses, and on Tuesday she formally reached out to the WGA to set a meeting for Friday. Why the writers before the actors? First, the thinking went, the rhetoric from SAG-AFTRA and its president, Fran Drescher, had become soooo heated. And several key AMPTP members are said to believe that the writers’ demands are more workable. Remember, they’re not asking for a specific success metric in streaming, while the actors want 2 percent of all streaming hits. That difference may or may not matter, we’ll see. The WGA concerns about A.I., while serious, might be alleviated by codifying that every script must be authored by a person, requiring credit and payment to flow from there. And the thinking among some on the studio side is that a compromise can be achieved on the demands for minimum staffing and requiring writers on set, not to mention the compensation issues like minimum wages.

Still, both sides are understandably wary that any meeting-before-the-meeting could be used as ammo to declare the other side intransigent, making a bad situation even worse. That’s actually what happened in the 2007-08 writers strike: the studios agreed to a sit-down about a month into the work stoppage, but talks soon failed, the studios then called the guild unreasonable and “out of touch” (and vice versa), and the strike dragged on. Not great, and both sides want to avoid that.

Whatever. I get it. Some may think the WGA missive is a sign that Chris Keyser and the other hardliners are unwilling to give at all to make a deal. But I think the negotiators feel they need to put that tough messaging out there, lest their militant members think they’re going soft by re-engaging without full capitulation by the studios. And the AMPTP is trying to position itself as the sober adults willing to make a deal, if only this hysterical guild can just be reasonable. This stuff kinda doesn’t matter, honestly. It’s all a dance. The bottom line is that this meeting before the meeting doesn’t happen unless both sides believe a path exists for productive talks. Whether it leads to anything is anyone’s guess. But it’s clearly a hugely positive development.

Clarification: Alan Horn notes he didn’t kill Guillermo del Toro’s Haunted Mansion because the project never got to his desk at Disney.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or a favorite Era? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.