Mar 12, 2026

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, hope everyone’s having a nice Oscar week—especially CAA’s Bryan Lourd, who finally agreed to abandon his Saturday night party. For the past few years it’s been siphoning off A-list guests and draining the juice from the traditional Night Before fundraiser for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, which raises millions for Hollywood people in need.

I’ve been shaming Lourd about this for a while now, but I think the more effective play was MPTF chief Bob Beitcher and board chairs Kevin McCormick and Emma Thomas naming Warner Bros.’ Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy as “event chairs.” De Luca, of course, is a longtime friend and quasi-client of Lourd’s, and this year, with Warners and its 30 nominations becoming the toast of the Oscars, Lourd wasn’t likely to go up against the executive he both looks after and sells projects to. Now all that’s left is someone convincing David Zaslav to donate some of his coming $800 million Warner Discovery sale windfall to the MPTF.

Tonight, let’s take a well-deserved break from merger-mania anxiety and have some fun with the Oscars—this is Hollywood, we’re supposed to be having fun, right? Right? Starting with…

Oscars ratings contest!: Here we go again. Send me your best guess for the final viewership number on ABC and Hulu, per Nielsen. (Hint: Last year’s number was 19.7 million.) Closest without going over wins a status-defining Puck hat or tote bag. Good luck!

Mentioned in this issue: David Zaslav, Timothée Chalamet, Josh D’Amaro, Sara Murphy, Amy Madigan, Hylda Queally, Paul Roeder, Matthew Greenfield, David Ellison, Bob Iger, Ari Emanuel, Mike De Luca, Leo DiCaprio, Patti Felker, Rose Byrne, Jafar Panahi, J.Lo, Bari Weiss, Sydney Sweeney, Karla Sofía Gascon, Bryan Lourd, Sarah Aubrey, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Kives, Jacob Elordi, Wunmi Mosaku, Jessie Buckley, Renate Reinsve, Colleen Hoover, Fred Toczek, Diane Warren, Michael B. Jordan, Dwayne Johnson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Chloé Zhao, Delroy Lindo, John Davidson, Harvey Weinstein, Ike Barinholtz, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, and… Tobey Maguire.

Not a Puck member yet? Just click here. Got a news tip or an idea for me? Just reply to this email, text me, or message me on Signal at 310-804-3198.

Let’s begin…

Mickey’s new mouthpiece: Congrats to new Disney chief spokesperson Paul Roeder, whose immediate reward for getting the big promotion will be to shield incoming C.E.O. Josh D’Amaro from the throng of shameless butt-kissers at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday. It’s not the first Oscars for D’Amaro—until 2029, the show airs on ABC/Hulu, so Disney sends a bunch of execs, including one in charge of the emergency “red phone”—though its usual Searchlight powerhouse was entirely shut out this year. (Matthew Greenfield, the head of Searchlight, is attending anyway). And no, Bob Iger will not be there.

Neither will David Ellison, the media consolidator who, if you haven’t heard, loves movies. Paramount has zero nominations, and I’m guessing Ellison is not particularly excited by the prospect of all those butt-kissers jockeying for face time with him alongside the three-spritzers-deep Ruffalo types accosting him over Bari Weiss and the whole media consolidation thing.
Speaking of the Oscars…: Data on consumption of this year’s best picture nominees is… not great. The 10 films generated 48 million tickets sold in the U.S., according to Entelligence, which is down from 65 million tickets last year (Wicked and Dune: Part Two helped a lot). Worse, just three movies (F1, Sinners, and Marty Supreme) accounted for 82 percent of domestic attendance, leaving the remaining 18 percent to be split among seven films. (That includes the two Netflix titles.) Politically, the audience for these 10 movies was 70 percent blue and 30 percent red, per the same Entelligence data, more blue than last year.
More: Over on streaming, six of the 10 nominees have been available long enough for Nielsen to compare their performance in minutes viewed over their first 30 days. Here’s the ranking:

Frankenstein (Netflix): 3.15 billion
Sinners (HBO Max): 1.67 billion
One Battle After Another (HBO Max): 1.36 billion
Bugonia (Peacock): 561 million
F1 (AppleTV): 543 million
Train Dreams (Netflix): 513 million

Predictably, Sinners, which first hit streaming last summer, got the biggest boost from the nominations in January, popping 150 percent compared to the week prior. Also notable that F1, the biggest global box office hit of the 10 films, didn’t actually do that great on Apple TV, though that platform is much smaller than Netflix or HBO Max.

Still more: Streamers and indie distributors now account for nearly half of Oscar nominations across the eight major categories, per Gracenote. Since 2016, films released by Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and MUBI have earned 41 major noms—about 25 percent of the total. Indies represented another 22 percent, bringing the combined share to roughly 47 percent of major noms. Still, Apple remains the only streaming-first company to actually win best picture, and that was for CODA during the Covid-addled 2022 race. The streak of dominance for theatrical distributors will almost certainly continue this Sunday.
Lourd can’t stand the (Ari) heat: Yes, it’s warm out, but I’m guessing Bryan Lourd moved to an inside table at the Polo Lounge yesterday for another reason. The CAA leader was meeting HBO Max’s Sarah Aubrey for lunch, and they were seated right near a booth containing producer Brian Grazer, investor Michael Kives, and… Ari Emanuel. Lourd and Ari have been publicly feuding (and stealing each other’s clients) for decades now. According to two eyewitnesses, Lourd said a quick hello to Grazer and Kives, did not acknowledge Emanuel, then sat down… and quickly got up with Aubrey and went to a corner table inside. Awkward for Aubrey, I imagine, because she used to work for Pete Berg, one of the Ari inner circle clients, and they remain friends. But I’m blaming the Polo Lounge maître d’ for this one. If you’re gonna charge $46 for the McCarthy salad, you can’t seat Bryan remotely near Ari.
Speaking of agent dick-measuring…: Because the only thing that matters more than the art of motion pictures is which talent agency scored the most Oscar nominations, here’s how clients of the Big Three fared across the eight acting, directing, producing, and writing categories…

CAA: 27
WME: 19
UTA: 6

Shout-out to Gersh for two big acting noms (Jacob Elordi, Wunmi Mosaku), and IAG (Delroy Lindo) and Paradigm (Amy Madigan) for one. But those entire agencies can’t match CAA’s Hylda Queally, who alone reps three acting nominees (Jessie Buckley, Rose Byrne, and Renate Reinsve).

A top law firm split: Speaking of reps, the venerable Felker Toczek entertainment law firm is no more. Patti Felker, Dave Ryan, J.R. McGinnis, Jordan Rojas, and Star Tyner are going one way, and Fred Toczek and Eric Suddleson are going another with a few associates. Amicable, no hard feelings, yada yada…
Box office over/under: Universal’s Colleen Hoover pic Reminders of Him is tracking for about $14 million, per NRG. Reviews are bad, so I’ll take the under.

Now, without further delay…

The 2026 Awards Season Awards!

From Chalamet’s self-immolation and Hamnet’s self-inflation to Sydney Sweeney’s seriously bad timing, this awards season—with months of shilling and striving and butt-kissing—concludes with my own annual awards season accolades.

Matthew Belloni

I only brought one tradition to Puck from my old job running Hollywood Reporter: the Awards Season Awards, honoring the highs and (mostly) lows of the campaign trail. Some great movies this season, but not a ton of offscreen drama until the final few days, when best picture and the actor races really heated up. And unfortunately, the year’s only quasi-scandal—Timothée Chalamet kinda saying no one cares about ballet and opera—happened as voting closed.

So, set aside your fears of a drone strike on Sunday, throw on your formalwear, put that Diane Warren song on repeat, and enjoy my honors for the most cynical marketing campaigns, the cringiest moments, and the most ridiculous people of this awards season…

Best F.Y.C. Billboard
Winner: Neon, for “F Your Consideration,” which appeared on La Brea in L.A. after No Other Choice, its festival favorite, received zero Oscar nominations.

The Prince Andrew Decline of the British Empire Award
Winner: The BBC, for somehow overlooking an audience member with Tourette’s hurling the N-word at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo during the BAFTAs and failing to bleep the moment on the tape-delayed broadcast.

Fun fact: I Swear, the acclaimed movie about that audience member, Tourette’s activist John Davidson, will be released in the U.S. in April and will be Oscar-eligible next year. So get ready for more debates over whether Davidson should be invited to awards events.

Chillest Contender
Winner: Chloé Zhao, who led her Hamnet audiences in group meditation sessions before screenings in Telluride, Toronto, and elsewhere.

Outstanding Achievement in Trolling
Winner: The Los Angeles Music Center, which is offering a 20 percent discount to upcoming ballet performances if ticket buyers use the code CHALAMET.

Runner-up: Jeopardy!, which shared an Instagram clip of contestants successfully answering “Ballet & Opera” questions with the caption “NOBODY @ HIM 👀” and Timmy’s name.

Honorable mention: Ike Barinholtz, who presented at the Producers Guild Awards and read a children’s book called The Very Hungry Manager about talent reps that masquerade as producers.

One-Third of a Lifetime Achievement Award
Winner: Timothée Chalamet, 30, who staged a “career retrospective” of his movies with big-name directors and the American Cinematheque as a campaign stunt to assuage concerns that he hasn’t “earned” an Oscar.

Worst Campaign Performance by a Wannabe Contender
Winner: Dwayne Johnson, for crying and declaring he’d been pigeonholed his entire career at the Venice premiere of The Smashing Machine.

Runner-up: Sydney Sweeney, for launching her ridiculous “Good Jeans” ad campaign right before asking awards voters to take her seriously in Christy.

Biggest Sucker
Winner: Ben Shapiro, the only nominee for the Golden Globes’ inaugural “best podcast” cash-grab category to actually fall for the Penske Media sales pitch and buy F.Y.C. ads for himself. (He lost.)

Most Surprising Shred of Integrity
Winner: Joe Rogan, who refused to submit The Joe Rogan Experience for the best podcast Globe over the $500 submission fee. “You can’t tell me I didn’t win,” he added. “I’ve been No. 1 for six years in a row.”

Bravest Air Soldier
Winner: Terry Dillard, pilot of the Marty Supreme blimp, who flew cross-country in a heroic act of social media promotion.

Starriest Screenings
Winner: Hamnet, whose campaign hit all possible Academy demos by orchestrating Q&As with everyone from Denis Villeneuve to Barry Jenkins to Finneas to Bong Joon Ho to James Cameron to Regina King to Seth Rogen.

Best Use of Private Jet
Winner: Leo DiCaprio, who presented to One Battle director Paul Thomas Anderson at the DGA Awards at around 8 p.m. and still made it to see Ice Cube perform at a Super Bowl party in San Francisco later that night with bud Tobey Maguire.

Most Generous Act of Charity
Winner: Sara Murphy, the One Battle producer, who thanked David Zaslav from the stage at the Globes.

Least Effective Hail Mary
Winner: Searchlight. Fearing little traction for its awards hopefuls Rental Family, Is This Thing On?, and The Roses, Disney’s typically savvy specialty division picked up Amanda Seyfried’s The Testament of Ann Lee after its Venice debut—only to get shut out on Oscar noms for that movie, too.

The “We’re Good, Thanks” Award
Winner: Harvey Weinstein, who endorsed both Sinners and One Battle in a recent prison interview, reminding everyone he’s worked with both filmmakers.

Runner-up: Karla Sofía Gascon, the Emilia Pérez star/sender of bad tweets, who weighed in with a cheeky response to the Chalamet ballet/opera uproar: “Best of luck with the awards.”

Most Hyperbolic F.Y.C. Ad
Winner: Focus Features, for including a quote from a blog called The Rolling Tape anointing Hamnet “not just the Best Picture of the Year” but “the GREATEST FILM EVER MADE.” Worse, the blog didn’t actually say that.

Worst SponCon
Winner: Golden Globes, for the incredibly cringey promo stunt for CBS’s UFC deal where a couple of fighters walked onstage as quasi-bodyguards and then… walked awkwardly offstage.

Runner-up: Also the Golden Globes, for incorporating Polymarket gambling—sorry, prediction market—odds into the broadcast right before winners were announced.

Sorest Winner
Winner: Mike De Luca, the Warner Bros. film co-chief, who as recently as last week posted an article on his Instagram complaining about the Variety coverage of Sinners when it came out last April. Mike, you already won!

Least Value Meal
Winner: The Critics Choice Awards, which charges up to $38,000 per table and serves food so terrible and cheap that pictures of it consistently go viral.

Best of a Bad Situation
To anoint the least terrible food served at an awards show, I asked the Times’s awards writer Kyle Buchanan: “If awards-show meals were awards-season contenders, the Golden Globes’ sushi platter would basically be Jessie Buckley: so far out in front it’s almost unfair. No other dinner was all that memorable, though at least the PGAs didn’t serve untouched chicken pot pies again.”

Worst Afterparty Plans
Winner: Jafar Panahi, a double nominee for It Was Just an Accident, who says he will return to his native (and now at war) Iran to serve the jail sentence he received while out campaigning.

Least Subliminal Messaging in a Phase 2 Campaign Slogan
Winner: Hamnet, for “Our Stories Live Forever.”
What the studio meant: “This movie is about Shakespeare, got it? How can you not vote for a movie about Shakespeare?”

Runner-up: Sinners, for “Feel It in Your Soul.”
What the studio meant: “Remember that very cool sequence with the history of Black music? Even if you don’t love vampire gore, how can you not vote for a movie with that sequence?

Biggest Flex
Winner: Tom Cruise, who accepted his honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards by asking everyone who had worked with him to stand up for applause—a lot of people stood… and by acknowledging them, he eliminated the need to thank anyone individually.

In Absentia Award
Winner: Sean Penn, who showed up to the Globes, where he lost, and then ghosted the BAFTAs and Actor Awards, where he won. Oscars?

In Memoriams…
The Smashing Machine, Kiss of the Spider-Woman (the second year in a row where J.Lo campaigned for a movie that had no shot), Christy, Is This Thing On?, Jay Kelly, A House of Dynamite…

Biggest Loser
Winner (?): The Honor System. One after another in the anonymous ballots published this week, Academy members continued to admit that they vote despite not having seen many of the movies and despite a new box that must be checked attesting that they have.

Who Won the Season (It’s a Tie)
Mike and Pam
Ballet and/or Opera
Blimps
Rose Byrne’s husband’s bearded dragon
ICE Out pins
“Schwap!”

See you Monday,
Matt

Correction: André 3000 is not a Wasserman/The Team client, as was mentioned by Dave on Monday. Apologies.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or odds of Conan making an Irish vampire joke? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

Puck founding partner Matt Belloni takes you inside the business of Hollywood, using exclusive reporting and insight to explain the backstories on everything from Marvel movies to the streaming wars.

Ace media reporter Dylan Byers brings readers into the C-suite as he chronicles the biggest stories in the industry: the future of cable news in the streaming era, the transformation of legacy publishers, the tech giants remaking the market, and all the egos involved.

The CNN Dowry

DYLAN BYERS

A White House WAG Mystery

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL

Wall Street’s Oil Crisis

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006

SEE THE ARCHIVES