Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, and happy spring from Los Angeles, where it’s been summer for a month.

Tonight, it’s a shorter odds and ends issue, touching everything from the Bachelorette scandal to KPop Demon Hunters to Project Hail Mary and more. Plus, Kim Masters offers a provocative idea for the Sony studio.

Programming note: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I ranked the top butts-in-seats movie stars, director Paul Feig explained how he used test screenings on The Housemaid, and CNBC’s Alex Sherman predicted sports fees will hobble entertainment spending. Subscribe here and here.

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Mentioned in this issue: Josh D’Amaro, Dana Walden, Phil Lord, Courtenay Valenti, Ravi Ahuja, Taylor Frankie Paul, Tom Rothman, Mike De Luca, Aditya Sood, Peter Supino, Larry Ellison, Andy Weir, Peter Rice, Chris Miller, Lorne Michaels, Kathy Kennedy, Amy Pascal, Ari Emanuel, Debra OConnell, Sam Raimi, Streeter Seidell, Bob Chapek, Bob Iger, Michael Rapino, James Longman, Michael Peña, Rachel Lindsay, Erik Kenward, Pam Abdy, Caroline Maroney, Ryan Gosling, Rob Mills, and… Club Chalamet.

But first…

After a $141 million global opening, biggest for a non-franchise since Oppenheimer, let’s rank the flexes:

5. Ryan Gosling, who, after more than two decades of stardom, finally shakes his can’t-open-a-movie rep.

4. Courtenay Valenti, the Amazon MGM film chief, who inherited the project when she arrived in 2023 but greenlit it with a nearly $200 million budget, oversaw production, and positioned it as the big swing on her 2026 slate. (A shadow flex from Warner Bros.’ Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who bought the project and attached Gosling and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller back in 2020—before the book was even published—when they were running the MGM studio).

3. Aditya Sood, who runs Lord and Miller’s company and now has producing credits on both hit Andy Weir adaptations, PHM and The Martian.

2. Amy Pascal, who produced from the beginning and whose success here for Amazon will likely afford her and David Heyman extra leeway with Bond.

1. Lord and Miller, the comedy and animation veterans, who can now add “sci-fi blockbuster filmmakers” to their résumés (and quotes). Huge flex.

Honorable mention: This movie probably doesn’t happen without Kathy Kennedy, the former Lucasfilm chief, who fired Lord and Miller during production of 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story for daring to inject some humor into the material. So instead of solidifying a relationship with Disney and making a decade’s worth of blockbusters together, à la Jon Favreau, Kennedy enrages the duo and they instead peel off The Mitchells vs. The Machines and the Spider-Verse movies for Sony, and now Project Hail Mary for Amazon. Lord and Miller are said to have a good TV relationship at Disney and have even pitched an FX project recently, but they haven’t worked for Disney on the film side since. Not a coincidence.

Speaking of Disney…: One producer noted this weekend that PHM may be the most appealing live-action Disney movie of the past decade. Ooof. What was the last big non-franchise swing Disney took in live action? Probably Free Guy, in 2021, but that was inherited from Fox. A Wrinkle in Time in 2018? The BFG in 2016? I know… the franchise stuff works, as evidenced by the Moana trailer that dropped today and likely generated a zillion views. But new Disney C.E.O. Josh D’Amaro is probably doing the math on all the Rocky alien plushies he could’ve sold in Tomorrowland. At some point he might ask why, instead of pursuing new live-action franchises, Disney is pumping out Alien 10 and Tron: Whatever?

4.9 million
New subscribers to Peacock in the so-named “Legendary February,” thanks to the Super Bowl, Olympics, and NBA All-Star Game. That’s the biggest monthly number ever for a single premium service and 34 percent of total premium streaming signups for the month. [Antenna]

4,615,722
Miles flown on the company jet by Bob Iger during his decades at Disney. That’s 9,453 hours and 41 countries. [Willow Bay’s Instagram]

9 percent
Increase in U.S. vinyl record sales in 2025, surpassing $1 billion for the first time since 1983. [RIAA]

62 percent
Occupancy rate for L.A. soundstages in the first half of 2025, down from 90 percent in 2022. [FilmLA/Bloomberg]

226,000
Viewers of the first Saturday Night Live UK on Sky, a solid number for the pay TV service. [Source]

More: No, Lorne didn’t attend the first show—he didn’t want to overshadow lead executive producer James Longman, I’m told—but Michaels sent along his SNL producers Erin David, Erik Kenward, Caroline Maroney, and Tom Broecker, as well as head writer Streeter Seidell.

“I think it’s over. The name ‘Bachelorette,’ ‘Bachelor’ is tainted at this point. How do you move forward past that? You can’t.”
—Rachel Lindsay, the former Bachelorette star and current podcast host, on ABC’s handling of the domestic violence scandal involving Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul that killed the already-shot season of the show.

More: Everyone seems fixated on who, if anyone, is getting fired over this debacle. I’m told that’s not happening. Rob Mills, head of unscripted programming, booked Paul and vouched for her up until that video dropped on TMZ, but the newly promoted Disney content chief Dana Walden and TV head Debra OConnell also signed off. Walden and her team have really been leaning on the company’s I.P. lately, ordering offshoots of everything from The Handmaid’s Tale (The Testaments) to Family Guy (Stewie) to yet more 911. The prospect of leveraging Hulu’s biggest reality hit to prop up a fading franchise must have been irresistible.

Until it wasn’t. Still, the more interesting question is whether this embarrassing scandal impacts new C.E.O. Josh D’Amaro’s tolerance for ABC and its general-interest content at all. The recently unveiled (and extremely confusing!) TV-side reorganization under OConnell suggests a stay-the-course approach to programming and platforms. But at some point, D’Amaro will need to address the question Bob Iger considered back in 2023 and ultimately punted on: Should Disney even own ABC and its cable networks, or are they, as Iger suggested, “non-core”? Plenty in the investment community believe they’re an albatross, and they come with big P.R. headaches in the news— and, occasionally, unscripted—divisions. For D’Amaro, who just sent a big companywide memo preaching the Disney brand and its “unique” place in the culture, a domestic violence scandal during his first week on the job might be enough to question whether the whole ABC enterprise is worth the brand risk.

Now Kim’s got a provocative idea…

Tom Rothman has survived literal years of speculation that he’s on his way out as head of the Sony film studio. It was sweet satisfaction to him last May, when he signed what was described as a new “multiyear” contract, and this year, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Jumanji 3, and the already-released GOAT ($175 million worldwide), Sony should recover nicely from a dreary 2025.

But lately chatter about a search for a successor for the 71-year-old exec has again been pingponging around Hollywood, to the point that I raised the question with Sony Pictures C.E.O. Ravi Ahuja. “I’m not talking to anyone,” he told me. “Absolutely not. I have full faith in Tom and I'm not talking to anyone at all and have no intention to.”

But what if Ahuja doesn’t need to talk to anybody? Because a name that keeps coming up in this chatter is Peter Rice, the former president of 21st Century Fox, who ran Disney’s TV unit until then-C.E.O. Bob Chapek rudely dismissed him in 2022. Since then, Rice has been producing, with recent credits on 28 Years Later and Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming The Social Reckoning. He’s also managing the Olympics and Paralympics opening ceremonies for LA28.

Rice has told all and sundry that he’s very much enjoying his new life. And while running a film studio might be considered a small job for him, a veteran plugged-in executive suggested a different scenario to me: What about running Sony’s TV and film studios? “That’s a big fucking job,” this person said. “If there’s enough trust between [Peter and Ravi], you could see it.”

Indeed, Ahuja and Rice are close, with the former having worked for the latter at Fox and Disney. They possess different skill sets; Ahuja has his Wharton M.B.A., but is not a creative executive, while Rice is (or was) one of the most highly regarded talent whisperers in the business. And while some think Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy of Warner Bros. might eventually make a play for the Sony studio chief gig if their new bosses at Paramount don’t show them sufficient respect or they don’t want to stick around and find out, Ahuja already knows and respects Rice.

I want to stress the Rice scenario is not based on anything other than informed speculation. (Ahuja recently named Keith Le Goy to run TV.) But I’m floating it here because it makes so much sense. As I wrote in September, Ahuja has a succession problem, with no good internal candidate to take over. So Ahuja can stand by Rothman until 2028, when Tom’s most epic swing—Sam Raimi’s four Beatles movies—will all be released. If that’s the plan, then Rothman really will go big and go home.

If Democratic senators demand a “full and independent” probe of the Middle East money backing Paramount’s Warners deal but the letter is addressed to Trump’s F.C.C., does it make a sound? [THR]

More: The $24 billion from the Saudis, Qataris, and Abu Dhabians may not be all that’s raised by debt-addled WarnerMount. Analyst Peter Supino of Wolfe Research predicted on Friday that the “post-merger company will sell billions of stock—maybe tens of billions to delever.” Who else might Larry Ellison interest in buying into the company that owns CNN and CBS News?

It’s definitely amusing to see Michael Rapino forced on the stand to downplay his many boasts about Live Nation’s “incredible moat” and the admission that “our fees are too high.” [WSJ]

Ari Emanuel told Donald Trump that the Live Nation case should be settled, after which Trump “began calling around to ask why it hadn’t been settled.” [WSJ]

Everything is a weapon: In approving the $6.2 billion Tegna–Nexstar merger, Trump’s F.C.C. didn’t change the antiquated rules limiting ownership of TV stations, it just granted a one-time waiver to a preferred deal. [CNBC]

Remember when Amazon justified $75 million to make and market Melania because even if it didn’t perform in theaters it would be huge on Prime Video? It debuted with 747,157 views in its first week, per Luminate, only good enough for fourth place. [Luminate]

The “Cartel Olympics,” and why The Killers’ manager, WME, Michael Peña, and every producer should be careful about buying seemingly extraordinary life rights. [Atlantic]

Has any deranged celebrity stalker received as much mainstream press attention as Club Chalamet? [N.Y. Times]

The saga of shuttered Hollywood restaurant Horses is even weirder than you thought. [Air Mail]

Thursday’s column on the ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ sequel deals has already become one of Puck’s most-clicked-on articles in a while. A couple reader responses…

“Thank you for publishing these numbers, it’s time animation filmmakers are respected and paid as their live-action peers.” —An animation producer

“You have a bad habit of writing about Netflix deals as if these numbers are big wins for the talent involved. They’re not. If these deals pay the filmmakers $50 million over five years, as you write, what will Netflix earn from the product they create over its lifetime? What has Netflix already earned from the original KPop Demon Hunters? The answer is likely billions of dollars in subscription and library value. The only way these artists would be fairly compensated is if they shared in the revenue stream from this franchise in all its forms (including the movies themselves) forever. That’s a true win.” —A producer

Have a great week,
Matt

Maya Tribbitt contributed research for this issue.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or a new editor for David Ellison’s Wikipedia? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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