Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, where I’m easing gradually into the new year. You are not required to follow casting news or the Disney proxy fight until next week, and you definitely don’t need to know why Chris Nolan is feuding with his Peloton instructor.

As always, if you were forwarded this email, ring in the new year by becoming a Puck member.

Let’s begin…

• And the Golden Globe REALLY goes to…: On the occasion of the return of the Globes to Sunday night, now with an NFL lead-in and a new network in CBS, let’s acknowledge the real winners here: the publicists. Kelly Bush Novak, Cindi Berger, Marcel Pariseau—these are the brave social justice crusaders who cynically leveraged a diversity scandal at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to get what they really wanted: the end of media press conferences they couldn’t control.

  And it worked! Two and a half years later, the H.F.P.A. is disbanded, dozens of journalists have lost their jobs and livelihoods, one of the greatest promotional platforms for film and TV was nearly eviscerated… but celebrities have been protected from questions that might—might!—make them feel less than 100 percent coddled. Thanks to the brave publicists, H.F.P.A. junkets have now been reduced to “webinars” where questions are submitted the night before, chosen by a publicist, and asked by a moderator. The talent doesn’t even know who’s on the call. Heroes, all of them.

  Meanwhile, the Globes voters have diversified, yet the leadership of Bush Novak’s ID PR and the other big publicity firms has, for the most part, not. And while the Globes have been “purified” of conflicts of interest and unprofessionalism, other groups (like, um, the Critics Choice Association) have members who gladly accept gifts, take studio-financed trips and cash payments for moderating panels, and even force stars to sit with them and take awkward selfies at the Critics Choice Awards. Never change, Hollywood.

• Speaking of the Globes…: They couldn’t book anyone for the Cecil B. DeMille award? That’s the big one, usually an Oprah-Clooney-Meryl-Denzel type. Even last year, after being kicked off TV, they got Eddie Murphy. Insiders are blaming the strike, but man, it seems like the publicists should at least have thrown the show an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone bone.

• Box office over/under: It’s accountability time: I made 40 box office predictions in 2023 and got 25 right. That’s a 63 percent success rate, which is definitely in the money in Vegas. Still, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to get that up to 70 percent in 2024. Horror hasn’t been my strong suit, but I’ll take the over on $10 million for Blumhouse’s Night Swim, just based on the creepy commercials.

Now, for the third year in a row, I polled sources for more observations and foreshadowing on the topics of ’24, both big picture and small. Today I’ve got the first batch, followed on Sunday by the rest. Here’s last year’s list, so you can check me. And if you disagree, email me why at matt@puck.news. Let’s begin…

In many ways, those are the remnants of the TV bubble, the pre-strike, pre-Great Netflix Correction race for bigger and splashier and more disruptive shows at whatever cost. Platforms still want some of those, of course, but now they’re first asking, How do we make less, spend less on what we do make, and not bleed subscribers or advertisers in the process?

Disney, for one, has been strategizing for most of the past year about how to not make such pricey shows. (The Bear, at just $3.5 million per episode for Season 2, is the envy of FX and Hulu, though that price is coming up for Season 3, thanks to a renegotiation with the cast that’s almost wrapped.) HBO is still making the hugely expensive House of the Dragon and a second season of Last of Us, but its ideal show is The White Lotus—cheap, noisy, eventize-able, and with a cast that resets every season. Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are even scrutinizing budgets in a way they weren’t a year ago, say producers and agents. Is this the right strategy? Who knows? But it will define the year in TV.

At the same time, consumers are increasingly thinking of “streaming” as an advertising experience, whether it’s AVOD or FAST, as long as it means lower prices. Check out this chart on sentiment. There’s a joke here about streaming just becoming TV, but I don’t think the TV networks are laughing.

With so many high-value theatrical titles now available to license, the question for 2024 is whether Netflix really needs a steady stream of original movies anymore. Its film chief, Scott Stuber, has already said he’s reducing output from about 50 originals a year to between 25 and 30—and promising, yet again, that they will be higher-quality than subscribers have come to expect from Netflix. But I’m betting that number comes down even more—with the attendant staff layoffs, of course.

Remember, Netflix launched as a Blockbuster Video competitor and only got into the originals game when it feared the traditional studios would hoard titles for their own streamers. “We needed volume,” Stuber has said. But now, at least in the U.S., he doesn’t really, because legacy rivals have decided that short-term cash is a higher priority than building scale. Netflix can re-deploy more of the cash it gives Zack Snyder and the Russos elsewhere, like in foreign markets. Or devote it to…

Only the hopelessly naive believe Ted Sarandos when he says Netflix isn’t interested in live sports, and the ad tier really needs gotta-watch-now programming. This toe-dipping of the past few years—the Chris Rock special, the whole Love Is Blind live reunion debacle—has been a trial run, figuring out the tech for live broadcasts on such a global scale. Now, it’s time to deploy.

What’s the solution? My close friend Adam Aron at AMC has been desperately raising money to “survive and then thrive.” But that’s not a long-term solution. Theater chains need to reduce screen counts—especially as Paramount likely follows Fox into the history book as an independent distributor. So, just close underperforming multiplexes and problem solved, right? Not typically, because landlords need movie theaters as anchors per their lease covenants with other tenants. The answer could be multiplex conversions, like what Cinemark just did to this Kansas location. They killed half the screens and turned that space into an “entertainment zone,” with bowling, laser tag, ropes courses, a bar and restaurant, and other stuff. A modern movie “experience” center.

Conversions aren’t cheap, and the Cinemark chain can do this because its balance sheet is stronger than some of the others. But investors might help foot the bill, or the mall landlords might even be willing to pony up to keep those anchor tenants in business. Maybe even city governments. It’s desperate times.

And with a publicly available stock, a market cap under $1 billion, and a growth narrative—especially overseas—it’s the one exhibition company that an Apple, Amazon, or even Disney would find attractive. “Imax remains the preferred company in our exhibition industry coverage universe given its expanding global footprint, its increasing contributions from local-language content, and its asset-light business model,” wrote Eric Handler, an analyst at Roth MKM, in a recent note. If the deal market picks up, look for Imax to be on every banker’s list.

I know the guild did investigate this issue in 2021, after it successfully bludgeoned the agencies into ending packaging fees and limiting ownership of client shows, but it soon shifted attention to the studio negotiations. Still, this has been a gripe for years. Some managers are great producers. But some leverage their in-demand clients to “produce” with them, sometimes doing nothing other than helping set up the project in the first place. Managers can sometimes make more as a producer of a show than their clients do as creators. And I’ve even heard about writers whose projects have died because their manager refused to step off as a producer, which brings up the same conflict-of-interest issues—again, both real and perceived—that fueled the agency action. (Disclosure: My wife is a manager.)

In 2024, despite the election bounce in TV ads and the growth at Tubi, investors will finally do the math on what the secular decline of linear means for Fox. That, combined with either a judgment in favor of Smartmatic (the other voting machine plaintiff) in its $2.7 billion defamation case, or a payout similar to what Dominion got, will put Lachlan and his share price in a tough spot.

I’ll have the other half on Sunday…

Got a question, comment, complaint, or your own last minute prediction? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.