Welcome back to a jam-packed What I’m Hearing. I’m in L.A. today but I’ll be in Las Vegas at the CinemaCon movie theater conference this week, let me know if you’d like to share a machine-made daiquiri or go see David Copperfield.

Programming notes: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I debated what’s a hit when streaming movies debut in theaters, Eriq Gardner broke down the Fox/Dominion settlement from Delaware, and analyst Rich Greenfield parsed the ho-hum Netflix earnings report. Subscribe here or here.

More: Part 2 of Julia Alexander’s Streamer Report Cards will publish in What I’m Hearing+ on Tuesday. If you’re not getting WIH+, fix that by clicking here. And if this email was forwarded to you, maybe with the subject line OMG JEFF SHELL, just click here to become a Puck member…

Discussed in this issue: Jeff Shell, Tom Cruise, Zendaya, Lucian Grainge, Chris Hemsworth, Dana Strong, Risa Heller, Daniel Katz, Will Smith, Johnny Depp, James Corden, J.K. Rowling, Ashton Kutcher…and Fred Specktor’s 90th birthday party (in Cabo!).

But first…

Now to the news nobody saw coming…

No, Shell made one of the dumbest and, confoundingly, common mistakes among Hollywood executives: With all the money in the world, all the possible women in the world, and all the savvy and common sense required to ascend to the top of the media business, Shell had an affair with an employee, a subordinate. All while navigating NBCUniversal through the #MeToo movement, the Matt Lauer scandal, the Ronan Farrow investigations, and firing people for bad personal behavior, like Meyer and Paul Telegdy and—incorrectly, it turned out—Josh Goldstine, the Universal marketing executive who was dismissed by Shell before he sued and won a $20 million-ish award.

Shell did this all while hiding his own skeletons? I guess nothing shocks anymore. It was an NBCU employee who filed the complaint that led to Shell’s downfall. A trade report tonight says the colleague was Hadley Gamble, a CNBC correspondent who was once accused by Russian state media of being a “sex object” sent to distract Putin. I haven’t confirmed that name—indeed, as of 9 p.m. PT tonight, no other news outlet has, which is… curious, given the attention on this matter. Regardless if it was Gamble or another NBCU employee who brought her relationship with Shell to his Comcast bosses, it was a pretty swift process, I’m told. The New York office of Gibson Dunn, the law firm hired to conduct the investigation, interviewed a few witnesses and scoured Shell’s emails and records. I can only imagine being the lawyer who got that initial call from Comcast. Again? Seriously? What is it with this company?

Shell was terminated for cause, I’m told, so Comcast is paying him nothing to step down. Or, rather, Comcast will try to pay him nothing. Shell has engaged litigator Patty Glaser and crisis P.R. executive Risa Heller to try to escape this with some money and dignity intact. Heller, interestingly, also represents Jeff Zucker, the former NBCUniversal C.E.O. and CNN president, who was terminated last year from the latter for—say it with me now—a consensual affair with a subordinate. Glaser and Heller could run the Zucker playbook, possibly generate some it’s-just-an-affair media coverage, and convince the Roberts family at Comcast to pay some go-away money. Remember, Zucker was ultimately able to keep a $5 million bonus, and he landed with an investment vehicle backed by RedBird Capital and Abu Dhabi’s IMI. (Disclosure: Heller has also represented Puck, but not me personally). That kind of end result is likely Shell’s best-case scenario.

Comcast C.E.O. Brian Roberts passed the baton today to Mike Cavanagh, president of the company and a member of Roberts’ inner circle. Cavanagh’s a financial guy, not an operations person like Shell. It’s a tough role to fill because Shell was groomed for the top NBCUniversal job with stints in television (he ran the international TV group in London), movies (he moved to L.A. in 2013 to run the film studio), and all the news, sports, and theme park challenges that come with running NBCU solo for the past three years.

Still, Shell likely wasn’t a Comcast lifer. His contract was set to expire next year, I’m told, yet discussions about a renewal had not begun. My colleague Dylan Byers reported last year that Comcast was discussing combining NBCU with Electronic Arts, which would have meant a new role or an exit for Shell. (That deal never happened.) The cable television business—the whole reason Comcast bought NBCUniversal in the first place—is cratering faster than anticipated. And Shell and other Comcast executives have been pretty open about their dissatisfaction with Peacock, an also-ran (yet growing!) player in the streaming wars, which is projected to lose $3 billion this year. Still, for a movie studio without much legacy I.P., Universal has been manufacturing hits lately with filmmaker relationships like Jason Blum, Chris Meledandri, and Jordan Peele, plus the windowing strategy that Shell used the pandemic to force on the theaters. That was a game-changer.

Everything I’ve heard today suggests that Cavanagh will be in the Shell job for a while, though the Times noted he’s the most likely internal candidate to succeed Roberts whenever he steps down. Maybe they go outside for a Peter Rice or a Dana Walden. But Cavanagh makes sense if, as many believe, the Robertses are simply biding their time until they offload NBCU, either in a sale or a merger with a company like Warner Bros. Discovery or Paramount Global or both. After all, if NBCU-WBD happens in a year or two, David Zaslav would likely lead the combined company, so there wouldn’t be a need for a leader of Comcast’s media assets, anyway.

Does the Shell exit make a major transaction like that more likely? Maybe, maybe not. I’ve wondered for years why the Robertses, by all accounts a conservative Philadelphia family, put up with the drama and headaches of owning media assets. And in the meantime, the internal names being thrown around today are Cesar Conde, chair of the News group, which has been relatively drama-free lately compared to its scandal-plagued rivals ABC News and Fox News; Donna Langley, at the film studio, has been known to want more responsibility; and Mark Lazarus, chairman of television and streaming, is well-liked internally. Let’s see if any of those names come up on the very awkward Comcast earnings call on Thursday.

Runner up: “In the last few years, the power of the major label has been completely decimated.” –Elliot Grainge, the 29-year-old independent music impresario whose father, Lucian, happens to run the world’s largest collection of major labels, Universal Music Group.

Now for some exclusive data on movie star power that may shock you…

It’s the relevant question these days as studios debate the theatricality of film projects, and who to put in them in order to raise the perception of value in the theater-going experience. Zendaya is clearly a huge star, for instance, but can she open a movie in theaters? Do audiences still want to see Angelina Jolie on the big screen? Which Chris, if any Chris, actually puts butts in seats these days?

With more studios and streamers deciding to open their movies first in multiplexes, the theater owners likely will declare victory over streaming at the CinemaCon theater conference this week in Las Vegas. But the results of this survey, while not exactly surprising, reveal a pretty serious problem in the kinds of actors that audiences want to pay to see. NRG circulated the study and its Top 100 Actors list to its studio clients, one of whom quietly slipped it to me. So let’s dive in.

1. Tom Cruise
2. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
3. Tom Hanks
4. Brad Pitt
5. Denzel Washington
6. Julia Roberts
7. Will Smith
8. Leonardo DiCaprio
9. Johnny Depp
10. Kevin Hart
11. Keanu Reeves
12. Sandra Bullock
13. Ryan Reynolds
14. Adam Sandler
15. Harrison Ford
16. George Clooney
17. Robert Downey, Jr.
18. Angelina Jolie
19. Morgan Freeman
20. Chris Hemsworth

Yeah. Reads for the most part like an Oscar party guest list from 20 years ago, right? No Zendaya. No Jennifer Lawrence. No Chalamet or Holland or Michael B. Jordan, or anyone Hollywood has anointed a movie star in the past decade. The average age of this crew is 57.5 years old. Only four of them are in their 40s. Two are in their 80s. It’s almost like when people think theaters, they think throwback, meaning they stopped recognizing actors as theatrical draws after Thor came out in 2011.

That year, of course, is about when Netflix started to become a thing. Maybe the notion of stardom has become so fractured and degraded by Peak TV and the streaming era that the analysis of theatricality, perhaps even subconsciously, is a nostalgic enterprise. If theatrical hits represent the monoculture, and the monoculture is dead, then the stars who connote theaters are necessarily the old stars.

Or maybe it’s actually conscious. Hollywood has been telling audiences for years that new stars don’t really matter because the kind of new, original movies that create stars don’t really matter. We can blame the rush to streaming, or the dependence on pre-sold I.P., or social media—all the factors that combine to reduce the star power of actors. Of the Top 20, only Hemsworth got famous in a Marvel or DC movie; everyone else became huge in an original star vehicle (Pretty Woman, Top Gun, etc.), and then kept making them for years.

Cut to this year’s theatrical schedule; not many chances for an actor to break free of the I.P. Instead, it’s Ezra Miller in The Flash, Margot Robbie in Barbie, all pre-branded plug-n-plays. Plus, of course, the old guard has hung around much longer than their predecessors. This year it’s Cruise (Mission: Impossible 7), Ford (Indiana Jones 5), Washington (Equalizer 3), Reeves (John Wick 4), and so on. Real movie stars are throwbacks because the biggest movies themselves are increasingly throwbacks.

A couple other findings of the NRG study:

• Cruise, 60, ranked No. 1 among men but fell to No. 7 among women, meaning that despite the miracle of Top Gun: Maverick, he hasn’t quite erased the couch-jumping era, and the Scientology-infused separation from wife Katie Holmes and daughter Suri.
• Johnson, 50, is No. 1 among teens. I’m betting that his social media skills and Moana helped get him there.
• The popularity of Roberts, 55, is driven overwhelmingly by women over 35. Not coincidentally, Universal targeted these exact viewers for the recent Ticket to Paradise, with Clooney.
• Remember when everyone declared Sandler’s career as a movie star over when his rich Sony deal ended and he was “forced” to sign with Netflix? Today Sandler, 56, is No. 2 among 18-24 year olds, no doubt thanks to those Netflix movies. Hart, 43, skews young as well, thanks in part to all his Netflix activity.
• Washington, 68, is overwhelmingly the top choice for Black audiences, with more than 3 times the mentions as any other actor.
• Johnny Depp! The 59-year-old, fired off of Fantastic Beasts 2 and considered unhireable by most studios amid his personal issues, is still a draw. And he’s especially strong among females under 35, according to the study. They apparently aren’t bothered by the court finding in the U.K. that he abused Amber Heard.
• CAA FTW: For the poor agency P.R. people keeping track of this stuff, the Top 20 are repped by CAA (9), WME (7), UTA (2), and two have no agent (Leo because he can bring his posse to CAA parties without paying 10 percent; and Depp because the majors won’t touch him).

GEN Z
Zendaya (No. 47 total, No. 14 among Gen Z)
Tom Holland (No. 39 total, No. 10 among Gen Z)
Adam Sandler (No. 14 total, No. 5 among Gen Z)
Chris Evans (No. 22 total), No. 15 among Gen Z)
Kevin Hart (No. 10 total, No. 3 among Gen Z)

Like I said, I think Sandler and Hart are there because they have leaned so heavily into Netflix, where young people watch movies. And Zendaya and Holland seem like the industry’s best hope of young stars becoming actually meaningful to the next generation.

MILLENNIALS
Jason Statham (No. 42 total, No. 23 among Millennials)
Michael B. Jordan (No. 43 total, No. 26 among Millennials)
Liam Neeson (No. 34 total, No. 22 among Millennials)
Vin Diesel (No. 28 total, No. 19 among Millennials)
Leonardo DiCaprio (No. 8 total, No. 6 among Millennials)

GEN X
Julia Roberts (No. 6 total and among Gen X)
Keanu Reeves (No. 11 total, No. 7 among Gen X)
Viola Davis (No. 38 total, No. 22 among Gen X)
Matthew McConaughey (No. 41 total, No. 24 among Gen X)
Morgan Freeman (No. 19 total, No. 11 among Gen X)

BOOMERS
Kevin Costner (No. 32 total, No. 9 among Boomers)
Clint Eastwood (No. 46 total, No. 11 among Boomers)
Harrison Ford (No. 15 total, No. 6 among Boomers)
George Clooney (No. 16 total, No. 8 among Boomers)
Meryl Streep (No. 30 total, No. 12 among Boomers)

Those aren’t entirely surprising. The study provided some info on who over-indexes with Black audiences as well:

BLACK/AFRICAN AMERICAN
Angela Bassett (No. 50 total, No. 6 among Blacks)
Viola Davis (No. 38 total, No. 5 among Blacks)
Michael B. Jordan (No. 43 total, No. 10 among Blacks)
Samuel L. Jackson (No. 26 total, No. 7 among Blacks)
Denzel Washington (No. 5 total, No. 1 among Blacks)

1. Chris Hemsworth (No. 20)
2. Jennifer Lawrence (No. 25)
3. Tom Holland (No. 39)
4. Michael B. Jordan (No. 43)
5. Zendaya (No. 47)
6. Scarlett Johansson (No. 53)
7. Jenna Ortega (No. 54)
8. Margot Robbie (No. 67)
9. Henry Cavill (No. 73)
10. Emma Watson (No. 86)
11. Gal Gadot (No. 91)
12. Timothee Chalamet (No. 94)
13. Jonah Hill (No. 98)

Interesting, right? Of those, only four (Ortega, 20, Holland and Zendaya, both 26, and Chalamet, 27) are under 30 years old. So 4 percent of the movie stars that matter in theaters are under 30. Pretty depressing. Did the old guard, thanks to science and resilience, just hang around so long that audiences never got familiar with new people? Or are young people just appearing in so many different projects, on so many varying platforms, that audiences don’t think of them as traditional movie stars?

Ortega, for instance, is probably high on this list because of Netflix’s Wednesday series, not the Scream movies. But it’s nice to know her audience considers her theatrical. Many other young stars are nowhere to be found here, including those Hollywood has anointed, like Florence Pugh, Dakota Johnson, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Pete Davidson, and many more.

Does any of this matter? I think it does. Studies like NRG’s influence casting because the studio heads read them. Jolie, for instance, has been pretty off the grid as an actor the past few years, but days after this study went around, Warner Bros. picked up a movie with her and Halle Berry. Probably a coincidence on the timing, but it’s a good piece of data for the studio. Conversely, if I’m Warners, I’m concerned by how low Chalamet is on that list, given they’ve got Wonka as a star vehicle for him later this year. Sony just shot a rom-com for theaters with Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, yet neither made the Top 100. Not great.

But if you’re Sony and you want to make a rom-com with actors under 40, this study shows the choices are pretty damn limited if you want to get people to theaters.

The Gower Street analytics firm has raised its global box office projection for the year from $29 billion to $32 billion, still way down from 2019 but up from $26 billion in 2022. [THR]

Speaking of movie distribution, a little scoop: Amazon/MGM has chosen a successor for film distribution chief Erik Lomis, who died tragically last month. Two sources say it’s Kevin Wilson, an executive vice president at the company, who could be named head of distribution as early as this week.

Besides helping lose weight, Ozempic gives you weird dreams about Oprah and Kathie Lee Gifford. Sign me up! [WSJ]

Ben Strauss explains why the Pay TV business has been so important for sports leagues, and why everyone’s hitting the fire alarm on RSNs. [Washington Post]

Consultant and analyst Doug Shapiro notes the rising risks in the TV business and advises streamers and networks to “revert back to historical deal structures that appropriately share risk and reward with talent and independent studios.” [Medium]

Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary have now raised $110 million to try to make your text message inbox just as cluttered with garbage as your email. [NY Times]

Someday music executives will look back on the A.I. Drake and either laugh or cry uncontrollably. [NY Times]

Some poor FT reporter had to read every Succession script and pour over screenshots to figure out that Waystar Royco is probably worth about $80 billion, not including debt. [Financial Times]

You can own Kendall Roy’s 5,500 square foot apartment above Carnegie Hall for $29 million. Cousin Greg not included. [Town & Country]

Turns out, audiences didn’t actually love this three-hour head-scratcher. And the fact that A24 went from four screens to 965, rather than gradually growing its footprint to leverage word of mouth, suggests Daniel Katz and team knew they needed to squeeze out as much revenue out of their $35 million asset as they could, and quickly—the box office equivalent of a pump and dump. Harvey Weinstein used to pull these stunts at Miramax, but the theaters cracked down after complaints about the fake grosses gumming up theater commitments. These days, though, the theaters are happy for any positive headlines and care a lot less about who is paying for the tickets.

A24, as always, declined to comment, but it has denied in the past that it buys out theaters. It has admitted, as have others (this is not solely an A24 thing) that its limited grosses include talent Q&A showings, and influencer freebies, and mid-week preview screenings that are rolled into the final numbers. Maybe Aster, coming off Midsommar and Hereditary, just has super-fans who waaaay over-indexed on opening weekend. But anecdotally, a friend of a friend was told when purchasing a daytime ticket for Beau Is Afraid last weekend at the AMC in Century City that the screening was nearly sold out—upon arrival, it was an empty theater.

“What’s interesting about Iger’s calculus is his willingness to be the tough guy and set his successor up for… success. That is, he’s like a retiring politician willing to vote with his conscience rather than his next election in mind. So Iger can take on Florida… but can he do it with the battering ram AND finesse required to leave the next C.E.O. without a ton of collateral damage to clean up after he’s gone?!” —An executive

“I’ve noticed there’s one major angle missing from all the coverage of Disney v. DeSantis: Florida Democrats have wanted to do what DeSantis has done for years, but the lobbyists were in bed with [former governor Jeb] Bush and the other Republicans. Back in the ’90s, the Miami Herald’s very left op-ed page ran pieces constantly asking the state to do what DeSantis has now done. (Carl Hiaasen even wrote a book, Team Rodent, on the subject.) Also, most people in Orlando loathe Disney because of how many Disney World hourly employees can’t afford rent and live in motels. Down in Florida, this is a winner for Florida Democrats and Republicans.” –A publicist (in Florida)

“Looks like the District might actually sue Disney soon, rather than the other way around.” –A lawyer

“Morale is BAD at Disney and I’m kinda surprised you didn’t mention it. Not just like layoffs bad, like ‘Even if they don’t cut me, I’m trying to leave’ bad. Seems like nearly everyone hates the post-pandemic version of the company.” –A Disney employee (for now)

“With DeSantis getting dunked on by Republicans in Congress and his weak poll numbers softening further, I can only randomly think of this incredible line read from Thandiwe Newton as for what Iger should do.” –Another executive

Have a great week,
Matt

Corrections: The Aziz Ansari movie at Lionsgate is called Good Fortune, not Good People, as I said Thursday. Wall Street Journal reporter Robbie Whelan has been on the Disney beat for just over a year, not just under, as I said last Sunday. And RedBird Capital is with a capital B. Apologies all around.

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