Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, coming to you from L.A. after a few weeks of travel. Tomorrow evening I’m on the Paramount lot moderating the F.Y.C. panel for Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team, then I’ll be in town for a week before I’m off to my undisclosed summer retreat location until mid-July. (Still writing these emails, of course.)

Tonight I’ve got a newsy, all-over-the-place, all-Thursday Thoughts issue. I love writing deep-dive analysis columns, but I also like to occasionally empty my notebook with shorter items on everything I’m hearing from around Hollywood. Feedback always welcome…

And of course, if you were forwarded this email or are new to the WIH community, click here to become a Puck member.

Let’s begin…

• Paramount: Who will blink first?: It was hard not to read Tuesday’s awkward shareholder presentation by Paramount’s new C.E.O. threesome George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, and Brian Robbins (I refuse to call them the “Pep Boys,” but that’s apparently the nickname on Wall Street) as anything but owner Shari Redstone’s burn-it-down strategy. The message to her disgruntled shareholders: You don’t want me to sell to Ellison? Okay, fine, I’ll just fire another $500 million worth of employees, start selling off assets, and hand over the streaming business to Comcast or Apple. You hear me?!

  That’s arguably what Redstone should have done back in 2019, rather than combine CBS and Viacom to take on Netflix. But from everything I’ve heard this week, while Shari is trying to extract last-minute concessions like legal indemnity from Skydance/RedBird (and taking meetings with other suitors), she still prefers Skydance to the alternatives. The Sony/Apollo bid would likely face steep government resistance and kill her father’s beloved Paramount as a studio. The bid for controlling shareholder National Amusements from Baby Geniuses producer Steven Paul and the 80-year-old tequila-and-hair-product magnate John Paul DeJoria doesn’t resolve any of Paramount’s issues. (Also, DeJoria says his goal with the company is to “promote positive information on their stations.” What??) And keeping the company but stripping it for parts would torpedo the stock in the short term and risk destroying what value Skydance sees in it long-term. Robbins, in particular, has Shari’s ear, but even after this week’s pitch from the Pep Boys (sorry), I agree with J.P. Morgan, which wrote in a note to clients: “We continue to believe that Skydance is a superior outcome for all stakeholders.”

• Oliver sacked his agents after HBO disappointment: John Oliver, among the highest-paid talents on television, recently fired WME because he didn’t get the big raise he wanted in his new HBO deal, per three sources familiar. Oliver, who was making about $30 million for 30 episodes a season of the Emmy magnet Last Week Tonight, re-upped at the end of 2023 for another three years. But given the overall contraction in TV and the fiscal restraints at HBO parent Warner Bros. Discovery, the new Oliver deal actually penciled out to about the same salary or even a slight reduction, depending on how you look at it.

  Oliver thought he deserved more… and maybe he did. But more likely, this seems like another recent example of a top-tier talent punishing his representatives for the new realities of the marketplace. There’s probably a good joke to be made about a TV host who positions himself as a man of the people yet privately throws a tantrum when his own insanely high salary isn’t quite high enough for his liking, but John would do that joke way better, so I’ll pass. (Oliver’s manager, David Martin, and publicists didn’t get back to me. HBO declined to comment. Usual disclosure: WME represents Puck but not me.)

• Sit through two Horizons, get a special popcorn bucket?: Kevin Costner’s $110 million, three-hour Western Horizon arrived on traditional tracking services today with a $12 million thud. But that’s not even the most concerning data point. David Herrin at The Quorum notes that Horizon was actually forecasted to open as high as $17 million domestic a couple weeks ago but is dropping as the June 28 release date approaches. That’s despite heavy promo during the NBA playoffs. “It is struggling in all categories, including unaided awareness, total awareness, and interest,” David emails. “Strongest demo is men over 35. Other demos are much, much lower. A one-quad film.”

  Not great for a poorly reviewed movie with a budget that high, and with a sequel coming six weeks after the first film, and with Horizon: Part 3 currently shooting, and with Part 4 planned. Costner may be buds with Warner Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav, but Warners is minimally on the hook for Horizon, taking a distribution fee to release the first two parts of the saga domestically. The rest is Costner and his mysterious, likely Middle Eastern, investors. Costner & Co. are also paying for P&A releasing costs.

  Tickets for Horizon will go on sale on Wednesday, I’m told, and moviegoers will be able to secure their spots for both Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 at the same time via a special promotion. Not a bad strategy, actually: Rope in the Yellowstone fans—which Costner insists aren’t being counted by the low tracking (uh, okay)—and charge them twice before they even see Part 1.

• Will Smith’s investors want their money back: It’s nail-biting time for Will Smith, who’s attempting his big comeback from The Slap this weekend with Bad Boys: Ride or Die. But for some investors in Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook production company, the damage is already done. And they’re pissed. I’ve learned that a group of the company’s backers has hired litigator Marty Singer to go after the Smiths and two of their executives, demanding the return of millions of dollars squandered after The Slap and its aftermath put Westbrook in a “seriously perilous financial situation.”

  In a letter sent earlier this week (which I read), a group of three of the company’s dozens of investors claimed that they and others put $20 million into Westbrook, which then lured Candle Media, the big Blackstone-backed content venture, to invest $60 million in the company. That was right before Smith made himself “a pariah” in Hollywood by smacking Chris Rock onstage at the March 2022 Oscars. But that’s only the beginning. The Smiths then “enabled” their C.E.O., Kosaku Yada, and Miguel Melendez, the Smiths’ longtime manager and a director on the company’s board, to abscond with more than $20 million in cash from Westbrook in the form of B.S. loans and bonuses. This at a time when the company was forced to fire half its employees. “Immediately thereafter, Mr. Yada completely abandoned his duties as C.E.O. of Westbrook and relocated to the Bahamas,” the letter claims. He also allegedly bought a horse. Nice. (A lawyer for Westbrook told me, “All parties deny all the allegations in the letter,” but he declined to get into specifics; I reached out to Yada and Melendez but did not get a response.)

  This isn’t too surprising. Westbrook has been struggling since The Slap, as noted by Semafor in January, and Smith and his CAA team have been hoping the new Bad Boys will serve as a stamp of the public’s approval for Hollywood to get back in the Will Smith business. I actually thought Candle might sue to get out of its deal, but it’s not a party to this new threat. In traditional Marty Singer fashion, the lawyer also had some choice words in the letter for Smith himself, for essentially torpedoing his investors “when he made the decision to physically assault, batter, and yell obscenities against Oscar host Chris Rock during a live program broadcast to millions of viewers all over the world.”

• The thirstiest man in Hollywood: Shane Salerno, the producer and Avatar and Armageddon writer, is somewhat notorious for self-promotion and trying to use the trade media to boost his projects. But man, what he’s doing with this killer volcano project Eruption, based on the just-released posthumous book by Michael Crichton (finished by James Patterson), might set a hilarious new bar for desperation.

  Follow along here: Salerno and his Story Factory are in business with the Crichton estate, and they clearly saw Eruption as an easy big-ticket sale to a studio or streamer—all they needed to do was drum up a little interest. First there was a December 2022 Deadline story announcing the novel, about a mega-eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano that threatens the world. Then, the following October, it was another breathless Deadline story unveiling the title and publication date, with writer Mike Fleming Jr. comparing the book to Jurassic Park and heralding, “We can expect a monster screen auction to erupt early next year” for movie rights. Three months later, another Fleming “exclusive” revealed a trailer for the book (yes, a book trailer) and a supposed February auction for a supposed film trilogy. “This should be a big one,” Fleming gushed.

  Then in May, with the project still unsold, Variety was enlisted to declare the auction “poised to begin,” adding “several major studios, streamers and networks are preparing offers” to adapt the novel. Further, “one source tells Variety that the auction is expected to snowball into a monumental bidding war.” Monumental!

  Not to be outdone, Deadline followed a couple days later with another report saying the auction was actually happening that day, including—I kid you not—a letter from Crichton’s widow all but begging the studios to adapt the book. “Get ready to be transported into a heart-pounding, dramatic adventure,” Sherri Crichton wrote to the studios via Fleming. “It’s expected to be a big sale,” he insisted.

  You can see where this is going. No bidding war. No enthusiasm. No sale. That relentless media campaign and the lap-dog trade reporters failed to drum up much interest after all, according to the six studios/streamers I polled. “It’s a volcano project. This isn’t the ’90s,” texted one buyer who looked at the material. Plus, this was just a book sale, no talent attached. Now, Salerno has pivoted. Today, in yet another article, Deadline trumpeted that Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, directors of Netflix’s Nyad, are attached, and “big stars” have had “preliminary meetings.”

  Okay! Several of the studios and streamers I contacted have agreed to hear the revised Eruption pitch from Salerno, CAA and the filmmakers. (Everyone declined to comment.) And given the auspices and the likely sales of the book, this project probably will land somewhere. But Shane, buddy, can we please stop with these relentless media campaigns? They don’t work. They are transparent. And honestly, I’m embarrassed for everyone involved.

• Box office over/under: Bad Boys: Ride or Die presales have been falling well behind 2020’s franchise restarter Bad Boys for Life, and tracking has actually dipped a little this week. So I’ll take the under on the $50 million tracking.

Correction: I included a bad link on Monday for Jon Stewart’s epic rant about the Trump conviction. The right link is here.

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