Nov 3, 2025

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, where for once I’m not hearing much. I’m off this week, exploring the culinary delights (and sweaty football pubs) of London. And unlike in the past when I said I was off but really was pretty involved, I’m trying to do a real “vacation” (scare quotes mine), so no Who Won the Week, Feedback, or other Monday WIH staples. I even wrote this intro last week (before the World Series Game 7).

Thanks to my great Puck colleagues Kim Masters, Eriq Gardner, and Julia Alexander for filling in. Kim is here today with fresh intel on the Ellisons’ would-be takeover of WBD. Eriq does his usual WIH+ column tomorrow on what Hollywood people are fighting about now, and Julia will be here Thursday with her latest analysis of streaming video data. I’ll be back Monday, hopefully more debonair and with a light Madonna accent…

🚨 More event news: This Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell will be interviewing Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim after an exclusive screening of their new nuclear armageddon thriller, A House of Dynamite, followed by a swanky reception. The evening is hosted by Puck and our partners at Netflix. Please join us! R.S.V.P. here.

🚨🚨 Second, a reminder that Puck’s second annual Stories of the Season event will take place on November 14 in Hollywood. We’ll serve drinks, network, and spend some quality time with the film awards season’s most compelling talents, including keynote guest Chloé Zhao. (I’ll also record that conversation for The Town.) Of course, Stories of the Season is entirely curated by me and other Puck writers. If you’re an awards voter, request an invite to this special event by emailing Fritz@puck.news.

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.

Discussed in this issue: David Zaslav, Dana Bash, David Ellison, Ted Sarandos, Mike Cavanagh, Brian Roberts, Rich Greenfield, Trump, John Lasseter, Taylor Sheridan, Ari Emanuel, Bob Iger, Mark Shapiro, Gerry Cardinale, Jeff Bewkes, Erika Kirk, Mel Gibson, and many more…

Now over to Kim with some news before the main event…

Kim Masters

Call of duty: Last week, the Department of Homeland Security posted a tweet using an image from Columbia Pictures’ 2000 Mel Gibson film, The Patriot. “You have a duty, American,” the captions read, “Send them back,” and “JOIN ICE.GOV.”

I’m told this was done without permission, so add Sony to the list of I.P. owners who have had their work used by the Trump team against their wishes. (The studio declined to comment.) What image will D.H.S. appropriate next? As for Mel, who is depicted in the still, I was told he’s in Rome shooting the Passion of the Christ sequel and can’t be reached for comment.
MBS, development exec?: Producer Erik Feig, the new leader of the Saudi-backed Arena SNK Studios that Matt wrote about last month, has started reaching out to prospective filmmakers, pitching an opportunity to make movies and TV shows with a focus on video game properties and manga. I’m told Feig is making it clear that he is working closely with Mohammed bin Salman, which may not be a strong selling point for some people. (Feig has yet to give an interview on his new initiative and declined to comment.)

Turns out MBS, who lifted the longstanding ban on cinemas in Saudi Arabia in 2018, is a huge movie and video game fan. And the first U.S. film to play in the country—Black Panther—offers a window into his tastes. So does the first indie film to be screened, the ultraviolent Sicario: Day of the Soldado. An executive who does business in that part of the world said the Crown Prince is “obsessed with Marvel” and wants to come up with breakout original I.P. That’s a tough mountain to climb, this person continued, adding, “Maybe MBS is a brilliant development exec.”
The art of the WBD deal: A couple of industry people asked me this week whether I thought that analyst Rich Greenfield was serious in suggesting that Brian Roberts could suck up to Trump by vowing to put Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, in charge of NBC News and CNN as part of an offer for WBD. (My colleague Bill Cohan covered this analysis memorably.) So I asked Rich, and he laughed. “There is this narrative that there is no chance Comcast could get approval for a deal,” he said. “Trump likes cutting deals, so there’s definitely a deal to be done. I was serious in the sense that there are a substantial number of people who would love the opportunity to change the narrative at NBC. When you have a network that has continually frustrated the president, there are people that would be perceived as more center-right. If Erika is a bridge too far, I was trying to make that point.” (Yes, Erika is a bridge too far, and I’m talking about the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge in China, which, at 102.4 miles, is the world’s longest.)

And now on to the main event…

Have We Reached Peak Ellison Anxiety?

The surest sign that the Ellisons are still frontrunners in the WBD sweepstakes? The chorus of industry critics is growing—and fantasizing about other options. Meanwhile, the PSKY team might be looking to take its bid over the top with help from abroad.

Kim Masters

Setting aside the chronic hum of A.I. anxiety, Hollywood is pretty much a one-obsession town right now. So yes, the chatter at Thursday’s dinner honoring David Zaslav with the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award focused almost entirely on the battle for Warner Bros. Discovery. After all, at least two-thirds of the industry’s power elite were gathered in the Beverly Wilshire ballroom, which was so densely packed that I wondered what the fire marshal was doing that night.

Matt already ran a partial list of the bold-faced names in attendance at what was facetiously dubbed Zaslav’s bar mitzvah. But it was also an emotional evening featuring moving talks from two October 7 survivors, including Omer Shem Tov, who spent 505 days in the darkness of Hamas tunnels. CNN anchor Dana Bash spoke about a life-changing trip to Auschwitz, and Zaslav spoke somberly of his own family’s persecution in Poland during the Holocaust. Heavy stuff, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Zaslav’s mood was also colored by the realization that the sun is setting on his Hollywood adventure, and probably on his long (and outrageously remunerative) career.

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Several bidders (or potential bidders) for some (or all) of WBD were there: David Ellison, accompanied by Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer and head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division during Trump I; and Ted Sarandos—after Reuters reported earlier that day that Netflix had retained Moelis & Co. to evaluate a prospective offer for the studio and streamer. (Sarandos has also long coveted the Paramount lot.) One attendee texted me that the jokes he picked up were “that every table was going to submit a bid, or that there would be an auction at the end of the evening.”

Also on Thursday, Comcast co-C.E.O. Mike Cavanagh had signaled potential interest in the Warners Streaming and Studios business , and the consensus view right now is that Brian Roberts cannot sit this one out. Some executives I canvassed noted that Warners fits better with Comcast than Paramount: NBCU has theme parks that could capitalize on Warners franchises, while stalled-out Peacock could get a much-needed boost. Analyst Rich Greenfield has been promoting the idea, but others are skeptical that Roberts can pull it off, politically and strategically, no matter how much he donates to the White House ballroom.

The Ellisons in the Room

The clear frontrunner in the minds of Hollywood, as evidenced by the growing wave of anti-Ellison snark, remains Paramount Skydance. And the underlying theme is a fear of what Larry and David might ultimately do. “People are afraid of consolidation in general,” said one high-level player who could be affected by the outcome of the drama. “But the combination of Larry, A.I., and the connection to Trump…” If the Ellison faction were to come up with “some A.I.-enabled TikTok thing,” this person continued, it would be daunting. “I’d love to pooh-pooh that, but you can’t. If there were some there there, that could be powerful.”

David Ellison is trying to win hearts and minds in Hollywood by vowing that Warners and Paramount will operate as two distinct studios, each cranking out 15 movies per year. Many are hoping he means it, but with the deep cuts underway at Paramount, few actually believe him. Certainly, theater owners don’t. “Think about what Disney did to Fox,” one seasoned Hollywood player said. “They’ll just fire thousands and thousands of people. 20th Century Studios has like 10 people working there. That’s always what happens.” (I’m told the real number of employees at 20th Studios is more like 75, but you get the point.) Of course, if Comcast were the victor, there would be the same fears regarding how the combined company would deal with two studios. And if Netflix submits the winning bid, you can likely kiss theatrical goodbye.

There is also the issue of David’s leadership skills, as every move he makes is scrutinized. “To put this in Paramount terms—is [David] Ellison Fredo… or is he Sonny? Because he doesn’t seem like he’s Michael,” a Comcast-adjacent observer texted me out of the blue. “And what is it about Skydance that would make people think this guy can run not only one but two studios? Hiring John Lasseter? Investing in Mission: Impossible movies? I really am not seeing anything other than Daddy’s money.”

Much has been said and will continue to be said about Ellison’s installation of Bari Weiss atop CBS News, which has to be an annoying distraction for him. (The fear of Trump’s influence under Weiss’s watch is hardly going to be diminished by the president’s praise of the Free Press founder during his 60 Minutes interview on Sunday. For that matter, the pushback-free interview itself has fed the concerns that CBS News is now captive to Trump.)

Another concern was Taylor Sheridan’s defection to NBCU. Props to Paramount for getting journalists to entertain the possibility that the company didn’t really want to keep the guy who the studio’s streamer has basically been built around. (Ellison and a planeload of his execs shlepped to Texas to do what? Just say howdy?) Sure, Sheridan is difficult and crazy expensive, but Paramount is paying the Duffer brothers a large, unspecified sum for a four-year deal. Which would you rather bet on—that the Duffers can create another Stranger Things–level phenomenon, or that Sheridan can come up with his umpteenth hit?

Many industry insiders are also skeptical about Paramount’s seven-year, $7.7 billion deal for exclusive UFC rights in the U.S. Yes, it can be read as a signal that Ellison came to play. But some people see it more as Ari Emanuel having his way with the person to whom he is ostensibly an (unpaid) advisor—you know, as a sideline while he’s running the company that owns the UFC. “Ask Ted Sarandos and Bob Iger why they didn’t make the UFC deal,” an Ellison doubter told me. “When they modeled it, it wasn’t worth half of what [TKO was] asking. And everybody knows it.”

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Netflix, which made an offer for only part of the UFC package, declined to comment. Disney also declined to comment, but an insider said ESPN didn’t make a formal offer after running the numbers and engaging in talks “because there was nothing we could present that made financial sense for us.” (TKO president and C.O.O. Mark Shapiro told me in a text, “We ran a long, fulsome process with seven viable suitors [and] we are really pleased where we landed.”)

Larry of Arabia?

Whether any potential WBD buyer can outplay the Ellisons is for now a known unknown. One longtime industry insider postulated that Amazon might yet jump in, which could be a game-changer. Sure, the company just laid off 14,000 employees, but this insider believes the streamer has a renewed commitment to entertainment. Another well-situated source told me there’s a bidder backed by Emirati money. I beat a bunch of bushes and couldn’t find anyone else who knew about that.

The one thing everybody knows is that Larry Ellison could end this contest instantly if he decided to make an offer the WBD board couldn’t refuse. (There could be legal challenges from other bidders or even state attorneys general, but obviously the Trump administration won’t object.) I’m told that the Ellisons, père et fils, and RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale are sweeping through the Middle East this week. Maybe Larry wants to share the opportunity? (Disclosure: Through Puck’s recent acquisition of Air Mail, RedBird is a minority investor in Puck.)

Whatever happens, it’s a sad turn of events for Warners, which has been suffering ever since Jeff Bewkes sold the studio to the awful phone-company people.

More than one person used the word “heartbreaking” while talking about this moment: Hollywood’s proudest legacy studio is now all but certain to be subsumed into some other corporate entity. “I think it’s tragic,” said a former studio insider. “It’s just been mishandled for so long. It’s sad that such a series of bad decisions led it to the place that it is. It was the beacon of the business.”

Thanks, Kim. See you on Thursday (or rather, Julia Alexander will see you on Thursday).

Matt

Got a question, comment, complaint, or know someone who wants to bid for WBD? 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.

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