What I’m Hearing: ‘Reindeer’ Games, Will Smith’s Return & Bryan vs. Ari

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, where I’ve stopped checking in every few hours on the Paramount situation. I hope someone in the deal war room is taking notes for the eventual book that will be written on this chaotic sale process. In the meantime, tomorrow evening I’ll be on the Sony lot for a sit-down with the L.A. Copyright Society. Details here. Programming note: I’m back on CNBC’s Squawk Box tomorrow at 7:20 a.m. Eastern talking Paramount and more. On The Town, Lucas Shaw and I broke down the Will Smith comeback and ranked the butts-in-seats stars of the ’90s, Michael Kassan offered a report card on the streamer ad tiers, and researcher Josh Lynn explained how data helps studios choose what to green-light. Subscribe here and here. Not a Puck member? Click here to fix that problem. Got a news tip or an idea for me? Just reply to this email. Also, if you missed Julia Ioffe’s recent chat with the filmmakers and subjects of For Love And Life: No Ordinary Campaign, it’s here. Discussed in this issue: Tom Rothman, Ye, Shari Redstone, Chris Winfrey, Shane Salerno, Tom Cruise, John Oliver, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Linda Burrow, and… Bryan vs. Ari again. But first…

Who Won the Week: Will Smith

He’s back! CAA’s Richard Lovett put all Smith’s eggs in the Bad Boys 4 basket and was rewarded with a $57 million domestic debut, which should revive at least some of those projects that stalled after the Slap. Right? Right?!? Let’s see what announcements arrive in the next month.Speaking of P.R.…

Shari Fired a Key Paramount Comms Team

Throw some new victims on the heap of Paramount Global casualties. C.E.O. Bob Bakish, four board members—all gone during this negotiation to potentially sell the company. Now the Joele Frank P.R. firm, which has been advising the Paramount board’s special committee evaluating offers from Skydance and others, was abruptly fired last week for unclear reasons. (A Joele rep simply said, “I’m no longer authorized to speak on the committee’s behalf.”)Brunswick, the comms firm that famously advised ex-Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek on his Florida political debacle, has been talking to the Shari Redstone people about coming on, though a source there says it’s not official. That move would be amusing: Byron Trott, the banker who is advising Shari during this troubled, seemingly endless sale process, is a big investor in Brunswick. That process became even more ridiculous today with the addition of a new bidder: Edgar Bronfman Jr., the Seagram heir and former Warner Music owner. According to the Journal, Bronfman and Bain Capital want to pay more than $2 billion for National Amusements, less than the supposed bid from the Baby Geniuses producer and his tequila guy backer. Besides sharing a nepo baby bond with Shari, Bronfman is executive chairman of Fubo, the sports-focused digital streamer. Fubo, which is already in business with Paramount, was not included in the bid in today’s report, but it is said to be a part of Bronfman’s plans for the company, so it’ll be interesting to see if it surfaces as a factor. (Paramount declined to comment.)

Quote of the Week (Bryan Lourd Edition)

The CAA C.E.O.’s ongoing I-don’t-do-press press tour continued this week with stops at the Financial Times and L.A. Times (delayed from an October interview), which produced these nuggets:“Walmart turned out to be a pretty important part of our country and if we play that role in the creative community—all for it.” —Lourd responding to nemesis Ari Emanuel’s jab that CAA had become Walmart. “I’m very proud to be an agent. But one of the greatest compliments is when people say you’re nothing like an agent, because their idea of an agent comes from that HBO show.” —Another jab at Ari, famously the inspiration for the “dealmaking vulgarian” (Lourd’s words) on Entourage. “The reason the entertainment business has lasted so long is that it’s actually thrived on disruption and the evolution of technology. It’s in the DNA for people here to be alarmed at first and then to embrace it and go toward it. There’s nothing but opportunities around AI” —Hmmm... Let’s bookmark that last sentence and see what Lourd thinks in five years. Now for a look at the under-discussed scandal of Emmy season…

Stop Playing ‘Baby Reindeer’ Games

Netflix is pushing the stalker drama for Emmys as a “true story” even as key facts have fallen apart and its subject has sued for defamation. Now, TV Academy voters have a chance to reject the dishonest campaign.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Are you excited for Emmy voting? Thursday begins the annual 11-day period where the 25,000 mostly unemployed members of the Television Academy consider sampling the hundreds of shows in contention but watch only the five they already like and then vote only for everyone on those shows—or whoever’s F.Y.C. panel event served the most food that could be taken home in a Tupperware container. Don’t you wish everyone knew the true glamour and meritocracy involved in determining Hollywood’s most coveted awards?This year, if you believe the so-called “precursor” bodies—the lesser, barely dignified, untelevised honors like the TCAs or the inaugural Gotham TV Awards (that’s a thing!), all of which populate the pre-Emmys corridor only to extract submission fees and $20,000 per table—Netflix has a strong contender in Baby Reindeer. The “true story” stalker drama has a great shot at the outstanding limited series Emmy, as well as acting noms for its star-creator, Richard Gadd, his co-star as the obsessed Martha, Jessica Gunning, and a bunch of other categories. The issue—and I’m kinda shocked this hasn’t become a bigger narrative this season—is that the veracity of Baby Reindeer as a “true story” has pretty much fallen apart, first via media reports in the U.K. that challenged many facts; then when the “real-life” Martha, Fiona Harvey, was outed by fans and later came forward on Piers Morgan; and now, last week, when Harvey filed a $170 million lawsuit in California alleging “defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, gross negligence, and violations of Harvey’s right of publicity” over what she calls “the biggest lie in television history.” (On that last point, I believe Mark Burnett would like a word over his portrayal of Donald Trump as a competent billionaire on The Apprentice.) Anyway, I don’t need to get into every detail of what was allegedly made up on this very disturbing show, which Netflix says has been viewed more than 65 million times worldwide. According to the suit, Martha is pretty easily identifiable as Harvey, and she is portrayed as “a twice-convicted criminal” who “spent a total of five years in prison for stalking Gadd and another woman.” None of that apparently happened. Not great, but I know, it’s hard to care about these cases. Docudramas have a long history of sparking frivolous legal claims from their subjects, both famous and unfamous. Olivia de Havilland went nuts over her portrayal as a vindictive gossip sixty years ago in FX’s Feud, but her lawsuit on right-of-publicity and false light claims failed. Lakers legend Jerry West threatened litigation over HBO’s Winning Time, which was extra funny because the show depicted him as a hotheaded asshole—exactly the kind of guy who would threaten a lawsuit over a dumb TV show. In the defamation context, courts have consistently given producers leeway for “substantially true” portrayals, requiring that extra level of “actual malice” in the depiction of public figures, whatever that means in this social media age. But there are limits. Netflix just settled on the eve of trial with former New York prosecutor Linda Fairstein, the villain of Ava DuVernay’s 2019 When They See Us docudrama about the Central Park Five case. Netflix and DuVernay were quick to declare victory because the settlement requires only a $1 million payment to the Innocence Project and nothing to Fairstein herself, but that obscures the fact that the judge in the case had ruled that several scenes were indeed false, and that a reasonable jury could find them defamatory. The streamer also recently lost a bid to dismiss a defamation suit from a former friend of Anna Sorokin over her depiction in Shonda Rhimes’s hit miniseries Inventing Anna. Netflix’s U.S. litigation chief Linda Burrow may not face more legal claims than her counterparts at other studios and streamers, but it often feels that way, right? The Baby Reindeer case is interesting because, as a non-public figure whose life was allegedly “destroyed” by the show, Harvey would only have to demonstrate that Netflix was negligent in its false portrayal of her. Gadd did change her name, meaning the show is not necessarily about Harvey. But, as litigator Mitchell Langberg told The Daily Beast, “Showing all the messages she got [from the cyber sleuths who tracked her down] makes it very clear that a good part of the public knew it was about her.” In short, there’s pretty good evidence on both sides here.

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This Is a True Story?

But honestly, who cares if a show takes liberties with the facts? The Crown, another Netflix awards-bait show, has been accused of fabricating lots of stuff about the royals. Many shows are based on real stories. It’s about how the shows are presented. The Crown is up front that it’s dramatized. On the other hand, Netflix opens Baby Reindeer with a title card that boldly and unusually says, “This is a true story.” Not “based on a true story” or “inspired by true events,” but an explicit promise to viewers: Watch this OMFG bonkers ridic story because it’s TOTALLY TRUE. Only in the end credits does it acknowledge that scenes and characters have been changed. And it worked. Everyone watched, high viewership led to great buzz, which led to awards attention, all thanks in part to what we now know is a lie.If Reindeer were a memoir, would Gadd be canceled like James Frey nearly 20 years ago after the narrative of A Million Little Pieces fell apart? Instead, Gadd is making the rounds at media-safe F.Y.C. events, where he won’t be asked about the factual problems and the mislabeling of the show. The Netflix awards team put him on both NBC’s Today and The Tonight Show, and neither brought up the legal issues. I’m guessing that was a condition of the booking, though Netflix declined to comment beyond its statement supporting Gadd, who has only said that the show is “emotionally true.” Again, shows make stuff up all the time. It’s fine, they just acknowledge that the story is only based on reality. People expect that. But Netflix didn’t do that, and when I asked why the opening title card still hasn’t been changed, a rep declined to comment. Maybe doing so would be an admission that might give Harvey fuel for her lawsuit? Maybe Netflix knows the “truth” is a big part of what made the show pop. This might seem trivial, but in the future, why wouldn’t every docudrama simply label itself with, “This is a true story”? It’s a much better hook than This is kinda, a little bit, “emotionally” real, especially if the show appears on a powerful platform that has the resources to drown out critical voices, all while running an awards campaign. There’s still time to do the right thing, Netflix. Relabel Baby Reindeer as “based on the incredible true story,” parade Gadd around talking about the changes he made from reality, and argue that the factual stuff doesn’t take away from the power of the material and the performances, which it doesn’t. (I actually liked the show, as bad as it made me feel.) But leaving “This is a true story” on a show that clearly isn’t? Embarrassing, and definitely not awards-worthy.

My Reading List…

A DC debacle that doesn’t involve Ezra Miller: How Warner Bros. took a $200 million loss on the Suicide Squad video game. [Bloomberg]Joe Adalian’s annual streamer rankings is a big Netflix love-in, but I’m surprised Disney+/Hulu outranked Max this year. [Vulture] How Ye (Kanye West) turned a Japanese architect’s Malibu masterpiece into a hollowed-out shell. [New Yorker] The arms race for sports rights is almost certainly going to push down the content spend on scripted and unscripted entertainment, Doug Shapiro argues. [The Mediator] Congrats to Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel and Charter’s Chris Winfrey for making the Times’s revised top 10 list of highest-paid C.E.O.s by “compensation actually paid” in 2023. [NY Times] Speaking of Ari, he escalated his campaign against Netanyahu via a strongly worded op-ed. [Financial Times] We all thought Tom Cruise was the hardest-working man in Hollywood, but it’s actually whoever coordinates his gifting. [EW] Now for Scott Mendelson’s take on the big Bad Boys 4 box office…

Sony’s Will Smith Post-Slap Rebound

Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which opened with $56.6 million in North America and $107.4 million worldwide, isn’t just the first unquestionably successful tentpole of the summer, it’s also Sony Pictures’ third straight success in six weeks. The Will Smith-Martin Lawrence action-comedy sequel arrived three weeks after The Garfield Movie and a month after the low-budget, star-free Tarot. Barring an improbable tapering for Bad Boys, all three films will be profitable in the theatrical window alone. Sony, with a steady diet of varied and inexpensive releases, is on a path to have a comparatively under-the-radar, not-so-bummer summer.Even if it fails to both leg out where it’s already playing and break out in its remaining upcoming territories—China, Italy, and Japan—Bad Boys: Ride or Die still looks likely to end its run with around $325 million globally. That’s less than Bad Boys for Life, which was the top Hollywood movie of Covid-decimated 2020, with $426 million worldwide on a $90 million budget. But there are plenty of reasons to feel optimistic that the movie could even eclipse that number—namely a 5 on PostTrak and an A– CinemaScore, plus the fact that it’s the only R-rated tentpole until Deadpool & Wolverine in late July. In the end, the lingering brand damage of Smith cold-cocking Chris Rock at the Oscars didn’t appear to have any impact, as I had predicted last week. Sony deftly ignored the scandal and instead focused the marketing effort on a worldwide media tour for the stars (including Saudi Arabia) and television and digital spots that focused on the I.P. Tom Rothman’s studio offered up media that highlighted the plot hook (our two hero cops are framed for murder and go on the run) and a kinetic, action-packed visual style familiar from the previous film. This tactic subtly reminded general audiences that it was a direct sequel to Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi’s well-reviewed and well-received Bad Boys for Life. Rothman, who was a famous penny-pincher when he ran Fox’s film divisions (in one job or another) from 1996 to 2012, once told The New Yorker his theory of Hollywood economics. “The trick is, from the business side, to try to be fiscally responsible so you can be creatively reckless.” Few would call his Sony slate—or his decision to make a fourth Bad Boys movie with Will Smith—creatively reckless, but that’s what passes for... Continue reading online…

The Feedback

My grab bag of items on Thursday led to feedback on a bunch of topics. Some examples….“John Oliver sounds like a baby [for firing his agents when they failed to get him a big raise at HBO], but agencies fall into the ‘You have one job’ category of service employees. Get me more money or get fired. Sounds like [WME] didn’t get John more money, so…” —A producer “Tonight’s WIH led me down a rabbit hole of researching this egomaniac Shane Salerno. His real insanity can be found on his Wikipedia page. It’s chock-full of name-dropping and weird technicalities designed to lead you to believe he’s the most successful writer in Hollywood history. But it also includes exhaustive personal details about him. The best: He was the only write-in class president of his high school since the school was founded in 1851. Does he think we believe a third-party journalist discovered this fact?!” —A production coordinator “If Ellison gets Paramount, as looks likely, you need to start an I-banking/consulting firm. You’ve been saying this from the beginning, despite all the nonsense in the media.” —A lawyer

Have a great week, MattGot a question, comment, complaint, or a last-minute bid for National Amusements? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Murdoch’s Basel

Inside the commercialization of Art Basel.

MARION MANEKER

Biden’s Age Paradox

Investigating Bidenworld’s newfound sanguinity.

JOHN HEILEMANN

Shari’s Final Fantasy

Plus, unpacking Elon Musk’s $56 billion D-Day.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

License to Will

Uncovering the dueling narratives at the Washington Post.

DYLAN BYERS

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