Tonight, Kim Masters is here with a breakdown of the succession sweepstakes at Sony Pictures as Tom Rothman turns 70 and a key lieutenant bails for Paramount. Plus, a standoff over the Conjuring franchise, and more thoughts on how to fix Rotten Tomatoes.

🚨 Programming note: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I parsed the NFL numbers on YouTube and those Wizard of Oz grosses at the Sphere, Fergus Navaratnam-Blair of NRG revealed the top franchises for Gen Alpha, and my good friend Adam Aron explained why he’s the corn king of America. Subscribe here and here. 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: James Wan, Ravi Ahuja, Amy Pascal, Sanford Panitch, Jerry Bruckheimer, Donna Langley, Sydney Sweeney, Dakota Johnson, Bryan Lourd, Richard Brener, Josh Greenstein, Taylor Swift, Tom Rothman, Natalia Safran, Palak Patel, John Terzian, Charles Roven, Michael Clear, Post Malone, Peter Safran, Kid Cudi, the Murdochs, The Rizzler, and… David Geffen’s divorce. But first…

Even at 94, Rupert outmaneuvered his children again. Prudence, James, and Liz had won the Nevada trust litigation and, barring an unlikely reversal on appeal, were poised to together take control of Fox News and the rest of the family company when Rupert dies. Instead, Dad got them to walk away with $1.1 billion each in a complex deal to settle the war and firmly plant eldest boy Lachlan atop an empire that will continue unchallenged. As always, money wins.

Runners-up: James Wan and Michael Clear, the Conjuring: Last Rites producers who, along with director Michael Chaves, producer Peter Safran, and New Line execs, pulled off a franchise-best domestic opening ($84 million)—and, since their Atomic Monster was acquired last year by Blumhouse, the biggest global opening ($194 million) in Blumhouse’s storied history. A little more on this…

Close watchers of the Conjuring movies may have noticed producer James Wan appearing among fan favorite characters in the final scenes of The Conjuring: Last Rites, which debuted with a stunning $84 million domestic and $194 worldwide this weekend. That cameo might be the last time Wan has anything to do with the franchise.

Wan and his Atomic Monster production company have been locked in a standoff of sorts with Warner Bros. for the past few months over his continued involvement in the Conjuring universe. Wan directed the original 2013 film and its sequel, and he’s been a producer and key creative figure on all the main Conjuring movies, as well as three Annabelle spinoffs, two Nuns, and quasi-spinoff The Curse of La Llorona. Each of the eight Conjuring universe films released prior to Last Rites has averaged about $285 million globally, and this one seems poised for more. Atomic Monster’s deal requires Warners to credit and pay Wan on all future Conjuring movies, as well as a planned TV series. And despite Last Rites being positioned as the “final” film in the saga, Warners’ New Line division is already plotting a potential prequel, I’m told. Given the box office numbers, of course they are.

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But Wan, who also launched the Saw and Insidious horror franchises, wants to be paid more for his producing services. Remember, Blumhouse merged with Atomic Monster last year, and since then, CAA’s Bryan Lourd has made multiple trips to the Warners lot to press for better economics for Atomic Monster on Conjuring. CAA initially asked for 50 percent of future movies, then lowered the ask to 25 percent for an initial follow-up film and 50 percent after that. Warners is still balking, and Wan is threatening to walk away.

I’d say that would be a pretty big exit for arguably Warners’ most reliable franchise—Wan is a huge name in horror. But Warners sources insist his involvement in recent movies has been limited. Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear has taken a big role on-set, along with Natalia Safran, wife and partner of Peter Safran, the producer who originally brought the property to Warners and is now a business-focused executive at the company, co-running DC with his creative partner James Gunn. But multiple non-WB sources say that Wan is still instrumental in the creative direction of the franchise, and still appears on set and makes key contributions to the mythology and scare sequences that have made the movies so popular. Regardless, Richard Brener, the New Line executive who has been riding high on the recent success of Final Destination: Bloodlines and Conjuring: Last Rites, sees no need to pay more for Wan’s involvement. To continue receiving his producing credit, Wan is required to perform some basic services, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be in breach of contract. If that happens, Wan and Atomic Monster could be kicked off the franchise entirely, allowing Warners and Safran to go it alone. But would the movies suffer? And would the Conjuring fans revolt if its creative maestro is no longer involved? That’s a gamble Warners has to decide if it wants to make.

$935 Price to watch every NFL regular and playoff game this season, the first with everything available on a streaming service. [Sportico]

339 million S.V.O.D. subscriptions in the U.S., a 10 percent increase year over year and a new all-time high. [Antenna] 24.6 percent Year-over-year decrease in August domestic box office (thanks to the success of last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine) and a 14.6 percent decrease compared to the pre-pandemic average [FranchiseRE] 43 percent Share of U.S. K-pop streaming volume that comes from the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, as of August 7. [Luminate] 200 percent Increase in Travis Kelce’s jersey sales after his engagement to Taylor Swift, the biggest spike since the Super Bowl [LA Times/Fanatics]

“I am doing this because they’re paying me a large sum of money. They’re paying enough money to look the other way.” —Comedian Tim Dillon, being honest onstage about why he agreed to play a gig at Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival. (His price was $375,000, he said.)

Runner-up: “I’m sorry that we sent them into space. … We can never get that genie back.” —Donna Langley, the Universal studio chief, lamenting the hilariously epic space sequence in F9, at a TIFF panel. Okay, here’s Kim on the Sony drama…

In late July, Sony Pictures announced a shuffling at the top of its film studio. Tom Rothman, who had long been dogged by rumors of imminent retirement, re-upped with a “multiyear” extension of his contract. He added C.E.O. to his previous title, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. At the same time, studio co-president Josh Greenstein departed for Paramount, leaving Rothman’s longtime right-hand man, Sanford Panitch, as sole president. “We are all sorry to see Josh go,” Rothman said at the time. “The key to a sound organization, however, is to have a strong bench.”

But according to sources, higher-ups at Sony have not been convinced that the bench is strong enough to provide an eventual replacement for Rothman. Sony hasn’t specified the length of the contract extension (sources say it’s three years) and if it were up to Rothman, it probably would run until he drew his last breath. At 70, he’s a decade or more older than anyone else running a film studio, so it sure looks like Sony’s movie division has a looming succession issue. It makes sense that Ravi Ahuja, the charismatic Sony Pictures C.E.O. who’s only been in the job since January and whose background is in TV, would lock up a new contract with Rothman. Smart and hardworking, Rothman has been the remedy for the overspending and mismanagement that had plagued the studio ever since the Japanese bought it in 1989, from the misadventures of Peter Guber and Jon Peters through the end of the Amy Pascal regime in 2015—which not only involved lavish spending, but also that annoying little international incident of the Sony hack. The film studio has been consistently profitable—no small feat—since Rothman took the helm, so he has good reason to take pride in his stewardship. Having said that, Sony has been enduring a bad year and is now last in market share among the major studios, behind Paramount. Its latest swing, Caught Stealing, just opened to $22 million worldwide, and the upcoming A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is tracking at about $8 million despite starring Margot Robbie. Sony blames these troubles on the strike, which delayed the third Spider-verse movie, and says next year will be better, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, another Jumanji, and Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. A Legend of Zelda film is also in the works. Rothman evokes complicated feelings in Hollywood, where he has long been known as a micromanager who can squeeze a dollar until filmmakers beg for mercy. Having sparred with him for years, I’m aware that he doesn’t see himself that way at all, and finds that characterization outdated and lazy. He views himself as a man who takes his job seriously and does it responsibly, and as a great lover of, and advocate for, movies. The confounding thing is that all of it is true—the good and the bad. That is why many of those who complain about Rothman still have a soft spot for him.

That soft spot doesn’t extend to Panitch, however. Having also previously worked for Rothman at Fox, Panitch has picked up a reputation as Rothman’s hatchet man. “Sanford is amazing at one thing that very few people can do, which is: He manages Tom Rothman, and he does that better than anybody,” a high-profile producer told me. According to one former colleague, “Sanford has been the guy that’s willing to do the hard thing so that Tom feels it doesn’t land on him.” Another producer said Panitch’s involvement leads to “a lot of busy work. That’s just his way of operating.”

Rothman, while declining to answer other queries for this article, rose to Panitch’s defense: “Sanford Panitch is an excellent executive. He enjoys the full support of the company. His hard work and dedication have been instrumental in our achieving multiple record years over the last decade.”

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One former colleague described Panitch, who is 59, as “smart and aggressive,” but added, “He operates like a foreign sales guy—‘What can I get through the system? How can I serve it up in a way that Tom will like?’ It’s not about building relationships with filmmakers and building up a slate based on his gut.” But veteran producer Charles Roven, who produced American Hustle and Uncharted at Sony, disputed that. Rothman and Panitch, he said, “are an extremely efficient and good team, and they have multiple movies with some pretty fantastic filmmakers. They wouldn’t have that if that combination wasn’t working.”

Producers who have made films for Sony have said, in some cases, that Panitch has helped movies get to a green light when Rothman balked. Bad Boys producer Jerry Bruckheimer told me Panitch had been “very helpful in getting our movies made. He was always on the right side of getting the movie made.” Another producer said Panitch had to overcome Rothman’s doubts about making the Sydney Sweeney–Glen Powell rom-com Anyone But You, which grossed $220 million. If Rothman is anxious about a project that feels too expensive or risky, one producer said, “He’ll say to Sanford, Go find money,” and Panitch is skilled at lining up outside investors. Some years back, Panitch seemed to crave a little spice beyond the daily diet of a hardworking studio suit. In 2016, just as he was starting at Sony, he launched a clothing line called 1sizefitssome. As jackets came only in size 40, pants in a 34, and shirts in a 16, it’s perhaps not surprising that the business didn’t take off. But Shawn Levy, Zachary Quinto, and J.J. Abrams talked up the clothes for a Wall Street Journal write-up that year, and Quinto even served as a model for a promotion that Panitch arranged to shoot in Hong Kong. The result was a 97-second film—now sadly gone from the internet—that, according to the Journal, involved “ominous music … guns, tattoos and a beautiful woman.” One downside: The clothes were “obscured by scene-setting fog and intriguing, often intentionally out-of-focus camera work.”

Eyebrows were also raised by Panitch’s association with Palak Patel, who was an E.V.P. of production and development at Sony for 10 years, until his contract was allowed to lapse last December. He is now chief content officer at Prime Focus Studios, Namit Malhotra’s effects house. (Patel declined to comment for this article.)

I’ve never met Patel—hadn’t even heard of him before I started working on this story—but in my years covering this industry, I can’t remember anyone evoking as many negative comments without any positive ones to balance the scales. Patel was the executive assigned to Sony’s Marvel movies outside of the Spider-Man projects, which the studio manages in conjunction with Disney. Those films started with a bang when Venom grossed $856 million in 2018. But sources said that on the sequel, producer Hutch Parker found Patel to be toxic and untrustworthy, hampering communication with the studio, and ultimately banished him from involvement with the film. Sources said Patel also clashed with Pascal, another producer on the film. The Marvel-related projects that were supposed to be managed by Patel have been an especially high-profile problem. In 2022, the poorly reviewed Morbius managed only a $167 million gross, with salt rubbed in that wound thanks to a historic 74 percent drop in its second weekend. Patel ran into clashes again on Madame Web (sitting at 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), which grossed $100 million worldwide and was even noisier online than Morbius, for all the wrong reasons. Dakota Johnson went public with her complaints. “There’s this thing that happens now where a lot of creative decisions are made by committee. Or made by people who don’t have a creative bone in their body,” she told the Los Angeles Times. After last December’s Kraven the Hunter pulled in only $62 million globally, Sony hit pause on the non-arachnid Marvel properties. With that dismal record still unspooling, a former Sony executive said, “There were loud rumors: Why does Sanford keep this guy around?” (The same question could have been put to Rothman, who takes such pride in staying profitable.) There was even more eyebrow-raising when Sony gave a first-look deal to John Terzian, the co-owner of a number of celebrity-favored restaurants and private clubs: Delilah in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami; as well as the Bird Streets Club in West Hollywood; and the Beverly Hills–adjacent The Nice Guy. There are also two exclusive nightclubs: Keys and Poppy. Patel was known to enjoy evenings out (whether Panitch was ever along for the ride is unclear), but Terzian doesn’t have a track record producing movies. (One exception: He’s an executive producer on an independent film called Idiotka, which played at a couple of festivals.) He does have relationships with many celebrities, and the deal involved a couple of prospective star vehicles, one seen as a kind of potential 8 Mile with Post Malone, and another comedy called Hell Naw with Kid Cudi. The Post Malone project fell apart, but according to Terzian, the Cudi project, first announced in April 2023, and an unannounced horror film are still alive at the studio. To some insiders, though, the deal had made no sense to begin with. “It’s kind of an oxymoron to have Terzian and Rothman in one story,” said one industry veteran. As for Patel, the gossip mill began to grind over his expense reports, which eventually triggered an investigation. He was out at the end of last year. It’s not clear whether such goings-on affected the perception of Panitch at Sony, but it seems that his tenure at the studio is unlikely to outlast Rothman’s. For now, Rothman is running the place, but perhaps recognizing that nothing lasts forever, he has announced a mighty swing: four Beatles movies, all directed by Sam Mendes, all scheduled to be released in April 2028. With the movies said to be costing about $100 million each, it seems in some ways like the unlikeliest of Rothman bets. But given his belief in Mendes, maybe not. “He’s going to have to retire sometime, and the Beatles movies might be the right time to do it,” said one producer who has known Rothman for many years. And that might be the case whether it’s a winning bet or a bold misadventure.

The sad demise of postproduction behemoth Technicolor, featuring the requisite acquisition spree and subsequent crushing debt load. [Bloomberg]

David Ellison would very much like your ideas for how to salvage his garbage cable TV brands like MTV and VH1. [WSJ] A big welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery, which finally joined the A.I. litigation party with Comcast and Disney! [LA Times] (Note: Eriq Gardner will have more on this case tomorrow in WIH+.) A brutal indictment of Disney’s price gouging at its parks as an indicator of the death of the middle class. [NY Times] The judge overseeing the $1.5 billion settlement of author claims against Anthropic may not even approve the deal. [CNBC] What if children’s books written (or, more likely, ghost written) by celebrities are not the best thing for our kids? [New Yorker] The Rizzler is making way more money than you. [WSJ] The deep dive on David Geffen’s divorce that we all deserve. [WSJ]

Thursday’s look at what ruined Rotten Tomatoes generated a lot of spirited responses. Also… is “poaching” a dirty word?

“This review issue does matter. We are selling audiences a product under false pretenses, and when they see it they are disappointed and don’t come back. If everything gets great reviews, the actually great movies can’t break through.” —A producer “You nailed the problem—the whole system has become meaningless noise driven by access journalism and fake positivity.” —An actor-writer “I wonder if there will come a day for someone to harness A.I. for good and have the machine compute the bias out of these nonsense aggregators and get us back to some sense of normalcy when it comes to criticism. A ‘good’ use for A.I.? One can dream.” —An actor “I argue with folks within our own company as to the ‘quality’ of a specific film or TV show. It is 1) subjective and slanted based on who is giving the opinion and their personal tastes and interests, and 2) different ages, backgrounds, and environments shape preferences. With the country literally split down the middle on almost everything, the idea of an RT score that would inform a majority of the viewing population is dated and becoming outright inaccurate. We need a new metric to judge a well-executed, memorable, and entertaining piece of content.” —An executive “Can we officially retire the word poach as it relates to a client changing agencies? An alligator poached does not have a say in whether its skin will be made into shoes or a purse. The definition of poached is ‘taken or acquired illegally or unfairly.’ A client changing agencies does so because they didn’t feel their career needs were being met at their current agency and expect ‘better’ representation at the new agency. In other words, they have final say.” —An agent

Can Disney’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere match last year’s Bob Dylan pic? Seven weeks out, the tracking numbers are similar, according to The Quorum’s latest chart…

Have a great week, Matt

Maya Tribbitt contributed research for today’s issue. Got a question, comment, complaint, or votes for the greatest Canadian in Hollywood? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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