What I’m Hearing: Strike Twists, TCM Politics, and the Kives Lawsuit

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, still based at my underground summer lair. Programming note: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I revealed the franchises that need to go dormant, and the author/antitrust advocate Matt Stoller argued for breaking up the studio/streamer oligopoly. Don’t miss an episode by subscribing here and here. Discussed in this issue: Michael Kives, David Zaslav, Jennifer Lawrence, Bob Iger, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Steven Spielberg, Ashley Hansen, Lesli Linka Glatter, Leo DiCaprio, Mike De Luca, Gene Stupnitsky, and Katy Perry singing Hava Nagila… But first…

Who Won the Week: Anthony Wood and Charlie Collier

The free, ad-supported Roku Channel appears on the latest Nielsen monthly streaming usage rankings (at 1.1 percent, tied with Peacock and just shy of Max), a first for the company’s founder/C.E.O. and its head of media.

Runner up: Warren Buffett, for this gem of a line in the Times report on Thursday’s lawsuit against former CAA agent Michael Kives’ investment firm for allegedly leveraging his celeb ties to suck $700 million out of Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt FTX: “In an interview, Mr. Buffett said Mr. Kives was a ‘name-dropper’ who ‘might pitch that he has a connection to me, but he doesn’t.’” Ouch. A little more on this…

Show of hands: Is a single person in Hollywood surprised that Kives, the world-class social climber and self-styled “connector,” is alleged to have fluffed S.B.F. at parties with Katy Perry and Leo DiCaprio, convincing the crypto mogul to invest billions in his K5 Global and pay Kives and partner Bryan Baum a ridiculous-sounding $250 million in fees? For what, exactly? To “burnish his own political and social influence,” according to the suit. So basically access to celebrities and Bill Clinton. (A K5 rep said the suit is “without merit.”) The question now is how many of the bold-faced-names in Kives’ orbit will find themselves giving testimony in this case, or others involving S.B.F. Perry, who sang Hava Nagila at Kives’ wedding, already had to have her rep give a statement to the Times. Friends like Kate Hudson and Arnold Schwarzenegger will likely be all over his texts and emails about FTX—and thus discoverable in litigation. I know nothing matters anymore, but these claims could do real damage to Kives. It’s one thing to get rich in a shady deal with a fake billionaire. It’s another to do so by leveraging the exact celebrity relationships that gave you currency in the first place in a way that now drags all of their names into a huge financial scandal. And in the bad timing department: I haven’t seen No Hard Feelings, but a friend notes that if you watch the Jennifer Lawrence comedy closely, director Gene Stupnitsky—a Kives bud, who roasted him at his wedding—included a scene where a girl is livestreaming and you can see a comment at the bottom of a phone screen from “Michael Kives.”

Quote of the Week (Taylor Sheridan edition)…

So hard to pick the funniest line from the many options in this Emmy campaign profile in THR, which miiiight not have landed as Sheridan or Paramount had hoped…

On his solo writing process: “They tell me there’s a story coordinator, but I don’t know who that is.”
On his studio collaborators: “I don’t really give a shit what a line producer or some physical production person thinks.”
On the WGA’s demand for mandatory writers: “If they tell me, ‘You’re going to have to write a check for $540,000 to four people to sit in a room that you never have to meet,’ then that’s between the studio and the guild. But if I have to check in creatively with others for a story I’ve wholly built in my brain, that would probably be the end of me telling TV stories.”

Finally, on the joys of owning a 270,000(!) acre ranch: “If someone stands at my front gate and screams through a bullhorn and says what a piece of shit I am, I still can’t hear them!”

Actually, that’s pretty cool. Now, Puck labor contributor Jonathan Handel on the Directors Guild ratifying its studio deal, and what it means for picketing writers and a possible SAG-AFTRA strike…

Actors, Writers, and a Delicate Strike Dance

As the Directors Guild ratifies its new contract amid skepticism from those who say it could have done better, SAG-AFTRA may not be as close to a deal as some expect, and the WGA remains “militant.”

JONATHAN HANDEL

In a video to members yesterday, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said that negotiations with the studios and streamers have been “extremely productive… and we’re going to achieve a seminal deal.” That seemingly suggested that a deal was near. Less noticed was national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland’s cautionary remark that there is only a “very narrow window of time remaining” to make such a deal without a strike. Narrow indeed: The 165,000-member union’s contract expires this Friday, and an extension for continued talks is unlikely without solid progress. Which way is the compass pointing? I’m hearing that press reports have been overly optimistic about an imminent deal, and that the companies’ response to SAG-AFTRA proposals is still pending to the degree that no one knows yet whether the union will walk. The first actors strike since 2000 could very well still happen as soon as the end of the week.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

For Your Consideration: Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking (Eligibility Pending)

Adding to the intrigue, the DGA membership ratified its contract Friday by an 87 percent “yes” vote. That’s a solid but slightly soft percentage: normally one would expect around 95 percent for such a vote. Indeed, in 2020 and 2017, the DGA didn’t even release the percentage, saying only that members had ratified by an “overwhelming margin.” More than half of the guild’s 16,321 eligible voters did not bother to cast a ballot on a contract that president Lesli Linka Glatter proclaimed will “build for the future and impact every category of member in our guild.” This year’s softness reflects a skepticism from those who believe the guild could have done better, a sentiment often seen on social media and captured by showrunner-director Steven DeKnight (Spartacus), who tweeted, “I can’t help feeling the DGA leadership let a singular moment in labor slip through their fingers. We won’t see this kind of solidarity again in my lifetime. If ever.” So the DGA deal is done, but that’s unlikely to placate the writers, who ramped up the rhetoric Wednesday at a rally at the La Brea Tar Pits. “I think what we need to do with the AMPTP is make them fucking extinct,” Teamsters Local 399 leader Lindsay Dougherty declared in a speech, alluding to the fate of the venue’s Jurassic period residents. “They’re scared of how militant, how ready to fight we’ve become,” writer-director Boots Riley boomed, referencing the AMPTP. The several-thousand strong crowd skewed young and cheered at all the right lines. “We break the stories. We can break you,” a picket sign declared. But can they? That remains the question, 56 days into a walkout that seems unlikely to end soon, notwithstanding the directors’ deal. Rallies help maintain solidarity and sense of purpose, but an actors’ strike would turbocharge the writers’ resolve and put increased pressure on the studios. Even without that boost, the WGA is a union that mustered a hundred-day strike 15 years ago, a 153-day walkout in 1988, and a two-year campaign against the talent agencies that ended just a couple years ago. And the crowd at last week’s rally, although not especially fired up by the speakers and music, seemed as determined as ever. There are less militant voices in the guild, for sure, but outwardly, the posturing is likely to remain aggressive, DGA deal and perhaps SAG-AFTRA resolution notwithstanding. Harder to assess is the AMPTP member companies’ mood, or moods. As June turns into July, the fall television season begins to sink out of reach. Bad news for three of the broadcast networks and their owners, Disney, NBC Universal, and Paramount Global; perhaps opportunistic times for pure-play streamers Netflix, Amazon and Apple, which may pick up disenchanted viewers; and kind of a meh for AMPTP members Fox and Sony, which have less exposure to scripted broadcast content. The Alliance operates by consensus, but with these divergent interests, reaching a deal with the writers (and actors) may be harder than ever. Reports emerged after the rally that Emmy officials were considering delaying the Sept. 18 telecast, perhaps until January. Fifteen years ago, the approaching Oscars was one of the key factors that ended that era’s writers strike, but this time it seems the reverse is more likely, with an awards show giving way to a walkout. So despite the resolution of one-third of the Hollywood guild trifecta, it seems likely to be slow-going this summer and into the fall—unless the writers and companies can arrive at a plot twist that satisfies all their respective audiences.

Now, for the Zaz-TCM Mess

This Turner Classic Movies situation is basically every David Zaslav controversy at Warner Bros. Discovery rolled into one: He professes an undying love for an asset, then fires the people who made it what he says he loved in the first place—in this case, 25-year veteran Pola Changnon and her senior team—thus causing everyone to loudly freak out, which then leads to Zaz re-committing to the future of the asset, albeit vaguely and in a P.R. stunty way. “This is my favorite channel,” he told Maureen Dowd after the pitchforks came out again this week, adding, “I think it could be bigger and more powerful with more reach. This is going to be a magical thing.” Okay…Meanwhile, I’m getting emails from TCM employees with sentiments like “it’s been killed” and “so we’re doing more with no budgets. Great.” Let’s see whether giving oversight to the Warners’ film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy is anything more than a stunt, or whether Spielberg or P.T.A. end up curating anything other than all the ill will around town.

My Reading List…

Yay to No Hard Feelings for a $15 million debut, beating the abysmal tracking for a $50 million-ish comedy. But let’s be honest: Sony’s Tom Rothman doesn’t pay Jennifer Lawrence eight figures to open in fourth place. [Indiewire] Related: It will never not be funny that The Flash, Zaslav’s favorite comic movie of all time, dropped more in its second weekend than any modern comic movie except the reviled Morbius. With Marvel’s shared-universe and multiverse movies becoming hard to follow, Mike Calia argues that DC should focus on standalones—you know, the opposite of the Marvel copycat strategy of new DC chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran. [CNBC] The fake Drake and how musicians should respond to generative A.I. [New Yorker] Sympathies to Ashley Hansen and the Harry & Meghan comms team for having to spin this devastating Journal story on the Royals’ failed Hollywood ambitions: “We’re more equipped, focused and energized than ever before.” Uh-huh. [WSJ] HBO, Netflix, Insecure, and the new “promiscuous era of streaming.” [Vox] Everyone’s favorite Israeli arms dealer turned big check-writing producer Arnon Milchan is a star witness in the corruption trial of Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks to the prime minister pulling strings to get Milchin a visa renewal “as part of a gifts-for-favors affair.” Affair? That’s called “producing.” [NY Times]

The Feedback

Putting aside the debate over whether Vanna White deserves a pay raise (she does!), my inboxes were active with comments on my Thursday back-and-forth with Bill Cohan about Disney and Bob Iger’s troubles. “I’m a Disney lifer and I’ve never seen morale this low in my division or across anyone I talk to. The company is broken, and it turns out Iger was exactly the wrong guy to figure out how to fix it. We need someone who won’t be afraid to tear down some of the impediments that Bob considers “pillars.” Pixar and WDAS should be one unit to cut costs on these movies. Who gives a shit about Pete Docter’s ego. ESPN doesn’t make sense for a post-cable bundle TV business. Full stop. And you are right about [criticizing] Kathy [Kennedy at Lucasfilm] and everyone can see it—including, I suspect, Bob, but he’s been unwilling to pull the trigger. Chapek had his issues and made mistakes, but he at least wasn’t using the old playbook. I’m not alone in hoping Bob [Iger] recognizes his return was a rare misstep and leaves next year like he promised. It might already be too late.” –A Disney executive “There’s a reason the Netflix [share price] is again pulling away from the studios: Focus, agility, and innovation. When was the last time someone used those words to describe Disney?” –A producer “Disney will live or die based on its creative people. That’s the advantage the company has, and it’s the reason Iger refused to make the cuts that [exiting C.F.O. Christine] McCarthy wanted him to. That long-term thinking will allow Disney to survive this period of upheaval and thrive long-term.” –An executive “You guys… you said you weren’t going to discuss the silly idea of Apple buying Disney… and then you discussed the silly idea of Apple buying Disney. Stop! Never gonna happen.” –An analyst “At least Bob [Iger] isn’t embarrassing himself once a week like [David] Zaslav.” –Another producer

Finally…

No fun stuff this week, I’m traveling…

Have a great week, Matt Got a question, comment, complaint, or a good Kives story? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

The Row’s Future

Is the ultimate quiet luxury brand in expansion mode?

LAUREN SHERMAN

S.B.F.’s O.C. Connection

Notes on sniffing out a fraudster.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Bret Hot American Summer

Is Baier the stable hand Fox News needs?

DYLAN BYERS

The Omidyar Mystery

Why is the billionaire reeling in his largesse?

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

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