Happy holidays from What I’m Hearing HQ, where I’m happy to report I’ve semi-successfully baked the Tom Cruise bundt cake (pic below). Thanks to everyone who sent words of encouragement. Today it’s the annual Hero of the Year, then on Monday (not Sunday… I’ve got NYE plans not involving Tom Cruise or confectionaries) I’ll be back to bestow the prestigious Villain of the Year honor.

Programming note: I was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today breaking down the scary year in Hollywood. Thanks to The New York Times’ DealBook newsletter for including The Town on its “What to Read and Listen to During Your Holiday Break” list. This week it’s our year-end, two-part The Townies awards show, where Lucas Shaw and I picked the Craziest Executive Move, Most Baffling Success, and the coveted Publicist Fail of the Year. (And for a bit of year-end banter with fewer f-bombs, Kim Masters had Lucas and me on The Business. Listen here.)

Speaking of coveted awards…

• The first billion-dollar tour, per Pollstar
• A concert film that bypassed studios and grossed $250 million, second only to Michael Jackson’s This Is It—and he had to die to beat that number
• Spotify and Apple Music’s most-streamed artist
• Five separate albums in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time
• Boosted NFL TV ratings just by showing up at games
• Nemesis Scooter Braun lost nearly all his clients

Runners-up: Greta Gerwig, Chris Nolan, Netflix co-C.E.O.s Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, CAA’s Bryan Lourd, Universal’s Donna Langley, Angel Studios’ Harmon family, Lionel Messi, Shawn Ryan, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, Travis Kelce, Sam Mackie (the Netflix TV licensing exec who did the Suits deal), Vince McMahon, and Vince McMahon’s mustache.

We debated this one on The Town, and ultimately we decided Gerwig gained more this year from co-writing and directing Barbie ($1.4 billion) than Nolan, who was already a brand-name filmmaker, did from making Oppenheimer ($950 million). So she’s my runner-up to Swift, though I reserve the right to revise that assessment if, as expected, Oppenheimer finally wins Nolan a best picture Oscar.

“Fuck you, I don’t know. Next question.”
—Adam Driver, at a Ferrari post-screening Q&A in November, when asked by an audience member what he thought of the “cheesy” car-crash scenes.

“There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic, and they are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive and dangerous.”
—Bob Iger, at Sun Valley’s “billionaire summer camp,” addressing the concerns of the striking writers and actors.

“Zaslav says that for this party, they wanted ‘our best friends, and our real friends, you know, no assholes.’”
—New York magazine, quoting David Zaslav’s cringey assessment of his infamous Cannes party with Graydon Carter.

“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far.”
—Rupert Murdoch, in an email to Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott the day after Biden’s inauguration, lamenting the election denialism coming from his primetime hosts, as revealed in the March run-up to Fox settling with Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million.

“Trash takes itself out every single time.”
—Taylor Swift on her “enemies” Scooter Braun and Kanye West, in December’s Time Person of the Year interview

“The two guys who insisted we go to the theater didn’t come to the theater.” —Jimmy Kimmel, at the Oscars in March, roasting Tom Cruise and Jim Cameron for no-showing the ceremony.

“I’ve seen it three times. It’s a very emotional movie. You’re going to go through all the emotions. To me, it’s the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen. I think it’s broken new ground. ... It’s very personal. It’s very inspiring.”
—Zaslav (again!), at CinemaCon in April, introducing The Flash, which later bombed.

“It isn’t, fundamentally, that good a business.”
—Warren Buffett, talking to CNBC in April about Paramount Global, of which he is the largest individual shareholder.

“Well, I lost half a day of skiing.” —Gwyneth Paltrow, testifying during her March ski-collision trial, when asked how the accident affected her.

A tough category! I’m gonna go with Iger, just for the news value of creating a narrative for the strikes that lasted months.

Now, without further delay, it’s the Hero of the Year. Remember, this is not who won the year (see above). This is the person who best exemplifies how the entertainment industry may survive the next decade of pain and consolidation…

Iger, who returned in November 2022 at age 71 with a promise to find a quick successor and leave after two years, served only eight months before his contract was extended again, through 2026, in part because—all together now—Disney needed more time to replace him. “I remain intensely focused on a successful transition,” Iger said then, in a statement believed by exactly nobody. Mark Parker, the board chair, added that his special blue-ribbon succession committee was working super-duper hard, and that the Iger extension was “allowing ample time to position a new C.E.O. for long-term success.”

Guys, what if I told you there’s an executive sitting in plain view, with years of relevant, C.E.O.-level experience at a large, publicly traded entertainment company. That company is a player in the consumer products space, an area where Disney made $2 billion in operating income this year. And what if I told you that this executive is managing global, Disney-style brands, including working with several actual Disney brands, like the ultra-lucrative Cars and Frozen toy franchises. He’s also been the C.E.O. of one of the world’s biggest TV producers (Endemol), and he knows Disney well, having run and then sold two separate companies that ended up there: Maker Studios, the multichannel digital network that Iger bought for $500 million in 2014 when YouTube incubators were a thing; and Fox Kids Europe, a TV network company that Disney absorbed from Fox and Haim Saban back in 2001.

And now, thanks to Barbie, he’s the architect of the No. 1 movie of the year, which, in classic Disney fashion, is based on decades-old I.P. that was smartly reimagined for modern audiences and grossed $1.4 billion worldwide. Except it’s not Disney that is celebrating, it’s the Warner Bros. studio. (In fact, Iger doesn’t have a single $1 billion-grosser to celebrate for the first time since 2014, excluding the Covid years; in 2019, he had six.) If managed correctly, Barbie will birth sequels and spinoffs for a decade, boosting toy sales, theme parks, and brand equity in the process—the very thing that Disney has typically done better than any company in the history of entertainment.

Barbie was not a happy accident, either; this was the strategy—an about-face from most outsiders’ Hollywood plans, which typically entail passive licensing, a long stay in development hell due to risk-averse “brand management,” and an eventual blame game when audiences shrug. Instead, this executive positioned his toy monolith as that most cringe-worthy of Hollywood terms, an “I.P. company” and a “premium content producer”—phrases that, like “elevated soap” or “Let’s get lunch in the new year,” are said frequently in this town and seldom translate into actual execution. But here, it did, thanks in large part to granting a filmmaker broad creative control. And this company now has at least 14 other live-action movies in active development, a potential trove of theatrical properties.

Will they work? Who knows? But at a time when comic book movies—the dominant I.P. of the past 25 years, and a genre that Disney has exploited masterfully—are either temporarily challenged or outright dead, depending on who you believe, everyone in Hollywood is freaking out about what’s next. Which properties—oh God, if any properties—will consistently put butts in seats in three, five, or ten years, thus floating the rest of the theatrical business? Video game adaptations? Maybe. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, from Illumination and Nintendo, makes a good argument. Gran Turismo, from Sony, does not. Toy adaptations? It’s been hit-and-miss in the 16 years since Transformers, but Barbie at least lights a new path. That’s enough, in this disappointing year at the box office, to be anointed Hero of the Year.

This executive also works in El Segundo, about a 35-minute drive (no traffic) from Burbank. He’s an Academy voter, floats in the same Bel Air-Brentwood rich-guy social circles as Iger, and he’s even a regular at the Polo Lounge. Sounds like someone Disney should at least take a look at, right?

I’m taking nothing away from Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote and directed a crowd-pleasing comedy with a smart message that resonated globally, and who will likely be rewarded with multiple Oscar nominations on top of the eight-figure paydays she and co-writer/partner Noah Baumbach have earned as profit participants. And full credit to star and producer Margot Robbie, who aggressively recruited Gerwig and co-star Ryan Gosling; Toby Emmerich, the executive who greenlit the film at Warner Bros. and agreed to spend what ended up being $145 million after reshoots (Mattel kicked in on some overages); Robbie Brenner, the veteran producer whom Kreiz hired to shepherd Barbie and other Mattel properties, like Masters of the Universe and Hot Wheels; and Josh Goldstine and the Warners marketing team, which, despite this existential moment in the industry, proved that the core competency of legacy studios remains not just making a compelling product but selling it to the world.

But when Kreiz joined the then-troubled Mattel in 2018, he set about rescuing Barbie from Sony (and mending the company’s relationship with the Bobs, who had shifted Disney’s cash-cow princess licenses over to rival Hasbro). Kreiz also learned from what The Lego Group did with The Lego Movie, in 2014, that the best way to “manage” a brand was to take it into uncomfortable places. He allowed his doll, his company, and even himself, to be mocked and deconstructed by the very film that he desperately hoped would revitalize his aging asset. And it worked: On a recent earnings call, Kreiz revealed that Barbie contributed about $125 million from its share of box office and the initial bump in toy sales. But the actual value of the film to the company, especially since Kreiz leveraged it as the cornerstone of a long-term I.P. exploitation plan, is far greater.

I know, it’s one movie. Last time I had lunch with Kreiz and Brenner, in March of 2022 (at the Polo Lounge, of course), they spoke of Mattel’s aspirations in film and TV as if it were a fresh new idea. Partnering with top-tier talent up front (J.J. Abrams on Hot Wheels, Tom Hanks on Major Matt Mason, Marc Forster on Thomas & Friends, Daniel Kaluuya on Barney) is a tweak of the pure-licensing model. But many, including Mattel rival Hasbro, have gone down this path of “reinvention” as a content company. Maybe Barbie is the Iron Man of Mattel, the declaration of a new franchise machine. Or maybe it’s Transformers, which, seven films in, is still a franchise for Hasbro (and Paramount), but its success in 2007 begat Battleship, G.I. Joe … and not much else.

Hasbro once harbored major ambitions in film and TV, but it is now so challenged, it just offloaded its eOne library and production division to Lionsgate. While I.P.-driven hits abound in Hollywood, basically only Marvel has successfully made the consumer products-to-content powerhouse transition as a company, and Marvel comic books are filled with stories ripe for adaptation. Marvel, unlike Mattel, also financed its own movies, hitting paydirt with Kevin Feige’s vision for interlocking Avengers movies and selling to Disney for $4 billion in 2009. Mattel is letting studio partners largely foot the bill for its Hollywood foray. For that reason, the stock has hardly moved despite the outsize success of Barbie. Wall Street would be way more impressed if Mattel owned the movie.

That’s probably why Kreiz’s name doesn’t come up in discussions of Disney succession, both internally and in the media. Iger also might not want to resurface Maker Studios, Club Penguin, and his other digital forays that didn’t pan out. But given that Disney is Mattel’s most important business relationship, Kreiz is said to be friendly with Iger; they have semi-regular breakfasts and text each other, according to those who know both. Still, I’ve heard from Disney insiders that such a quintessentially American company should have an American C.E.O. (This chatter came up when Peter Rice, a Brit, was discussed as a potential chief executive candidate—before Chapek fired him.) Kreiz is Israeli—born in Tel Aviv, he spent many years in the I.D.F. and taught wind surfing in the Caribbean before grad school—and he has dual British citizenship (his mom’s from London). That might disqualify him in the eyes of some Disney traditionalists, though Kreiz went to UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and has lived in L.A. for more than a decade.

These days, that’s a small criticism, especially since, as we know, Disney doesn’t have obvious internal candidates. Josh D’Amaro (Parks), Jimmy Pitaro (ESPN), and Dana Walden (TV) all have been floated, but each suffers from a lack of broader experience. The Disney succession committee is said to be casting a wider net now that they’ve bought some time with the Iger extension. But tellingly, zero outside names have surfaced from this search.

For all I know, the Disney board is talking to Kreiz. (Both his rep and Disney declined to comment.) After all, in his five years at Mattel, he restored the company to financial health and slashed its leverage, two tasks Iger is facing these days. He’s dabbled in gaming via licenses with Roblox and others, and theme parks via another licensing deal, with Mattel Adventure Park set to open in Arizona in 2024. These are passive deals, but they’re at least a toe in the water of businesses that the next Disney C.E.O. will need to confront.

Would Disney ever turn the Magic Kingdom over to a toy executive, albeit one who’s now boasting a blockbuster movie franchise in Barbie? Even given his familiarity with the company, Kreiz would still qualify as an outsider. But given his background and success this year in the exact arena where Hollywood is desperately looking for answers, he seems like as good a candidate as any to watch.

• David Ellison (’22, click here)
• Bela Bajaria (’21, click here)

Got a question, comment, complaint, or odds on whether this tweet is the result of a terse phone call from Oprah? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.