Welcome back to a very special Wednesday edition of What I’m Hearing+, this one hosted by the very special Kim Masters. She’s got intel on what America’s Creepy Dad Bill Cosby stands to gain from Netflix’s new A Different World, Dana White and an FBI probe of alleged fight-fixing in the UFC (which was news to Paramount), as well as exclusive reports from events this week honoring Warner Bros.’ Alan Horn and the late producer Jon Landau…

Discussed in this issue: Kevin Tsujihara, Ryan Reynolds, Dana White, David Zaslav, David Ellison, James Cameron, Ari Emanuel, Pam Abdy, Chris Nolan, Charlotte Kirk, Jasmine Guy, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña, Mike De Luca, Kash Patel, Tom Werner, Alan Horn, Isaac Dulgarian, George Clooney, Yadier del Valle, and many more…

All yours, Kim…

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The winners already know — it’s quality of attention, not quantity, that matters to consumers, brands, and the media companies that connect them.

Are you fighting the right battles in the war for attention?

Kim Masters

Wednesday Thoughts…

We need to talk about Kevin (Tsujihara)…: Last week, Warner Bros. hosted a ceremony dedicating a 114-seat screening room to former film studio chief and current consultant Alan Horn, 82. Seated in the front row were Warner Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav, film heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, Horn and his wife, plus George Clooney, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Nolan, and… former Warners C.E.O. Kevin Tsujihara.

You might recall that Tsujihara resigned in 2019 after a colleague and I reported on his entanglement with aspiring actress Charlotte Kirk. (Kirk’s involvement with then-NBCU vice chairman Ron Meyer led to his ouster the following year.) I was told after we exposed the scandal that AT&T C.E.O. John Stankey, who was overseeing Warners at the time, felt bad for Tsujihara, as did some members of the Warners old boys’ club. Stankey threw Tsujihara a farewell party at which, sources told me, the AT&T exec literally teared up as he said his goodbyes.

Until very recently, I hadn’t heard about many Tsujihara sightings around town (though Matt has spotted him lunching at the Polo Lounge, twice). It was announced a couple of years ago that he had formed an investment firm, Alignment Growth, with former Time Warner top dog Jeff Bewkes and former investment banker Alex Iosilevich. Then, just a few weeks ago, Tsujihara turned up at the dinner where Zaslav received the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award. And here he was again, in the front row at a Warners event. My source noted that all the executives and luminaries in that front row made remarks, except Tsujihara.

I texted him this week to ask whether this was his first time back at his former studio home, and he responded that it was not. He didn’t answer a follow-up question, but given the circumstances, I think we can agree that it was game of him to answer at all.
Cosby’s go-away money for A Different World?: A friend raised an interesting question regarding Netflix’s upcoming 10-episode reboot of A Different World, which originally ran from 1987 to 1993 as a spinoff of The Cosby Show. Would Bill Cosby make money from the new series? The original was produced by Cosby’s production company and Carsey-Werner, the ’80s and ’90s hitmakers also behind Roseanne and 3rd Rock From the Sun, among many other shows.

A Different World followed Cliff Huxtable’s daughter Denise (Lisa Bonet) as she matriculated to Hillman College, a fictional H.B.C.U. The Huxtables are absent from the new version of the show, though Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Whitley Gilbert (Jasmine Guy) return as their daughter Deborah (Maleah Joi Moon) starts her first year at their alma mater.

Netflix sources say the show came to the streamer with no involvement from Cosby, who has been accused by more than 60 women of sexual assault. (Cosby has maintained his innocence.) The comedian’s name is nowhere to be seen in the new Different World credits. But Tom Werner, now 75, is credited as an exec producer (Marcy Carsey has retired), and apparently handled the negotiation with Cosby.

According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Cosby is not only being paid, as required by his original contract, but is getting extra money for keeping his name off the new show. As the comedian was at the height of his power when the deal for the original series was struck, no doubt the terms were very good. I tried every which way to reach Werner through his company, his agent, and his lawyer, and got no response. I also tried many ways to reach Cosby with no success.

I asked a veteran network executive for a guess as to the terms. “Given that it’s Netflix and he would be getting both an E.P. credit and extra for agreeing to keep his name off, I’d say the range is $75,000 to $100,000 per episode,” he said. If so, up to $1 million of Netflix cash may end up, by way of Carsey-Werner, going to an alleged rapist.

It also occurred to me that Roseanne Barr must have made a similar deal on The Conners, which ran for seven seasons on ABC. That series was spawned from the 2018 revival of Roseanne, which was canceled after one season due to Barr’s toxic tweets. Her name is nowhere to be seen in the Conners credits. Roseanne’s rep did not respond to a request for comment.
Celebrating the Cameron Whisperer…: This past rainy Monday night, I went to a packed party at Katsuya in Century City to celebrate the late Jon Landau’s memoir, The Bigger Picture. Landau, who died last year at 63, worked with Jim Cameron from True Lies through the Avatar movies. He was a great guy who had the ability to contend with and take some of the edge off of Cameron, who was present at the party. There was a video with tributes from Bob Iger, a tearful Sigourney Weaver, a weeping Zoe Saldaña, and more, as well as photos of Jon living his best life—some with him in costumes that he’d occasionally wear to lighten the mood during intense Cameron productions. (In one he was dressed as a hot dog.)

Only family members spoke (and sang) at the party. But Cameron, who wrote the four-page introduction to the memoir, told me what he would have said had he been invited to make remarks. “Jon and I were like two strands of DNA,” he said. “We were inextricable career-wise—you couldn’t talk about his major achievements without mentioning me, and you couldn’t talk about mine without talking about him, at least from True Lies on. But at the same time, we kept our private lives very separate. We didn’t hang out, go to dinner, go bowling. I wasn’t part of his Thursday poker nights. He valued his family above all things, and led his own life. And I did, too. It was a curious friendship, based 100 percent on the work and how we valued each other for that.”

And now for the main event…

Paramount Enters the Octagon

The UFC’s two F.B.I. investigations caught its new partner, Paramount Skydance, off guard. With a $7.7 billion deal signed and the bloodsport soon to start streaming, is it worth fighting over?

Kim Masters

When the new management at Paramount struck its seven-year, $7.7 billion deal for the U.S. rights to UFC, some industry insiders thought David Ellison had overpaid—especially given the dearth of other bids. But there appears to be another question worth asking about the deal. UFC parent TKO did not disclose an ongoing F.B.I. inquiry surrounding the alleged fixing of a 2022 match between Darrick Minner and Shayilan Nuerdanbieke. (The bout spawned multiple investigations into fighter-turned-coach James Krause, whom the UFC ultimately banned. The Nevada Athletic Commission gave the two fighters involved lengthy suspensions.)

Now, following another suspicious match earlier this month, UFC C.E.O. Dana White has revealed that the F.B.I. has expanded its inquiry. Of course, this has caused many to wonder just how pervasive match-rigging might be. (Neither TKO nor Paramount had any comment for this story.)

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

We keep talking about the war for attention, but we’ve been getting it wrong.

The winners already know — it’s quality of attention, not quantity, that matters to consumers, brands, and the media companies that connect them.

Are you fighting the right battles in the war for attention?

No one is claiming the UFC had anything to do with fixing either fight or that it is the focus of the investigation. White noted in a November 4 interview with TMZ Sports that he personally called the F.B.I. after suspicions were aroused during a November 1 match between Isaac Dulgarian and Yadier del Valle. When the bet-monitoring company IC360 flagged unusually large volume on del Valle before the bout, White said, “We called [Dulgarian] and his lawyer and said, ‘What’s going on? Are you injured? Do you owe anybody money? Has anybody approached you?’” He continued: “And the kid said, ‘Absolutely not.’” Dulgarian fought and lost rather conspicuously in the first round, and UFC promptly dropped him.

In the interview, White also revealed that the F.B.I.’s involvement wasn’t new. “That investigation [of the 2022 match] is still ongoing and will be part of this investigation, too.” He added that the UFC will “do everything we can to make sure” that anyone involved in fight-fixing goes to prison.

Could Paramount, which I’m told knew nothing about the F.B.I. investigation, eventually challenge the deal if the scandal deepens and damages the UFC brand? UCLA law professor and co-director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy Andrew Verstein, who is admittedly not knowledgeable about mixed martial arts, told me that it’s not outside the realm of possibility, though a court might have a “caveat emptor” attitude. And while every professional sports league must come to terms with the prevalence of legalized gaming—the NBA and MLB have each faced their own crises—combat sports face unique challenges because, unlike with team sports, one athlete can determine the outcome of a match on his own.

In his TMZ interview, White called the idea that other fights were compromised “total clickbait bullshit,” but he also acknowledged seeing “things now on the internet where fighters are coming out” to say that they had been approached about fixing a fight. If that was true, White said, they should have reported it. But on his podcast, Ariel Helwani, who covers MMA for Yahoo Sports and has feuded with White in the past, called fight-fixing “a massive issue” for the UFC. “I believe what is happening here is people are preying on low-level fighters who don’t make a lot of money,” he said.

How much scrutiny will this issue get from Kash Patel’s F.B.I.? After all, there’s going to be a UFC event on the White House lawn next summer, with the Lincoln Memorial used for weigh-ins. (Writing that sentence makes me question my sanity, but it’s true.) Meanwhile, White continues to attract a lot of attention. In 2023, he publicly apologized after TMZ obtained footage of him slapping his wife at a Cabo nightclub. Earlier this year, White welcomed the influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate in Las Vegas (ProPublica recently reported that the Trump administration intervened to prevent them from being investigated by U.S. authorities while they were here). They are now back in Romania, where they remain under investigation for sex trafficking. (The Tates have denied any wrongdoing.) Recent reports have focused on White’s public high-stakes gambling—and losses that Casino.org alleged to be somewhere between $25 million and $50 million. (He also called reporting on his gambling “pure clickbait bullshit”—a phrase he seems to enjoy.)

This is the sort of conduct that usually induces nausea for the boards of publicly held companies, but a TKO insider noted that White is not an officer of the company and does not sit on its board, while WWE president Nick Khan does. And Dana’s TKO boss, Ari Emanuel, is making a lot of bank from both the UFC and WWE, partly by crafting a splendid rights deal with Ellison while also acting as his advisor. (The TKO stock price is up about 30 percent this year.) There are also Ari’s connections to consider. TKO has partnerships with Saudi Arabia for UFC fights and WWE matches. And on Tuesday night, Ellison took his seat at a White House dinner honoring Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, welcomed into the country for the first time since the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—and hosted by Ari’s former client Donald Trump. By Thursday, presumably David and his father will take another swing at Warners—possibly the kill shot, and possibly even with heavy financial backing from… well, you know who.

Thanks, Kim. I’ll see you all tomorrow.
Matt

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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