What I’m Hearing: The Hero of the Year

PREVIEW VERSION

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Welcome back to What I’m Hearing… where I’m still half-speed for the holidays and offering my year-end takes. Questions and predictions for 2023 are coming Monday.

Programming notes: If you need a podcast for the chair lift, Lucas Shaw and I gave out The Townies for the best and worst of Hollywood 2022. We also joined Kim Masters for a more civilized, NPR-friendly breakdown of the year on The Business (here). Also, barring news, I’ll be on CNBC Squawk Box around 5:40 a.m. PST 😳 tomorrow discussing Bob Iger’s challenges. As noted above, Sunday’s email will come on Monday. Happy New Year.

No Thursday Thoughts today, so let’s go right to…

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The Hollywood Hero of the Year Is…

David Ellison arrived in Hollywood like a wannabe Bond villain: a young, icy-blue-eyed aerobatic pilot, armed with Larry’s billions. More than 15 years later, however, with a nine-figure payday from Top Gun Maverick, his string of studio and streamer successes could be a harbinger for how Hollywood survives a new era of downsizing and consolidation.

MATTHEW BELLONI

It’d be pretty easy to scan the Hollywood headlines of 2022, hone in on the biggest success story in the most challenged area of the business, and say, OK, so who’s the one person who made THAT happen? The short answer, of course, is that Tom Cruise made Top Gun: Maverick happen. But the guy who got the ball rolling more than a decade ago—before Cruise, before producer Jerry Bruckheimer, way before those Paramount Global executives who wanted to dump the movie on a streamer, causing Cruise to put his foot down and set it up to gross $1.5 billion worldwide, the biggest 2022 release so far—was actually...

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