Welcome back to What I’m Hearing...

A reminder: We’ve got group memberships! Just email fritz@puck.news and make your whole team smarter and happier. And another plug for my new podcast on The Ringer. This week I grilled Jason Kilar, debated who really won the Grammys, and discussed who’s responsible for an unwell Bruce Willis making 22 movies in 4 years. 

Discussed in today’s email: David Zaslav, Will Smith, Toby Emmerich, Jake Bloom, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Oprah, Tracey Jacobs, Les Moonves, Lachlan Murdoch, Ben Thompson, and Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes...     

But first…

Who Won the Week: Jim Gianopulos

The former Paramount Pictures chief was ousted in September, and since then, the 2022 movies he left behind—Scream, Jackass Forever, The Lost City, and now Sonic the Hedgehog 2, with its huge $71 million opening weekend—have all overperformed. And next month’s Top Gun: Maverick will out-gross them all.  

A little more on this and some other topics...

On the box office rebound: First Marvel, then horror, then women returned for Sandra Bullock; are we ready to say family movies are back, too? Seems so, at least for pre-branded sequels. Even rival studios are cheering the Sonic 2 numbers, and the theaters-are-dead crowd has been muted. Even Universal’s Sing 2 just hit $400 million worldwide—and that movie has been available at home since January. Turns out parents still need something to do with their kids.    

On Will Smith’s punishment: Several things can be true at once:

• Yes, a 10 year ban from Academy activities, including the Oscars, is significant. 
• No, it’s not nearly the same as revoking nomination eligibility, which would have been a real statement. Smith probably wouldn’t have attended the Oscars more than once or twice anyway. And he’ll get his screeners through SAG-AFTRA. 
• Yes, revoking eligibility would have raised issues over past offenders like Roman Polanski, who won an Oscar after pleading guilty to rape. And maybe people would have considered other winners with asterisks if a Smith performance was amazing yet not eligible.
• No, nobody would have really cared about that. The ban should have included nominations.  

My prediction: Almost nobody will vote for Smith this year for Emancipation (if Apple even releases it). But in, say, three or four years, he will be great in a small indie that is given a real awards push, and voting for him will be part of a “second chance” narrative crafted by a campaign consultant and peddled via the awards press and ads...

Johnny and Amber Have Both Already Lost

One of the ugliest defamation battles in Hollywood history goes to trial this week, live on TV. Whatever the outcome, the real damage has been reputational—and, for Depp, largely self-inflicted. What does he have left to lose?

Speaking of Emmerich, his 2020 decision to fire Johnny Depp from the Fantastic Beasts franchise is looking prescient. (Why he hired Depp in the first place, given the well-known behavior issues, is another question.) Secrets of Dumbledore may not light up the box office next weekend—overseas, it’s already way down from 2018’s Crimes of Grindelwald—but imagine marketing a family movie when your star is on Court TV debating whether he abused his wife. Nightmare scenario.

Depp’s televised $50 million defamation trial against Amber Heard is set to kick off tomorrow in Fairfax, Virginia, and if that sounds familiar, it’s because this is the second public airing of these sordid claims. Depp already lost a U.K. case against Murdoch’s The Sun, which called him a “wife beater.” The judge there issued a brutal ruling, finding “overwhelming evidence” that Depp assaulted Heard many times during their 15-month marriage—not exactly the outcome Depp envisioned when he sought to take advantage of Britain’s stricter libel laws...

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