Hello and welcome back to What I’m Hearing. Nobody in Hollywood seems to be working this week, so we’ve got a shorter issue today.

Let’s get started…

• Box office over/under: With Minions: The Rise of Gru riding an improbable wave of well-dressed and unruly TikTokers, Disney’s Thor: Love & Thunder seems a bit vulnerable this weekend (or at least vulnerable for a Marvel movie). So I’ll take the under on the $150 million tracking, with the caveat that tracking has been notably horrible this summer.

• Congrats to Manfred Westphal, head of marketing and communications for the APA agency, who is leaving after 11 years to write a book about Fred Otash, the private eye who bugged Marilyn Monroe and J.F.K., and was neighbors with Westphal’s parents. Grand Central is the publisher, and APA is repping the book. Brad Turell, late of ICM Partners, will take over for Westphal...

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So it’s hard not to feel a little bad for these ICM Partners agents who are getting chewed up in its $750 million acquisition by CAA, its larger rival, that was finally approved last week by the Department of Justice. Takeovers are difficult, both culturally and logistically, so nobody expected these cutthroat CAA and ICM agents to form a drum circle or sing an Armani-clad version of We Are the World at the corner of Constellation Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars. Still, due either to naivete or an inflated sense of their own value, few on the ICM side expected the ruthlessness with which this “merger” is being carried out. It’s getting nasty...