Welcome back to What I’m Hearing. I’m home from vacation, so thanks to Eriq Gardner and Julia Alexander for holding down the fort last week. We’ve got contributions from them today, plus my own look at Sylvester Stallone’s war on the Rocky franchise. Reminder: You can get Eriq’s excellent The Rainmaker email by clicking here, and Julia’s What I’m Hearing+ will launch on Tuesday, so look for that.

Another reminder: I’m doing a reception with The Dropout’s Emmy-nominated star Amanda Seyfried, creator Liz Meriwether, and producer Rebecca Jarvis on Aug. 10 in NYC. This event is only available to Puck subscribers, so now is a great time to sign up—once you have, you can email fritz@puck.news for the registration link.

Discussed in this issue: Will Smith, Ron Meyer, Richard Lovett, David Zaslav, Rupert Murdoch, Brian Roberts, Beyonce, Vince McMahon, Daniel Petrocelli, and, ugh, Jared Kushner’s book.

But first…

Runner up: “No, what does he really want?”
–Rupert Murdoch, responding to Jared Kushner’s comment in early 2015 that Donald Trump wanted to be president, according to Kushner’s new book, Breaking History...

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So… what’s actually going on here? On the surface, it’s pretty simple: this is estate planning, Hollywood-style. Stallone, now 76, wrote and starred in the original Rocky in 1976, but he did not direct or produce the Oscar winner, and he assigned his rights in the script to the producers. Thus, despite all his success over the years (remember, he was in the $20 million club in the 90s), he has no ownership of his signature property. Winkler and the family of the late producer Robert Chartoff, along with MGM (now Amazon), control the franchise. That’s tough, but...