Greetings from Bluffton, South Carolina, What I’m Hearing’s summer H.Q. for the next few weeks. I was mid-air today when the news hit that Peter Rice was fired from Disney, so I scrapped my planned email and put together everything I’m hearing below.

But first…

• If the tracking on Jurassic World: Dominion is about $140 million domestic, I’ll take the under. The crazy Top Gun: Maverick hold and the franchise-worst reviews will probably bring it well under the $148 million opening for Fallen Kingdom, despite the original Jurassic Park cast.

• If you’re Apple, which so badly wants to be HBO, why would you take J.J. Abrams’ Demimonde, a $200 million-plus sci-fi series that is now officially not good enough for HBO? I’ll have more on this Sunday.

• Is it just me or has there been a collective shrug over the Academy’s hiring of Bill Kramer as its new C.E.O.? First, it was expected. (So expected, I told you in October that Kramer, who spearheaded the Academy Museum, would almost certainly replace Dawn Hudson as the group’s leader, and I’m told the candidates besides Kramer who were willing to take the job were not great). Second, Kramer is an insider who likely will not shake up an organization that definitely needs to be shaken up. We’ll see if he can fix the Oscars after the ugly Will Smith spectacle, and shrink the unwieldy 54-member board of governors, which prevents any meaningful change.

Now let’s dive into one of the more bizarre executive firings in modern Hollywood…

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So you think it’s nothing when you’re asked to meet with Chapek on a random Wednesday in Burbank. After all, if the new boss didn’t want you on his team, the professional thing to do would have been to say so before you re-upped your deal for three years last summer, right? Or if there was a problem since then, Chapek definitely would have told you at least once that he’d like things done differently. And he certainly would have offered constructive criticism, like all good managers do. If, God forbid, Chapek did want you gone for some reason, maybe as a fall guy for a Disney stock chart that looks like the final drop on Splash Mountain, or because of the industry chatter that you might do a better job as C.E.O. than him, he’ll certainly respect you enough to let you exit on your own terms—either for another gig or for a Disney producing deal, with all the usual nice things said about you in a press release. That’s just how things are done...