Let’s just start with a few news items…

“They ascribe the same algorithmic attention to something they spend a lot of money on as something they
spend very little money on. By that model, you should probably just make everything for a medium number, right?”
—Joe, hilariously questioning Netflix’s strategy of spending $300 million on a movie in a THR interview published the same day his own $300 million movie, The Electric State, hit
the service.

“Transmedia is going to be perhaps the dominant form of media moving forward.”
—Anthony, hard-pivoting to plugging the bros’ nascent A.I. studio in the Journal (better to reach potential investors!) on the back of the “themes” in The Electric State.

“This trend was
started by Harvey Weinstein. He vilified mainstream movies to champion the art films he pushed for Oscar campaigns.”
—Joe, defending the artistic value of popcorn movies to The Times of London and… possibly suggesting The Electric State should win Oscars?

Now onto today’s
“defenestration,” in Puck parlance…

Was anyone really surprised to see United Talent Agency replace its longtime C.E.O. Jeremy
Zimmer? That’s what the announcement was this morning, of course: an old-fashioned Hollywood firing by UTA’s board of directors, spun as a long-planned “succession” with the usual “staying on board to aid the transition” language. Zimmer is an old-school talent agency guy, so I kinda wish he had just come out and said it the way agents often talk about studio executives: “I got shitcanned.”

No shame. Zimmer had a great run, growing UTA, which he co-founded back in 1991, into a
solid number three talent agency behind CAA and WME. I know, Jeremy has big fans… and major detractors; I’ve always liked him personally, though in my experience, he’s got a Jan Brady quality to him—enormously successful yet perpetually thirsty to be equated with Bryan Lourd at CAA and Ari Emanuel at Endeavor/WME, two of the best agents and most ambitious leaders in the history of Hollywood. Hence, Zimmer’s bravado in meetings and many spotlight-seeking media
appearances, including this unforgettable two-shot with UTA client DJ Khaled, and unfortunate foot-in-mouth moments like at a Financial Times conference last fall, where Zimmer admonished creators “to be a little bit more daring in the work they want to do because it’s gotten a bit repetitive.”
Said the guy who has never created anything and isn’t really a talent agent anymore.

Still, with major outside investment over the years, including lately from Swedish private equity firm EQT, Zimmer oversaw not just the survival of UTA amid fierce competition, but the expansion of the company into sports (via Rich Paul’s Klutch), broadcasters (via Bienstock Group), fashion, books, and several other verticals—about 20 acquisitions in
total, though splashy forays into fine art and a ventures group were shuttered or downsized. And the 2022 acquisition of London-based agency Curtis Brown Group, one of UTA’s most successful deals, was spearheaded by David Kramer, the agency’s president, who will now succeed Zimmer.

Zimmer declined to speak with me today, but based on multiple conversations with UTA insiders, chair Paul Wachter and his 11-person board had grown especially frustrated with
him recently. Yes, there were the client defections. In just the past year, UTA lost Kevin Hart, Judd Apatow, and Ben Stiller to WME, and Issa Rae, Hannah Einbinder, and Post Malone (via the hiring of touring agent Cheryl Paglierani) to CAA, plus Sylvester Stallone to IAG. After the strikes of 2023, as the content recession has taken hold and the
agencies have faced layoffs and belt-tightening, there’s been a feeling that CAA, having gobbled up ICM Partners, and WME, flush with cash from Endeavor sister companies UFC and WWE, are hellbent on turning the full-service agency game into a duopoly. That hasn’t happened, of course, but both the UTA board and rank-and-file agents have been feeling the heat. (Usual disclosure: WME represents Puck but not me personally.)

It didn’t help that CAA scored a massive $7 billion valuation in the
2023 sale of TPG’s ownership interest to François-Henri Pinault, and that Endeavor’s “representation” unit, which includes the WME agency, disclosed full-year revenue of $1.7 billion for 2024, up 9 percent compared to the prior year. That’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison (Endeavor
includes some other businesses like licensing in “representation”), but UTA’s strike-hobbled numbers were nowhere near its rivals’, I’m told. Some mid-level agents complained loudly to management when bonuses in the $15,000 range landed with a thud last year.

Zimmer also championed some questionable deals. He is perceived to have overpaid for Klutch, which UTA first bought into in 2019 and acquired full ownership of last year, according to a knowledgeable source. The board was apparently
far more frustrated with Zimmer’s 2021 deal for MediaLink, the advertising consultancy founded by Michael Kassan. Kassan is a controversial guy (some would say ethically… challenged), and Zimmer happily paid $125 million to jump into bed with him, plus a $25 million payment to Kassan personally.

Somewhat predictably, the personal and professional relationship imploded into litigation last March, with both sides hurling insults and demands for damages. Now, after
a year of fighting, a significant devaluation of the MediaLink asset, a combined $8 million or so in legal fees spent, and the exit of C.O.O. Andrew Thau and several UTA leaders who were involved in the MediaLink deal and integration, the matter is still pending—though I’m told settlement talks picked up last week, perhaps foreshadowing the UTA board’s eagerness to move past both the dispute and Zimmer at the same time. Amusingly, there was zero mention of MediaLink in today’s
UTA-fed trade media coverage of his exit.

Zimmer and the UTA partners brought this kind of scrutiny on themselves, of course, welcoming private equity into its insular talent business. With both Sofia Hasni Ahuja and Sydney Pardey of EQT on the UTA board, as well as Wachter—the influential financial advisor for Arnold Schwarzenegger, LeBron James, and more—the pressure was on. (An added wrinkle: Wachter handles
investments for Timothée Chalamet, perhaps UTA’s most in-demand client.)

If there was a feeling at UTA that Zimmer had “lost the troops,” as they say, Kramer is at least one of those soldiers. A career UTA guy who started in the mailroom, Kramer was always considered the likely successor, having been elevated to president in 2022. The board simply moved up the timeline when its frustrations with Zimmer mounted. And Zimmer will stay on that board, at least for now—with a
massive payout, of course.

Kramer continues the leadership trend of active agents like Richard Weitz, who co-runs WME with former Endeavor C.O.O. and comms chief Christian Muirhead, and the entrenched CAA triad of Lourd, Richard Lovett, and Kevin Huvane. But he inherits a decidedly less-fun agency business in a decidedly less-fun Hollywood. No TV packaging, fewer jobs industry-wide, and a representation business that
seems to be barbelling at the top and bottom with the middle vanishing. With Endeavor about to take WME private again, UTA’s dreams of rolling up tons of interlocking companies to go public are likely only a fantasy, at least for now.

This one calls for double siren emojis: OpenAI and Google are asking the Trump administration to let them
train A.I. models on copyrighted materials. Time for Hollywood to mobilize. [The Verge]

Thanks to Flow, Casey Bloys has stumbled on an ingenious way to juice much-needed engagement on Max: Movies for pets. [NY Times]

Comcast added two more Olympics, in 2034 and 2036, for NBCU, “including its streaming platform Peacock.” As if Peacock will exist in 2034. [WSJ]

Harvard Business Review says Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift for four reasons: targeting untapped
markets; finding opportunities to create stickiness; maintaining productive paranoia; and adapting to radical shifts in platforms. Maybe people also like the music? [HBR]

The Tate brothers are too gross for Spotify… yet not gross enough for Endeavor’s UFC. How long until they’re guests on Gavin Newsom’s podcast?
[L.A. Times]

MrBeast, who claims he lost money on his $100 million-ish Amazon deal for Beast Games, wants $150 million for a second season. [WSJ]

Graydon
Carter, promoting his new memoir with Maureen Dowd, took multiple swipes at Anna Wintour and joked that his friend David Zaslav is “wildly underpaid.” I miss magazines. [NY Times]

Netflix needs to option life rights from billionaire In-n-Out heiress Lynsi Snyder so content chief
Bela Bajaria can finally make a gourmet cheeseburger about gourmet cheeseburgers. [Fortune]

Now-ex-D.O.J. lawyer Liz Oyer writes about getting fired after she refused to reinstate gun rights for Mel Gibson.
[Rolling Stone]

Sign of the times: Pinewood’s planned 1.4 million square feet of new soundstages in the U.K. will now be 78 percent data centers. [Stagerunner]

L.
Ron Hubbard turned 114! (Alas, only 74 of those years were on Earth.) To celebrate, here’s the story of how the Scientology founder “disconnected” from his own parents. [Underground Bunker]

And now, here’s Scott on a five-year milestone…

This was supposed to be the comeback year for movie theaters—survive til ’25, etcetera. But this
past weekend, which marked five years since the novel coronavirus upended the globe, saw domestic box office returns topped by an $8.7 million-grossing original, Novocaine. This past Friday-Sunday frame generated just $50.8 million total, or $3 million less than this same grim weekend in 2020 as the world was shutting down. In fact, Novocaine made less, not even accounting for inflation, than the $10.6 million earned by Pixar’s ill-fated Onward in its second weekend. So far this year, the theatrical movie industry has earned $1.22 billion,compared to $1.79 billion up to this point in
2020.

Meanwhile, most other out-of-home entertainment options have returned to 2010s-era norms. Thus far this season, Broadway attendance is at 95 percent of its record-setting 2018-2019
season. The concert industry is flourishing, with $9.5 billion in tickets from the top 100 tours, according to Pollstar, up 71 percent from 2019. Likewise, the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, and the NHL have all reported increases in attendance in their most recent full seasons compared to pre-pandemic years.

So… why not movies? There are the obvious culprits: the
push-to-streaming, consolidation, the dual labor strikes, and the decline of theatrical genres, like romantic comedies and dramas, that used to mint movie stars. But moviegoing was also far more vulnerable than Broadway or the concert industry. It is much cheaper than a concert or live sporting events, and the delta between watching a film in theaters versus weeks later on the couch is far narrower than, say, seeing Taylor Swift live on stage versus streaming Taylor
Swift: The Eras Tour on Disney+. And even though most theatrical releases still perform better than streaming-only titles in post-theatrical (P.V.O.D., etcetera), there has been a vast decline in overall volume.

There’s just no getting around that drop-off. In 2018, a high-water mark, North American theaters released 872 feature films (155
of which played in at least 1,000 theaters) for a record-breaking…

Continue reading online…

Light feedback this week, but a couple responses to my mailbag items on Netflix “quality” and Disney
succession…

“Quality sucks but does Netflix care? Can you even properly scale differently? It’s sad/frustrating but it’s not going to change. Too many people watch junk (otherwise a service like Max would be No. 1), and Netflix competitors are failing to compete—especially at the global level.” —An executive

“If Dana [Walden] was the chosen one, she would have been chosen already. Simple as that. The mere fact that we don’t know the
heir apparent yet is all the signal we need to know the ultimate choice will come from outside the company, regardless of any friendship with Kamala.” —Another executive

Have a great week,
Matt

Clarification: Director Bong Joon Ho insisted
on a podcast in February that his version of Mickey 17 tested higher than the alternative cut that Warner Bros. created. Kim Masters’s column last Monday cited a source saying the WB version tested higher, so we’ve updated the column to include the contradictory source.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or a competing cut of
this newsletter? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.