Matthew Belloni

Mike de Luca and Pam Abdy have run Warners' film division with a big-swing mentality that brought artistic highs, a punishing 2026, and… Digger. With the 103-year-old studio set to merge with Paramount, and David Ellison's debt load to manage, the pair, sources say, won't be along for the ride.

Now that it's here, David Ellison's merged Warner Bros.–Paramount operation brings with it a grab bag of unresolved issues. How will they compete? (Will they compete at all?) Who will they favor? And maybe most intriguing, where will the ousted Warners studio heads end up?

Facing pressure over weakened engagement and a depressed stock price, the streamer is prepping for a round of layoffs in the near future, per sources.

NBC's sketch comedy institution has looked to YouTube for castmembers for decades, but its decision to elevate a pure-play digital creator as host this season is a watershed. Expect more to follow.

Matthew Belloni Welcome back to the Tuesday edition of What I’m Hearing, helmed by Eriq Gardner, who’s in L.A. this week to watch the Rams lose in overtime (sorry) and speak at USC’s Entertainment Law and Business Institute. Eriq happened to be in the room for a bizarre situation on Friday involving NBCUniversal chair Donna […]

After a summer in the severance wilderness following his bizarre departure from Paramount Skydance, Shell is ready to milk what remains of the linear boom—and with familiar investment partners.

The streamer's creative leader will depart as it aims to fix its engagement woes. Peter Rice, the former Disney and Fox executive, will replace her.

Bela Bajaria and Dan Lin did largely what they were hired to do. Their successors will inherit many of the same structural problems—fallout from the Warner Bros. whiff, the theatrical allergy, and the binge model's limits, etc.—they faced.

While Netflix co-C.E.O.s Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters had to act in the face of flagging engagement numbers, don't expect Peter Rice to usher in a programming revolution at the streamer. It's still playing the strongest hand in town.

Oct 22, 2026 Matthew Belloni Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, finishing up a big week for former Hollywood moguls clinging to the spotlight. Congrats to our guy David Zaslav, who spent some of his $606 million Warner Discovery plunder to sit courtside between Roger Goodell and Jon Bon Jovi (and in front of Michael […]