THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 64 OCTOBER 16, 2019
FEIGE:^ MEREDIT
H^ JENKS.^1 BOB IGER CEO
THE WALT DISNEY CO.See story on page 58.
2 REED HASTINGS
CEO
TED SARANDOS
Chief content officer
NETFLIXEven as Disney, WarnerMedia and
NBCUniversal enter the streaming
fray, the original disrupter — with
nearly 152 million global subscribers
and a 2019 content budget esti-
mated at up to $15 billion — enjoys
a massive head start. And Hastings,
59, and Sarandos, 55, now have an
army of top creatives (among them
Game of Thrones duo David Benioff
and D.B. Weiss, Ryan Murphy,
Beyoncé and the Obamas). But with
more than $10 billion in debt and a
maturing market, the duo who revo-
lutionized viewing may need to put
sustainability over spending as the
company’s market capitalization
— $125 billion at press time — has
been battered by a subscriber miss
(in the U.S., Netflix lost 130,000
subs in the second quarter). A
new test will come with a second
Oscar best picture campaign (The
Irishman, Marriage Story and The
Two Popes are favorites) after the
top prize eluded Roma.
A TOP TALENT (NOT ON YOUR
PLATFORM) WHOM YOU ADMIRE
Hastings: Amy Sherman-Palladino.
Sarandos: “Billie Eilish
is fascinating.”3 BRIAN ROBERTS
CEO Comcast Corp.
STEVE BURKE
CEO NBCUniversal
COMCAST/NBCUNIVERSALRoberts, 60, couldn’t outbid Disney
for 21st Century Fox, but he did
manage to wrest European enter-
tainment giant Sky from Rupert
Murdoch, paying $38.8 billion for
a majority stake and prompting
Murdoch to unload his share for
$15 billion. With Sky making up
the third leg of Roberts’ empire —
joining Comcast Cable and NBCU
— the company now has 184,000
employees and brings in more
than $110 billion annually. Second-
quarter revenue missed estimates,
but it also was the fourth consecu-
tive quarter for which Comcast
beat earnings-per-share estimates;
the stock has spiked more than
30 percent this year. Burke’s
NBCUniversal, with $8.2 billion in
revenue for the second quarter,
saw broadcast and cable edge
up, while film declined 15 percent
primarily due to a 53 percent drop
in theatrical compared with the
strength of 2018 hits like Jurassic
World: Fallen Kingdom. The com-
pany enters the streaming arms
race in April with Peacock, its ad-
supported product. And Burke, 61,
having recently shuffled Peacock’s
team (bringing in longtime
Comcast exec Matt Strauss), has
been writing big checks for con-
tent including licensing deals for
Parks and Recreation, Battlestar
Galactica and The Office, for
which it shelled out $500 millionfor five years (beginning in 2021),
depriving Netflix of one of its most
popular programs.4 SHARI REDSTONE
Chairman
VIACOMCBSAfter an epic battle worthy of an HBO
drama to unite Viacom and CBS,
Redstone, 65, emerged unscathed
and in control of the soon-to-be-
combined media behemoth. But
over the past year, Viacom’s stock
has dropped from $32.78 to $22.50,
while CBS’ has fallen more precipi-
tously, from $ 57.4 4 to $ 37.6 4 (still,
ViacomCBS will enjoy a huge slice
of the U.S. TV audience, at about
22 percent compared with Comcast’s
18 percent). And with the new
company valued at about $31 billion
(compared with AT&T-WarnerMedia’s
$255 billion or Netflix’s $125 billion),
expect Redstone to embark on a
media assets shopping spree.5 KEVIN FEIGE President Marvel Studios
THE WALT DISNEY CO.It’s Feige’s cinematic universe, we
just live in it. The most important
Disney employee not named Iger
and arguably the most success-
ful film producer of all time, Feige
began 2019 at the Oscars with
the first superhero movie (Black
Panther) to be nominated for best
picture. The $1.1 billion launch of
Marvel’s first female-headlining
movie, Captain Marvel, was a pre-
lude to Avengers: Endgame, which
with $2.8 billion overtook Avatar
to become the biggest movie of all
time. Feige, 46, was at the center of
a studio fight over a sequel to yet
another one of his 2019 billion-
dollar babies, Spider-Man: Far From
Home (the outcome: Marvel will
complete the Sony trilogy). Now
he’s plotting the integration of
Marvel properties acquired via the
Fox acquisition and a trip to the
Star Wars universe.6 JOHN STANKEY CEO WarnerMedia
AT&T/ WA R N E R M E D I AIt’s been a rocky start for
WarnerMedia — the name AT&Tgave its $85 billion Time Warner
acquisition in June 2018 — with
a shake-up headlined by Warner
Bros.’ Kevin Tsujihara departing
amid scandal and HBO CEO Richard
Plepler stepping down. The record-
breaking $247 million launch of
Joker and HBO’s dominant Emmy
haul (137) go a long way to soothing
any ills — one of which is that activ-
ist investor Elliott Management
is demanding that AT&T lay out
a clearer direction for its media
business and jettison assets like
DirecTV. Stankey, 57, has been CEO
since the acquisition and added the
title COO of AT&T on Oct. 1, making
him a candidate to succeed AT&T
CEO Randall Stephenson. A major
test will be the 2020 launch of
WarnerMedia’s streamer, HBO Max.
THE LAST APP SOMEONE UNDER
13 HAD TO EXPLAIN TO YOU “If it
has to be explained, I probably
shouldn’t be using it.”NETFLIX7 CINDY HOLLAND
VP original content
SCOTT STUBER
Head of film
BELA BAJARIA
VP international originalsHolland, 49, has led Netflix’s TV
rise, shepherding such acclaimed
offerings as When They See Us and
Russian Doll along with populist
hits like Stranger Things. Bajaria,
48, who ushered in unscripted wins
like Queer Eye and Nailed It in her
former position, moved into a new
role in March as the international
head, overseeing all non-English-
language originals and content
teams in Europe, the Middle East,
Africa, India and Latin America
as the company’s focus becomes
increasingly global. Stuber, 50,
spearheads film efforts by supervis-
ing four divisions (big budget, indie,
documentary and international)
that churn out up to 60 movies a
year. Despite an ongoing standoff
with theater chains over theatrical
windows, in two years he’s managed
to lure A-list filmmakers including
Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) and
Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story),
whose films are likely to give the
streamer another swing at a best
picture Oscar one year after Roma
nabbed best director.
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In a roller-coaster year of megamergers and
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