THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 72 OCTOBER 16, 2019
50 BARACK AND
MICHELLE OBAMA
Producers
Who wouldn’t take their call? The
former president, 58, and first lady,
55, kicked off 2019 with a Sundance
acquisition — doc American
Factory, which premiered to strong
reviews on Netflix in August en
route to an awards-season run.
Tonia Davis and Priya Swaminathan,
co-heads of Obama banner Higher
Ground, are steering projects under
the couple’s deal with the streamer
— including adaptations of David
W. Blight’s Frederick Douglass bio
and Michael Lewis’ Fifth Risk, and
Bloom, a post-World War II-era show
about fashion — plus podcasts
under a new deal with Spotify.
51 PETER CHERNIN
CEO
THE CHERNIN GROUP
Last summer, Chernin, 68, sold his
company’s interest in Otter Media
to AT&T for $1 billion, and although
Chernin Entertainment has a stake
in such tech and media companies
as Barstool Sports and Headspace,
his main focus is on producing, with
two Fox films on the way: James
Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari and the
animated Spies in Disguise. Chernin
also is in production on Fear Street,
Fox’s adaptation of R.L. Stine’s
best-selling teen horror books. He
remains busy on the small screen
with upcoming Apple series See
and Octavia Spencer-led Truth Be
To l d as well as P-Valley for Starz.
52 JON FAVREAU
Director-actor-producer
His Lion King grossed $1.64 bil-
lion (2019’s second biggest haul),
with boundary-pushing tech that
Favreau, 52, also is using for The
Mandalorian, his Star Wars live-
action series for Disney+. Having
launched new shingle Golem in
August, he has kept his hands in
the Marvel Universe, exec produc-
ing Avengers: Endgame and acting
in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
In June he bowed Netflix’s The
Chef Show.
A TOP TALENT (NOT ON YOUR
PLATFORM) WHOM YOU ADMIRE
Quarterback Daniel Jones.53 STEVE GILULA AND
NANCY UTLEY
Chairmen Fox Searchlight
THE WALT DISNEY CO.“The message we received from
Disney is that they liked the fact
that we were making movies they
don’t make,” says Gilula — i.e.,
Taika Waititi’s Hitler satire Jojo
Rabbit and horror hit Ready or Not.
With new TV and shorts divisions,
Gilula and Utley, 64, have films
from Guillermo del Toro and Wes
Anderson on deck.
A RISING TALENT (NOT ON YOUR
PLATFORM) WHOM YOU ADMIRE
Utley: “Zendaya is immensely tal-
ented and interesting.”54 BRAD PITT,
JEREMY KLEINER
AND DEDE GARDNER
Managing
partners
PLAN BLast Oscar season, Plan B had
two contenders, Vice and If Beale
Street Could Talk, and this season
it’s got hopes for The Last Black
Man in San Francisco and Ad Astra
(which stars Pitt, 55). Plus, one of
the team — hint: It wasn’t Gardner,
51, or Kleiner, 43 — stars opposite
Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin
Tarantino’s summer hit Once Upon
a Time in Hollywood ($364 million).55 QUENTIN TARANTINO
Writer-directorHis ninth film, Once Upon a Time
in Hollywood, grossed $364 million
worldwide off a $90 million budget,
and once again planted Tarantino,
56, in the center of the cultural (and
awards) conversation. In a creative
power play, he also negotiated to
eventually own the film’s copyright.56 DAVID ZASLAV
President/CEO
DISCOVERY INC.With its $15 billion acquisition
of Scripps Networks, Discovery
surpassed NBCU as the No. 1 media
company for female viewers. In all,
its portfolio, from Animal Planet
to HGTV, reaches 3 billion viewers
worldwide and comprises nearly
20 percent of ad-supported pay TV
viewership in the U.S. While other
media companies shell out billions
on content, Zaslav, 59, is building a
more efficient direct-to-consumer
business (powered by a new tech
hub in Bellevue, Washington) based
on its unscripted assets, including
the soon-to-launch Food Network
Kitchen app, a global natural history
service with BBC, and a joint ven-
ture with lifestyle superstars Chip
and Joanna Gaines.
GO-TO PODCAST FOR A LONG DRIVE
Fresh Air.57 JAMES CAMERON Writer-director
“My life right now is 85 percent
Avatar, 15 percent other things,”
says Cameron, 65, whose game-
changing Fox franchise is now a
Disney property. “Disney has an
enormous investment in Avatar —
in a funny way, more than Fox did,”
he notes, “because they’ve spent
more on the [Avatar] land in Florida
than Fox did on the original movie.”
He’s a producer on Terminator:
Dark Fate (Nov. 1) and Mission:
Ocean X for Nat Geo, but his focus
is on those long-delayed sequels —
one scheduled for release in 2021,
one in 2023.
BEST AND WORST THING ABOUT
HOLLYWOOD’S MERGER MANIA
“As long as people pay the bills
and, when I show up to work on
a Monday morning, they haven’t
closed down my production, I could
give a shit.”Scarlett Johansson