THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 62 MARCH 26, 2020
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.admission.” He’s made recent deals for 9-1-1’s
Tim Minear at 20th TV, The Americans’ Joe
Weisberg at FX and Grey’s Anatomy’s Krista
Vernoff at Disney. The lawyer, who also reps
Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller, brokered
a hefty deal for Nicholas Braun to star in a new
WeWork series.
We’ve hit peak content when “Talent salaries
start dropping.”CORPORATE
Glen Mastroberte
Skadden Arps
UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW
Mastroberte represented beIN Media Group
in the sale of a 49 percent Miramax stake to
ViacomCBS, which included a $375 million produc-
tion funding commitment. He also represented
The Ringer in its nearly $200 million sale to Spotify
and negotiated founder Bill Simmons’ contract.
Other clients include Glassman Media (which sold
to Endeavor Content), A24 (which has a multiyear
financing and distribution deal with Apple TV+)
and Facebook.
If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Pizza, pref-
erably Neapolitan.”CORPORATE
Mickey Mayerson
Paul Hastings
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL
“Parasite offered a glimmer of hope that there are
opportunities for movies to find audiences through
independent distribution,” says Mayerson, whose
clients include Fibonacci Films, Old Hill Capital andIndian Paintbrush. He handled a deal with the TV
side of Motion Picture Corporation of America, which
primarily produces movies for Netflix and Hallmark.
We’ve hit peak content when “Netflix decides to
sell itself.”TA LE N T
Joel McKuin
McKuin Frankel Whitehead
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
McKuin helped to craft unprecedented dual overall
deals for Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s
Fake Empire. The team behind Hulu’s Looking for
Alaska signed with both Apple and CBS TV Studios.
“Writers are being valued in a way they never have
been before,” says McKuin, who reps some of
Hollywood’s top scribes. This includes Noah Hawley,
who will wrap his fourth season of Fargo and is set
to write and direct a new Star Trek franchise, and
You co-creator Sera Gamble, who has an overall at
Universal Content Productions.
If I could eat only one food forever, it’s “Pizzeria
Mozza’s fennel sausage pizza comes to mind.”TA LE N T
John Meigs Jr.
Hansen Jacobson
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Meigs saw big change in his clients’ lives in 2019.
“Seeing Winston [Duke] being able to buy a house
based on the money we got for [Netflix film] Spencer
Confidential, these things are really gratifying,” he
says, adding that he’s proud of Kaley Cuoco develop-
ing her own Big Bang Theory follow-up, HBO Max’s
adaptation of Chris Bohjalian’s The Flight Attendant:“She had me reach out to the author and optioned
the book before anyone even knew about it.” Other
in-demand clients include Issa Rae (The Lovebirds,
Insecure) and Betty Gilpin (The Hunt, GLOW).
Please reboot Love JonesTA LE N T
Darrell Miller
Fox Rothschild
GEORGETOWN LAW
Longtime client Angela Bassett has become
a powerhouse behind the scenes and is doing
“dynamic and diverse things,” says Miller. She’s a
director, an exec producer on her Fox show 9-1-1
and its spinoff, and is continuing her partnership
with Ryan Murphy on his projects. Also on Miller’s
roster are newcomers Teyonah Parris, who signed
on for Disney+ series WandaVision, and Da’Vine
Joy Randolph, who’s stealing scenes in Hulu’s High
Fidelity and starring in Lee Daniels’ The United
States vs. Billie Holiday.
Hollywood’s 2020 priority “Trying to accept the
redefined consumer consumption habits.”TA LE N T
Marcy Morris
Jackoway Austen
UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW
“I pride myself in being tough and fair in negotia-
tions, and not making enemies,” says Morris, whose
longtime client Kate Hudson had a banner year.
Her deals span athleisure (Fabletics), alcohol (King
St. Vodka), podcasting (Sibling Revelry, which she
records with her brother Oliver) — and, of course,
film and TV projects like Netflix’s Mona Lisa and theCourt Judge Daniel Buckley has
indicated he’ll announce his
interpretation of AMC’s deals
with Robert Kirkman (who
authored the Walking Dead
graphic novels) and the show’s
executive producers, including
Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert.
Because AMC both produces
the series (through its studio)
and distributes it (via its cable
network), the core issue is license
fees. Is a formal transaction
required between two sister
companies, or does AMC get to
“impute” an amount? If the latter,
must the fee be on fair-marketterms? The answers
go to how much The
Walking Dead is book-
ing in revenue, which
changes the pool for
profit participants.
The creatives say if a fair mar-
ket fee was used, it would have
resulted in hundreds of millions
more for profit participants. AMC
disputes that.
At a trial in February, Hurd
testified that AMC’s former
boss, Charlie Collier (now Fox
Entertainment CEO), promised
the creative executives would
be “treated fairly,” which shethought meant that license fees
would flow as if the show had
been produced by a third party.
“I might tell them they’re going
to do well and that they’ll be
treated fairly,” said Collier in
his own testimony. “I wouldn’t
typically talk contingent com-
pensation with anybody. It’s
beyond the scope.”
Judge Buckley’s ruling won’t
be the end of the story. In
June, another set of plaintiffsHow The Walking Dead
Could Redefine Dealmaking
TWO LEGAL FIGHTS OVER THE ZOMBIE SERIES WILL SHAPE HOW CREATORS ARE PAID
IN A FUTURE WHERE EVERY STUDIO HAS ITS OWN STREAMER By Eriq GardnerAfter seven years in court, AMC
will soon see some big legal
rulings concerning The Walking
Dead, the mega-successful drama
about a fictional group of survi-
vors living at a time when a virus
had turned most of humanity
into ravenous zombies. Assuming
society’s real-life viral pandemic
doesn’t interfere with the time-
table, these court decisions may
also influence ongoing profit par-
ticipation fights and the changing
way that many creatives are com-
pensated in the streaming era.
The first big ruling may come
April 17. That’s when L.A. SuperiorKirkmanMayersonMcKuinMeigsMillerMorrisMoss10fea_lawyers1-17_L [P]{Print}_53606986.indd 62 3/25/20 10:45 AM