Kim Masters
Verified
As seen in:
Puck,
The Business (Podcast),
CNN,
IMDb,
MSN,
MSN Malaysia,
MSN Singapore,
Yahoo Entertainment,
Business Insider,
The Washington Post,
Los Angeles Times,
New York Daily News
and
Puck partner. Host of @KCRW’s The Business. Not a fan of this site or its owner. @kimmasters.bsky.social
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Kim Masters
Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ and the politics of getting a…
Kim Masters sits down with Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney to talk about his new film, Musk. Plus, Masters and Matt Belloni take a closer look at Elon’s billion-dollar investment in Skydance.
What Elon’s Money Could Cost Skydance
These are anxious times in Hollywood, and especially on the Warner Bros. lot, where Skydance’s $80 billion debt load and an impending $6 billion in synergies have nearly everyone on edge. So last week’s that Elon Musk had put $1 billion into the parent company—partly fulfilling John Malone’s public prediction that the SpaceX founder could invest up to $10 billion in Skydance—landed especially hard.
A Paramount “Betrayal” & Dana Walden’s P.R. Whiff
Among the clutch of books by or about Hollywood players coming out this fall, marketing veteran Gerry Rich’s new tome, Chasing Hollywood: A Marketing Chief’s Lessons on Breaking Through, turns out to be, in part, particularly relevant right now. Rich, who has devised campaigns for movies from The Crying Game to War of the Worlds to No Time to Die, offers the requisite tips on how to play the Hollywood game.
Warners Execs Stare Down the Ellison Era
Now that California Attorney General Rob Bonta has folded like a cheap umbrella (looking like a hostage in his press conference announcing the settlement), the reality of Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is hitting Hollywood hard—the way a thing that you knew was coming can still stun you with its impact. The mood inside Warners is grim. “This is like doomsday,” one insider told me.
The Ari Emanuel Fact-Check
I’ve been finding Ari Emanuel’s book unexpectedly engaging—a credit to him and ghost writer J.R. Moehringer. Aside from his fulminations on the virtues of rage, it’s at times a fun trip down memory lane. And yet one thing to bear in mind, per longtime Ari associates, is that he’s not exactly a reliable narrator. One former associate told me, “No surprise, about 40 percent of his story is inaccurate.” (Sources say there was a rigorous fact-checking process for the book.)
How Netflix Won the ‘Lonesome Dove’ Rodeo
Maybe it’s the Yellowstone effect, but Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry’s doorstopper Western epic, has become a surprise hit with the Millennial and Gen Z crowds. “Young women are now obsessed with this 40-year-old cowboy novel” read a 2025 New York Post headline. “Why Is Everyone Reading ‘Lonesome Dove,’ an 858-page Western From 1985?” read another last year in Esquire.
Unlocking the “Zaslav Value Pack”
The fruits of David Zaslav’s frugality have been a reliable source of news this summer. The sequel to the Barbie movie, which made $1.5 billion in 2023, has stalled out at Warner Bros. because the studio’s C.E.O. is balking at paying Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling very large sums to return. Warners has until December to sort it out before rights revert back to Mattel, per the Times.
The Sean Duffy Reality Show Adventure
It’s been a long summer for whatever audience had been breathlessly waiting for The Great American Road Trip, the corporate-sponsored travelogue featuring U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, his Fox News contributor wife, and their nine kids schlepping around the country to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
WarnerMount Enters Its “One Way or Another” Phase
However the Ellisons try to spin their surprise decision to hold off closing the Paramount-Warner deal, possibly until June 2027, it sure looks like they recalibrated after months of projecting supreme confidence in their invincibility. (My partner Eriq Gardner will have a full analysis of their legal strategy in tomorrow’s edition of What I’m Hearing.) Most people in Hollywood still expect the deal to go through—eventually.
Armie Hammer Is Sad About His Own Comeback Vehicle
Late last month, Armie Hammer attracted a level of buzz he had not seen in years—at least not for an onscreen performance. The actor, whose once-promising career was derailed by a #MeToo-era cancellation, plays the starring role in Citizen Vigilante, a low-budget shock film from German provocateur Uwe Boll, sometimes cited as the world’s worst director. So how did Hammer feel about finally being in a film that grabbed international attention?
Amazon–Altman Aftershocks & Mike ’n’ Pam’s J6 Movie Questions
Can you feel it? The mounting influence of politics, Big Tech, and oligarchy over what appears on our screens? On Thursday we learned that Abbott Elementary creator Quinta Brunson was leaving her home at Warner Bros. Television for Disney, with one source telling Matt that “uncertainty” was the cause.
Bari’s War of Ideology & How Scorsese Embraced A.I.
Has there ever been an office email that oozed more contempt for management than the one sent to staff by surviving 60 Minutes correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim? “We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure,” they wrote last week.
Hollywood’s Saudi Tax Rebate Problem
At Cannes a couple of weeks ago, Saudi Arabia announced that it would increase its rebate to as much as 60 percent for movie and television projects that filmed in the country. Amazing, right? That would seemingly be the most generous incentive program in the world, far higher than the 25 to 40 percent offered by some European countries and even the 50 percent that Qatar announced last November.
Netflix Goes to the Movies & Baldoni’s Second-Act Chances
You’ve probably noticed that Netflix has been dropping a lot of tasty breadcrumbs for movie theater owners since trying to buy Warner Bros.—and finally delivering a whole loaf with the planned global theatrical release of Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia film. That prompted me to ask a well-connected producer what he thought was afoot. Was Netflix still shopping for a way into theatrical? Was there more to this courtship than meets the eye?
The Sad-Sack WarnerMount Resistance & Ovitz’s Hollywood Revival
“I wish the attorney general in California would get off his ass,” one unhappy Warner Bros. Discovery executive told me recently. Or, this person continued, maybe European regulators would slow things down enough to test Larry Ellison’s endurance, or “maybe it’s the midterms” that could somehow turn things around. Is there a chance that the war will lead to trouble with the financing? What about a strongly worded letter?
Joel Silver and Hollywood’s Scourge of Second Chances
At a party the night before the Oscars, a group of veteran Hollywood insiders were idly wondering if anyone had heard anything about Joel Silver. Once one of the town’s most successful and powerful producers, shepherding Warner Bros. franchises including Lethal Weapon and The Matrix, Silver was huge in every sense of the word—loud, foul-mouthed, wildly extravagant, and sometimes, allegedly, despicably underhanded.
David Ellison’s Troubling H.R. File
As a demoralized Hollywood anxiously casts about for signs of how David Ellison will run ParaBros or WarnerMount, should the $111 billion deal close, the reality is that there isn’t much track record to work with regarding the 43-year-old producer who has become the world’s most voracious acquirer of media in a span of about seven months. Yes, having rolled into town with a couple billion dollars in his pocket, he ran Skydance and has dozens of credits.
Show More
loading
Actions
Get in touch with Kim
Contact Kim, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack