The 2026 Hollywood Executive Power Ranking

This episode of The Town is presented by FX's Adults, called TV's Best Comedy by Forbes. The ensemble comedy series about a group of 20-somethings crashing in their friend's childhood house is back for season 2. In what the cut calls "A to the most hysterically funny episodes of the year," the five friends invent elaborate workarounds for problems they're too afraid to face head-on. For your awards consideration, in all comedy categories, all episodes of FX's Adults are now streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. It is Monday, November 2nd. Lots going on this past week in Hollywood, Skydance offered buyouts to thousands of employees ahead of playoffs of thousands who don't take them. The Elizabeth Holmes documentary is now on track to gross $100 million domestic. Truly amazing. And Michael Mann shot himself in the leg. We're not talking about that. We're talking about none of that, actually. Today, it's power, specifically who wields it most in the entertainment business. We've done episodes like this in the past and different categories, but we've never distilled it all down to the top five people with the most power in Hollywood. This isn't talent, it's not stars or filmmakers or showrunners. These are the executives with green light power. They control what gets made, who gets cast, and how much they're paid, which services are launched and scrapped. And we're judging based on the size of their domains. A lot of change in the executive suites around town lately, so it's finally time to do this. Today, it's the 2026 top five most powerful executives in Hollywood from the ringer and puck. I'm Matt Bellany, and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg, our Monday guy, welcome back Lucas. Happy Halloween. You are a little late. That's okay. What were you for Halloween? I didn't have a great costume. I guess I was a John Trafalter from Pulp Fiction. Oh, that's so bad. Yeah. My family and I, we were the Savannah bananas, including our dog, which she did not like being dressed in a banana costume, but you know what, it's Halloween. None of us like it. All right. So what controversial topic today, whenever we do these power lists, these drafts, we always get nasty emails from people. I encourage it, email me nasty stuff if you want to fight for your person, but we don't tell people in advance that we're doing this. We just do it. And today, we're doing the mother of all email, instigation lists. We're doing top five most powerful executives in Hollywood. So keep your Chris Nolan to yourself, keep your Taylor Sheridan to yourself. We are only doing executives. So are we in agreement because before we change this, you said you had a talent. Was your one talent, Chris Nolan? Sure. Yeah. I mean, certainly on the film side, and we could argue between him and Sheridan overall because Sheridan wields a lot of power in TV. We should probably do a talent power list at some point soon or update the previous ones we've done. We did a version of this three years ago where we went through different categories and kind of named people that were powerful and, you know, up and coming execs and TV and CEOs. We're not doing that today. This is everybody against everybody else, talent excluded, and we're going to go through and the criteria, very specific criteria, green light power. This is control of what gets me, who has paid what the services that are launched and the size of their domain. The green light power is what throws me because of the conversations we've had around who is eligible for this, because some of the people don't aren't really green lighting things, but I hear you. Well, but that's why the CEO level executives at some of these companies are not eligible because they're not involved. Like the CEO of Apple, not involved in content at all, says, thank you very much. Yes. I'd like to go to the Emmys. Sure. We're going to get to that, but the criteria is people who are actually involved in the content green light process or are involved in the sort of the green light committees, the green light. Sure. But there are layers to it because I think there are people who aren't necessarily making all the decisions, but are above people who make those decisions and where, if they call and decide that they want something, that trumps whatever the person underneath them says. True. It's the David Zazloff alternate nights question. Can he just make a call and say, I'd like you to make a movie with my friend that I walk on the beach in the Hamptons, but she can and did. Several times. All right. There's one getting made right now, Nancy Byers on the Warner's line. Okay. Let's start. We're going to rank these backwards. We're going to go from five to one, and we will debate throughout. So you get your number five. You go first. I want to know where you're five. I found the hardest. So I'm curious where you're going with five. I want to see if we agree. Five is Donna Langley at NBC Universal. You had done it five. I do. Only because you may have her hire, apparently. I have her hire. Yeah. Okay. So she is, I think by most accounts, the best creative executive in town. We could argue between her and Casey Boyes at Skydance, but she has the best talent relationships. She's been vindicated a number of times on talent bets that she has made. Jordan Peele, Chris Nolan, illumination, a number of things. But I don't have her hire because she splits the domain with, with Matt Strauss. She has no control over sports and obviously sports is a gigantic content category. So we're not going to, she, she doesn't get to that level where she is fully in charge of a 20 to 30 billion dollar content spend per year. I do think the interesting aspect here is the split of the company between NBC Universal and Comcast that is coming in 2027. I think that gives her more power. Curious what you think about that. But because this company is going to essentially stand on its own, potentially to be sold, potentially to buy stuff, I think that she gains power in that scenario. So the split with Strauss is why I agree that she can't be higher because most people would say, if you said like, she's one of the only people on this list where, and it's like, who is green lighting these projects, like she's actually green lighting a lot of the, a lot of these things. She still is very active at the movie studio and the TV, you know, we talked about Taylor Sharon, Christopher Nolan, those are two relationships that she is in many ways responsible for bringing over not her alone, there are other people who work for her, of course. She has to take Jason Blum's call when he has some crazy, like, obsessive thing that he's, you know, cares about, all of that. I still had her fourth just because I think that she is sort of the most respected in her peer group, but is probably the only one of her peer group who is on this list because her direct bosses do not just totally delegate. Right. That's an interesting point because there is this class of executive now who is the chief content officer and we can argue whether that makes sense to have as a job, but that is the job that most of these companies have. Sure. It is, it is Donna Dana and now Peter writes. Dana Walden at Disney and Peter Rice at Netflix. I had my cop can see her. You probably have him higher. Okay. So give me your argument for why he is five is the head of prime video at Amazon. As far as I'm concerned, there are five entertainment companies that matter. And we are essentially picking one person from each of those companies. Your list may be different in some way. Amazon is probably the fifth biggest spender of those five. If you include sports, it's bigger. But I thought we were doing Hollywood, which is why like, yeah, but content, I don't know, the sports factors into the content span. And I think that of those people, he is kind of less, also kind of one of those who is less involved. The defense for why he's on there is because Amazon is one of the five biggest studios. He is in charge of all. You had a thought there that you were going to complete. I'm going to say the nice stuff before the last nice. He is runs one of the five biggest entertainment companies. I think of those five companies, Amazon is probably the company that people think of last, but it is moving, I think it is actually like kind of stable and moving up a little bit. It has made a big play in sports and movies. They're releasing 15 movies a year. And because of the way it split, he has a head of TV and a head of movies. And so he is the person who sits on top of all of that. Now he also oversees other things. I think that the knock against him is though he has worked in entertainment for pretty much his whole career. He has, he's not like a talent relations guy. No, he's a suit. Yeah. He's a suit. And previously he had very strong heads of TV and filming. I had someone who was between him. He had Jen Salki. He's always in every position because he was a distribution guy and Fox from being the CEO of Sony, excuse me, being the CEO of Hulu, to being the head of Sony TV, to being the head of, of now Amazon. He has always had sort of someone else do the creative and handle those relationships. And he is a very effective executive. But he has now kind of consolidated power by eliminating that co-betwee. Maybe you didn't have him at all. I had him before you had him before. Okay, so we just flipped we flipped him And I think the knock on him is that you know when you talk about who's called are you gonna return? It's not I'm returning I'm returning Donna's call above Mike Hopkins But you know what he has a bigger purview, but Mike does have a bigger job and more and like you know More of a tight hold over the purse strings. So I I see it He also does not have any British royalty attached to him Donna is a Dame Which matters Maybe if the maybe if the bond movie is a hit he can be anointed. What is the what is the male equivalent of Dame? Lord Lord is it Or I think it's a Knight a knight or sir sir like like Chris Nolan is a sir Yeah, but I believe you are dressed as a sir if you are a knight. I believe okay anyway. All right We are asking we're really losing it. Yeah. All right, so we just flip flopped on four and five So let's go right to three. Who is your three? I think my third is David Allison. Oh Okay, give me the argument. Why you're gonna put him one or two and I know that and that's fine, but he Because why cuz he's the owner and CEO of one of the no okay But why three because that no because I don't want to step on one and two all right Give me the pro and then the con why he is the owner and the CEO One of the biggest entertainment companies. I think of Anyone on this list and which why I could understand putting him higher He's not really answering to anyone other than his maybe his dad and like that's the other and the board but he has set up Skydance so that he is really in charge of the growth and the creative and he has an Uncrites running the Kind of operations and so if you are one of these studio chiefs if you are Worried like thinking about talent David Allison is gonna be in your business in particular on the movie side Deciding what to make the knock against him is they're just considerably smaller than the two companies that I have above and That they have a lot of debt. They're gonna be limited and there's a whole part of their business like the Casey-Bloy's universe where I think David It's like mostly going to stay out. Yeah, the pro I have for him is that like you said Unlike a lot of these CEO types. He fancy himself a hands-on producer and He is going to get involved especially on the movie side He is going to be the talent relations guy if he calls you It's probably because he wants to make something so you're gonna call him back right away. Yeah, and At least they're talking about a $30 billion to $40 billion dollar content spend each year Now we'll see if that actually happens But that would be considerably bigger than Netflix then universal and you know, they have amazing sports rights They have this promise of 30 movies a year. They have two Premium streaming services that make the kinds of shows that people in Hollywood like to make and I think he deserves to be number two That's I had him a - yeah, I'm a - only because of his level of involvement Right. Well, that's what well I went back and forth. I was it was like power versus involvement and he's also 43 44 years old. You could potentially do this forever. He I just think there's still a lot of like prove it with him Yeah, in three years he could have his tail between his legs back on the market trying to spin off or break up these assets Yeah, I don't I don't know about that But there's you know, he's gonna he's gonna spend a lot of time integrating and they can spend they can talk about how much money They're gonna spend on all this programming. Let's see what it looks like when they actually have to get in and hit the numbers and does he have Elon or the Saudis calling him telling him what to do I don't think so But again, it's a honeymoon period now wait till those numbers don't meet what he is get a honeymoon period He like speed ran through it at Paramount. He didn't really get one I don't know that he he's he's a set he's starting in a lot of ways on the fact But because of all the political stuff that's happened over the last six months. Is there a honeymoon period in the business? Yeah, I mean HBO's buying a bunch of stuff Warner's is gonna buy some some stuff so maybe in that respect but certainly not the layoffs that are coming I mean they started buyouts last week and We're looking at 5,000 people about to get fired. So that five days a week in the office Yeah, that's that's a big rain cloud over your honeymoon. All right. I had Ellison at two which means that we flipped again I had Josh tomorrow you had Josh at three. I have him at two Okay, so the argument for Josh tomorrow the CEO of Disney is that with sports they have a $24 billion content spend each year in fiscal year according to Disney He while he is not as involved in day-to-day content green lights. He is More involved than some of the others more involved than the CEOs of see that yeah This is where it gets tricky because we decided with NBC Universal Mike Kavanaugh Brian Roberts really not involved So Donna is essentially the face of that in the case of Disney even though Dana Walden is the chief creative officer Chief content officer that the Josh is just more involved than air go Josh is the Disney representative and He's her boss and isn't and she has to justify things to him and like I know I know it's not really Hollywood but like the parks do matter and He's very involved in the park. Well, it's bottom the top an entertainment company not a connectivity company that has an entertainment division exactly like I reported last week that they have scrapped a plan Second park in Shanghai that they were working on it Imagineering and like that is a Josh decision. That is like 100% Coming from the CEO. They have to prioritize that all of these things he's doing especially with AI and Gaming and all these other things that impact the content Plants like those are coming from the top. So right. That's why I had him at three to be honest of below Ellison just because he's not as involved and if he calls you of Josh calls you It's probably not about a movie that you are working on. It's probably something bigger than that So I had him second just because Disney's such a bigger company and more important. Yeah, so it's interesting You say that because Disney's still smaller than Netflix, but Disney's share price is up 20% since August. Why do you think that is? Parks are doing well, isn't parks are doing fine They are more resilient than rival parks like the universal parks are down and the Disney parks have stayed pretty resilient, but it's not like they are You know going through the roof I guess amid the economy and all of the issues that we've had with them with with travel because of the Trump stuff like I guess they are more resilient, but do you think that's why the share prices up? Do you have an alternate theory? I don't I actually asked this question in my newsletter and I and people said what you said that the park's numbers were good that people are starting to believe his narrative about How they are they have a plan for digital and AI and one Disney and creating a big I mean, they're basically they're flat this year So they've been going they've been trending down and so they've got you know the parks have proven more resilient And so there's a little bit of a boost You know, we'll see where they are after they report earnings and do all those fun things It's interesting because at a time when Netflix has declined almost 50% Sure, and Skydance has gotten crushed since the merger and yeah Yeah, it's just it's interesting that the mother of all entertainment companies is up Do we need Craig to break that these ties on four five and two three? No, that's fine We can have our own rankings, but but we clearly agree on number one. We do. I don't know yours You're number one could be Neil Mohan for all I know Is it I mean, I thought about putting Neil Mohan on this list I thought about it and quickly and quickly dismissed it because they don't actually Invest in a whole lot of programming. They don't actually make it easy. If we're talking look We are if we are talking about classic Hollywood if we're talking like Bigger picture like factoring in creators and all that then. Yeah, I mean, I would take I probably take Microdonna off the list and put Neil up up here But he's certainly not you know commissioning a bunch of programming for anyone But you could argue that he enables More people to make money on content than anybody in the world. Yeah Just rugged. No, I agree. It's depend. It's if we're doing the like who's getting called back first game It's like who is calling right if I am if I'm Christopher Nolan I'm calling Mike Hopkins back before I'm calling Neil Mohan back if I am like one of his peers if you're Josh tomorrow I'm calling Neil back before I'm calling Mike back. So you were standing next to me at the Oscars when Neil Mohan walked up And I made the joke that he's the most powerful anonymous person here. I don't think he like his his publicist did not like that at all But it's kind of true right well, but which of the people that we just named are like prominent. Oh, everybody knows who Josh tomorrow is in town. I'm talking about people in the business. Got it I think people in the business well Smart people in the business know who Neil is I mean, we also while we were talking then we saw what we saw you know stars walking by and they were not stopping to talk to Bill Moan. And I think stars would probably say hello to Donald Langley. Sure. But they might not say hi to Josh. And if they were in the Disney family, sure. Yeah. Maybe he's he's new though. Yeah. See. All right. So let's get to number one. So we have we have the Netflix. We have the Netflix people at number one. Well, I have only Ted Sarandas, the co CEO. I don't think Greg Peters, the other CEO, I don't think he matters to content. I just don't know. I think that's that's not how the company is. Right. The argument for Ted is pretty clear. They are still the biggest streaming service. When it comes to pure entertainment spend, they are the number one player. And if you want any indication of how much Ted cares about what is programmed, he just fired his cheap content officer and hired someone else. Yes. So if there's a if there if there needs to be a greater demonstration of sort of authority, he just did it. Not only that, but he's involved. Yeah. He cares about the big moves that they make. And we'll sign off on WWE or a big movie project in particular. He cares very much about winning awards and that they have enough content in the award space. He alone is deciding whether to put movies in theaters. And that impacts a whole lot of people in the entertainment business. If Ted decided tomorrow that he wanted to put 10 to 15 big budget movies in theaters, it would completely remake the movie business because the theaters would go crazy and love it. Craig, do you agree with this list? The only thing I quibble with is that the number one person being the head of Netflix is interesting because it's the company that that feels the least aligned with the direction of the entertainment business is going in, which is theatrical and in person stuff. Well, what's happening is the dichotomy between user generated content online and premium in theaters for movies. And Netflix is really not in either of those businesses. They are premium, but online. So you're kind of right, but that's still a really good business. 325 million subscribers. You're also talking specifically about the movie business and the movie business makes up a minority of the entertainment business. It takes up more of the mental head space. That's very fair. It's more about the perception of the business than it is. But most of these companies still make way more money from streaming TV, whatever you have it. And I guess the question is because it does feel a little weird at get given the shakiness of Netflix this year, but there's just not an obvious other person, right? There's a new CEO at Disney. Skydance is a brand new company. You're not going to pick an Amazon person or an NBC universal person because they're shaky too. It just, you know, it's a weird time. And the market cap of Netflix is still 255 billion despite the decline of the stock price, which is still bigger than Disney. But if you're a producer, an actor, a director, and you have a new idea or something interesting, is Netflix the first call? Is that the call you want to get? Depends on what it is, but honestly, kind of yes. It depends on, yeah, it depends on what it is. For some people, it's going to look for Chris Nolan. It's not their last for movies. It's going to be Donna for TV. It's probably going to be Casey, but for like one executive who can make something happen and make sure it gets seen. Like, you know, it's probably right to two most powerful companies are Netflix and Disney. Disney does the least sort of normal buying of outside material, at least on the certainly on the feature side and even to some extent on the TV side. So yeah, you look at what has happened at Netflix over the past six months. And it's hard to say that the number one most powerful person in Hollywood has just been beaten over the coals, raked over the coals for the last six months based on their lack of hits. Right. And they haven't had a movie that has really broken through all year. And they did just fire their head of film and their content chief precisely because he says the movies and shows aren't good enough. But six months from now, David Allison is going to be number one. No, no. I mean, the amount of spend, like you said, it's $20 billion just primarily on film and TV. They do have WWE and they do have some NFL. But sure, primarily it's on the stuff that people in Hollywood make. And it's all professionally produced. Well, we can argue they did a deal this morning with Druski, like they're doing more of that. But I just, you know, in terms of calls getting returned, he is kind of the mayor of Hollywood. He took over for Iger. Right. Iger used to be the clear number one most powerful person. And Ted still goes to premieres for random shows. He still has. Yeah, he still has comedian parties at his house. He'll sit there for the Golden Globes. None of the CEOs go to the Golden Globes. Like he's still involved in the community. Right. Brian Roberts would go to the Globes when they had it on when they aired it on NBC. But Bob Iger doesn't go didn't go to the Golden Globes because they didn't air on ABC. Who is the biggest snub? Who would be number six and number seven on this list? Well, what I had, I wondered whether Brian Lord should be number five. We're in the same boat. I had my number five here was Lord slash Hopkins. Yeah. Lord Brian Lord the head of CAA because if you think about power, if Brian Lord for some reason decided to boycott a certain studio, it would be pretty crippling. Now, obviously his clients wouldn't like that and they might go to rivals. But the way the talent representation business has consolidated, there are two arguably three main players in the talent agency world now. And if the big three of the big three, if CAA declares war on you, you're fucked. Like that's a problem. CAA is the biggest. And it's also the only the only one that is currently kind of led by its top agent. Yes. Exactly. So they have it. Brian is clearly the most powerful agent in town. And he flexes. He will, you know, he's doing with the Barbie cast. He signed Greta Gerwig and Noah Bonbach. And he is using the fact that he represents the four main players in Barbie to extract extraordinary fees for Barbie too. So much so that David Zazzle of it, Warner just said, F you, we're not doing that. Right. And I think that that has changed under Ellison. We'll probably get an announcement on Barbie too pretty soon. But that's the kind of power there. And also on my almost list is would be Casey boys. Obviously, he reports to David Ellison. But in terms of people, someone with the relationships and the track record, he is the TV equivalent of Donald. I, yeah, I thought about it, but I felt like we had to do one person per company and David Ellison is so clearly that for Skydance that agreed. Yeah, I do think we could do a whole Skydance list. That would be fun. A Skydance Hunger Games, like who, we, we drop them all in the wilderness and who would kill who first. I think Casey would psychologically manipulate Josh and Dana at the film studio to kill each other. And then he would ultimately rise on top. Casey and George would be an interesting battle. George Seeks at CBS. Yeah. What's much more than CBS now? What? George. Oh, that's right. He's all the networks. He ever sees TV studios. Lucas, where do you put yourself on this list? Did you just miss the cut? I'm not on the list. We really should do a media person power ranking. That sounds awful. Doesn't it? Never. That will never happen. Nobody matters. All right. Lucas. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. We are back with the call sheet or instead of the call sheet today, we are reluctantly revisiting the box office draft. Lucas is here and Craig has the numbers. And we are doing an update on the box office draft. You guys are doing this just to poke my open wound. Are you? No, we're, we are giving our listeners an update on the box office draft. An honest update. We haven't talked about it in a while. We have a great tracker that was, that was built by this guy, Chris Tenet. So thank you to Chris who's tracking this for us very officially. So the update is this. So we're heading into the final two months of the year. And Lucas' team, Shaw Studios, as Chris has it written here, is up. It's basically up about $2.2 billion on Matt. I'm up. I'm up. I'm up more than $3 billion. $3.2 billion. That's correct. $3.2 billion. He's up. And that is based on the release of five movies. Because we we each have two left. Yes. You both you drafted seven movies. Uh, if you include the, er, eight, if you include the bomb, but you drafted seven movies. And so now remaining, Lucas has Dune three and Jumanji. And Matt has Avengers Doomsday and the Hunger Games movie. So Matt basically needs to out gross Lucas with his two movies by by $3.3 billion to win. Not going to happen. And even if Avengers becomes the biggest movie of all time, Dune's going to do five. No, dude, like basically like the Dune film role needs to get like trapped in a fire. I think for Matt to have a shot here. Yeah, I would be winning even without Spider-Man. That's kind of the crazy part. Unbelievable. Cause, okay. So you have Spider-Man and the Odyssey. Correct. Game over. And he had Super Mario. He had the Mandalorian would struggle. And again, the big killer Matt got crushed because of because of digger. No, the big, the big killer was that Moana and [BLANK_AUDIO] closure day, both really sucked. And minions was a mild disappointment. - When you look at the hits, it's like you picked Michael, which was great. You netted 800 million, Toy Story, 900 million. You look at Lucas, 2.3 billion from Spider-Man. I mean, it's just. - I thought Toy Story 5 would do business like Spider-Man. - Yeah, I did too. I almost took it. - And I'm really glad I changed my mind if the last minute. - Yeah. And in retrospect, it seems stupid. The last Spider-Man did great. I should have known that. - Well, I had the first choice. So you wouldn't have picked it first. And, but even like, I don't know, I picked Toy Story over Avengers. And Avengers is gonna far outgrow. - Well, I picked Mario over Avengers. So we both, we over corrected because of how big some of the kids' movies have been the last couple of years. We over corrected. But because there were so many kids' movies this year, there wasn't that one that was so much bigger than everything. - And look, we're gonna continue to tweak the format. We're always open to growing and being smarter and getting better next year. - You wanted that. Are you still wanna like add categories? - I don't know. So what we're gonna do next year, we can announce it. Is we're gonna do it live? - Are we prepared to announce it? - Yeah, why not? We're gonna do it live in January. - We're doing a live event for the box office draft. - That's right. It's gonna be basically the NBA and NFL drafts and then us. We're number three on the draft schedule for the year. - It's gonna be bigger and better than ever. And it's, we're gonna tweak the format and make it even more exciting. - And people will be able to buy tickets to attend this. - Of course. - If they want to. - And they can bring posters and, you know, giant foam fingers. - Yeah, people can show up dressed like Shrek, if they want. - Yeah. - You can dress like Shrek, excellent. And we will have celebrity guests. I mean, we'll try. - No celebrity is gonna want to participate in this. - Maybe. - Yeah. Oh, let's see. We've picked your movie as a potential bomb. Let's bring out Ryan Gosling. - Yeah, but yeah, that's what we're gonna do. So. - All right. We'll have boring flow on that soon. So we're declaring Lucas the winner. Even though it's fairly no bad. - Well, you gotta, what you gotta see it through. But I believe Lucas, if you win, are you up three to one? - No, it's two to. - Two to. - Two to right now. - Yeah, Matt won the first two. I will have won the last two. - And luckily, there will be no baseball next year. So I won't have to buy any tickets for any games. - You'll be buying Savannah Banana's tickets for us. - Exactly, I'll get us all Savannah Banana tickets. Probably more expensive on the black market. All right, thank you guys. That's the show for today. I wanna thank my guest Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Borbeck. Our editor is Jesse Lopez and Stefano Sanchez. And I wanna thank you. We will see you a couple more times this week. (upbeat music)