Vanity Fair’s 100 most influential people for 2010. Top ten:
- Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
- Steve Jobs (Apple)
- Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Erick Schmidt (Google)
- Rupert Murdoch (News Corporation)
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
- Bernard Arnault (LVMH)
- Michael Bloomberg (New York City)
- Larry Ellison (Mark Hurd’s soul mate)
- Evan Williams and Biz Stone (Twitter)
- John Malone (Liberty Media)
Two years ago, when Facebook recruited its 100-millionth user, a celebratory toga party was thrown by C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg, a classics buff who is prone to spontaneously reciting Homeric verses from memory. Since then the stunningly successful Web site has quintupled its size to a staggering half-billion participants worldwide, and that slender 26-year-old cloaked in the hoodie—Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus! This year Vanity Fair anoints Zuck as our new Caesar. He rules from the imperial capital of Palo Alto, California, the Rome of our nascent millennium. In this, the 16th annual ranking of the 100 most
WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: The wildly popular social-networking Web site, valued at around $25 billion, added its 500-millionth member this summer, and those “friends” share more than 30 billion pieces of information a month. Facebook runs more banner advertisements than any other Web site (176 billion a quarter) and drives more U.S. visitor traffic to some sites than even Google. Revenues this year could reach $2 billion.
THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: In June, at The Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference, as columnists Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher interrogated him about privacy issues, Zuckerberg appeared uncomfortable, sweated profusely, and even—gasp!—took off his signature black hoodie.
Photograph by Brian Solis.
APPLE
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Having saved the music business and conquered the smartphone market, Jobs is now looking to salvage the publishing industry—and forever alter the world of mobile computing—with the iPad. Released amid a Parousian frenzy, the one-and-a-half-pound computer tablet sold one million units in just 28 days, a milestone that took the now ubiquitous iPod nearly two years to reach. With sales of iPhones expected to top $20 billion this year, up from $630 million in 2007, it’s no wonder that Apple blew past Google and Microsoft to become the most valuable tech company on the planet.
UNLIKELY FOE: Consumer Reports, which, even after Jobs finally addressed the iPhone 4’s antenna issues, refuses to recommend the phone.
Photograph by Matt Yohe.
SWORN ENEMY: Steve Jobs, who characterized Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil,” as bullshit. Jobs reportedly felt betrayed by his erstwhile allies for their muscling in on the lucrative mobile-devices business, which the geekocracy now believes is the future of computing. Critics predicted that Google’s Android phones might eclipse the iPhone by 2012. It’s war between the two companies now, a surprising shift from not long ago, when Schmidt sat on Apple’s board, Brin and Page looked to Jobs as a mentor and role model, and Brin and Jobs would take walks together in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
ROAD NOT TAKEN: Ken Auletta revealed in Googled that the trio discussed buying The New York Times.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co. (Brin, Page) and Charles Haynes (Schmidt).
NEWS CORPORATION
BUSINESS AS USUAL: The 79-year-old media mogul is at his best when waging war with those he perceives to be his rivals (The New York Times, Time Warner Cable, Google). His latest adversary: online news aggregators that steal (his word) content from his far-flung media outlets. Last year he threatened to remove all News Corp. content from Google’s search engine (an apparent bluff), and then announced that if people wished to read some of his papers online they would have to pay a price. It’s a battle he is unlikely to win, but it’s helping turn Murdoch into something of a print-world savior.
HOLLYWOOD RELATIONS: Thanks to director James Cameron’s Avatar, the Fox film division posted a record quarterly profit of $497 million.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
AMAZON
HIGH POINTS: Bezos’s pioneering Kindle has captured about 60 percent of the U.S. e-reader market, though now it’s being challenged by Apple’s way-cool iPad and Google’s soon-to-open online bookstore. Amazon now sells more digital books than hardcover ones.
THORN IN HIS SIDE: John Sargent, the C.E.O. of Macmillan, one of the Big Six book publishers, opposed Amazon’s effort to impose a top price of $9.99 for e-books, which would have undercut the much higher prices (and profit margins) for paper ones. As punishment Bezos dropped Macmillan’s titles, but later relented and agreed to sell them for “needlessly high” prices.
Photograph by James Duncan Davidson.
LVMH
WHEN CASH IS KING: Europe’s richest man nearly doubled his net worth, to $27.5 billion, according to Forbes, as Arnault guided his luxury empire through the worst of the global downturn and surfaced strongly in early 2010.
PERSISTENT RUMOR: Arnault is said to be interested in buying the Hermès Group, the famed French leather-and-fashion house, but the dynastic family isn’t interested in selling.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
MAYOR, NEW YORK CITY; BLOOMBERG L.P.
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Though the mayor occasionally gets swept up in small fights (smokers, soda drinkers, food vendors), New York is in as good a shape as it has ever been. Bloomberg has reduced crime, improved public education, and instituted a number of large-scale civic initiatives that are as ambitious as any big city’s in the country.
GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND: This summer, a trusted political consultant, John Haggerty Jr., was accused of stealing $1.1 million from the mayor during last year’s election campaign (he has pleaded not guilty). Haggerty allegedly used most of the money to buy a house.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ORACLE
CAN BE PROUD OF: The software mogul’s sailing team captured the America’s Cup in February, achieving the first U.S. victory since 1992, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars drawn from the third-biggest American fortune after Bill Gates’s and Warren Buffett’s—all three of whom have pledged, along with 37 other billionaires, to give at least half of their fortunes to charity.
SWORN ENEMY: Jonathan Schwartz gained notoriety as one of the first C.E.O. bloggers (an uncommonly good one, too) before Ellison, who topped The Wall Street Journal’s list of highest-paid C.E.O.’s of the decade, collecting $1.84 billion, acquired Schwartz’s struggling company, Sun Microsystems, and began dissing him in the press, saying, “Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.” Schwartz later announced his resignation on Twitter.
Photograph courtesy Oracle.
HERE TO STAY AFTER ALL? The enormously popular microblogging service has signed up an astonishing 124 million registered users (increasing by 300,000 a day). People “tweet” more than one billion times a month and search Twitter over 800 million times a day.
NOT SO FAST: Critics were underwhelmed when Twitter revealed its moneymaking plans in April: charging companies such as Starbucks and Sony Pictures for “promoted tweets,” otherwise known as ads.
Photographs by Joi Ito.
LIBERTY MEDIA
BUSINESS AS USUAL: Malone’s Colorado-based media octopus has tentacles into Starz, Sirius XM Radio, Live Nation, QVC, and Expedia, and has been seizing cable companies around the world through its subsidiary Liberty Global. In June, he left the board of DirecTV, reducing his stake in the satellite broadcaster to 3 percent. The ostensible reason was to comply with a regulatory ruling that DirecTV would otherwise have to divest its operations in Puerto Rico. Malone’s gain on the deal: $162 million.
EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLY PARANOID BEHAVIOR: Fretting over the U.S. economy, Malone’s wife moved all of her personal cash to Australia and Canada. The couple maintains a getaway in Quebec near the Maine border, which they could reach via snowmobile.
Photograph courtesy Liberty Media.
BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY
SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED ABOUT: His staunch defense of Goldman Sachs. Granted, he does own a significant block of the investment bank’s stock, but the Sage of Omaha sounds far from oracular arguing (over and over) that Goldman’s motive in the mortgage mess was entirely pure. That said, it’s hard to criticize the man who injected billions of his own capital into the market when it was most desperately needed.
GENE POOL: According to Ancestry.com, Barack Obama and Buffett are blood relatives. The president’s ninth great-grandfather—and Buffett’s sixth great-grandfather—is French immigrant Mareen Duvall.
Photograph by Mark Hirschey.
PIXAR, DISNEY
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Pixar’s unmatched winning streak Continues. Coming 15 years after the original, Toy Story 3 grossed more than $630 million worldwide in its first month and reduced theaters full of adults to tears. Up next: the Stanton-directed John Carter of Mars.
SYNERGY WATCH: As Disney’s chief creative officer, Lasseter has tried to sprinkle “Pixar dust” on numerous Disney projects, including The Princess and the Frog and a set of Tinker Bell direct-to-video releases, but so far nothing has reached the level of success and acclaim of Pixar’s releases.
Photographs by Patrick McMullan Co.
TIME WARNER
CAN BE PROUD OF: After spinning off AOL and Time Warner’s cable businesses, Bewkes has repositioned the company as a streamlined entertainment giant, with more than half its profits coming from television channels and programming—a business he grew up in as the longtime chief of money-printing and award-winning HBO. The company flourished during the recession and is outperforming industry rivals.
CORPORATE SIGNATURE: Having lived through the darkness that was AOL—Time Warner, Bewkes has been cautious about making any big media deals. The company passed on the Weather Channel but submitted a $1.5 billion bid for MGM.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
DISNEY
FLYING HIGH: Presiding over what is now the world’s biggest media company based on market capitalization—$65 billion—Iger used Disney’s heft to buy superhero-film factory Marvel Entertainment, played hardball with cable operators Cablevision and Time Warner Cable over rate increases for his ESPN and other channels, and off-loaded the once great Miramax independent movie studio as he refocuses the company on Disney-branded blockbusters such as Alice in Wonderland and Pixar’s perennial masterpieces, most recently Toy Story 3.
FAMILY RELATIONS: When Disney blacked out the first few minutes of the Oscars telecast on ABC during a dispute with Long Island cable operator Cablevision, Iger, who was born there, had to field complaints from his family.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
BLACKROCK
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: With $3.3 trillion in assets under management, BlackRock is the world’s largest money manager. Revenues in the company’s latest quarter were $2 billion—double 2009 levels—reflecting BlackRock’s increased dominance since the purchase last December of Barclays Global Investors.
BIG LOSS: In January, BlackRock and investment partner Tishman Speyer were forced to hand New York’s Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village over to creditors, in the process watching a $5.4 billion investment go down the drain.
Photograph by Nigel Parry.
POLO RALPH LAUREN
IMPERIAL EXPANSION: Nestled within his new, 23,000-square-foot Paris flagship is Ralph’s, the designer’s American-themed restaurant. The see-and-be-seen place has served a Who’s Who of politicians (Jacques Chirac), royalty (King Albert II of Belgium), and movie stars (Catherine Deneuve). And the beef comes from Lauren’s own Colorado ranch.
EMPLOYEE RELATIONS: A class action filed by 6,700 former Polo workers in California against the company, alleging unpaid, off-the-clock labor, went to court in March. The company didn’t admit liability, but agreed on a settlement only weeks later for $4 million.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
PPR
CAN BE PROUD OF: Pinault is remaking his family’s empire with his own vision—selling off assets so he can spend freely to acquire even more luxury labels for his Gucci Group (Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Stella McCartney). PPR will reap as much as $6 billion when it sells off its European retail operations.
SPOUSAL RELATIONS: Wife Salma Hayek Pinault, an impassioned environmentalist, got him to drive a hybrid instead of an Aston Martin.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
APPLE
MARK OF SUCCESS: “Jony” is the genius behind that other genius at Apple. The latest device that they created together, the iPad, is actually living up to Steve Jobs’s claim that it’s yet another revolutionary product.
LEGEND HAS IT: Ive left the design firm Tangerine to join Apple shortly after his client Ideal Standard rejected his designs for a new toilet.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
J. CREW
EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLY CONTRADICTORY BEHAVIOR: Although Drexler has said he doesn’t see J. Crew expanding internationally, this spring he partnered with luxury online e-tailer Net-a-Porter, a site that peddles designer goods in more than 150 countries, leading to speculation that he is testing the waters overseas. (The company is also scouting real estate in Canada.)
SYNERGY WATCH: Drexler has been stocking his stores with not only J. Crew merchandise but also well-known long-standing brands: Sperry Top-Sider, Belstaff, Timex, and Red Wing. It could be brilliant retailing or simply riding this year’s heritage trend. Or both.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ACTOR
STAB AT IMMORTALITY: Hollywood’s hottest star—and the only one ever to appear in two films to gross $1 billion (Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Alice in Wonderland)—was paid a princely $20 million for the upcoming drama The Tourist, co-starring Angelina Jolie. But that’s nothing compared with the extraordinary payday he’ll reap from the fourth Pirates movie. Industry sources say the versatile actor will collect a record $35 million by the time filming is wrapped.
REAL-WIFE DRAMA: Vanessa Paradis, his longtime partner (and mother of his two children), was said to have urged Depp to drop out of making The Tourist once she learned that he would be filming a protracted love scene with famed temptress Jolie.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
COMCAST
STROKE OF LUCK: Roberts’s timing on acquiring NBC Universal is looking better and better, with NBC ad sales up 20 percent over the previous year and Universal’s box office improving as the deal’s close approaches. The merger caps an epic empire-building effort by Roberts and his 90-year-old father, Ralph. The $30 billion question in buying NBCU: whether Roberts will be able to make owning content and distribution—a bit of a 90s conceit—pay off.
JOCULARITY TEST: Adjusting to the likely mocking of Comcast next season on NBC’s 30 Rock, whose parent company happens to have been acquired by “Kabletown.”
Photograph courtesy Comcast.
DREAMWORKS ANIMATION
THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Although DreamWorks posted respectable gains in both revenue and profits in 2009, the stock is down nearly 30 percent. But that’s likely to change once the final numbers come in for How to Train Your Dragon and the last installment from the Shrek franchise. While the former got off to a slow start, it ended up earning more than $475 million worldwide—enough for Katzenberg to declare the movie the company’s next big franchise.
iLOVE: So enthralled is Katzenberg by his new iPad that, at The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference, he declared, “The laptop is yesterday’s news.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SINGER
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: She shoots a video about a scantily clad convict—and fills it with numerous product placements (Miracle Whip, Polaroid). She intrigues professors as they parse postmodern culture. She inspires surging sales for slinky “shapewear” (think Spanx). Gaga is living out the title of her debut album, The Fame (more than 10 million copies sold), hogging headlines whether she’s flipping the bird at a Mets game or wearing a red fetish costume as she meets Queen Elizabeth. All the while her fans stream her videos tens of millions of times and await her updates on Facebook and Twitter.
PROFOUND AVERSION: Pants.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
MacANDREWS & FORBES
YEAR’S BEST MOVE: When long-suffering shareholders of Revlon finally decided to throw in the towel last fall and exchange their common stock for preferred shares, in the process loosening terms on some Revlon debt held by Perelman’s MacAndrews & Forbes, they should have wondered what Perelman wanted with shares that had been dead in the water for three years. Less than a month after the exchange, Revlon reported outsize third-quarter results, sending the stock from under $6 to nearly $20. Perelman wins again.
FAMILY RELATIONS: In a largely civic-minded move, in April, Perelman teamed up with his businessman father, Ray, to bid for Philadelphia Newspapers—the bankrupt owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com. They lost out to the company’s lenders.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ACTOR, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF HOLLYWOOD’S EVERYMAN: Hanks secured his position as America’s most influential popular historian with the March debut of the 10-part, $200 million HBO mini-series The Pacific, the second of the World War II epics that he created with Steven Spielberg. He reprised his role as the voice of Woody for Toy Story 3 (earning $15 million) and planned what he anticipates will be a controversial series on the J.F.K. assassination. And this spring he returned to film directing after a 14-year hiatus, shooting himself and Julia Roberts in the upcoming Larry Crowne.
MOGUL RELATIONS: Spielberg scrapped his effort to remake Harvey when he reportedly couldn’t persuade Hanks to star in the role made famous by Jimmy Stewart.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BIG MOVES: As his boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., has been grappling with the paper’s financial crisis, the unflappable Keller has been a steady hand at the Times: changing the top editors in some key slots, and giving his newsroom second-in-command, Jill Abramson, a six-month assignment to focus on digital initiatives, including the implementation of a pay-wall system that’s to be introduced early next year.
ARCH-ENEMY: Australian-born Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson, who skewers the Times at every opportunity.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BIG BOLD MOVES: When Thomson took over The Wall Street Journal two years ago he injected the paper with his own dose of market turmoil. He expanded its international reportage, launched a much-trumpeted New York metro section (which so far seems tinny) and a glossy weekend magazine, and pushed his reporters to cover topics the Journal had all but ignored, including sports and culture. The result: while the nation’s big-city newspapers experienced an overall decline, the Journal’s paid readership grew. Its two-million-plus circulation now tops that of USA Today, making it the biggest paper in the country.
FASHION ACCESSORY: Skinny ties, “for environmental reasons; they emit less carbon.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
BLOOMBERG L.P.
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Last fall, Bloomberg, which has been making high-profile acquisitions and investing heavily in new products—the complete opposite of just about every other media company—picked up BusinessWeek at a fire-sale price of $5 million, giving it access to the magazine’s 900,000 subscribers and its 11 million monthly Web visitors. With 2,300 journalists working from 146 bureaus around the world, Bloomberg’s news staff is now bigger than those of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times combined.
DUBIOUS-ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: The Bloomberg president has made consecutive appearances on Gotham magazine’s list of the best-dressed people in New York: “A complete joke, because I own four suits and two pairs of shoes.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
THE DAILY SHOW
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Stewart’s The Daily Show (and spin-off The Colbert Report), on Comedy Central, draws the lowest median age of male viewers in the elusive 18-to-34 demographic than any of the late-night network shows. The two shows also have a cult following on the Internet, and while ranked as among the most watched series on Hulu, Viacom pulled them off the free video-streaming site earlier this year.
POSSIBLE LAPSE IN JUDGMENT: Wearing skintight black pants for his surprise appearance onstage in Conan O’Brien’s comedy show at Radio City Music Hall in June.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
J. P. MORGAN CHASE
CAN BE PROUD OF: While the competition has been busy retrenching or fighting off prosecutions, Dimon’s firm has added firepower across the board—in retail banking, asset management, investment banking, and even credit cards. Still, any hopes Dimon may have had of using his popularity with President Obama to soften regulatory reform were blown away in the winds of populist protest.
MARITAL RELATIONS: Perhaps not understanding the precise definition of the term, Dimon referred to his wife of 27 years as a “cougar” during a Robin Hood Foundation benefit he co-chaired in May.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
AMÉRICA MÓVIL
LIFE OF BRIAN MOMENT: When Slim’s New York Times investment made him the paper’s biggest shareholder not named Sulzberger and the New York Post labeled him (correctly) “a savior,” a Times flack called the tabloid and crucified the messianic reference: “The correct way to refer to Mr. Slim is that he is a shareholder.”
MAN NOT SO MUCH OF THE PEOPLE: Slim dominates the Mexican economy, controlling some 200 companies that account for roughly one-third of the country’s stock-market index. On average, ordinary Mexicans earn just $13,500 a year—less than 0.0000003 percent of Slim’s formidable fortune, the biggest in the world.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ESPN, ABC SPORTS
CAN BE PROUD OF: The sports network and its various iterations (magazine, online, mobile, restaurants) is a money machine for majority owner Disney, extracting the highest fee of any channel from cable companies. Bodenheimer’s latest coup: the World Cup. All the various ESPN online and mobile outlets that carried the competition racked up a total of 4.9 billion minutes of usage for World Cup content.
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Sarah Palin—who aspired to be a sportscaster as a kid—named daughter Bristol in part after Bristol, Connecticut, where ESPN is headquartered.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
HBO
BRAGGING RIGHTS: With 101 prime-time Emmy nominations, HBO’s dominance of quality television remains unchallenged. The creative triumvirate at the network is pretty much on speed dial with top talent—such as Martin Scorsese, whose first-ever TV series, Boardwalk Empire, debuts in September. With the hit shows True Blood and Entourage, and promising newcomers such as Bored to Death, the division delivers close to $1.2 billion in annual profit to parent Time Warner’s coffers.
EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLY TOO MUCH SUCCESS: HBO paid Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke so that she would not sue over its new show Tilda, starring Diane Keaton as a cantankerous Hollywood blogger.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
HARPO PRODUCTIONS
GRAND AMBITION: After 25 years of tears, cheers, and occasional couch jumping, the queen of daytime TV will now try to conquer the world of prime time with her forthcoming show, Oprah’s Next Chapter, an hour-long program that will undoubtedly serve as the cornerstone of OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, her new venture with Discovery Communications that will launch in January.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SINGER, HUMANITARIAN
BUMP IN THE ROAD: In May, U2 was on track to break the record for the top-grossing tour ever when Bono was sidelined for emergency spinal surgery. The 360 Degrees Tour, reputedly the most expensive rock tour in history—costing $750,000 a day—pulled in $311 million, making it the year’s top draw.
NEMESIS: Popular financial-news Web site 24/7 Wall Street called Bono “the worst investor in America” for his Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Elevation Partners’ “disastrous” bets on companies such as Forbes and Palm.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
LIGHTSTORM ENTERTAINMENT
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: With Avatar, Cameron once again is feeling on top of the world. His groundbreaking 3-D film brought in a record $2.7 billion. Sure, he ran over budget to the tune of $100 million, but his revolutionary camerawork will forever change the way movies are made.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
MOGUL RELATIONS: As Facebook’s C.O.O., Sandberg is the adult antidote to the youthful exuberance of company founder Mark Zuckerberg. They’re technology’s odd couple, but their partnership appears to be working. Reports in June put the company’s 2009 revenue at $800 million, far more than expected.
SHOULD BE ASHAMED ABOUT: By forcing users to jump through complicated hoops to “opt out” of the sharing of online usage data—as opposed to having us “opt in”—Facebook has recently replaced Google as the bogeyman of online privacy.
Photograph by Kimberly White/Bloomberg/Getty Images.
COMCAST
FUTURE MOVES: It’s likely that once Comcast acquires the majority of NBC Universal—which will vastly expand the nation’s largest cable operator into a force in programming (that, as C.O.O., he will oversee)—there will be big changes at the entertainment company, including investing in network TV in a way current owner General Electric has not.
SUMMERTIME CENTER OF GRAVITY: Burke and his family spent the July 4 weekend at their house in Montana, with his close friend J. P. Morgan Chase C.E.O. Jamie Dimon (on whose board Burke serves).
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
CHANEL, FENDI, KARL LAGERFELD SAS
ONE DESIGNER LEFT BEHIND: Lagerfeld, the renowned creative director at Chanel and Fendi, was left hanging in March when his eponymous label, which was purchased by Apax-owned Tommy Hilfiger in 2005, was not part of Phillips—Van Heusen’s $3 billion acquisition of the Hilfiger brand. Since then, Apax has been revamping Lagerfeld’s management team, likely in preparation for an eventual sale.
NEMESIS: French actress Audrey Tautou, who starred in Chanel No. 5 ads and played Coco in last year’s Coco Before Chanel. When asked if she wears Chanel, Tautou said, “Sometimes. This morning, I wore the rain boots.” To which Lagerfeld replied, “I didn’t even know we made rain boots. After that, I don’t have to be nice.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
IAC, DVF
BIG DEAL: The merger of Live Nation and Diller’s Ticketmaster Entertainment to form Live Nation Entertainment was finally completed, though a tough 2010 concert season is putting pressure on the newly combined mega-firm’s results. Meanwhile, von Furstenberg, through the Council of Fashion Designers of America, of which she is president, raised $1 million for Haiti.
THORN IN HIS SIDE: IAC’s search division (including Ask and Citysearch), the value of which the company wrote down by $992 million in 2009. Diller tried to sell the fourth-ranked Ask last year, but no deal was done. He says it’s currently not for sale.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
RELATIVITY MEDIA
WHEN CASH IS KING: The Hollywood wunderkind is in the midst of putting up billions (he’s raised $10 billion over six years) to help keep Universal and Sony cranking out pictures through 2015. His company’s name is attached to 29 films this year alone, including MacGruber, Get Him to the Greek, Salt, and Little Fockers.
BIG MOVE: In July, he announced a deal with Netflix that will make all Relativity Mediacontrolled films (25 to 30 a year) available for streaming.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
THE HUFFINGTON POST
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: What began as a blog for liberal kvetching by her glam friends has evolved into a bona fide news organization with a paid staff of 70 reporters and editors and an investigative fund. In May, HuffPo, which, according to Nielsen, draws as many as 13 million unique visitors a month, hosted its first table at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, taking its place among long-established news organizations.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
MAD MEN
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: The stylish 60s ad-agency drama enjoys the most upscale audience of any TV show, and its cultural influence, driven by creator Weiner, costume designer Bryant, and set decorator Wells, is pervasive: it has been parodied on The Simpsons and celebrated with its own Jeopardy! category, Oprah episode, Bloomingdale’s store window, and even Barbie and Ken dolls.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co. (Weiner, Bryant) and Bill Kelly (Wells).
ZYNGA
THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Pincus used Facebook as a launching pad for his now ridiculously popular “social games,” such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Fishville. More people play Farmville, a virtual agribusiness (83 million), than any other computer game. With more than 200 million people playing all Zynga games, he’s getting even more social, linking up with the likes of Yahoo and the iPhone, among others. One recent estimate of Zynga’s value: $5 billion.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
IMG WORLDWIDE
BIG GUTSY MOVES: Already the dominant sports agency in the U.S., Forstmann’s IMG lately has been looking abroad for new business. In 2008, IMG signed an agreement with China’s national television broadcaster to produce an extensive slate of sports programming. This March, the company struck a similar deal with the indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
MICROSOFT
LEGACY WATCH: In the decade since Ballmer took over from buddy Bill Gates as Microsoft’s C.E.O., the company’s annual revenue has nearly tripled, to $58 billion. But it has also lost nearly half its stock-market value, while rival Apple’s value rose over 500 percent—and eclipsed Microsoft’s in May.
BROKEN CRYSTAL BALL: Three years ago Ballmer proclaimed, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” (The iPhone is now the No. 2 smartphone, with a 28 percent market share.)
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
INTERNET ENTREPRENEUR
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The 30-year-old self-taught computer whiz is considered by many to be an oracle of the Web, one who knows how to integrate the computer and online networks into people’s lives. At 19 he helped Shawn Fanning create Napster, the file-sharing service that fundamentally changed the music business. He also played an instrumental role in the launch of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
HULU
MOGUL BONA FIDES: Last December, Hulu reached the milestone of serving one billion videos a month over the Web. Advertising brought in $100 million last year, but when one of its key backers, Rupert Murdoch, launched his fatwa against free content online, rumors flew that Hulu would start charging viewers. Sure enough, in June, Kilar announced a $9.99-a-month service that offers full seasons of TV shows and will play on various platforms early next year.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
HIGH POINT: The comedy impresario’s Saturday Night Live’s 13 nominations at this year’s Emmy Awards brought its total to 126 nominations over the show’s 35-year run, eclipsing the previous record held by E.R. Seven of those Emmy nods came for the May 8, 2010, episode hosted by 88-year-old Betty White after Michaels ultimately acceded to a Facebook campaign by nearly a half-million of her fans.
THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: Plentiful mentions in the New York Post, which wrote that “the king of Saturday Night Live … is getting a tarnished crown” as “critics say the show peaked in the last century,” and that Michaels’s protégé Conan O’Brien “bombed as the Tonight host” and Michaels’s film version of S.N.L.’s “MacGruber” sketch proved to be a “turkey” at the box office.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
FLYING HIGH: The nerdy, prolific Abrams, behind the blockbusters Star Trek and Mission: Impossible III, has been developing a mind-boggling array of new projects inspired by everything from Japanese toys (Micronauts) to literary novels (he optioned Colum McCann’s National Book Award winner, Let the Great World Spin). His upcoming offerings include Undercovers, a TV spy comedy debuting this fall on NBC, and Mission: Impossible IV, with Tom Cruise.
WINDFALL PROFITS: Made $31 million last year from the back-end earnings for Star Trek.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ILLUMINATION ENTERTAINMENT
BRAGGING RIGHTS: In its opening weekend, Illumination’s Despicable Me exceeded box-office expectations and recouped its relatively modest production budget ($69 million) in its first week—making it the envy of other studios. It was the first release by the new animation company Meledandri founded in 2007 with backing from Universal Pictures. Before that, he had spent 13 years at Fox, where he oversaw the purchase of the hot computer-graphics house Blue Sky and the first two installments of the successful Ice Age series.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR, WRITER
LATEST BID FOR IMMORTALITY: Five of Perry’s nine movies have opened at No. 1. His 10th film, an adaptation of the 1975 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, will premiere in January with a cast that includes Janet Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg.
SWORN ENEMY: Spike Lee likened Perry’s two popular TBS sitcoms to “coonery and buffoonery.” On 60 Minutes, Lee was quoted as having said, “I see ads for Meet the Browns and House of Payne and I’m scratching my head The image is troubling and it harkens back to Amos ’n’ Andy.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
POLITICO
SIGN OF OMNIPOTENCE: Washington power brokers don’t arise from bed without first reading Allen’s “Playbook,” a tip sheet that he sends out as early as 5:30 A.M. in a private e-mail to 3,000 Washington insiders before it hits the Politico Web site. He routinely breaks news and helps set the day’s agenda for the rest of the media.
Photograph courtest Politico.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Since joining the paper, in 1998—shortly before the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management—the Pulitzer Prize winner has indefatigably covered an endless procession of corporate scandal and miscreancy, from the failures of WorldCom and Enron to the corrupt stock shilling of the Internet boom, to the overpaid culprits who created the economic crisis we’re in today.
DIPLOMACY SKILLS: After being roughed up in one of Morgenson’s blistering accounts of A.I.G.’s demise (some of which she co-wrote with Louise Story), Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein compared the experience to being “waterboarded.”
Photograph by Splash/Newscom.
GLEE
CAN BE PROUD OF: Murphy’s Glee attracts as many as 11 million viewers a week with its joyous, outrageous portrayals of a high-school glee club. Fox ordered two more seasons as the show’s devoted fan base turned out in force for a four-city tour, Glee Live! In Concert!
SWORN ENEMY: Newsweek, which Murphy condemned for publishing a “blatantly homophobic” article criticizing the performance of openly gay Broadway actor Jonathan Groff, who plays a straight character on Glee.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
PRADA S.P.A.
CLOUD OF UNCERTAINTY: Buoyed by 14 percent growth in its retail sector, the luxury company negotiated a three-year loan of $454.8 million to help refinance its debt and continue expanding its retail operations (30 store openings this year).
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
TOD’S
RECESSION-DEFYING MOVE: The Italian luxury-goods mogul saw his company’s earnings climb 3.5 percent last year, to $119 million. Meanwhile, he recorded a $44.5 million paper profit when the shares of Saks Inc. he had bought in early 2009 more than doubled. Still bullish on Saks, he invested $52.5 million more, upping his stake from 5.9 percent to 9.4 percent.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ROC NATION
BRAGGING RIGHTS: The 40-year-old hip-hop legend generates nearly $1 billion in annual revenues from his clothing line, music label, talent agency, concerts, endorsements (HP, Budweiser), nightclubs, and more. He’s had 11 albums reach No. 1, more than any other solo artist and second only to the Beatles.
DUBIOUS EFFORT TO HAVE IT BOTH WAYS: He called out his close colleague Kanye West for his “rude” outburst during Taylor Swift’s Video Music Award acceptance speech—but also defended the “passion” that led the rapper to protest that Jay-Z’s wife, Beyoncé, deserved the win.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SONY CORP.
THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: This year, Stringer skipped the Sun Valley mogul retreat to attend the final of the World Cup. Sony was one of the contest’s biggest sponsors, using it as a platform to trumpet a huge bet on 3-D as the future of television. Stringer’s ongoing efforts to return the Japanese electronics behemoth to its former glory have been impeded by the recession, but a strong first quarter is proof his plans are starting to gel.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
WENNER MEDIA
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: When Rolling Stone, Wenner’s 43-year-old culture-and-politics fortnightly, broke the story that broke the back of General Stanley McChrystal, many observers wondered how a magazine more popularly associated with preening pop stars could have landed such a scoop. They shouldn’t have. Fueled by two unpopular wars and a historic economic collapse, Rolling Stone simply stuck to its roots, churning out a string of high-caliber stories that have made the magazine consistently engaging.
SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED ABOUT: As the McChrystal story exploded across every news outlet in the country, the article was nowhere to be found on Rolling Stone’s own Web site, an absence that prompted some media critics to charge that Wenner still doesn’t get how the Internet works.
Photograph by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images.
BURBERRY
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The duo transformed a stodgy British rainwear brand into a fashion powerhouse as Bailey, the chief creative officer, put his mark all over design, branding, and advertising. American-born C.E.O. Ahrendts plans to open as many as 30 new stores this year.
DIGITAL BONA FIDES: Bailey streamed last February’s London runway show in 3-D to select cities around the globe, while he also enabled customers to view it live in 2-D on the Web and click to buy items.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
CHARLIE ROSE
BIG SCOOP: White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel admitted on Rose’s show that he wants to run for mayor of Chicago when the incumbent, Richard Daley, decides to retire. Emanuel later confessed that he never meant to be so revealing.
THE PRICE OF MOGULDOM: Last September, Fortune probed the potential conflicts of interest from Rose’s being his show’s own fund-raiser and asked whether the influential TV host downplays his close ties to Coca-Cola, his top sponsor.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
FIREFLY3
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Freston remains a go-to media maven without actually running, or wanting to run, a giant media business. Instead, he acts as an adviser and connector, including sitting on the boards of Bono’s One and (Red) ventures and consulting for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network. He’s also on the board of DreamWorks Animation and finds time to roam the corners of the earth.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
CBS
MARK OF SUCCESS: Moonves is all about getting paid—he told the tech turks at this year’s Sun Valley conference that content creators such as CBS need to be compensated for all the things people watch on gadgets, and has led the charge for broadcast networks to be paid monthly fees by cable operators for the first time. He rekindled talks with Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes about combining CBS’s profit-challenged news operation with ratings-challenged CNN. And, having made CBS the top-rated network for seven of the past eight years, Moonves himself earned a handsome $43 million in 2009 (double his pay for 2008).
CLOUDY FUTURE: CBS Films’ first two releases, Extraordinary Measures and The Back-up Plan, fizzled, and their titles could well describe what the division needs next.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS
MOGUL BONA FIDES: In three years as C.E.O., Zaslav, who recently paid $25 million for Conan O’Brien’s Central Park West duplex, has aggressively turned earnest but sleepy Discovery Communications, with its 13-channel U.S. portfolio (Discovery, Animal Planet), into a programming behemoth (Deadliest Catch, Planet Earth) that is sure to hit new heights early next year with the launch of the crazily anticipated Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), of which Discovery is part owner.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ACTOR, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTIVIST
CROWD-PLEASER: Clooney won the New York Film Critics Circle award for best actor for his role in Up in the Air, for which he commanded a $10 million fee, and for his vocal work in the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox. And he enjoyed a surprising windfall from his dark military comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats, which grossed $44 million worldwide and brought him $4.5 million in back-end profits. In his role as Hollywood’s consummate do-gooder, Clooney organized and hosted a two-hour benefit concert, “Hope for Haiti Now,” which raised $57 million.
ODDLY ENDEARING AND HUMANIZING EVIDENCE OF HAPLESS KLUTZINESS: At his Italian villa last year, shut his car door on his hand and broke it.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
VIACOM
ALL YOU NEED IS CALM: Last year was one of relative stability at Viacom, where until recently the day-to-day running of the fourth-largest media conglomerate was overshadowed by Dauman’s boss Sumner Redstone’s personal and financial turmoil. Iron Man 2 performed particularly well ($616 million worldwide) for Paramount. And this year, with advertising rebounding and ratings up at key cable networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central), Viacom paid its first dividend ever.
BIG LOSS: A federal judge tossed out Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and its owner, Google, for allegedly posting copyrighted clips from Viacom’s cable channels without permission. Viacom is appealing.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
HOLLYWOOD HIGH: Despite the box-office disappointment of Funny People last year, Hollywood’s “Mayor of Comedy” was nonetheless re-elected: Apatow signed a three-picture directing deal with Universal. Meanwhile, the moderate success of Apatow’s most recent undertaking as a producer, Get Him to the Greek, proved the continuing appeal of his patented brand of bromedy.
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: Now that Apatow’s mafia has virtually taken over comedy in Hollywood, it’s becoming harder for each of their new films to outdo the last one’s moments of outrageousness.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
PIMCO
BIG BOLD BETS: With investors fleeing the stock market in droves, many are finding refuge at Pimco, Gross’s bond behemoth, which manages more than $1 trillion of other people’s money. In 2008, while the broader stock market dropped 38 percent, Pimco’s flagship Total Return fund was up 4.3 percent. His biggest gamble: buying $200 billion worth of distressed debt from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On the day the Treasury announced that it would bail out the two mortgage giants, Gross’s funds made a $2.5 billion profit.
BIG PURCHASE: Gross, the world’s foremost philatelist, traded four stamps for an 1868 one-cent stamp called the Z Grill, one of only two known to exist.
Photograph by Jonathan Alcorn/Zuma Press.
CHINA INVESTMENT CORPORATION
MAN-OF-THE-PEOPLE MOVE: A late-May announcement by C.I.C. president Gao that the $300 billion sovereign-wealth fund was not going to reduce investments in Europe ignited a rally that helped head off (for the moment) the sense that Europe was going down the financial tubes.
WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: As some investors (and countries) scrounge for cash, C.I.C. is buying big chunks of important companies in critical industries. Last year, it purchased stakes in Russia’s Nobel Oil Group and Canadian mining outfit Teck Resources.
Photograph courtesy China Investment Corporation.
KHOSLA VENTURES
BIG MOVES: Even with credit tight, Khosla was able to raise $1.3 billion last year to seed two different investment vehicles—a $1 billion fund earmarked for clean-energy and information technologies, and a $300 million fund that will target high-risk, experimental projects. Among his current investments: a suburban-Detroit-based manufacturer of fuel-efficient internal-combustion engines (EcoMotors), an LED lighting company (Soraa), a solar-energy concern (Cogenra), and a high-efficiency-cooling-system company (New PAX). In May, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, joined Khosla’s venture-capital shop to serve as an adviser.
PET PEEVE: Greenwashing. “There’s a lot of this fashionable ‘Let’s go green!,’ especially politicians spending other people’s money, to show that they can be greener than the next guy.”
Photograph by James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Inc.
IMAGINE ENTERTAINMENT
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: A whirlwind of eclectic ideas, Grazer has a dizzying four dozen movies in development and a half-dozen more in various stages of production. His fourth Russell Crowe picture, Robin Hood, captured $310 million in global box-office receipts, and he’s got a surefire success in his upcoming The Dilemma, a Vince Vaughn comedy directed by his longtime business partner, Howard, who this year turned his 1989 hit film, Parenthood, into a hit TV series for NBC. Howard also moonlighted making short videos for the Web site Funny or Die that were comedic, star-studded lobbying efforts for creating the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
UNIQLO
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Japan’s richest person, Yanai has built a $9 billion fortune (up $3 billion last year alone) from his apparel chain Fast Retailing—and he aspires to surpass Gap, Sweden’s H&M, and Spain’s Inditex (owner of Zara) to become the world’s top clothing retailer. His Uniqlo stores sold more than 400 million items last year and have already conquered New York, London, Paris, and Moscow. He plans to open 200 more stores across Asia by 2012.
DODGED A BULLET WHEN: In 2007 he lost out in his $950 million bid to buy Barneys New York. Less than two years later, the store’s value had been reportedly halved.
Photograph courtesy SoftBank.
PARTICIPANT MEDIA
CREATIVE CREDENTIALS: The eBay billionaire has cut a wide swath through film with his Participant Media. The for-profit entertainment company with a social-action angle bankrolled four documentaries at Sundance, including Davis Guggenheim’s harrowing Waiting for Superman, about the U.S. public-education system. But more than financing projects, Participant’s trademark has been its message marketing, various outreach programs that allow its films—such as the Oscar-winning The Cove and the upcoming Countdown to Zero—to have an impact.
PIPE DREAM: The Skoll Global Threats Fund, headed by former Google philanthropy chief Larry Brilliant, aims for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ACTORS, HUMANITARIANS
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: When a couple is so enviably adept at balancing work and family that they can take turns making big movies (she received $20 million for Salt, and he’s been working on Moneyball) and hanging with the kids (he took them crabbing in Venice while she shot The Tourist, with Johnny Depp), then they can expect Schadenfreude of the highest degree.
LATEST ACTS OF DO-GOODERY: After the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January, their foundation gave $1 million to Doctors Without Borders for emergency medical response.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
APPALOOSA MANAGEMENT
BIG GUTSY MOVES: Last year, when few people dared to brave the world’s equity markets, Tepper went all in, loading up on beaten-down bank stocks that nobody would touch. Among his prescient calls: investing heavily in Citigroup (at an average price of 79 cents a share) and Bank of America. The result: a 130 percent return, a performance that netted the 53-year-old a record $4 billion. This year, the investor is setting his sights on the airlines.
Photograph courtesy David Tepper.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: “The enigmatic aspects of Obama make him an endlessly fascinating protagonist,” says the op-ed columnist. Rich’s virtuosic 1,500-word weekly Times column has portrayed what he describes as “a new administration still coping with an unrecovered economy (for most Americans), the bleeding ulcer (and that’s the optimistic diagnosis) of Afghanistan and a political opposition that vehemently, if not nihilistically, combats its every move.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SHOWTIME
CLOUDY FUTURE: Blank’s longtime deputy, Robert Greenblatt, the force behind many of the pay channel’s recent original-series successes—Weeds, Dexter, and Nurse Jackie—stepped down in July. The personnel change comes just as Showtime adjusts to the loss of three big suppliers of movies and as competition with HBO is getting tougher and up-and-coming Starz has hired former HBO head Chris Albrecht to raise its game. To replenish Showtime’s pipeline, Blank brokered distribution deals with Summit, the Weinstein Company, sibling CBS Films, and DreamWorks Studios.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
NV INVESTMENTS
MOGUL RELATIONS: Nevo continues to be a behind-the-scenes investor in media and technology companies. He’s a backer of Richard Rosenblatt’s Demand Media and an investor in Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Square, and has handed over an undisclosed portion of his fortune to angel investor Ron Conway.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Mayer, Google’s first female engineer, must vet nearly every proposed change to company properties. The 35-year-old has overseen the development of Gmail, Google Maps, and Google News, making her one of the most influential arbiters of how we experience the Web. Her latest effort: redesigning Google’s all-important search-results page, giving visitors the ability to peruse video, images, and more.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
WRITER
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: MacFarlane is the highest-paid TV writer and producer in history (a $100 million contract with Fox), and his Family Guy has sold more DVDs than any other seasonal TV franchise (more than 22 million combined units). In 2008 he launched his own YouTube cartoon comedy channel, and now he’s expanding into film with his live-action C.G.I. hybrid, Ted, about a man and his teddy bear.
BOLD STATEMENT: Compared Arizona’s anti-immigration law to Nazi Germany’s racism: “Nobody but the Nazis ever asked anybody for their papers.… I think they should be required to ask that question in German if the law sticks around.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SEQUOIA CAPITAL
LATEST BIG MOVES: The challenged economy put a crimp on much of the world’s money flow, but it hasn’t slowed Moritz. Flush with cash, the venture capitalist is backing new enterprises in India (Indecomm Global), China (social-networker Comsenz), and Europe (online-payments company Klarna).
Photograph by Soumik Kar/The India Times/Getty Images.
MARC JACOBS INTERNATIONAL, LOUIS VUITTON
BIG MOVES: Since 2008, Jacobs’s company has been racking up record financial results, thanks to diversification and expansion in China and Brazil. Meanwhile, at Louis Vuitton, where he is creative director, the luxury label increased its revenue by double digits in 2009.
EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE OVEREXPOSURE: The print ad for his new Marc Jacobs men’s scent, Bang, features the designer nude on a Mylar bed with only a fragrance bottle for coverage.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
ARCHITECT
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Named by Design Intelligence the No. 1 “role model” for sustainability, McDonough crusades with an uncompromising environmental credo—he believes in re-using just about everything—and has inspired some of the highest-profile green projects of our time, including his big cool buddy Brad Pitt’s Make It Right houses in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SYNTHETIC GENOMICS
WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: The human-DNA decoder created the first synthetic life-form by manufacturing a new genome and injecting it into another cell. By manipulating the DNA of simple organisms, the geneticist plans to engineer algae that can produce usable fuel. ExxonMobil is giving him $300 million to help fund his next-generation biofuel efforts.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
GAGOSIAN GALLERY
IMPERIAL EXPANSION: The powerful art dealer impressed critics with museum-quality exhibitions of late works by Monet at his New York gallery, in which nothing was for sale. “Gogo” opened an Athens gallery last year, expanded his Beverly Hills space, and debuted a storefront on Madison Avenue to sell prints, posters, and limited-edition works.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
THE WYLIE AGENCY
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: One of the most powerful forces in book publishing (the others being Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs) represents more than 700 clients, including contemporary writers such as Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth (as well as the editor of this magazine), business luminaries (Larry Ellison, David Rockefeller), and the estates of literary giants like Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, and John Updike. His basic operating tenet: if a publisher recoups the big advances Wylie lands his writers, he didn’t ask for enough money.
WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: In July, Wylie announced a deal with Amazon that gives the online retailer exclusive digital rights to 20 backlist titles, including works by Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and Hunter S. Thompson. Critics say the deal will shortchange writers by locking them out of popular e-reader services from Apple and Sony.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
IMAX
THEATER OF OPERATIONS: It wasn’t long ago that the large-screen Imax format was looked on as a novelty attraction relegated to museums and theme parks. Not anymore. Thanks to a series of bold strategic initiatives—and some major backing from Hollywood—Imax’s business has exploded. Fueled by James Cameron’s year-end breakout, Avatar, the company posted record revenues in 2009 and turned its first profit in four years. Since bottoming out, in November 2008, Imax shares are up more than 500 percent.
TRUSTED ALLY: Paramount chief Brad Grey, who told the Los Angeles Times that Imax “has become an almost essential part of releasing a blockbuster.”
Photograph by Patrick McMullan.
TED CONFERENCE
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: The elite pay $6,000 apiece to attend Anderson’s invitation-only TED Conference (for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) every spring in Long Beach, California, where they spend four days watching 50-plus creative thinkers talk about their most provocative ideas. Afterward, the rest of the world watches it compulsively on the Web.
NEMESIS: Sarah Silverman, whose TED speech was “god-awful,” he tweeted.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
NETFLIX
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: Hastings has seen his mail-order DVD-rental business soar in dominance—it now has 15 million subscribers and is worth more than $5 billion. Netflix has also led the charge to stream movies directly over the Internet to TVs, laptops, and gaming systems. More recently the company partnered with Relativity Media’s Ryan Kavanaugh to stream movies from Kavanaugh’s deep film catalogue.
CLOUD OF UNCERTAINTY: Opinion is divided on how well Netflix will be able to stave off companies that want to steal bits of its business, from the studios that supply the movies and TV shows it rents to gadget-makers such as Amazon and Apple.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
DIOR
BUSINESS AS USUAL: Dior’s creative director designs more than 30 collections annually between the fashion house and his label, John Galliano. This year he added a men’s-wear line, Galliano, and his new selection of scarves and hats debuts this fall.
CAN BE PROUD OF: In June, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is Dior’s biggest fan, presented the couturier with the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
BIG FRUSTRATION: After months of hustling to reclaim the name Miramax, as well as the library of films they made under it, from former employer Disney, the Weinsteins fell short in a bid with financier Ron Burkle. The reasons were debatable, but the challenged finances of the Weinstein Company, which the brothers set up when they departed Disney five years ago, could not have helped. In June, however, the company finally re-structured $450 million worth of debt, with Goldman Sachs taking temporary ownership of as many as 250 of its films.
CAN BE PROUD OF: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, their first bona fide hit in a while, reminded people that the brothers still have the touch.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD
CAN BE PROUD OF: Few people can escape her poisonous epithets, be they high-ranking executives (NBC’s Jeff Zucker has been called a “kiss-ass incompetent”), journalistic peers (Variety editor Peter Bart was dubbed Mike “Ovitz’s buttboy”), or low-level studio publicists (“asswipe”). But her four-year-old entertainment-business blog routinely draws more readers than both the print and online versions of her biggest competitors, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and breaks more industry news as well.
FIGHTIN’ WORDS: “If you stonewall me, if you lie to me, if you don’t give me the information first—you will pay a price.”
INVESTOR, ART COLLECTOR
LENSMAN CHRONICLES: The fourth monograph of Pigozzi’s long-running “visual diary,” Catalogue Déraisonné, available now in the U.S., includes Pigozzi’s trademark intimate shots of major celebrities.
GREEN PROPS: Pigozzi’s Liquid Jungle Lab is focused on high-tech ecological research in Pacific Panama. Plans are afoot to build a super-deluxe eco-hotel on his Panama property.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
STARZ MEDIA
MOGUL COMEBACK: Since joining Starz earlier this year, Albrecht has been working to make the pay-TV channel a major player against rival HBO (from which he was fired in 2007). His first success: the mini-series The Pillars of the Earth. In addition to ramping up original shows, he has also been busy at Starz owner John Malone’s Liberty Media with the shutting down of three-year-old Overture Films.
SMART-GUY MOVE: After Andy Whitfield, the lead actor in Starz’s surprise hit series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Albrecht gave the go-ahead to a special six-part prequel series while Whitfield underwent treatment.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
DESIGNER, FILMMAKER
STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Ford’s return to designing women’s fashion, expected with next year’s fall collection, is hotly anticipated. Not that he’s been idle since leaving Gucci: Ford launched his own brand with forays into eyewear, beauty products, and men’s wear. And he re-invented himself as a Hollywood auteur by writing, directing, and financing (with $7 million of his own cash) his debut feature film, A Single Man, which earned a best-actor Oscar nomination for Colin Firth and brought in more than $23 million in worldwide box-office receipts.
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Ford and the film’s distributor, the Weinstein Company, were met with protest when they cut out a kiss between gay lovers.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
SV ANGEL
BID FOR IMMORTALITY: Conway is considered by many to be the single most important angel investor in Silicon Valley. Among his notable winners: Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and PayPal. In 2010 he launched a $20 million fund that has invested in 50 fledgling tech firms, including current Web darling Foursquare.
PAST LIFE: Conway began investing in Internet companies in 1995, eventually raising $150 million from a coterie of wealthy clients such as Tiger Woods. He nearly lost it all in the tech crash of 2000, but was bailed out by two prescient calls: PayPal and Google.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
BYD
WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: Wang began selling his first electric car in China last year. In May, BYD announced plans to build its North American headquarters in Los Angeles, in preparation for the company’s foray into the U.S., in 2011. Add to that a deal with Daimler AG to develop a new line of electric cars and it’s no wonder BYD’s car business is now its biggest revenue generator.
MAN-OF-THE-PEOPLE MOVE: At the Detroit auto show, Wang and his associates rented a house in the suburbs rather than stay at an expensive hotel.
Photograph by Robyn Beck/Getty Images.
SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT
BIG WIN: Armed with a $1 billion credit line from Merrill Lynch (and a small equity infusion from Jeffrey Skoll’s Participant Media), Friedman and Wachsberger couldn’t have anticipated the rich vein they would tap into with Twilight. To date, the three Twilight movies have earned more than $1.7 billion worldwide, a number that will likely double when Summit releases the final two installments in the years ahead.
PET PEEVE: Being labeled the studio that Twilight built. Summit’s other hits: Knowing, which grossed $181 million worldwide, and The Hurt Locker, winner of last year’s best-picture and best-director Oscars.
Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
GOLDMAN SACHS
DODGED A BULLET WHEN: Goldman’s July settlement with the S.E.C. over accusations of fraud in the Abacus scandal was a paltry $550 million. Big money to the rest of us but a mere 15 days’ worth of profits for the Wall Street powerhouse the population at large continues to love to hate.
Photograph by Patrick McMullan Co.
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Jeff Katzenberg dubious ranking will plummet if his wishes to end Motion Picture and Television long term care materialize. Our heroes tend to trip, and fall when they leave the realm that they excel in to take on other duties. It's the Peter Principal and it will be Jeffrey Katzenberg's undoing.
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