Does CAA Have a Succession Problem?
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For those of a certain age who like to think that they’re still young — and who doesn’t? — it is sobering to realize that when Michael Ovitz bowed out of the agency business in 1995, neither Tom Holland nor Zendaya had even been born.
People who weren’t around in those days can’t begin to appreciate the fear that Ovitz inspired in Hollywood. He wielded the kind of power that no agent has mustered since and no agent ever will again. How the times and the town have changed.
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One thing has remained constant in all the years since Ovitz left the building: Three then-young men who had emerged as future leaders of CAA well before Ovitz departed are still at the helm. Perhaps in spite of himself, Ovitz nailed the succession question that has led to so much drama at Disney and Paramount. But those three men — now in their 60s — have shown no discernible signs of repeating that trick. In the wake of French billionaire François-Henri Pinault’s deal to acquire a majority interest in the agency — a deal valuing it at a rich $7 billion — Bryan Lourd, Richard Lovett and Kevin Huvane are sticking around as co-chairmen. Lourd, now a grandfather, will be CEO — apparently the capo di tutti capi — which is not a bad gig at a still-dominant agency, even if it doesn’t pack the wallop it did in the Ovitz era. All three have committed to stay for an unspecified period. (CAA won’t say how long, but competitors are guessing at least three years.)
The fact that no group has emerged as possible successors has not gone unnoticed. “If I were a young person at CAA right now, I’d be like, ‘Fuck, these guys are never going away,’ ” says a person knowledgeable about the inner workings of the agency. There are rumblings of possible discontent after a Financial Times report on info shared with lenders, which revealed that “top staff” will split up $200 million without specifying who’s in that group.
A source says Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel and a couple of associates have seized the moment to call important CAA agents to argue that the green could be greener in their shop, though how persuasively they can frame that argument is not clear. Endeavor stock has remained mostly underwater. (An Endeavor source notes that, unlike their counterparts at CAA, insiders can liquidate their shares as soon as they vest, as the company is publicly held.)
It was the same sense that advancement wasn’t possible that led Ovitz and four other restless young agents to leave the William Morris Agency in 1975. They built CAA from a small office furnished with card tables and rented chairs into a powerhouse with its own I.M. Pei-designed headquarters, which the agency had already outgrown by the time it was finished.
They also built a killer client list at a time when stars truly mattered: Sylvester Stallone, Barbra Streisand, Tom Cruise. One small example of how Ovitz wielded his power: When Tom Pollock (who died in 2020) was chairman of the Universal film studio, he told me Ovitz bullied him into casting Bill Murray as the third lead in the modestly budgeted 1993 movie Mad Dog and Glory, requiring the studio to pay millions more than it intended for what was seen as a role that could go to a much less expensive actor.
Ovitz stomped on people so regularly that fellow founding partner Ron Meyer used to compare himself with the character in Pulp Fiction assigned to clean the car after someone’s brains were blown out — or sometimes with abused wife Nicole Brown Simpson. In 1989, in fact, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas alleged in a widely leaked letter that Ovitz had literally threatened to have “his foot soldiers” blow Eszterhas’ brains out if he left CAA. Ovitz denied it.
Even when Ovitz was at the peak of his influence, it was clear that another group of impatient young men — Lourd, Lovett, Huvane, David O’Connor and Jay Moloney — had emerged as potential future leaders of CAA. In 1991, I dubbed the group the Young Turks when they got their own line in the Premiere magazine power list. (And wow, did that ever stick, though it probably wouldn’t fly today.) I have previously written about how I had borrowed the term from the law firm world, where it was commonly used to refer to restless junior partners.
In James Andrew Miller’s 2016 book Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, Ovitz referred to his protégés as “a bunch of young guys who I was overpaying who thought I wasn’t paying them enough.” Busy trying to build the agency into a multifaceted business, he gave them the opportunity to work with his big-name clients. “It wasn’t that he was so selfless,” says a source with firsthand knowledge of the situation. “It was the opposite.” If he had to sit on the phone with Robert Redford for an hour, this person continues, he couldn’t pursue his grander plan to turn CAA into something more than an agency.
When Meyer and then Ovitz both left CAA for high-level studio jobs, the agency named a leadership group that included some older agents, such as Rick Nicita and Jack Rapke, and every single one of the Young Turks. Sadly, Moloney fell into a struggle with addiction and mental health issues. He left the agency in 1996 and died by suicide in 1999, days after his 35th birthday. After working to launch CAA’s dominant sports representation business, O’Connor left the firm in 2015, first to be CEO of Madison Square Garden and then to found a venture capital firm.
In the wake of Ovitz’s departure, Lovett was named president of the agency, and it wasn’t hard to see why. An insider remembers him as “an incredible micromanager [who] was booking incredible numbers” — better numbers than the other four. Though the Young Turks had no training or experience in management, they managed to grow CAA from about 300 agents to a firm with more than 3,000 employees. (Full disclosure: In the wake of CAA’s acquisition of ICM, I am now a CAA client.)
But by several accounts, Lovett’s client list has diminished, though it still includes Tom Hanks and Will Smith. There have been repeated rumors of strain in his relationship with Lourd — though one CAA source dismisses that idea as “wishful thinking” on the part of competitors. These days, Lovett spends some of his time painting at his studio in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station. Meanwhile, Huvane is content with managing his enviable client list, which includes Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise.
As for Lourd, he should be better pleased with a new majority shareholder that connects the agency to the luxury goods group that owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen; the auction house Christie’s; and a series of wine estates. A source with knowledge of the agency says the previous relationship with TPG was “a mismatch” that didn’t do CAA that much good. “With a company in the consumer branded retail business, there’s probably a lot more synergies there,” this person continues. “It’ll be good to have a new sponsor. It’ll be a shot of energy.”
Powerhouse author Miller agrees. In Lourd, he says, “You’re talking about a guy who loves the world of fashion. People say he’s revitalized.”
That may not be what younger agents who harbor ambition to advance at CAA want to hear. Over the years, some have grown frustrated at the apparent lack of opportunity for advancement and have headed for the exit. Perhaps most notably, that’s what led Patrick Whitesell to join Emanuel at what was then the Endeavor Talent Agency in 2001. “Patrick had been promised that he’d get in the room” with the other CAA leaders, Miller says. “Those guys’ refusal to share power with him created their biggest competitor.” In fact, it was Emanuel and Whitesell who created the kind of diversified company that Ovitz dreamed about.
Agents at CAA will closely watch how leadership manages whatever windfall the change in ownership may bring. Surely no one at Endeavor has forgotten how, in 2017, Emanuel and Whitesell each sold $165 million of equity while others were left waiting for their big payday.
Unless the CAA leaders are generous with their colleagues, the issue could lead the rank and file — or even some star agents — to seek an alternative with an exit strategy, be it WME, or UTA, which recently received private equity investment from Sweden’s EQT Partners. (Or management: In 2020, more than a half-dozen CAA reps left to join agents from UTA and WME in founding Range Media Partners.) “They seem to have a problem! No liquidity (or very little) for those who have vested and waited for nine years!” a well-connected source says. And the clock is ticking, with year-end bonuses and equity grants on the horizon.
One observer familiar with the agency speculates that the leadership’s compensation will turn out to be a sticking point. “They’re going to take so much now,” he says of the three not-so-young Turks. “We’ll see how much they’re going to give to the minions.” — Alex Weprin contributed to this story
This story first appeared in the Sept. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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