The Mail Cart: Monday, September 14th

👋 Welcome to The Mail Cart. This is Warner, founder of AvA. Connect with me here + follow our IG page for daily resources.

WHO IS THE BEST AGENCY IN HOLLYWOOD??? We are finding out October 4 in LA. If you’re an assistant (agency or non-agency)… you’re invited.

🎥 We launched our Unsung Hero series last year at The Golden Globes. In a few hours, we will be on the Emmys carpet highlighting all of the amazing people behind the scenes who help make this industry run. We think it’s about time they get some credit..

📝 Paramount and California set their settlement hearing for late October plus who was TIFFs Obsession?

💼 Looking for open Entertainment jobs? Scroll to the bottom of this email.

Our Job Board now has 215+ early career Entertainment roles as well.

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AvA LIVE Lineup Booked In Partnership With:

Happy awards season to those who celebrate.

Next up (in a few hours) is the Emmys. So I thought who better to bring onto AvA LIVE this week than an expert, an unsung (now sung) hero and a BIG surprise.

This week we will be joined by Jacqueline Coley, the Awards Editor at Rotten Tomatoes, and the iconic Mario Dedivanovic, CEO and CCO of Makeup By Mario and 2 more surprise guests..

For what it’s worth (it’s worth a lot), some of Jacqueline’s Emmys predictions:

Outstanding Comedy Series
🏆 Who Will Win:
Widow’s Bay

🏆 Who Should Win:
Widow’s Bay

Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
🏆 Who Will Win:
Jean Smart – Hacks

Outstanding Drama Series
🏆 Who Will Win:
The Pitt

🏆 Who Should Win:
The Pitt

⭐ Paramount and California are officially holding a settlement hearing for the WBD merger in late October

While this is common procedure for all civil court cases, an agreement keeping the conglomerate in the state would save between $1-2 billion of economic output.

⭐ Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched a film and TV production company called ‘Hope & Hard Work’ at the Toronto Film Festival

Fun Fact: ‘Obsession’ was first acquired at the festival (TIFF) this time last year for $15M ish. You already know how the rest of that story goes…

⭐ ‘The Odyssey’ is now Universal Pictures highest grossing film in the company’s 114-year history at $1.68 billion

Universal also accounts for 26% of all box office revenue for 2026 with nearly $5 billion to date, along with a host of other industry leading numbers this year.

⭐ What music companies have ~~folded~~ partnered with AI companies.

This post by Benjamin James breaks it all down:

Credit: Benjamin James

⭐ Ticketmaster has partnered with Meta’s new Muse AI to help optimize the concert ticket buying experience. 🙃🙃🙃🙃 Insert opinion here 🙃🙃🙃🙃

Inside the $250M Fund Betting on Creators

Tucker Brown has spent 15 years at CAA. In June his name hit the trades when the agency launched Compound, a $250 million creator fund built with private equity giant TPG. He also ran point on the Dude Perfect deal, still one of the largest control deals a creator business has ever seen. We caught him on AvA LIVE between flights to London, Dallas, and LA. Here's what he told us about putting institutional money behind creators.

Condensed and edited for length.

You launched Compound in June and it was everywhere. What have the months since actually looked like?

Lots of lead-up, then we pivoted fast into deal mode. The launch was the moment to formally introduce ourselves to the market. I went straight to Cannes Lions to put Compound in front of the people who matter, then turned to deal flow. This is a relationship business, so a lot of it is advancing conversations with creators we've known for a while and getting them comfortable with us as a platform.

Your name first showed up around the Dude Perfect deal. Why is that the one to point to?

It's the best reference point. It was the first deal I did in this category and still one of the largest control sales of a creator business ever. The economics were extremely attractive. It brought real capital in to build Dude Perfect for a future that lives beyond the five founders. That was eye-opening, for me and for CAA. It got us thinking about being a different kind of capital partner, one that understands talent and what motivates them.

Break it down for our readers. Where do creators actually need the money?

Barriers to entry are low. If you have a phone, you can be a creator overnight. When the content works, the business scales fast, but the infrastructure doesn't catch up. You end up with a real media company generating serious revenue and no operating structure underneath it. A lot of the capital goes to building that structure. Too many creators are running the company themselves in ways they shouldn't be. You want them creating. Bring in other people to run the business, and use growth capital for the natural extensions, consumer products, live, everything beyond the core.

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Barriers to entry are low. If you have a phone, you can be a creator overnight.

When you write a check, what are you looking for?

Scale first. We focus on later-stage businesses. We want infrastructure, even if it's rough, and an employee base. We want revenue diversification. Maybe there's a core YouTube business, but with long-form, TV, film, audio, live, and consumer around it. A lot of what we look at has four or five real revenue segments. And we want to know how dependent the business is on one person. We lean into talent, it drives value, but if you pulled that individual out and the whole thing collapsed, that's a problem to solve.

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We lean into talent, it drives value, but if you pulled that individual out and the whole thing collapsed, that's a problem

Beyond Dude Perfect and MrBeast, what categories are you watching?

News and politics. At Evolution I worked on the MeidasTouch deal, which took investment from Soros Fund Management. Traditional media is breaking, and creators are building massive businesses by speaking directly to engaged audiences with real-time news every day.

We closed with a game. Hot takes, agree or shred. "Putting a creator in the boardroom is just stunt casting."

Shred it. Creators are some of the most important entrepreneurs of this media generation.