Hollywood's New Don

For a time, at least, Endeavor sounded like a frat house with money, like Entourage at the office. In 2002, agent Sandra Epstein sued and The New York Times reported that in court papers, “Epstein and other Endeavor employees described office escapades that included rampant pot-smoking, obscene hazing at corporate retreats, sexual frolics on desks, and one agent demanding that his assistants book prostitutes for him.” Epstein walked away with a $2.25 million settlement.

In a more amusing caper, a few years back Emanuel and then-partner Marty Adelstein calculated how many average minutes they were on network television thanks to their floor seats at Laker games. Then they contacted NetJets, a company that provides ownership stakes in those coveted private jets. They offered to wear NetJets T-shirts or hats at those games in exchange for access to the G-V of their dreams. NetJets passed and the two wound up with an unsolicited offer from Captain Morgan’s Rum—with the condition that the Captain sit with them at games. They passed.

Presumably the environment will be more buttoned-down at the new WME Entertainment. There are far more women at the combined agency, including Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who’s head of the book division and a member of the new board. What’s not clear is whether WME—with clients including Matt Damon, Jack Black, Russell Crowe, and Denzel Washington—can coalesce. “In the long run, I don’t think it works,” says one of the WME’s chief competitors. “It’s utterly inorganic. Success really does depend on a culture and I don’t believe he’s fostering any culture.”

And when it comes to star power, William Morris did not bring a huge list of top clients into the fold. Failing to sign stars was one of the big problems at William Morris, so while the merger has brought Endeavor more breadth, it did not significantly enlarge its galaxy. One former associate says Emanuel isn’t just counting on stars; he wants the new company to expand far beyond talent representation into brokering media deals. “That’s why they called it an entertainment company and not an agency,” he says. But it’s tough to make that work and still placate the talent that constitutes the primary asset of any agency. “At what point does it become too much about Ari and not about the clients?” this observer asks.

But the biggest challenge, he continues, may be far beyond Emanuel’s control. “The economy is still so bad,” he says. “That’s sort of the X-factor of the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what they do if revenue continues to fall so dramatically.”

Kim Masters is the host of The Business, public radio's weekly show about the business of show business. She is also the author of The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else.