Asad Ayaz
Chief brand officer, The Walt Disney Co.; president of marketing, The Walt Disney Studios and Disney+
A recent day from Ayaz’s calendar explains why Bob Iger hand-picked the marketing wizard in 2023 to serve as the conglomerate’s first-ever branding officer while continuing to oversee campaigns for movies and streaming series. This year, Disney is back on top at the box office (including Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Alien: Romulus), with Moana 2 and Mufasa yet to come.
Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024
6 a.m. Gym.
7 a.m. Travel time.
8 a.m. Internationals marketing monthly with regional leads; in TD416A.
9 a.m. Release dates with distribution; Thunderbolts trailer review. Release dates are highly classified, but Ayaz reveals that theatrical dates for Freakier Friday and the live-action Lilo & Stitch have been signed off on for May 8 and May 23, 2025, respectively; in TD 416A.
10 a.m. D23 Brazil — run of show; in Pandora TD 413D conference room.
10:30 a.m. DO NOT BOOK. If Ayaz knows a meeting may run over, he builds in a break. Since his 10 a.m. covered Disney’s first-ever D23 fan show in Latin America, he held space for overage as he didn’t want to keep his 11 a.m. meeting waiting.
11 a.m. Musafa creative, redia and digital campaign; in TD 109U.
12 p.m. Holiday brand campaign; in Pandora TD 413D conference room.
12:30 p.m. Working lunch with Andrew Ferguson, evp research; in Rotunda.
1:30 p.m. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew campaign beats; in TD 416A.
2 p.m. Disney+ global marketing update; in TD 416A.
3 p.m. Marvel digital / YouTube content ; in Pandora TD 413D conference room. Two of Ayaz’s key afternoon meetings (and one morning meeting) took place in the Pandora-themed conference room, a tribute to James Cameron’s Avatar. Plans for other themed conference rooms were scrapped out of concern that it could make things awkward for other filmmakers.
3:30 p.m. Moana 2 filmmaker presentation; in TD 416A.
4:30 p.m. Captain America: Brave New World partnerships review; in Pandora TD 413D conference room
5 p.m. Disney+ digital and social strategy; in Asad’s office.
6 p.m. Awards discussion. CALL: Adam Smith, chief product & technology officer.
7 p.m. Girls’ soccer practice.
Margie Cohn
President, DreamWorks Animation
Acquired by NBCUniversal in 2016 from Jeffrey Katzenberg, DWA has taken time to find its stride (complicated by the advent of streaming and the pandemic) within the sprawling conglomerate, which also owns rival Illumination Entertainment. But DWA is back in action (see below).
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024
6 a.m. Day starts with coffee. Pot set up the night before. Over the first cup, do email, then complete The New York Times’ Mini-Crossword and Connections as reward.
7 a.m. Pilates or elliptical.
8 a.m. Commute to work while making family calls, or listen to The Town podcast.
9 a.m. Arrive at DreamWorks campus in Glendale, grab breakfast at the commissary; catch some quality schmooze time. Breakfast-chatter topics: The Wild Robot, which has been the biggest hit of the fall, earning north of $200 million at the worldwide box office, and Kung Fu Panda 4, which is among the biggest films of the year.
10 a.m. TV exec team: Review all projects, including the upcoming Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, and talk about impending pitches with senior staff for television division.
11 a.m. Weekend read: Review scripts with feature development team, discuss next steps with Kristin Lowe, chief creative officer. “I have to look to the future, as well as work on everything that’s happening right now, in this second,” says Cohn. “It takes so long to make animated movies. We’re looking at 2027, 2028 and 2029 right now.”
12 p.m. Digital dailies room: Biweekly check-in with Dog Man production. The movie is almost finished (in theaters Jan. 31, 2025), so Cohn is looking at final lighting with director Peter Hastings, producer Karen Foster and production designer Nate Wragg.
1 p.m. Lunch at DWA commissary with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish co-directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado to talk about progress on their upcoming original movie (unannounced).
2 p.m. Head across campus to Lakeside Annex for The Bad Guys 2 layout and animation review with director Pierre Perifel, co-director JP Sans and producer Damon Ross.
3 p.m. Universal marketing meeting to review creative. Review print art for Dog Man and revised trailer for The Bad Guys 2.
4 p.m. Business affairs: Review status on feature deals including casting.
5 p.m. Last event of the day: Head over to the Lagoon (an outdoor site on campus) to celebrate employees who’ve been with DreamWorks for 25 years. According to Cohn, happily, there are quite a few of them.
6 p.m. Return calls, attempt to catch up on all the emails she missed while in meetings. Cohn says it’s rare that she’s able to actually catch up on email: “Sometimes I’m sitting in my office and 15 people will come in one at a time. I’m booked back-to-back during the day, so they come by.”
7 p.m. Head home.
Rachel Morrison
Filmmaker, cinematographer
After becoming the first woman to be nominated an Oscar for best cinematography for 2017’s Mudbound, Morrison reunited with Ryan Coogler — they’d worked together on Fruitvale Station — to make Black Panther. After that film, Morrison decided she wanted to shift focus. On Dec. 25, her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside, will open in theaters as Oscar season gets into full swing.
Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024
8:30 a.m. Hot yoga.
10 a.m. General meeting with Nick Nesbitt and other executives at Scott Stuber’s United Artists, which Stuber is relaunching in partnership with Amazon MGM Studios — following Nesbitt viewing The Fire Inside. Morrison is reluctant to admit that meetings have taken a dramatic uptick since people starting seeing The Fire Inside, a biographical sports drama about American professional boxer Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, played by Ryan Destiny.
11 a.m. Stylist fitting with upcoming press events for The Fire Inside.
12 a.m. Meeting with executives at Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon and Seth Rodsky’s company. Morrison knows Witherspoon from working together on The Morning Show (Morrison directed one episode).
1:30 p.m. Panavision interview. So far, Morrison has enjoyed all of the publicity. “It’s still exciting and fresh,” she says. “Ask me again in a month.”
2 p.m. Interview Magazine interview.
3 p.m. BUST Magazine interview.
4 p.m. Interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
5 p.m. Son’s piano and guitar lesson.
7 p.m. Dinner at Manuela in downtown LA.
Pablo Larraín
Filmmaker, producer
The prolific Chilean director and producer is back in the Oscar race this year with Maria, his ambitious Maria Callas biopic that stars Angelina Jolie as the iconic opera diva. He continues to live in Chile, where he and his brother have a thriving production company.
Friday Oct. 25 2024
7 a.m. Alarm goes off.
8 a.m. Expresso round 1. Larraín is rarely in L.A., and needs a strong does of caffeine after landing late the night before from London, where Maria premiered at the London Film Festival.
9 a.m. Call with manager Eryn Brown to discuss incoming scripts, schedule and ideas.
9:30 a.m. Drive to Burbank.
10:15 a.m. Arrives at Burbank with his brother Juan de Dios and production/business partner Juan de Dios Larraín to discuss an upcoming project with an actor. “Fabula Producciones is the production company I founded with my brother in 2004 through which we produce film, television, and commercials,” says Pablo. “All of my films have been produced through Fabula, with my brother serving as a producer. We currently have two movies in post-production and four TV shows up and running. We are also currently working on a huge production for an American studio that I hope we can talk about soon.”
12 p.m. Mixing session with Los Bunkers, a famous and popular Chilean rock band who Larraín shot recently in Santiago. “We’re doing an acoustic mix to their set, the classic MTV Unplugged,” he says.
2 p.m. The Fabula trio holds another actor meeting in Burbank.
3 p.m. Lunch: green salad and the last espresso of the day (hard rule).
4:30 p.m. Meeting with international writer/producer to discuss how best to work together to improve a script they are hoping to collaborate on.
6:00 p.m. Try on suit for Maria’s AFI Gala Premiere
6:05 p.m. Dinner. After he eats, he says he unwinds from his day by calling his kids in Chile, and hearing about their days: “They know I’ll be back soon, because of them.”
10 p.m. Go to bed with a poetry book from any poet from Chile or Latin America, a land defined and described beautifully and essentially by its poetry.
A version of this story appeared in the Oct. 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
English (US) ·