Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger remains the most powerful person in entertainment, only adding to his empire with $71 billion of 21st Century Fox assets. But his dominance is one of the few things that hasn’t changed since THR published 2017’s list of Hollywood’s most influential figures. Along with Disney-Fox, 2018 saw AT&T win a judge’s blessing to acquire Time Warner, spawning new entity WarnerMedia — whose chief, John Stankey, arrives at No. 4. There were the milestones: Filmmakers Ryan Coogler (No. 93) and Jon M. Chu (No. 97) brought inclusive movies to the multiplex, smashing records along the way. And there are the movements: #MeToo and Time’s Up drove a reckoning. Out of work, and off the THR 100, are John Lasseter, Roy Price, Brett Ratner and, just this month, Leslie Moonves. His spot has gone to Ronan Farrow, whose reporting took the CBS chief down, Hollywood Reporter reports.
Along with Farrow, there are 34 people making their first appearance on the THR 100, many of them female and diverse — including stars (summer 2017 breakout Tiffany Haddish, No. 79), producers (LeBron James, No. 75), execs (Netflix’s Lisa Nishimura, No. 9) and creators (Kenya Barris, No. 81). White men still make up 70 percent of this list — but the sands are shifting, more rapidly and more unpredictably than ever, as THR takes stock of Hollywood power now.
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