If the first few days of January are any indication, 2025 will be a rock ’em, sock ’em year in the media and entertainment landscape.
Before Variety‘s Entertainment Summit on January 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – our annual gathering where we evaluate the year that just ended and envision what’s to come – today we officially reveal this year’s Variety 500. This is our annual global compendium of showbiz leaders and actors in television, film, music, gaming, digital media, entertainment technology and other Hollywood-adjacent disciplines .
During the eighth year of Variety 500, we added two categories: Marketers and Podcasters/Audio, which reflect the cross-currents of business in 2025 and have become new sources of power for leaders and creatives. Effective marketing across myriad channels has never been more crucial to the success of TV shows, movies, music, video games – essentially any content that needs to break through the ocean of options consumers have at your fingertips 24/7.
And after the rollercoaster ride of the 2024 presidential election, creating a category for podcasters and audio executives was the easiest decision we’ve made. Variety 500 this time.
RELATED CONTENT: THE VARIETY 500 GALLERY
A sample of the new additions to the list this year and their categories:
François-Henri Pinault (Moguls): The owner of CAA and the Kering brand group has a big ambition to connect the threads of its world in entertainment, retail and fashion.
Zoe Saldana (Talent): A 21st century star who is equally familiar with blockbusters and avant-garde fare like “Emilia Pérez.” (And we made this choice before Saldaña and the film cleaned up at the Golden Globe Awards.)
Joe Rogan (Podcasters/Audio): Not since the heyday of Walter Winchell has a man with a microphone exerted such influence on politics and culture.
Celine Song (Directors): The Korean-Canadian writer-director made such an artistic statement with 2023’s “Past Lives,” which landed an Oscar nomination for best picture and original screenplay, that she’s sure to be a force in world cinema.
Shannon Ryan (Marketers): The president of marketing for Disney Entertainment Television oversees a content promotion machine that operates on an unprecedented scale, given the breadth of Disney’s assets.
Jensen Huang (Moguls): Nvidia’s CEO has been focused on building microchips to power AI tools since Bill Clinton was in the White House — before most of us had any idea about it what artificial intelligence really was.