Alum Jeff Frost Helps Power Apple TV+’s Latest Hit — and Tulane’s Growing Entertainment Law Footprint
Long before Jeff Frost (L ’89) helped launch Apple TV+’s newest sci-fi smash, Pluribus, the Hollywood executive was shaping something else: Tulane Law’s rise as a destination for students aspiring to careers in entertainment and sports law.
Frost, chairman and CEO of Bristol Circle Entertainment and executive producer of Pluribus, co-founded Tulane Law’s spring Entertainment & Sports Law Conference, now one of the school’s signature annual events. More recently, he helped launch the Tulane Entertainment Negotiation Competition (TENC), a first-of-its-kind, student-run event that draws teams from across the country to New Orleans.
“Tulane Law wasn’t getting the recognition in Hollywood that I knew it deserved. We had so many alumni working in the business. I wanted the industry to see Tulane as a real presence."
Jeff Frost (L'89), Executive Producer of "Pluribus" and a founder of the TENC
The industry has taken notice — in a big way.
As the annual Entertainment & Sports Law Conference ballooned over the past eight years, bringing to campus leading Hollywood executives and top industry practitioners, a kernel of an idea also grew: an entertainment law negotiation competition that would match those already happening at Tulane in sports law.
Several years ago, Frost had staged a mock negotiation featuring a studio executive, an entertainment lawyer and an actress who worked on a series deal in real time. It was meant as a simulation for students and practitioners to learn. A Tulane student, Seamus Blair (L’25) approached Frost afterward with a question: Could this become a full competition?
It could — and did.
Frost helped design the competition, drafting negotiation prompts and recruiting the executives and lawyers who judged the rounds. What began as an experiment last year became a highlight of the Nov. 14-15 2025 Wave Weekend, allowing alumni to attend the two-day, high-intensity simulation competition, which tackles issues like talent compensation and intellectual property rights.
“For students, it’s an incredible opportunity to learn real-world negotiation skills,” Frost said. “When I was in law school, we didn’t have anything like this. Learning how to negotiate — not just the law behind it — is a huge advantage.”
In its second year, the 2025 TENC drew 16 law-school teams from nine universities across the U.S. to compete in rounds spanning film/TV, music, ADR, NIL and AI deals. Judges included more than 30 industry leaders, including Frost and Blair, now a recent graduate, and others from Apple, Sony, NBCUniversal and major law firms. Seventeen of the event’s judges earned their degrees at Tulane Law.
In the final round of the competition, Loyola University New Orleans (as Team OpenAI) and Suffolk Law School (representing the actor Morgan Freeman) negotiated a hypothetical agreement between Morgan Freeman and OpenAI regarding the use of Freeman’s voice in an AI system.
The team from Suffolk — Kelly O'Malley, Patrick Fitzpatrick and Hannah Carroll — took the final round from Loyola University’s Adeline Miller, Sadie Harris and Bailey Fontenot. Brooklyn Law’s Abagail Fernandez was named the competition’s Most Valuable Negotiator.
Students praised the feedback they received from industry professionals and the experience of seeing how deals actually take shape.
Meanwhile, Frost’s own career continues its dramatic ascent.
After starting as a lawyer at ABC and The Walt Disney Company, Frost moved into business affairs and eventually became president of Sony Pictures Television Studios, helping oversee hits such as Breaking Bad, The Boys, Cobra Kai, The Good Doctor and Shark Tank. His legal training, he said, gave him the tools — and the mindset — to navigate a complex and rapidly evolving industry.
“You think differently with a law degree,” Frost said. “You understand the parameters, the risks, the angles that might not be obvious to a producer who didn’t come up through legal. It gave me my entry point into entertainment, but it also shaped how I see the business.”
That perspective proved crucial when Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, arrived with two new scripts — episodes one and two of a show he’d been quietly developing for years. Frost read them and “was completely blown away.”
“It was classic Vince writing, but also a world and concept I had never seen on television,” he said. The project helped catalyze his decision to launch his own production company, Bristol Circle Entertainment, in 2023.
Streamers lined up to bid on the series, ultimately titled Pluribus. Four offered two-season deals outright; Apple secured the project with what Frost called a “very healthy budget.” The series premiered Nov. 7 to critical acclaim and quickly topped Apple’s internal viewing charts. As Wave Weekend rolled, the series hit No. 1.
Described as a post-apocalyptic psychological thriller in which “the most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness,” the show represents one of Apple’s strongest launches of the year. With a two-season order already locked in, Frost anticipates more ahead.
“We’ve just scratched the surface,” he said. “The response has been overwhelming, and there’s so much story left to tell.”
Frost’s success — blending legal training, business strategy and creative production — underscores how a Tulane Law degree can lead far beyond traditional practice. Through his continued mentorship of Tulanians, programming support, and hands-on involvement with students, Frost remains one of the school’s most visible advocates in Hollywood.
“Tulane gave me the foundation to enter entertainment,” Frost said. “Being able to come back and help the next generation find their way into this business — that’s incredibly meaningful to me.”
