Salame Witch Trials, Nuclear Recalculation, Disney’s Price Pincer

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon dispatch of Puck’s latest reporting.

Today, we lead with Julia Alexander’s brilliant dissection of Bob Iger’s bold Disney+ pricing gamble: with fans souring on Marvel and Star Wars, and Wall Street demanding cutbacks, can he convince subscribers to pay more for less?

Plus, below the fold: Teddy Schleifer wonders whether the feds can convince S.B.F.’s former lieutenant to flip. Julia Ioffe reveals Biden’s new calculus surrounding Putin’s nuclear threat. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Teddy discuss the moment S.B.F. was cuffed in a Manhattan courtroom, while Ben Landy and Julia Alexander dig deeper into Disney’s existential crisis.

JULIA ALEXANDER

To pare its streaming losses, Disney plans to reduce spending, raise prices, crack down on password sharing, and produce less—less!—content. In an era of ruthless competition and franchise fatigue, Iger may be pushing the limits of what consumers will pay without getting something original in return.

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TEDDY SCHLEIFER

Will S.B.F.’s former lieutenant finally succumb to the feds’ relentless pressure to flip? Or have tales of his demise been greatly exaggerated?

JULIA IOFFE

There is now a clear consensus that the White House sees the risk of Putin going nuclear as lower today than even a few months ago, encouraging Biden officials to tacitly approve Ukrainian tactics that they once feared would trigger a counterattack on NATO, or worse.

PETER HAMBY, TEDDY SCHLEIFER, BEN LANDY and JULIA ALEXANDER

Teddy Schleifer, who was in the courtroom when Sam Bankman-Fried was cuffed, shares his observations and reporting with Peter Hamby. Then Ben Landy and Julia Alexander discuss Bob Iger’s Disney+ dilemma.