A Netflix “Orgasm of Schadenfreude”

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What I’m Hearing: A Netflix “Orgasm of Schadenfreude”

Happy Thursday, a little later than usual thanks to all the calls I’ve been getting about Netflix…

Before we begin: a moment of silence, please, for Bill Ackman, whose Pershing Square hedge fund bought $1.1 billion of Netflix stock as a show of confidence in January. He sold the shares yesterday, losing about $430 million…

Thursday Thoughts…

Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek has been quietly sitting down with trade editors and reporters who cover Disney, hoping to influence his coverage. Good luck. The Florida situation has gone from bad to worse. I keep thinking back to the root cause here, the original email from Chapek to employees explaining his inaction on Don’t Say Gay, and arguing that corporate statements “do very little to change outcomes or minds.” Predictably, employees freaked, and he was forced to recant and go hard against the bill, which then poked Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans, who have absolutely run roughshod over Chapek, including today’s vote to strip Disney of special tax status. It’s a communications cautionary tale, and we can trace it all back to the email.

There isn’t a middle finger long enough to express how David Zaslav feels about Jason Kilar rushing to launch CNN+ before Discovery’s WarnerMedia acquisition closed. Killing the service so fast might seem hasty, but my read is that this is Zaslav cleaning the slate before new CNN chief Chris Licht officially starts next month.

We’re making $70 million Viking movies now? The Northman has Last Duel vibes, so good luck this weekend to Focus Features, which split the cost with Arnon Milchan’s New Regency Pictures.

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“It’s an orgasm of Schadenfreude.” That’s how a veteran producer described to me the feeling around town this week. Hollywood people revel in failures—in a business where nobody knows anything, everyone knows they’re better than the guy who just flopped—but this is different. A Netflix Nosedive, The Great Netflix Correction, a “bitch,” as co-C.E.O. Reed Hastings described the situation at a town hall yesterday, I’m told. Whatever you call it when your growth engine sputters and your stock chart resembles the White Cliffs of Dover. Walking to and from a table at Tower Bar on Tuesday, I was stopped by three separate people I know, all of whom conveyed some variation of “Sucks to be Netflix!” It’s a sickness, people.

And it’s not just the headline news—that Netflix’s first subscriber loss in a decade, and its projection to lose another 2 million subscribers in the next quarter, gruesomely deflated its share price—that is prompting that revelry. Nor is it the fact that Netflix’s market cap has shrunk from $300 billion in November to less than $97 billion. To many, this day was a long time coming...

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