Shari’s Bad Blood, Hollywood’s A.I. Anxieties, Law and Disorder

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon potpourri of Puck’s freshest reporting.

First up today, Dylan Byers illuminates the latest twists in the shape-shifting scandal engulfing The Washington Post: the newsroom revolt, Bezos’s unemotional response, the Barr boomerang, the Merida intrigue, and the coming denouement of Act I.

Plus, below the fold: Rachel Strugatz reveals Goop’s midlife funk. William D. Cohan uncovers the bad blood swirling around Paramount after the failed Skydance deal. On The Town, Matt Belloni is joined by Scott Galloway to measure the long-term impact of big tech’s Hollywood incursion. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and Gen Z influencer Link Lauren dish about the R.F.K. Jr. campaign and the G.O.P.’s sudden fixation with TikTok. And on The Powers That Be, Eriq Gardner joins Peter Hamby to mull the major legal controversies poised to reverberate through the ’24 election.

DYLAN BYERS

News and notes on the developing and shape-shifting scandal engulfing The Washington Post—the newsroom revolt, the Bezos response, the Barr return, the Merida tidbit, and the coming denouement of Act I.

a message from our sponsor

RACHEL STRUGATZ

Gwyneth Paltrow created, and perfected, the very concept of the celebrity lifestyle brand. Does the actress-entrepreneur-executive have what it takes to pull Goop out of a midlife funk?

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Charting the mounting animosities among all the interested parties—Shari, Skydance and RedBird, the special committee, Gabelli—after the endless Paramount saga capsized in an instant.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Matt is joined by Scott Galloway—a marketing professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, author, and podcast host—to look back on the fallout and consequences of the writers strike, and discuss how the studios and guilds should be handling the A.I. infiltration of the entertainment industry. They also discuss the state of the theatrical business, Hollywood’s aging executives, and how the government is handling big tech.