Netflix’s $18B Question, LIV-PGA Fatigue, Eggleston at Phillips
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Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon folio containing Puck’s latest reporting.
Today, we lead with Eriq Gardner’s riveting chronicle of Lionsgate’s bondholder civil war: an only-in-Hollywood conflict pitting investors in the film and TV studio against those whose financial interest got spun off into Starz, the struggling cable network and streamer. Aggrieved lawyers say the split violates the principle of pari passu (equality all around)—but aren’t these creditors getting exactly what they signed up for?
Plus, below the fold: Peter Hamby inspects the Democrats’ non-freak-out over Gavin Newsom’s new Roganesque podcast. Sarah Shapiro presents her candid chat with Rent the Runway C.E.O. Jennifer Hyman about her plan to rescue the business. And Marion Maneker examines a rare collection of William Eggleston dye transfer prints hitting the auction block at Phillips.
Meanwhile, on the pods: Matt Belloni reunites with Lucas Shaw on The Town to debate whether Netflix is maximizing its $18 billion content budget. On The Varsity, Golf Channel’s Eamon Lynch joins John Ourand to assess the sport’s increasingly severe identity crisis. And on The Powers That Be, Julia Ioffe connects with Peter to weigh the geopolitical implications of Trump’s growing alliance with Vladimir Putin.
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Eriq Gardner |
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Wall Street analysts have long insisted that Lionsgate would be worth billions more without the deadweight of Starz, its struggling cable network and streamer. So when Lionsgate C.E.O. Jon Feltheimer announced last year that the company would separate the studio division, no one was particularly shocked. But the plan required buy-in from bondholders, which opened the door to “creditor-on-creditor violence,” an increasingly prevalent Wall Street phenomenon. While some of the financial institutions that backed Lionsgate a decade ago signed off on the plan, other bondholders were left behind, stuck with the legacy company stripped of the studio and its I.P. crown jewels like John Wick and The Hunger Games. Worse yet, they’re potentially subordinated beneath hundreds of millions of new debt. Enter the lawyers…
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Peter Hamby |
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Perhaps the most surprising aspect of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s podcast debut with right-winger Charlie Kirk was that, after saying it’s “deeply unfair” for trans athletes to play in women’s sports, there was hardly any freak-out from his Democrat peers. Of course, before last November’s electoral drubbing, it’s entirely likely that some Democrats would have called for his head. The whole episode made for a fascinating test case for the party, which desperately needs to hone its messaging strategy and explore new avenues to reach voters. Breaking with the left on an unpopular issue? Check. Engaging with voices outside the blue cultural bubble? Check. Experimenting with new media channels that have become dominated by right-wing voices? Check.
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Sarah Shapiro |
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Rent the Runway, the O.G. millennial subscription fashion service, has been struggling for years with little revenue growth, zero profitability, and rising debt. And recently, it’s been under pressure from second movers in the retail space. To wit: RTR’s share price now hovers just below $4, an almost 99 percent drop from its $345 I.P.O. But C.E.O. and co-founder Jenn Hyman is optimistic that she still has growth levers to pull, and recently heralded a new strategy for the rental business: more inventory, new styles, deeper stock, and more than a dozen designer collabs. In this candid conversation, Sarah and Jenn discuss the rollout strategy for RTR’s next chapter, and her vision of a rebooted RTR that serves as a discovery engine for brands, akin to Sephora.
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Marion Maneker |
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Guy Stricherz and Irene Malli, a married couple who started the Color Vision Imaging Laboratory in New York’s Little Italy more than 40 years ago, have made plenty of color dye transfer prints—an all-but-extinct artistic process—for various photographers, but none more renowned than William Eggleston, an artist whose reputation is bound up with the impact and acceptance of color photography as a medium. The trio’s work has had a resurgence lately, highlighted by a just-closed gallery show at David Zwirner in Los Angeles. This week, Phillips will open an exhibition of 43 lots of Eggleston’s dye transfer prints, signed by the photographer, for an auction on March 18, consisting of Stricherz and Malli’s own printer’s proofs—the perfected master prints of Eggleston’s work.
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Matthew Belloni |
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Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to parse Netflix’s latest data dump and figure out what is and isn’t working for the streamer. Big-budget live-action movies, sitcoms, reality shows, crime documentaries, and foreign films and TV all contribute to Netflix’s enormous slate of content—but which of them are working the most? Is Netflix in need of a Taylor Sheridan–like universe? Do they need $200 million live-action movies? How much do they need live events like the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight? Should they get into podcasting? Matt finishes the show with a prediction about Amazon’s commitment to release 12 to 14 movies in theaters in 2026.
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John Ourand |
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Golf Channel’s Eamon Lynch joins John for an in-depth breakdown of the chaos pervading professional golf. Eamon explains why the sport is facing a crisis of confidence and structure—and why the PGA Tour can’t just rely on its past glory anymore. He also dishes on the tour’s search for a C.E.O., calls out its history of arrogance and complacency, and takes a deep dive into the ever-controversial LIV Golf. Plus, could a PGA-LIV reunification ever happen?
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Peter Hamby |
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Julia Ioffe |
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Julia Ioffe joins Peter to sift through the geopolitical implications of Trump’s middle-finger diplomacy as he retreats from U.S. commitments abroad and edges closer to an alliance with Vladimir Putin. Then they discuss what’s next for Europe as France ramps up support for Ukraine, Poland seeks its own nukes, and Germany rearms: If this is the end of Pax Americana, is it the end for NATO, too?
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