Good morning,

It was yet another spectacular week: Matt Belloni detailed Scooter Braun’s OnlyFans play; Eriq Gardner unearthed a Michael Jackson legal quandary; Julia Alexander examined a Quibi 2.0 phenomenon; Bill Cohan decoded the latest Ellison-Zaz deal heat; Dylan Byers perused the Vox dealbook; John Ourand investigated Bob Iger’s YouTube TV trench warfare; Lauren Sherman got to the bottom of Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede’s new $225 million fundraise; Rachel Strugatz broke the news of Victoria Beckham’s sale process; Sarah Shapiro offered the RealReal deal; Ian Krietzberg contemplated the A.I. nuclear option; Marion Maneker ran the numbers on a major market vibe shift and chatted up Jeff Koons; and Julie Brener Davich previewed a $50 million estate sale at Sotheby’s.

Meanwhile, Leigh Ann Caldwell foreshadowed Schumer’s succession plans; Julia Ioffe profiled Pete Hegseth’s frenemy at the Pentagon; Abby Livingston unfurled the G.O.P.’s redistricting grenade; and Peter Hamby documented Trump’s loss of Gen Zyn.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

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Lauren Sherman gets to the bottom of the Skims fundraising mystery and decodes Michael Burke’s American invasion at LVMH.
and…
Rachel Strugatz breaks the news on Victoria Beckham’s exit strategy.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro engages in the Coach discourse.

Marion Maneker interviews Jeff Koons and presages the New York sales.
and…
Julie Davich examines a distressed debt-serving plan at Sotheby’s.

Matt Belloni reveals a Scooter Braun fantasy and investigates Brian Roberts’s fundraising journey.
and…
Eriq Gardner details the Michael Jackson estate’s comeback tour.
meanwhile…
Julia Alexander spotlights a new Quibian trend.

Ian Krietzberg delves into the industry’s nuclear options.

Dylan Byers prophesies about Vox’s spinoff hypothetical.

John Ourand spills the tea on the Disney–YouTube TV negotiations.
and…
Julia Alexander explains why ESPN Bet was D.O.A.

Bill Cohan captures the latest WBD-Ellison deal heat.

Leigh Ann Caldwell games out the Schumer endgame and gets the skinny on the making of A House of Dynamite.
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Abby Livingston outlines the G.O.P.’s Texas redistricting mess.
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Peter Hamby deciphers a Trump dark omen.
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Julia Ioffe reports on Pete Hegseth’s office politics at the Pentagon.

Bill Flanagan revisits the glory days at MTV.
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Elena Clavarino chats up Italy’s top mob buster.
meanwhile…
John R. MacArthur buys the dip on print.

Dylan and Ian envision precisely what the A.I. takeover of media will look like on The Grill Room.
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Ourand and former ESPN and NFL Network executive Steve Bornstein play the hits on The Varsity.
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Lauren and Substack star Hunter Harris weigh in on the Taylor Swift fashion discourse on Fashion People.
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John Heilemann and Chris Matthews juxtapose the R.F.K.s on Impolitic.
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Matt and Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini talk about the anime phenomenon on The Town.
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Dylan and Peter discuss the end of MSNBC on The Powers That Be.

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Last week, my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell welcomed 200 guests into the beautiful United States Navy Memorial for a screening of A House of Dynamite, the brilliant director Kathryn Bigelow’s stunning portrayal of an intercontinental ballistic missile attack headed right for Chicago. In some ways, the movie is a capstone to Bigelow’s previous meditations on U.S. foreign policy. More than a decade ago, The Hurt Locker offered a sharp and exquisite commentary on America’s protracted invasion of Iraq. A few years later, Zero Dark Thirty captured the human element of the hunt for bin Laden in chilling detail.

Through an innovative narrative structure and Bigelow’s supple talents, A House of Dynamite couches the extremities and consequences of war within the visual language of bureaucracy. When we think of war narratives, our memories harken to the trench scenes of 1917 or the Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan. And yet, Bigelow convincingly and overwhelmingly reminds us that battles are also waged by government officials in suits and lanyard name tags, many, many miles from the theater or combat zone.

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In a rapturous interview after the screening, Leigh Ann led a conversation with Bigelow and Noah Oppenheim, the film’s screenwriter and erstwhile president of NBC News. They were joined onstage by former STRATCOM chief of staff Dan Karbler, who advised on the film. I don’t want to give away any spoilers here, but it was a quintessentially Puck night—a thoughtful conversation at the intersection of Washington and Hollywood, all set in a charming and historic venue, that inevitably influenced the perspectives of the politicians and security officials who manage the levers of federal power.

I was thinking of A House of Dynamite while reading my partner Julia Ioffe’s latest masterstroke, Dan Driscoll’s Army of One—a deeply reported piece on the lingering tensions between the new Secretary of the Army and his boss, Pete Hegseth. On some level, office politics are inevitable and ubiquitous. But they’re especially challenging in a town where cabinet secretaries can be replaced by their deputies.

Washington, of course, is the megalopolis of the apparatchik state, a place where everyone has a rabbi or a wise man or a principal—someone who provides top cover. Dan Driscoll openly and proudly proclaims that his top cover comes from his former Yale Law buddy J.D. Vance, himself a fellow veteran. And as we all know, Hegseth’s big buddy is Vance’s boss. (In statements issued by the Pentagon comms shop, both Hegseth and Driscoll told Julia that they admired each other and enjoyed a strong partnership.)

But both Bigelow’s movie and Julia’s piece are a reminder of one of the core tenets here at Puck. Transformative and consequential decisions aren’t made by robots or A.I. Instead, they’re rendered by humans, who have their own ambitions and insecurities. It’s one of the leitmotifs of all our various markets, and a reminder of so much of the value that we aim to provide here at Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon

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