Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting. Here’s what you need to know… and stick around for a little more on the survey keeping Hollywood executives up at night.

Meanwhile, on the pods…

And now, a little more on the latest Gen Z Hollywood survey…

HOLLYWOOD

Screen Engine C.E.O. Kevin Goetz—who conducts audience surveys for major Hollywood studios—was a little underwhelmed with Matt’s admittedly small-scale focus group of Westside L.A. high schoolers and their theatergoing habits. So Goetz decided to conduct his own version: a nationally representative study with 200 teens, aged 17 and 18, who were asked many of the same questions. Then he slipped Matt the report.

As Matt notes, Goetz’s results weren’t dramatically different from his Hollywood-adjacent L.A. crew: Both groups still like going to the movies, and view the theater as a “critical physical environment for social gathering.” But the national teens were a little more jaded, and quicker to express franchise fatigue, critique the glut of live-action animated remakes, and call out the movie stars they’re sick of seeing. They also don’t even seem to clock directors (barring Nolan and Tarantino). In short, it turns out that teens are harder to reach than previously understood, and the industry’s playbooks have mostly stopped working. So what does break through?

Click here to read Matt’s full story.

MEDIA

Byron Allen, the stand-up comic turned consummate media-deal hunter, defends his post-Colbert CBS late-night deal, his investing philosophy, and his ambition to somehow make BuzzFeed a YouTube competitor.

WASHINGTON

Russia is in deep, deep trouble, spurring renewed speculation about possible collapse. But we’ve seen this movie before, and Putin always manages to hold on. Is this time different?

FASHION

A roundup of readers’ smartest, most pressing questions and concerns, from Marc Jacobs’ forthcoming licensing adventure to the endgame for Glossier and the secret to Zara’s recent hot streak.

MEDIA

Media investor and new BuzzFeed majority stakeholder Byron Allen joins Dylan to discuss his plans for the platform—and his long-term goal of building the world’s biggest media company. They talk about how the acquisition could help boost awareness for his app, Local Now, and his plan to ultimately turn BuzzFeed into a free streaming service (like YouTube) to appeal to advertisers and content creators.

WASHINGTON

Jon Kelly returns in the hot seat for a spirited conversation about the roiling drama at the D.N.C.: the botched autopsy report, Ken Martin’s tenuous hold on power, and whether it’s all navel-gazing in between news cycles or a midterm asterisk.

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