Happy Friday and welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting. Today, we lead with a classic Matt Belloni double-header, beginning with his rollicking CinemaCon roundtable featuring a who’s who of industry players weighing in on the 90- vs. 45-day theatrical window debate. Then, Matt doles out his unsanctioned and highly subjective CinemaCon Movie Awards, covering all the best (and worst) studio presentations, parties, and buzz inside Caesars Palace. Plus, below the fold: Julia Ioffe takes a close look at Pete Hegseth’s hyperactive DoD comms shop. Julia Alexander previews this year’s Christmas Day cold war between the NFL and NBA. And exclusively for Inner Circle members, Lauren Sherman reveals how Trump’s multibillion-dollar assault on global trade has exposed vulnerabilities for LVMH and Kering. Meanwhile, on the pods: Julia Alexander joins Dylan Byers on The Grill Room for a wide-ranging symposium on the state of the media industry. On Impolitic, John Heilemann rings up former AP Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier and Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler to assess Elon and Trump’s dueling appetites for destruction. And on The Powers That Be, Julia Ioffe convenes with Peter Hamby to break down the shock impact of the president’s blunt-force trade warfare.

HOLLYWOOD

This week, Matt moderated a Cinema United panel at CinemaCon, the annual movie theater operator convention in Las Vegas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the subject on every panelist’s mind was the contentious issue of theatrical windows for film releases—specifically, the impact of shifting the once-standard 90-day theatrical window to a 45-day (sometimes fewer) time frame. Herewith, highlights from his conversation featuring Regal Cineworld C.E.O. Eduardo Acuna, F1 filmmaker Joseph Kosinski, NBCUniversal chairman of global distribution Peter Levinsohn, and Neon C.E.O. Tom Quinn. Read Now

HOLLYWOOD

After four grueling days of movie studio presentations, parties, and buzz at CinemaCon 2025 in Caesars Palace, Matt doles out his seminal, unsanctioned, and highly subjective CinemaCon Movie Awards honoring the many players whose achievements went unrecognized by the body of theater owners. Honorees include Eddy Cue (Most Interesting Presenter Who Didn’t Actually Present), Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande (Longest Press Tour), and Tom Cruise (Most Disappointing Bait and Switch), among many, many others. Congrats to all! Read Now

WASHINGTON

Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon’s hyperactive, unconventional media team are taking a more muscular approach to redefining the SecDef job. Their macho representation of Hegseth, filled with action-movie tropes, seems geared to resonate with the MAGA base. The message, apparently, is that he’s restoring prestige to a military corrupted by the woke policies of the Biden administration. Their campaign-style approach, in many ways, seems to prioritize winning the culture wars and defeating nerds over actually governing. “They all think their jobs are to be TV stars,” one former defense official said. “They don’t understand that governing is a separate job from getting elected/picked for things.” Read Now

SPORTS

Did the NFL really steal Christmas from the NBA this year? Sure, the league’s first-ever tripleheader might make it seem that way. After all, when Netflix broadcast two NFL games last Christmas, they brought in roughly 25 million more viewers than the average audience for the NBA’s five games on the same day. It turns out, however, that the NBA saw a substantial boost in viewership despite the counterprogramming. What the NBA should be concerned about, Julia argues, is how to convert cord-cutters and cord-nevers into regular viewers by taking advantage of their hybrid broadcast and streaming opportunity. Ultimately, the NBA doesn’t have a fan problem—but it does have a viewership problem. Read Now

FASHION

There’s been a slight panic in the luxury industry since Trump announced tariffs that will likely cost fashion brands a fortune. And while many in Europe are holding out hope for a last-minute reprieve, there’s been a bit of schadenfreude directed toward the Arnaults. After all, the family proudly attended Trump’s inauguration, and patriarch Bernard Arnault spoke sycophantically about a “wave of optimism” coursing through America. Perhaps their relationship with the president can offer LVMH leverage, but tariffs aren’t even the bulk of the company’s worries: LVMH saw their market cap slide 30 percent in the past year, and the luxury market is facing manifold outside pressures. Lauren also charts the latest game of musical chairs inside LVMH, before offering a status update on the industry’s highest-profile creative directors. Read Now

MEDIA

Julia Alexander joins Dylan for a wide-ranging symposium on the state of the media industry: the future of TikTok, Meta’s UFC play, Radhika Jones’s exit from Vanity Fair, the impact of A.I., and how Trump’s global trade war is ricocheting through the advertising market. Listen Now

WASHINGTON

John is joined by former AP Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier and Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler to discuss a week in which America’s de facto co-presidents seemed to try to outdo each other in terms of wreaking havoc and stoking panic. Fournier assesses the motives behind Donald Trump’s market-crashing tariffs and their potential political implications, while Wikler takes listeners inside the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, detailing how Musk became the gift that kept on giving. Listen Now

WASHINGTON

Julia Ioffe joins Peter to discuss the shock impact of the president’s blunt-force trade warfare—raising prices, tanking markets, and alienating America’s closest geopolitical allies. Then they chew over the troubling historical antecedents (Soviet Russia, for one) and debate why and how we got here. Listen Now

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