Good morning,

It was another terrific week: Bill Cohan profiled the C.E.O. trophy room of the activist storming the Disney gates; Tara Palmeri broke the news on Kevin McCarthy’s blood sacrifice under the dome; Julia Alexander evaluated Iger’s streaming options while Dylan Byers gathered the news on the turmoil inside his Washington Post; and Eriq Gardner had the scoop on the media M&A saga of ’23.

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

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer breaks down S.B.F.’s evolving crisis playbook.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers reports on the agita inside CNN and The Washington Post.
and…
Eriq Gardner reveals the boardroom melee inside the WWE.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni unpacks a Puck-commissioned research study on the streamers.
and…
Bill details the threat of the activists storming Disney.
and…
Julia Alexander reveals Bob Iger’s Hamletesque $27.5 billion Hulu question.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri unearths Ron DeSantis’s biggest foe, and chats with Peter Hamby about the post-Feinstein power grab.
and…
Julia Ioffe has the skinny on the White House’s Putin plan.
and…
Tina Nguyen breaks down the George Santos G.O.P. calculus.

PODCASTS:
Matt dissects the Iger activist drama on The Town.
and…
Peter Hamby and Dylan discuss the latest CNN micro moves on The Powers That Be.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

These moments stick with you. To wit: I can largely remember where I was, and what I was doing, when Putin invaded Ukraine, David Zaslav announced his merger with WarnerMedia, Jeff Zucker left CNN, Elon Musk announced his deal for Twitter, Anita Dunn returned to the White House, Bob Iger announced his second coming, and so forth.

I had a similar sensation, more recently, when the activist investor Nelson Peltz signaled that he was preparing to embark on a proxy battle against Iger and Disney. Peltz’s firm, Trian, had amassed a nearly $1 billion stake in the company, and Peltz wanted to join the board. Naturally, he had a few ideas that he wanted to float to management and wanted to ensure his views would be considered.

Sure, this wasn’t news on the caliber of Elon paying $44 billion for Twitter, but it was uniquely interesting in its own way. Peltz, after all, is an old school Gordon Gekko-style, Carl Icahn-inflected hellraiser. As his 35-page manifesto on Disney’s business noted clearly, his three previous proxy battles (at Heinz, in 2006; at DuPont, in 2015; and at Procter & Gamble, in 2017) were rousing successes in the sense that Peltz got what he wanted. Management took his direction and shareholders made money. Perhaps his most extraordinary feat of activism, however, was saved for GE, where Trian used its influence to defenestrate two C.E.O.s., back to back. Jeff Immelt, one of the pair, used to refer to Peltz as “the smiling crocodile.”

The smiling crocodile appeared to have already sunk his teeth into Iger’s predecessor (and successor) Bob Chapek last summer and fall—a blossoming friendship that may have led the board to lose faith in him. Iger, on the other hand, kept the crocodile at arm’s length. He offered C.E.O.-level blow-offs, such as a short perfunctory Zoom and making it clear that he wasn’t going to engage until the finale of a New Zealand yachting expedition.

With a position of around half of a percent of Disney, Peltz doesn’t have the leverage to make outright demands and expect results. But he sure can cause a ton of trouble in the boardroom and create an enormous distraction for a company trying to regain its footing in an industry that finds itself rudderless. A trio of extraordinary pieces offer tremendous insight into this ongoing saga and where it’s headed. First, in The Iger Narrative Meets its Nemesis, Matt Belloni weighs the validity of Peltz’s requests and gauges the reputational impact that hand-to-hand investor combat might have on Iger’s legacy. In Iger’s Full Nelson, Bill Cohan offers a history of Trian’s tactical history, perhaps foreshadowing the scale of the battle ahead. Lastly, in Iger’s $27.5 Billion Hulu Question, Julia Alexander digs into the key demand high atop Trian’s wish list.

This story is evolving, obviously, but its impact will be scattered throughout the culture, and particularly Puck’s power corridors. At this point, you know the refrain, but I believe it to be more true than ever: the Peltz-Iger saga is a story for our time, and precisely the sort of tale you can only truly understand at Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon