Happy Friday and welcome back to The Daily Courant, your digital capsule of Puck’s best new reporting. First up today, Matt Belloni examines the existential tumult plaguing Jim Moore’s Village Roadshow, the once high-flying film finance company now teetering on the edge of collapse. With a crippling legal fight against Warner Bros., private equity overlords, and industry-wide instability, can it ever regain its stature as a Hollywood powerhouse? Plus, below the fold: Dylan Byers points his Geiger counter at the latest fallout emanating from Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post. John Ourand reveals ESPN’s potential scheme to keep baseball on TV. And exclusively for Inner Circle members, Lauren Sherman digs into a pair of red carpet plotlines: the tenuous return of Georgina Chapman’s Marchesa and the Hollywood anointment of Saint Laurent Productions. Meanwhile, on the pods: Matt and Nielsen’s Brian Fuhrer demystify how ratings actually work in 2025. On Fashion People, Lauren connects with The New York Times’s Misty White Sidell to assess the gilded patina of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s The Row. On The Grill Room, Peter Baker joins Dylan to contrast Trump’s manhandling of the media with Russia’s historical press suppression. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Dylan offer a 30,000-foot view of the Post’s op-ed turmoil.

At this point, Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, the film finance and production outfit owned by private equity firm Vine Alternative Investments, has become notorious around town for all the reasons that have made the past few years so depressing in the entertainment business: The high-flying slate finance company, once the envy of the industry, moved headlong into producing its own movies and shows, got over its skis, descended into an expensive and protracted legal fight with its biggest partner, and ended up teetering on the brink of collapse in the aftermath of Covid and the strike-related content recession. Can the pioneer of film finance that had a hand in everything from The Matrix to the Ocean’s movies survive the industry slowdown that has claimed so many other Hollywood players? Read Now

Jeff Bezos’s decision to refashion the Post’s Opinion section as another Wall Street Journal–esque bastion for “personal liberties and free markets” seems to be the final and most severe obstacle between the Post he acquired from the Graham family for $250 million, in 2013, and the media company that he now aspires to create: a one-way door, in his parlance. Friends and associates of Bezos debate whether the new mandate is motivated by brazen Trump sycophancy, a pragmatism about Amazon and Blue Origin’s government contracts, his long-held libertarian philosophy, or some combination of these factors. Nevertheless, the rupture has been nothing short of traumatic for Post veterans and the broader Washington establishment, many of whom believed that Bezos was a modern version of Kay Graham—until they realized he wasn’t. Read Now

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Shortly after ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro sent MLB commissioner Rob Manfred a Dear John letter, and Manfred subsequently put the network on blast to his owners, there were reports that executives in Bristol were pursuing an end-run around MLB—partnering with Main Street Sports Group’s R.S.N.s to show local baseball games on its platforms. Alas, that doesn’t seem to be the case. John reports that ESPN and Main Street Sports (née Diamond), which owns the FanDuel–branded R.S.N.s, are talking. But these discussions have thus far focused on a marketing push that would bundle both companies’ direct-to-consumer offerings for a fee, akin to the WBD-Disney deal that combines Disney+, Hulu, and Max D.T.C. offerings. In any case, it appears that Bristol executives are cozying up to Main Street to help the network stay close to the game that it has carried for the past 35 years. Read Now

In some ways, it’s remarkable that Georgina Chapman’s Marchesa—which has drawn dozens upon dozens of reports of customers returning items and never receiving a refund over the past year—is still going. Long managed by her brother Edward, the company has always seemed on the edge of precarity, and Keren Craig—Chapman’s co-founder and co-creative director, who was often spoken of as the brand’s “real designer”—left in 2019. But has its latest revival among the red carpet set given it a second wind? Plus: Lauren digs into Saint Laurent’s increasingly significant presence in the entertainment industry—and not just on the red carpet or at star-packed private dinners. Emilia Pérez scandal aside, is the Kering-owned brand now a Hollywood mainstay? Read Now

Matt is joined by Nielsen’s Brian Fuhrer to explain the mysterious world of ratings and how they actually work in 2025. They get into how Nielsen literally tracks viewing habits, how that has changed over the years, and how they now track out-of-home viewing. Then, they look at a surprising metric about the Oscars ratings, discuss how streaming is improving ratings among younger demos, and debate which shows are the most influential in terms of attracting a younger audience. Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for the new Bong Joon Ho film, Mickey 17. Listen Now

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Live from Paris Fashion Week, Lauren is joined by Misty White Sidell from The New York Times to discuss the inception, rise, and triumph of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s The Row, arguably America’s one true luxury brand. They cover everything from the designers’ influence on American style and how they broke out of their child-actor prison, to what makes The Row different from its European competitors, why fans are willing to pay such steep prices for their wares, what makes their sample sales special, and how they might expand their purview now that they’re valued at more than $1 billion. Listen Now

The New York Times’s Peter Baker joins Dylan to dissect the fraught relationship between the Trump White House and the press, from its expulsion of the Associated Press to its handpicking of the press pool—tactics he likens to historical press suppression in Russia. They also weigh in on the changes at The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos, and the fight to maintain journalistic integrity in an increasingly politically charged environment. Listen Now

Dylan Byers joins Peter for a close look at The Washington Post as the legacy paper endures more staff departures, a fresh round of journalist agita, and the loss of 75,000 subscribers—stemming from the machinations of Jeff Bezos, who recently implemented a new editorial mandate focused on personal liberties and free markets. Dylan and Peter also debate the long-term goals for the paper, and whether Bezos and his publisher Will Lewis could be willing to sacrifice their core audience in order to build a new one. Listen Now

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