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Puck.news was founded upon two principles that Matthew Belloni (and likely all the other journalists) cited in his decision to join. Journalist-owned and independence “to 100% serve our audience, not sponsors”. (https://puck.news/why-i-joined-puck-belloni/). Less than three years later, Puck is a powerhouse media news organization populated by a murderer’s row of no less than seventeen top-notch reporters with rolodexes that rival (and beat) just about every other competing online news/podcast site. By extension, they have positioned themselves as an uncompromising and authoritative story-breaking group of insiders and it is this combination that has attracted tens of thousands of loyal subscribers who generate millions and millions of revenue for Puck …a number that will only continue to grow . Seems cut and dry. Puck is what it says it is and what we think it is. Yes? Maybe? Just as with everything in life (and in entertainment news reporting in general), there are competing shades of gray and in the case of Puck, there are two shades. TPG and STANDARD INDUSTRIES (via one of their companies 40 NORTH MEDIA). These two shades of gray put up the $7 million in seed money that birthed Puck in 2021. On a side note: TPG also participated in the second round of Puck.news additional funds raising not too long ago. What does all of this mean? Why should anyone care? Let’s flesh out the shades first. Shade #1: TPG is a large multi-billion dollar publicly traded investment company that lists as active entertainment related business investments on their website: CAA (along with one of CAA’s investment arms, Evolution Media Capital…though, it’s unclear why both are ‘active’ investments if TPG sold its stake in CAA to the French company Artemis in the Fall 2023). VICE-MEDIA. STX (until April 2022). AZOFF MUSIC. CINESPACE STUDIOS. DIRECT TV. SLING. SPOTIFY. WINDRVR. On a related note: TPG’s co-founder, Jim Coulter, sits on Puck’s board of directors. Shade #2: STANDARD INDUSTRIES is also a multi-billion-dollar investment vehicle that owns a lot of sub vehicles, one of which is 40 NORTH MEDIA which owns a globally influential marketing/advertising arm with several heavy hitter entertainment business clients https://www.fortynorthmedia.com/ : ROKU PARAMOUNT PLUTO TWITCH. AMAZON UNIVERSAL MUSIC LATIN ENTERTAINMENT. JLO. THE KARDASHIANS. On a fascinating note: 40 NORTH MEDIA which, interestingly enough, accepts Crypto. We are still trying to get our head around cryptocurrency as a concept. Between these two investment behemoths, it’s evident that TPG and STANDARD INDUSTRIES have tentacles that run vast and run deep in the world of everything…so vast and so deep that it raises interesting questions about one of the key principles upon which Puck was built and, by extension, the brand it has curated. Call it that fine line where reality and perception get murky sometimes. The tenet in particular that deserves analysis is one that Matthew Belloni experienced when he butted heads with the company that owns the Hollywood Reporter and left to join a media startup called Puck that 100% served its audience and not sponsors. This mattered because the rumor was that MRC was nixing stories in instances where it might negatively impact whatever relationship or otherwise that the company had with someone…and that was frustrating according to a Deadline article (https://deadline.com/2021/05/matthew-belloni-former-hollywood-reporter-editor-digital-media-startup-jon-kelly-1234757958/) In the case of Puck, perhaps they aren’t catering to sponsors, BUT is their independent streak and ‘story breaking’ reputation perhaps affected by entities that are much more influential than sponsors…like Puck’s investors? Example: In a profile of a Puck journalist, Vulture.com cited some stories that the journalist had ‘broken’ ahead of the rest of the entertainment journalists. One of them (a big scoop) was that TPG would sell its interest in CAA to the French company Artemis in late summer 2023. What’s interesting though is that, during this time, the cofounder of TPG was privy to information concerning the deal AND he was also on the Puck board of directors. Granted, the Puck journalist included a disclaimer that TPG was an investor in Puck and that no information could be extracted from anyone at TPG…and we’ll give this the benefit of the doubt. BUT, it does raise an interesting ‘Woodward and Bernstein’ versus ‘Richard Nixon’ debate. Could someone perceive the timing of the release of the TPG sale scoop as in any way influenced by something connected to TPG? The old ‘what did Puck know and when did they know it?” We honestly don’t know how the sausage was made on this one…but, again, content and timing are fascinating mechanisms to study. And revisiting the Hollywood Reporter dilemma that many reporters likely faced if the rumors were true with respect to the quashing of stories…the perception of a potentially similar problem at Puck is worth assessing as a ‘what if?’ Example: Vice-Media. TPG is a significant financial player in Vice. Not Deadline has been looking for not yet found articles on Puck.news (it will keep looking and admit its oversight when found) that do the deep dive uncovering of important storylines that have gone on for years. The rise and fall of a once powerful online news site that branched into television and film and all sorts of ancillary media. They had a highly controversial CEO whose personal and professional missteps compromised the company’s ability to establish the sort of reputation that Puck and Deadline have. Vice also has consistent money problems. Content problems. Investment issues. Significant gutting of employee numbers issues. They have been a case study of anything and everything that can go wrong. Could this be perceived as something different than the reality? The New York Times even broke a great story about Vice’s attempt to go public in order to keep alive the hope that TPG and other investors could get their money back. We want to see someone at Puck.news doing the deepest dive of all and getting inside the belly of the beast. Surely, there is still some meat on that bone. And what about TPG’s investment in Azoff Music? Irving Azoff is one of

Bob Iger is a captain of industry in the entertainment business and in the world of business in general…and how he got there is one of those Horatio Algier stories. In interviews with several media outlets, he mentioned starting off humbly as a weatherman in Ithaca, New York before latching onto the lowest rung of what is now the Walt Disney Company as a studio supervisor for the ABC network. He outworked his colleagues and ingratiated himself to as many people as he could in the name of opportunity.  Sure enough, he rose through the ranks of ABC until he eventually sat atop the throne and led the charge to acquire iconic brands like Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar…and to launch the successful streaming service Disney+. Fifteen years into his reign, Iger was inspired to write a book about the learned life lessons that paid off with incredible success and good fortune. Iger outlined 10 core principles that were/are foundational to his leadership style. The one we’d like to focus on is TRUE INTEGRITY–a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong. Simply put: Iger doesn’t practice what he preaches. Why is this the case? Because Not Deadline thinks (just an opinion) that Iger lost all of his integrity in 2012 and thought that no one in a million years would figure out what he did…because if they had, he would have been forced to step down immediately in shame, would have never survived long enough to repeatedly re-insert himself as the CEO for replacement, and would have never been heard from again until his obituary was written. What may have triggered his egregious disregard of right and wrong? Star Wars. Iger had consolidated so much power by 2012 and was so eager to flex the relationships he’d brokered…that he figured the greatest way to show it all off would be to keep all things Star Wars a complete secret until October 2012 when it was announced that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm, and then again until the hiring of JJ Abrams announcement in January 2013. All along, no one knew. How could Iger have pulled off this magical feat? Let’s say you want a 0.1% chance of anyone in the entertainment community or in the world uncovering or discovering anything about the status of STAR WARS as relates to Disney? Iger and his super legal team discussed what other soulless persons and companies would be willing to play ball with them. Answer: those like Iger who thought that abusing their power and cheating the system would be the coolest thing ever. Accordingly, the below steps would have been undertaken in some form (particularly as relates to the hiring of talent). STEP ONE: the phrase STAR WARS could not appear anywhere in writing in any form for anyone to intercept or leak to anyone in the world. To do this, they would reference a phrase/name or unrelated project (that was code for Star Wars) in any emails or paperwork or contracts. STEP TWO: Iger wouldn’t want anything in writing directly traceable to Disney because if it was traced—someone could and would leak it. Iger would disguise it to not just puff his chest but to also avoid the inevitable bombardment of calls from everyone in town advocating for this person or that person because he already had his targets in sight. STEP THREE: Iger would have identified the talent to be hired and identified Star Wars projects they would be hired for…and then find some unrelated projects the specific talent might be working on or could be enlisted to work on and disguise (double contract) the documents under everyone’s noses… BUT, those who were part of the negotiation would know the paramount reason for the supposed project would really be about STAR WARS STEP FOUR: Iger would have reached out as daring and wide as he could go. He wouldn’t just recruit a major tv/film financing entity, but he would also enlist a major agency and law firms who would assist in facilitating and the talent of course. and then, the granddaddy of them all—a college/university willing to put its reputation at risk as a front for deal papering and Iger’s name. STEP FIVE: Iger would not make any Star Wars related announcements related to talent until the deals were done for not just the first trilogy of films, but for the second trilogy as well. Dollars terms. STEP SIX: Iger released an announcement to the world that JJ Abrams had committed to the first trilogy (much earlier than January 2013) and others not referenced in that announcement. One cannot make this stuff up. It’s better than the most creative artist could ever imagine…and that’s what makes these ‘What If…’ articles so much fun to write. In the future, we hope to breakdown in more detail how each step would have been taken with methodical precision. Have a great week.

(Apologies in advance. The tone of this article will have some bite for reasons that become clear as the story plays out) November 12th 2021 was a very important day in the life of Britney Spears. It was on this day that a judge formally terminated the conservatorship that had been in place since Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, petitioned the court and was named co-conservator on February 8th 2008. The end of the conservatorship meant that Britney was free to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted with whomever she wanted in her personal and professional life. No longer was she beholden to her father or anyone else. This had to be a great thing. Yes? Not exactly. In short order, she posted strange Instagram videos of herself wearing skimpy outfits and doing weird dances. She got pregnant by longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari whom she had dated since 2016. She suffered a miscarriage. She tied the knot with Sam. She assaulted Sam (which was reported in TMZ by ‘sources’ as an ongoing problem). She got divorced from Sam fourteen months after getting married to him. She played with what looked like real knives in a video. Her ex-husband got 100% custody of their two sons and fled to Hawaii to get as far away as financially, affordably possible. She cut off all communications with her immediate family. She wrote a book detailing the dark side of her life, which brought on a whole new set of problems for her and everyone that she torched in the book. A video surfaced of what appeared to be Britney in a restaurant talking to herself. The post-conservatorship era sounds pretty bad. It must have been a lot worse when the Conservatorship was still active. Yes? Not exactly. Britney still had at least ‘30% of the time’ custody of her kids. She had a relationship, albeit strained, with her family. She had Sam as her boyfriend. She didn’t (wasn’t allowed to??) get pregnant. She released some albums. She appeared as a guest judge on X factor. She did a successful residency in Vegas. She was slated to do more shows in Vegas but canceled because of mental issues brought on her father’s seriously illness. She challenged the conservatorship in 2019 and Jamie temporarily stepped down, but it was not terminated by the judge out of valid mental health concerns as related to Britney. …which begs the question: Who thought it was a good idea, given Britney’s publicly and privately known mental health struggles, to put her in a position to fail? In our opinion, it was Matthew Rosengart. Rosengart is a very successful (former) federal prosecutor and trial attorney. He has represented a lot of high-profile clients who felt they were screwed out of money or defamed (Sean Penn). He has a perfect record when it comes to trials/settlements because he has a ‘burn down the house’ mentality and weaponizes the media to fire bombastic claims at whoever his client is suing. Britney met Rosengart in 2020/early 2021.  She had expressed a desire to terminate the conservatorship because it was oppressive, illegal, it violated her personal rights, it reduced her to something that wasn’t human. She wasn’t allowed to get married. She wasn’t allowed to get pregnant.  There was also a documentary in the works about this very topic…and someone at some point pushed the two of these people together. Some backstory on conservatorships in general is important before we circle back to Rosengart. 99% of the time, conservatorships are about family. A family member (usually on the older/elderly side) is incapable of handling his/her own affairs (some or all) and another family member or close friend/business associate is approved by the court to make those decisions. Courts do not approve or terminate these legal relationships without a thorough vetting of every possible fact and medical evaluation because there is so much sensitivity and history between those who are affected. Invariably, over the course of time, if there is money involved (or sometimes, visitation rights (or both)), the non-conservators want access. The playbook that every litigator follows is to throw the kitchen sink at the conservator in an effort to get him/her replaced and/or the conservatorship terminated regardless of what is true and what is fiction. Words like fraud/negligence/self-dealing/battery/overstepping authority/terrible treatment/dictator/bullying/oppressive/unconstitutional. Do these fighting words sound familiar? Rosengart loved the playbook because it played to his strengths. Blow up the other side because it’s a white hat fighting a black hat…except that he failed to recognize there were shades of gray all over the place. There was an existing (albeit dysfunctional) family unit still intact. There was an ex-husband/father and children involved. It wasn’t a kid overseeing a parent. It was the reverse. It wasn’t a kid trying to get a piece of the parent’s financial action. It was a kid having the money and the older person managing and paying himself (paying too much? To whom? Worthy of arguments in front of a judge. Agreed). It wasn’t a kid claiming that the parent was being abused. It was the kid claiming to be abused by the parent. It wasn’t a kid being kept at arm’s length from the parent. It was a kid with a dependent need for help from the trusted parent (before the kid suddenly didn’t trust the parent for reasons that only Britney and her inner circle know). Which brings us to what Not Deadline considers the primary trait of a Hall of Fame litigator. Like a Triple Crown winning jockey, the H.O.F. litigator has several gears at their disposal to not just win the race, but to the keep horse healthily intact. They know when it’s time to sprint, when to run, when to trot, when to walk, and when to not race at all. Rosengart believed it was always time to sprint and that cost his client (and immediate family and her friends and others) dearly. He maneuvered to block requisite psychological evaluations. He maneuvered to block

Not Deadline’s spidey senses tingled when it was announced that Rian Johnson’s company had made a two picture ‘put’ deal with Warners Bros to finance and distribute two projects that both sides could agree on in the name of what Rian and Ram called  Warner Bros. “renewed committment to the theatrical experience” (which is interesting since Rian and Ram gave KNIVES OUT 2 and KNIVES OUT 3 to a distributor with the exact opposite philosophy). Otherwise, in the article, there was no mention of exclusivity or terms or timeframe or of who will bring what financing to the table or who will own the copyright. There’s no mention of anything beyond an agreement to try to agree on two projects. Because of the vagueness (and because of some other things), we get to speculate about the future of KNIVES OUT 3. The film that launched Rian as a talent to be reckoned with was a very, very small but respectful 45 screen theatrical release for BRICK given the film’s left-of-center style and a cast of young ‘unknown’ actors. The next film, BROTHERS BLOOM, was intended to have a wider theatrical release beyond 209 screens, but it didn’t test well enough to inspire the studio to go wider. It wasn’t until LOOPER exploded into the wide 3,000 theater screen release that Rian’s dream came true…followed by STAR WARS which released on everything with a white background (including bedsheets). And then came KNIVES OUT, the widest release of Rian’s ‘original material’ career. 3,500 screens. On the eve of this eagerly anticipated milestone, Rian emphasized the importance of theaters when he told CINEMABLEND:  These days, it’s much more about attention. For me, it’s about the fact that if I’m in a theater I know that I can’t pick up my phone and look at it. I’m going to be able to zero in on that experience. I’m in the dark, and I’m with an audience of people who are having the same experience. I know I’m going to get the actual experience of the movie. …and then, reinforcing his allegiance to the theatrical experience, Rian doubled down to THE INDEPENDENT: I think, ultimately, I do have this kind of doe-eyed optimism that when you sit down in the theatre and the lights go out, all of that garbage disappears. You’re having a pure experience of a movie. Whatever happens in those two hours in the theatre is between you and the screen….(cinemas) are a haven where you can believe for a few hours”. As easy as it is to lose hope – and as understandable (and sometimes necessary) as cynicism can be – there is a magic to cinema that lifts up the veil of darkness and dares to lay the path to a better future. …which is why audiences and experts were both baffled and stunned when Rian moved not just KNIVES OUT 2, but also KNIVES OUT 3 from Lionsgate’s wide screen theatrical release strategy to Netflix’s anti-theatrical streaming model. Not just a theatrical opportunity was lost. It’s eighteen months later and counting that KNIVES OUT 2 is still not available for rent or purchase or streaming by anyone who doesn’t subscribe (or share passwords) to Netflix…which is unfortunate because the film would have inevitably found its way to Netflix anyways AFTER everyone around the world who didn’t subscribe to Netflix had the chance to see it by now. Which brings us to KNIVES OUT 3. Rian recently tweeted out a KNIVES OUT 3 teaser with the title and the release year (2025) with the Netflix logo at the end (https://deadline.com/2024/05/rian-johnson-next-knives-out-installment-1235937714/). Soon after, actors were announced as starring in the film. Jeremy Renner, good call. Josh Brolin, better call. Glenn Close, best call.  This must mean that Rian’s wish for a wide theatrical release by Netflix (booking theaters directly or via an existing distributor…or how about the acquisition of a distributor? That wouldn’t happen, but cool to think about.) has been granted. Why? Because even though KNIVES OUT 2 had a token theatrical release (which Rian lamented privately and publicly), a newly discovered theatrical commitment by Netflix will reinforce everything Rian previously and recently stood/stands for as an artist. (Side note: since Netflix is going with the theatrical release model, good luck to them landing high profile film packages without contractually committing to as wide of a theatrical release as KNIVES OUT 3, which will blow up the Netflix business model and possibly the stock price.) Ok. All set. Right? Not necessarily. This is where ‘what if?’ comes into play. What if Netflix sticks to its business model and does what it has always said, and does not do anywhere near the 3,000+ screen wide release? Rian has two choices. Do nothing and roll with it (which is his right of course…but, it would just seem counterintuitive to the passion he’s expressed for theatrical)…OR do unto Netflix what he did unto Lionsgate. Take the Knives Out sequel away from Netflix and put it through Warner Bros. (or through some other theatrically committed distributor). Can Rian do this? Of course! Recall at Lionsgate’s pre-Golden Globes party in early January 2020 when Rian told the Hollywood Reporter he wanted to be in production on KNIVES OUT 2 within a year. Chairman of the Motion Picture Group, Joe Drake, said he couldn’t wait to read the script when it was ready.  Soon after that, the CEO of Lionsgate (Jon Feltheimer) announced to the world that KNIVES OUT 2 was officially greenlit and, subsequently in another call, he stated that the production would start filming soon… …until the announcement was made in late March 2021 that Netflix had acquired the sequel rights. How could this happen? Jon Feltheimer said (in 2022) that Rian had always retained the sequel rights and decided to shop them elsewhere. Rian added during an interview with ScreenDaily on Dec. 16th 2022 that the deal with Lionsgate was only a single picture license and that his team had been shopping and pitching the sequel around town. Ok, if what

Dan Lin is a nice guy, if not the nicest. His blood, sweat, and tears built a topflight production company called Rideback, which signed a five year first look deal with Universal Studios in January 2021 because he (Dan) per a press release said he was “happy to align with a studio that had boldly innovatived new approaches to making and distributing movies.” Then, midway through the Universal deal, as the world emerged from the pandemic, Dan doubled down and said that theaters still turn movies into “cultural moments” more than streaming movies, which “come and go.” (He was spot on about this. Inject truth serum into anyone with a film streaming on Netflix and they’ll tell you it’s where feature films go to die.) SO WHY NOW, in spite of everything Dan believed in, did he jump aboard culturally averse, theatrically allergic Netflix and tell the world it was because the streamer’s philosophy aligned so strongly with his own personal and professional values and what he was building at Rideback? Not Deadline wants so badly to take Dan at his word, but at some point when an SEC filing and/or quarterly report is filed by Netflix, we will know how much money and stock options it took to convince Dan to abandon his mantra. Don’t get us wrong. Not Deadline is fully aware of the challenges and all consumptive lifestyle this sort of career can have on someone. Dan has been a grinder in this business for decades and balances that with a wife, kids, and charitable endeavors. Running a company, chasing financing, and pleading for green lights is a fool’s errand at a certain stage of life.  Maybe, it was time to smell the roses! If so, Dan Lin should have said that producing is a wonderful thing, that he has accomplished his goals to this point, and that he wants to shift gears and decide which movies to make rather than convincing others to make his. In the meantime, Not Deadline will hope and pray that, long before his lucrative contract expires, Dan’s nose tires of that deceptively attractive rose scent and he comes and goes from Netflix just like the feature films that stream there.