Venu’s Legal Blockade, The Obama Cavalry, Art’s ‘Cultured’ Renaissance

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your daily dose of Puck’s freshest reporting.

First up today, Eriq Gardner has the exclusive on a nascent talent agency legal war, wherein Bryan Lourd’s CAA is targeting a cohort of former agents at the rival outfit Range Media Partners, in pursuit of information about how Range’s constellation of stars—including Bradley Cooper, Anna Kendrick, and Tom Hardy—secured their recent roles. This is one to watch...

Plus, below the fold: Julia Ioffe reveals the gathering shortlist to implement Kamala Harris’s still-nebulous foreign policy agenda, before offering a first-hand account of the F.B.I. raid against Dimitri Simes. Marion Maneker profiles the executive behind the art world’s new in-crowd bible. Scott Mendelson articulates seven essential takeaways from Hollywood’s better-than-expected blockbuster season. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri is joined Alex Thompson and Chris Cadelago at the D.N.C. to examine how Obama’s team is giving the Harris campaign a lift. And on The Powers That Be, John Ourand joins Peter Hamby to unpack the legal challenge facing Venu, and to consider whether private equity money will flood the NFL.

ERIQ GARDNER

Bryan Lourd’s CAA is lobbing serious allegations at its former employees, accusing them of contract breaches, loyalty breaches, and tortious interference by coaxing clients and at-will employees to jump ship.

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JULIA IOFFE

Despite Harris’s lack of a national security platform, Democrats are entering a new phase of feverish speculation surrounding who might be tapped to create, and execute, her foreign policy agenda.

JULIA IOFFE

Dimitri Simes, the Kremlin TV host and Russian-American political analyst now living in Moscow, opens up about the mysterious F.B.I. raid on his Virginia home.

MARION MANEKER

Sarah Harrelson has used her old school magazine-maker’s skills and outsider’s perspective to bring a new generation of collectors into the art market.