007 Streaming, Mar-a-Lago Miseries, D.N.C. Moneyball

Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon compendium of Puck’s latest reporting.

Today, we start with Matt Belloni’s dissection of Amazon’s 007-sized problem: If the company can’t effectively manage its relationship with the Broccolis—the British-American family that controls the Bond franchise—can it ever justify the $8.5 billion it ponied up for MGM?

Plus, below the fold, it’s a Washington doubleheader as Tara Palmeri reveals which elite law firms have privately rebuffed Trump’s overtures and how Democratic insiders are handicapping the four-way tug-of-war to host the ’24 convention. Then Teddy Schleifer swings by The Powers That Be to discuss the L.A.-adjacent billionaire jockeying to own the Phoenix Suns.

MATTHEW BELLONI

It’s not just the struggle to find a film executive for its newly-purchased $8.5 billion studio and Bond franchise, but also to manage the Broccoli family that maintains full creative control.

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TARA PALMERI

Boris Epshteyn has been seeking outside counsel to help manage Trumpworld’s self-inflicted special master problem, but few white shoe firms want to get involved in Trump’s legal woes. Here come the “conflicts…”

TARA PALMERI

Houston, New York, Atlanta, Chicago… Each has its power brokers, critics, lobbyists, donors and political strivers jockeying for the economic windfall and media attention that accompanies a quadrennial convention roadshow. But with Biden yet to announce whether he’s running, whose decision is it anyway?

PETER HAMBY & TEDDY SCHLEIFER

Teddy Schleifer joins Peter to discuss the new primo silent auction prize for the three comma club: the Phoenix Suns. Then Tara Palmeri and Alex Bigler settle a massive Puck mystery.