‘Maverick’ Payday, Biden vs. Wall Street, S.B.F. Buys the Dip

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to what’s new at Puck.

Today, Matt Belloni opens his notebook to address the most pressing questions roiling Hollywood: How much is Tom Cruise really making off of Top Gun? Why does everyone want to sue Netflix? And can Bryan Lourd’s CAA+ take on Ari Emanuel’s ultimate-bullfighting Franken-live-sports-rollup-plus-agency model?

Plus, below the fold, Eriq Gardner uncovers the bewildering legal backstory linking Brad Pitt’s post-divorce woes to the war in Ukraine. Bill Cohan enumerates Sam Bankman-Fried’s nervy attempt to stabilize the crypto market. And Teddy Schleifer investigates a Wall Street-blessed mega-merger that the Justice Department is trying to quash.

In a word: Yes. Co-C.E.O. Reed Hastings basically admitted the end-of-year 2022 goal puts Netflix on a crazy timeline, telling employees in a recent note that “it’s fast and ambitious and it will require some trade-offs.” Most analysts think the ad tier will launch only in selected foreign markets at first, but given the company’s deflated stock price and subscriber plateau, plus the competitive ad tiers at other streamers, Hastings clearly feels the situation is urgent. People I talk to in and around Netflix say this ad urgency is tied to the coming crackdown on password-sharing. Netflix could no longer ignore the free-riding, but the leadership has no idea how the policing will play with customers, and how many freebies can be converted to upcharges or separate memberships. So Netflix really wants to have that lower-priced, ad-driven tier ready to go as a lure to keep those cash-strapped college kids and cheap-ass ex-boyfriends in the Netflix family.

One other note on Netflix ads: Is Hastings really going to let the Google fox into his henhouse? Netflix is reportedly deciding whether to initially outsource its ad business to either Google or Comcast. If Hastings can’t see why it might be problematic to turn his platform over to perhaps the tech industry’s biggest, most ruthless and data-mining competitor, he deserves whatever happens...