Confider #80: Another ‘Ugly’ Hollywood Fight, the Murdoch Book Bubble, and NYT Sports RIP
Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
EXCLUSIVE — CAAN’T TOUCH THIS: It’s become a big guessing game in Hollywood circles—who is getting what and how much following the sale of TPG’s majority stake of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to French luxury goods mogul François-Henri Pinault in a reported $7 billion valuation. But the windfall is also causing a major fight within CAA’s ranks. “It’s getting ugly,” one former CAA executive told Confider. “People are extremely mad.” Read the full Confider story here.
EXCLUSIVE — MURDOCH WINDFALL: It’s not just the Trump book industry that’s heating up: Confider has learned that two major Rupert Murdoch-related projects are in the works just as two new books are due to hit shelves. New Yorker legend Ken Auletta has teamed up with producer and director Susan Lacy, who previously helmed PBS’ American Masters series, to work on a Murdoch documentary. Auletta profiled Murdoch in 1995 and says the doc may be accompanied by a New Yorker piece and that he is hopeful about getting access despite Murdoch’s response to the last profile. “When the piece came out, he was not happy,” Auletta told Confider. “I’m trying to get cooperation on the theory you want to hear everyone’s side of the story.” Meantime Vanity Fair writer Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the Roger Ailes book, The Loudest Voice in the Room, has signed a new book deal following his April cover story, “Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama.” The Murdoch book is Sherman’s first since inking a deal to write about New York’s handling of the COVID outbreak—a book that ultimately never materialized. Next week, Michael Wolff will release his Murdoch/Fox book, titled The Fall, which is curiously being marketed differently in the U.S. than in the U.K. and Australia. The U.S. cover screams its subtitle, The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, while across the pond and downunder, the book features an entirely different cover. Instead of merely text on this edition’s cover, a photo of Murdoch is accompanied by a shorter subtitle: The End of the Murdoch Empire. Wolff has been desperately trying to gin up interest in his book online by teasing a few oddly specific revelations. “What’s Sean Hannity packing in his briefcase? Find out in THE FALL,” he tweeted last week. Before that he teased: “Want to know whose face was on each sheet of Lachlan Murdoch’s toilet paper roll? Sure, you do.” The tweets have received remarkably little or no engagement at all. The other Murdoch book due out later this year is Brian Stelter’s Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy, the follow-up to his bestseller Hoax, due out Nov. 14.