So Much "Succession"

Uncovering the parallels between the Murdoch family succession drama and the HBO TV classic "Succession". ​

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Today, we are talking about Rupert Murdoch and the succession drama over which of his children will control his media empire (while we also make a lot of references to Succession).

Also, this week:

• Amazon and James Bond

• Hooters Bankruptcy

• …and them fire posts (including quantum computing)

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The Murdoch Family is as Succession-y as Succession Could Ever Succession

It is well-known that HBO’s Succession — just a got damn masterpiece of a TV show — is partially based on Rupert Murdoch, his children and the question of who will ultimately control his media empire.

This connection with the fictitious Roy family (and their company Waystar Royco) is very salient right now because the Murdochs are going through a messy legal battle that has been as dramatic as anything ever written on the show.

TLDR: The 93-year old Rupert Murdoch and his children have an inviolable trust that will give his four eldest children equal board voting rights on Fox and News Corp after he dies. However, in recent years, he wanted to ensure that his media properties maintained a conservative slant and tried to alter the trust to the benefit of a single child. In December, courts in Nevada — which have favourable privacy and tax laws for family trusts — ruled that Rupert could not change the terms of the original agreement (that decision is currently being appealed).

For decades, Murdoch’s media empire has greatly influenced elections in Australia, the UK and America. The future fate of this conservative mainstay is no small matter, especially for Roman Roy super-fans (eg. me) that need new material for a Succession spin-off.

Last week, two lengthy articles on the story were published by McKay Coppins for The Atlantic (“Growing Up Murdoch”) and Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg for New York Magazine (“Inside the Murdochs’ Succession Drama”). The former was informed by Rupert’s son James, while the latter draws from 3,000 court documents with some very very juicy deets.

These articles were a combined ~30,000 word according to one of those sketchy online word counters that probably gave my laptop a virus. I also know these were long pieces because I spent so much time on the dumper trying to finish reading that my left thigh got numb.

I didn’t intend to write on the story but made dozens of highlights and decided to just type up the best parts. So, I did that with the added challenge of finding as many parallels to Succession as possible. I link to relevant scenes when possible as a form of fan service (aka “Phan service” aka there are some spoilers).

Top: Murdoch family (James, Liz, Rupert, Lachlan) / Bottom: Roy family (Kendall, Roman, Logan, Shiv, Conor)

Let’s start the Murdoch story with some bullet points:

• Australian native Rupert Murdoch has 6 children:

  • A daughter with Patricia Booker: Prudence (67 years old)

  • Three children with Anna dePeyster: Liz (56), Lachlan (53), James (52)

  • Two daughters with Wendi Dang: Grace (24), Chloe (22)

• For decades, there has been speculation on who would take over the Murdoch operation including Fox (Fox News, Fox Sports and other broadcast networks), News Corp (newspapers including The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London, The Australian as well as the leading book publisher HarperCollins).

• Notably, in 2018, Murdoch sold the TV and film studio 21st Century Fox to Disney for a whopping $71B.

  • Phan service alert: News Corp’s acquisition of Dow Jones — which owned The Wall Street Journal — in 2007 from the Bancroft Family for $5B has echoes of the Roy family’s play for the storied Pierce news empire. The Disney deal has obvious parallels with the European tech giant GoJo offering to acquire Waystar Royco. Oh, and News Corp’s $580m investment in MySpace in 2005 (!!!!!) definitely has parallels with the Roy family’s acquisition of Vaulter.

• Liz, Lachlan and James — represented in Succession by the three youngest Roy children (Shiv, Kendall, Roman…not an exact 1-for-1 comparison, though) — have been jockeying for position over the years but Rupert has really pitted the sons against each other.

• In 1999, Anna dePeyster divorced Rupert. Concerned with how he was manipulating his children on the topic of future succession, she gave up claims to her half of the marriage assets in exchange for an inviolable trust that ensured equitable distribution between all the children. In Anna’s mind, this trust would motivate the children to work together.

Even with the trust in place, Rupert found ways to have his children compete.

In the mid-1990s, James had co-founded hip-hop label Rawkus Records, which went on to record such artists as Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common and Eminem. Rupert bought a controlling stake in 1996 (Phan service: two solid Succession references here include Kendall rapping in his very first scene of the show...and then...uhh...rapping again later for his father).

James was folded back into the family business in 2000 when Rupert sent him to Asia. At the time, the region was a backwater for the Fox empire but James was still able to make an impact. His major achievement was diverting resources from Hong Kong to South Asia, where he helped to build Star India into a profitable media operation. After this W, James was moved to the UK and found similar success with Murdoch’s Sky assets. By 2007, James was promoted to run News Corp in Asia and Europe.

Over the same span, Lachlan was working on Fox TV assets in America. However, he became salty with Rupert’s indecision on who would take over the family business...so he quit. Lachlan and his wife moved to Australia and built up a reputation in Sydney’s elite corporate and political circles.

Their sister Liz launched a successful media company called Shine Group, which included massive TV reality hits such as The Biggest Loser and Master Chef. News Corp would acquire Shine Group in 2011 (on Succession, the daughter Shiv Roy also works outside the family with her father Logan — who is from another commonwealth country, Scotland — trying to entice her back with major offers).

That same year, James' rapid ascent to the top would come to a sudden halt due to the infamous phone hacking scandal at the UK publication News of the World (Phan service: the Succession parallel is the Waystar Royco cruise ship scandal including that immortal Cousin Greg testimony scene…and Tom Wambsgans and Cousin Greg having a heart-to-heart).

Investigations into News of the World found that reporters for the paper had hacked the voicemails of the Royal Family, politicians, celebrities and even a young murder victim. Rupert was forced to shut down the paper and someone from the family had to take the fall. It was James. He and his wife Kathryn — who are much more liberal-leaning than Rupert or Lachlan — believed that Liz, Lachlan and Rupert worked together to clip his wings.

Somewhat ironically, the crack-up between the siblings came a year after Rupert had arranged for a family counselling retreat, as described in The Atlantic (the Roy family had a number of such retreats in Succession):

Then one day in 2010, Rupert did something out of character: He invited his adult children to a family-counseling retreat in Australia. He explained that he’d hired a therapist who specialized in families like theirs, and said he believed the guy could help them.

The retreat was held at the Murdoch family’s ancestral ranch in Cavan Station, a 25,000-acre farm a few hundred miles from Sydney where Merino sheep roam the plains and kangaroos have to be culled. The purpose was not ostensibly to discuss succession planning, James recalled, but rather how they would “behave with each other.” (“Was this more business or personal?” [Coppins] asked. “There’s no difference in this family,” he said.)

After the phone hacking scandal, James was publicly “promoted” to Deputy COO of News Corp in America. However, James knew it was a demotion. Instead of running Sky operations in London, he was now working under his father in New York.

Then, in 2015, Rupert announced that Lachlan would be returning from Australia to become Fox CEO and that James would report to him. James — who had put a decade of his career into the company while Lachlan was in Australia — refused to accept the new arrangement. Eventually, Lachlan came back as Executive Chairman but he was still effectively running the company with James.

The political differences between James, Rupert and Lachlan came to a head in 2016 with the the UK’s Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in America. It became very clear that James and Lachlan could not have a stable long-term working relationship.

Soon, an opportunity came for a clean break: Rupert wanted to sell the TV and film studio 21st Century Fox because he realized that the company wouldn’t be able to compete in streaming with Netflix, Big Daddy Bezos at Prime Video and Tim Cook’s bottomless iPhone money. Also, Rupert didn’t mind trimming down his empire to focus on his roots in news (Rupert was 21 years old when his father died in 1952 and left two Australian newspapers for the family as an inheritance).

According to The Atlantic, Lachlan was not happy with the Disney negotiations (do keep in mind this article is informed by conversations with James):

As the Disney deal took shape, however, Lachlan became more and more hostile to it. He grumbled that he’d moved his family from Australia to Los Angeles so he could preside over a proper media empire. Now they wanted to off-load its most glamorous asset and leave him with a collection of shrinking TV stations, cable channels, newspapers, and book imprints that, according to one former News Corp employee, he referred to as “ShitCo.”

Over dinner one night at Gramercy Tavern with James and Rupert, Lachlan—usually so friendly and unflappable—lost his temper. He shouted threats and ranted about his opposition to the deal, James recalled. Before storming out of the restaurant, Lachlan delivered an ultimatum: If you go through with this deal, he told Rupert, “you will not have a son.” Then he turned to James and added, “And you won’t have a brother.”

News Corp and Fox currently have a combined ~$40B market cap. As an expert of ShitCos (aka every single SPAC I bought in 2021), I can safely say that News Corp and Fox are not quite in the “ShitCo” zone. But the empire is definitely much smaller without 21st Century Fox and with less rosy long-term prospects.

Despite Lachlan’s reservations — which would sadly prove prophetic (Phan service: Lachlan's outburst reminds me of this scene) — James threw himself into negotiations with Bob Iger and Disney. In 2018, Disney agreed to acquire 21st Century Fox for $71B. This is why Disney+ has Nat Geo and The Simpsons among other fresh assets. In the years since, consensus on Wall Street is that Disney overpaid by ~$20B. Solid negotiating by James (similarly, the high-stakes GoJo deal led to some incredible negotiations on Succession).

After the Disney deal, each Murdoch child received $2.1B. TWO BILLY EAACH!!

James took the cheddar and launched his own fund called Lupa Systems (Coppins writes, “The firm was named after the she-wolf in Roman mythology who nurses the twin boys Remus and Romulus—­one of whom goes on to kill the other to become the first king of Rome.”).

By 2019, James was no longer involved in running the Murdoch media empire and Lachlan became CEO of Fox and the official Rupert successor (he is also the chairman of News Corp and exec chairman at Fox).

Remember that inviolable trust? It is structured so that the four eldest children (Prudence, Liz, Lachlan, James) all have equal board voting rights for Fox News and News Corp. after Rupert dies. The trust can only be changed “if they were in the interest of the beneficiaries” and “Rupert would have to show, in effect, that disenfranchising three of his children was actually best for them”, per Coppins.

Fast-forward to 2023 and the drama dial around this trust got turned up to “11”. Rupert became increasingly concerned that James would team up with his sisters to vote against Lachlan and his more conservative views. So, Rupert initiated a plan called “Project Family Harmony” (lol) to change the trust and ensure Lachlan had all the voting rights for Fox and News Corp. The legal documents outlining the plan mostly substituted out the name “James” with the term “the troublesome beneficiary”. Subtle.

Prudence, Liz and James caught wind of the plan and that is how we got the recent Nevada court case…which so far has ruled against Rupert and Lachlan (for you Succession fans, never forget that one of the show’s coldest shots happened after an alteration in the family trust).

Man, no wonder Succession is so good. Even before this latest legal case, there was so much fodder. It’s actually been a running question for years on who in the Murdoch family was feeding stories to the Succession writers. Most suspected Liz or her ex-husband Matthew Freud (who I’m guessing is supposed to be Shiv’s husband Tom in Succession but with way way more Old World clout because he’s the great grandson of Sigmund Freud). However, the show’s creator Jesse Armstrong said the writing is mostly based on publicly available information.

How will this all play out?

Here is my uninformed and very very wild guess: in the next 5 years, Elon and X will acquire News Corp and Fox assets. X has gone from left-leaning to right-leaning since the Twitter takeover and President Trump’s second election victory. While News Corp and Fox are primarily in legacy media, they still command a sizeable audience and have important training assets for text and video LLMs. X CEO Linda Yaccarino used to oversee $13B in ad budget as global advertising & partnerships at NBCUniversal. She understands the levers of old media, so could maximize the assets as they make the AI-social transition. Take these Murdoch companies, combine them with X and xAI and take it all public at a valuation of $200B. Lachlan would probably be OK with X as the home for Fox and News Corp. An important nugget here is that James is a Tesla board member and — despite his political leanings — understands the tech angle. Then they could probably convince the sisters. Again, just a total wild guess.

Either way, here are a few of my favourite excerpts from the New York Magazine piece.

First, Lachlan actually tried to buy out the siblings right after the 21st Century Fox deal closed in 2019. But the other siblings felt they got the equivalent of one of those low-ball offers you make when trying to buy second-hand Air Jordans on Craigslist:

Each of Rupert’s children had just made $2.1 billion on the sale of 21st Century Fox through the trust. Lachlan could put this money toward buying out his siblings. Rupert had done the same thing himself decades earlier. He and his sisters inherited two regional newspapers in Australia from their father, and Rupert eventually moved to buy them out. Bet on yourself, he told Lachlan, urging him to follow his lead and buy out his siblings.

Prue, Liz and James were eager to make a deal. But Lachlan offered to pay them only 50 percent of the market value of their stock — a discount of more than $1 billion — arguing that the lower price was warranted because the shares were tied up in the trust for another decade. His siblings asked for more. Lachlan refused to go higher.

By the time the Disney deal closed in 2019, the family’s new fault lines were clear and were about to become clearer. Rupert generally doesn’t take money out of his companies for himself and didn’t get paid anything for the Disney deal. So five of his children decided to give him $50 million each as a gesture of gratitude. But James, who had stopped speaking to his father and brother, refused, making his own proposal instead: He wanted his $50 million to go toward estate planning not only for his father but also for his father’s wife at the time, Jerry Hall. Rupert declined the offer. Liz shared her disapproval with her brother for not just giving their father the $50 million like the rest of the siblings. “I think that’s pretty shit of you,” she told him, according to her testimony at trial.

Lachlan and Fox’s chief operating officer, John Nallen, drew up a new buyout plan, code-named Project Riley. This one was designed to enable Lachlan to buy out James alone. Under the terms of the trust, though, Liz and Prue would also have the option of being bought out at the same price. With James outside the company and in a position to make more trouble for him, Lachlan was clearly feeling pressure to act: He raised his offer to 60 percent of the market value of James’s shares, rather than 50 percent.

It was still too low for James. He knew that the older Rupert got, the more desperate he and Lachlan would be to secure Lachlan’s control. Prue’s director to the trust, Richard Oldfield, a financial adviser who is also on the board of the King of England’s charitable trust took notes on a conversation between the three siblings about the prospect of a buyout in the summer of 2020. He quoted James as saying: “If they do not get an agreement, they are all fucked.”

Years later, an episode of the show Succession actually set off a panic among the children. Spoiler Alert!! The episode in question was when the patriarch Logan dies:

Lachlan wasn’t the only Murdoch sibling thinking about his father’s death. Several months before the meeting at the Fox lot, the writers of “Succession” killed off the family’s patriarch, Logan Roy. The plot turn, and the fictional chaos that ensued, sent Liz and her representative to the family trust, Mark Devereux, into a panic, forcing them to suddenly confront an event they had long avoided. “All of the siblings are running around saying: ‘Oh, my God, who is supposed to say what? Does the company say something? Do I say something? Do we say something together?’” Devereux, a self-described “Succession” addict, would later say, recalling his reaction to the episode. “And I thought this is exactly, exactly the thing we should be avoiding, because that is chaotic.”

Devereux called Liz, who had already watched the episode twice and been extremely upset by it. (Devereux later commended it to James’s managing director, Jesse Angelo. “I don’t watch ‘Succession,’” Angelo said. “Me and James like ‘Shogun.’”) He was soon working on a memo — the Succession Memo, he called it — intended to prevent a real-life repeat of the Roy family chaos.

That’s an wild nugget if true (Phan service: remember this scene?)

You know the saying: “Life is stranger than fiction…unless fiction makes people in real life react in a way that reflects what was seen in the fictional world” or something like that.

Finally, here are some excerpts from various legal depositions.

During one heated exchange in Manhattan, Rupert’s lawyer called James and his sisters “white, privileged, multi­billionaire trust-fund babies”. Subtle. Later at the Nevada court hearing, there was this line of questioning:

By the third day in Reno, when the objectors — Prue, Liz and James — all took the stand, the outlines of the dueling arguments were well established. The three objectors would be key witnesses for Rupert’s lawyer, Streisand, to cross-examine. To sell his case to the judge, he needed to portray them as spoiled children who were resisting the wishes of the man who made them rich beyond imagination but also as schemers who had been circulating memos about their father’s death and who, if allowed to control the empire, would drive it to the left and alienate its core audience.

“You’ve been fortunate to have become a multibillionaire thanks to your father’s enormous generosity?” Streisand asked Liz.

“I wouldn’t call it generosity,” she replied, “but his enormous success, yes.”

He drilled down further, asking her about the sale of 21st Century Fox to Disney. “That’s when each of you received $2.1 billion, right?”

Liz again took issue with his characterization: “Pretax. Yes.”

“Pretax. Yes.” is something that Conor (the eldest child in Succession who — like Prudence — was not a real succession candidate) would probably have said based on the fact he asked for "a little 100 mil" for his failed US Presidential campaign (Phan service: the Roy’s fictitious conservative TV network ATN has a similar-ish moment to Fox calling the state of Arizona in the 2020 US Presidential election).

The only time in my life when I’ve said “Pretax. Yes.” is when my wife tried to convince me to buy a Le Creuset Dutch Oven and quoted some dollar amount after a seasonal “discount” to which I rebutted “Pretax. Yes.”, which cancelled out the discount and made the item look pretty expensive.

Saying “Pretax. Yes” to a $2B gift from your parents — that is still worth over a billy post-tax — is just objectively hilarious.

The last Murdoch-Succession comparison I’ll make is more a meta-theme. For all the money, power and influence, the real-life and fictitious family relationships are very sad. Reflecting on her falling out with James, Liz Murdoch said that trying to win her father’s approval and not speaking with her brother for years was “one of the greatest regrets of my life.”

During the recent Nevada court case, Rupert sat in on all the searing depositions and looked away not saying a word to his children. When he did communicate, it was…well…here’s a final excerpt from The Atlantic:

In the communications that emerged during the discovery process, James had learned how his father talked about him to the rest of the family—how calculating and manipulative he could be. When a packet of documents that James’s lawyer had requested arrived from Rupert, it came with a handwritten note: Dear James, Still time to talk? Love, Dad. P.S.: Love to see my grandchildren one day. James, who could not remember the last time Rupert had taken an interest in his grandchildren, didn’t bother to reply.

For real, though, if any of that piqued your interest — or you are a Succession fan — then you should definitely carve out some time to read those articles (but just prepare yourself for some numb thighs).

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Links and Memes

Amazon and James Bond: When Amazon bought MGM for $8.5B in 2022, the crown jewel asset from that studio was the James Bond franchise, which was creatively controlled by producer Barbara Broccoli. There hasn’t been a James Bond film since that deal and a Wall Street Journal profile from December revealed why: Broccoli had an “ideological split” and hated the creative suggestions from Amazon’s data-driven team, saying “these people are f**king idiots”.

Amazon wanted to milk the IP and give us a Bond Cinematic Universe. Broccoli has stewarded the brand and wanted Bond only to be on film. I get her reservations but also want to see an Odd Job prequel. And we may get that now because Amazon MGM announced on Thursday that it now has full creative control of the James Bond IP. Broccoli and her brothers must have gotten a fat bag (Deadline reports that it is an additional $1B with shared economics “on movies going forward).

This was all made official when Jeff Bezos asked X who should be the next James Bond. Henry Cavill was a popular suggestion. I’d love for Idris Elba to get the nod.

There was an intriguing suggestion from X user AlexMaisonDuCoq:

The formula to revive classic Bond is simple

• Cast Cavill (obviously)

• Make it a 60s/70s period piece

• Film is 100% practical effects

• Devote silly budget to finding and casting a completely unknown but extremely hot brown haired actress from [european country]

• Allow Cavill to be a ruthless male chauvinist. Like really let him get in his Connery bag

• Source the score exclusively from Goldeneye 64

Separately, Amazon MGM needs to find a way to get Christopher Nolan involved. He held a previous negotiation with Broccoli but they couldn’t come to terms. During the Oppenheimer press tour, he said directing James Bond “would be an amazing privilege”.

Every previous Bond has been from the British Isles: Sean Connery (Brit-Scots), Pierce Brosnan (Irish), Roger Moore (British), Daniel Craig (British), Timothy Dalton (Welsh) and George Lazenby (well, Australian, but ge only did one film). Nolan is from the UK and has worked with a lot of baller actors from the British Isles including Tom Hardy (British), Christian Bale (British) and Cillian Murphy (Irish). The funniest would be to do Matt Damon. He was in Interstellar and Oppenheimer and will be the lead in Nolan’s next film The Odyssey. While he is American, the Jason Bourne jokes would be incredible.

People may be missing the forest for the trees, though. MGM already has some IP that needs to be turned into a Cinematic Universe before Bond: Hot Tub Time Machine.

PS. My former colleague from The Hustle (Mark Dent) has a great article on how the Broccoli family secured the lucrative James Bond rights from author Ian Fleming and went on to produce 20+ Bond films (The family business that owns a share of the $7B James Bond franchise).

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Hooters Bankruptcy: It’s been a tough few years for chain restaurants in America. Food and wage inflation have hit costs while consumer demand is flagging. Now, Hooters — which is obviously famous for its boneless wings Hooters Girls and closed dozens of locations last year — may soon file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its 300+ remaining restaurants.

Predictably, people made some of the most immature puns when the news came out (“Hooters went tits up”. “It was the breast of times, and the worst of times”. “It’s a breastaurant bust”. “Hooters files for bankruptcy because of sagging sales”.)

Incredibly immature...and I laughed out loud at every single one of them.

The whole news cycle is a reminder that Hooters had maybe the most absurd brand extension in corporate history. In 2003, the chain burnt $40m to launch Hooters Air with 7 Boeing planes (tagline was “Fly a mile high with us” lol).

Based in Myrtle Beach, the plan was to bring golfers to the 100s of golf courses in the South Carolina resort city. The draw was that each flight had two “Hooter Girls” in addition to the flight crew, per Insider. The airline operated for 3 years but ultimately folded in 2006 because:

• A lot of people were still wary of flying after 9/11

• The target market of golfers was…way too niche

• Gas prices spiked after Hurricane Katrina

• Budget airlines (Spirit, JetBlue) started ramping up

The whole thing was operated by Pace Airlines, a charter plane service Hooters co-founder Robert Brooks had purchased in early 2000s.

Honestly, not the worst idea ever and it brought a lot of business to Myrtle Beach from 15 destinations across America. United or Delta should buy Hooters IP and give it a go. Advertise the twin engine planes...and staff. Sorry.

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Some other links for your weekend consumption:

• **Bearly AI**: The AI research app I’m building has been working with a number of businesses on an enterprise version of our product to quickly launch custom AI apps and chat solutions (developer integrations, data security, encryption, SSO, admin tools etc). Reply here if that last sentence piqued your interest. Separately, if you’re your a solo user looking to test all the latest LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek, Gemini), use code BEARLY1 for a month of our Pro plan for access to our easy-to-use UX.

• Adam Sandler had the best moment of SNL 50…with a special song (X/SNL)

• Wait But Why author Tim Urban is using the Apple Vision Pro 20 hours a week…maybe the only person in the world putting up those numbers, which is honestly quite impressive…and he’s doing it because it’s been a much better writing experience for him and his friend designed a hack in which the headset isn’t actually on the head and so it can comfortably be worn for many hours on end. (X/Wait But Why)

• The new Captain America film is apparently awful and further evidence that Marvel has turned into “a Giant Slop Machine”. (Vulture)

• xAI released its newest AI model Grok 3…and M.G. Siegler has a solid piece arguing that there will probably be one AI chatbot winner (like Google with search) and ranks the current contenders to take that crown with ChatGPT in the lead followed by Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, Claude, Perplexity etc. (Spy Glass)

• The funniest KPMG content that you will ever see (X/DanToomey/GoodWoork)

• “AppLovin (APP) Has a ‘SuperBad’ Third-Party Gift Card Scheme Fueling Growth” (Lauren Balik)

• “It's projected to take the City of Boston 20 years to build a single train station. So here's a thread on how long it took to build other things.” (X/Cremieux)

• Humane AI Pin…was launched by two former Apple employees. The debut video was panned as a cheap rip-off of Steve Jobs and the product was $700 plus a monthly subscription. Raised $230m and took 6 years only to sell to HP and the team will now work on adding AI to printers (aka tech purgatory when you realize HP bought and ruined Compaq, Palm/WebOS and printers that don’t jam but do jam all the time when they aren’t running out of ink after 3 pieces of paper).

Two good posts from Chris Bakke on the Humane topic:

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…and them fire posts: