When the deal collapsed, Reed informed us that it had never been that important. Everyone was crestfallen, especially Christina. From the beginning, she had opposed the deal, but as always, she’d been a complete team player—and had worked hard on the Netflix end. A lot of conversations with Reed (and with Patty) were needed to get him to realize how demoralizing it could be, when you made something a priority, asked people to break their backs doing something they didn’t agree with—and then didn’t honor the work they put in.
