← The Town with Matthew Belloni
Loading summary
Transcript109 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Danny Kelly and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the Ringer Fantasy Football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the Ringer Fantasy.
- [00:13]
B
Football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel.
- [00:17]
A
This episode is brought to you by AMC Theaters. Experience an unprecedented season of films and earn rewards while you watch with Focus Features in AMC theaters. See Downton the Grand Finale, Anemone, Begonia, Hamnet and Songsung Blue. Watch all five and unlock a $200 gift card for exclusive merchandise and be entered to win the ultimate Focus Features Red Carpet Experience. Make it a Focus Features Fall exclusively at AMC Theaters. Visit amctheaters.com focusfeatures to start earning your rewards. No purchase necessary. See official Rules for details. Martha listens to her favorite band all the time. In the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live. She saved so much, she got her seat close enough to actually see and hear them. Sort of. You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you more Expedia made to travel. Savings vary and subject to availability. Inclusive packages are at all protected. It is Wednesday, September 17th. A generation ago, if I asked you who is the most influential critical voice in movies, probably, say, Siskel and Ebert or A.O. scott of the New York Times, maybe Ken Charan at the LA Times. They could really help movies they liked, and the dreaded thumbs way down would be a death penalty for a certain kind of movie. Today, no critic really matters. Not really. The Internet and social media has unleashed a torrent of opinions on movies and TV and everything else, even podcasts. And in place of individual critics, the single most influential force in movie criticism is now Rotten Tomatoes, the aggregation site that deems good movies certified fresh via their critics score. But Rotten Tomatoes is kind of controversial in Hollywood. Filmmakers hate it because it's binary. It deems each review either positive or negative, not allowing much room for nuances like its rival movie Metacritic does when assigning a numbered score. And increasingly there are a whole bunch of random voices included amongst those more established critics. Rotten Tomatoes, which most people don't know, is actually owned by NBC Universal with an investment from Warner Brothers. It's actually part of the new spinoff company called Versant that's happening. They say that they broadened out the pool of critics to address criticism, that the site was too elitist, too white, too Male, et cetera. But as I wrote in my Puck newsletter a couple of weeks ago, the result has been that the Tomatometer scores have gone up about 13% over the past decade. Yes, great inflation on Rotten Tomatoes. So many, quote unquote critics are just film junket media or awards pundits trying to get access to stars or who knows who these people are. The end result, in my opinion, is that the most influential platform for advice on which movie to see has become almost unusable, at least for discerning people. That's my opinion, of course. But I wanted to have someone on the show from Rotten Tomatoes to defend the site and fight me and explain what their methodology actually is. Thankfully, Jacqueline Coley has agreed to do just that. So we had her on for a fun debate about Rotten Tomatoes, the state of movie criticism, and is it all going into the social media toilet? From the ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the. Okay. We are here with Jacqueline Coley, who is the awards editor and other stuff in her title at Rotten Tomatoes. Welcome, Jacqueline. I appreciate you coming on.
- [04:00]
C
I really appreciate you being here. Matt, first of all, I want to say thank you so much for giving us an opportunity, because we talked about this before, that there's a lot of misinformation about Rotten Tomatoes. So I'm really excited to tell folks about our product, tell folks about our.
- [04:13]
A
Brand, and fight me and fight me about it. Yes. No, that's fine. No, no. This is going to be a friendly debate. I wrote a piece in my Puck newsletter a couple weeks ago that was very critical of Rotten Tomatoes. I basically said that it has become unusable, that it has been flooded by awards, sycophants and random people. And the tomato meter does not reflect what people are actually thinking about the movies. And that the great inflation that's gone on over the past decade reflects the overall tenor of the critical community which now wants to suck up to talent rather than inform the people who might want to go see these movies. And I was walking around Toronto, I was at the film festival, and people who had read it said, you gotta have someone from Rotten Tomatoes on. And I appreciate you being that person. So let's get right into it. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there, or at least a lot of misunderstanding about how Rotten Tomatoes works, like how reviews are aggregated, who decides what is positive or negative? Is it a person? Is it AI? How the blurbs are decided, how someone becomes a Tomatometer approved critic, a top critic, all of these things. So explain how Rotten Tomatoes works.
- [05:35]
C
Okay. Well, first, let me say what Rotten Tomatoes is. So one of the things that I found to be a very big truth in your article, which is that we're the most trusted source for review aggregation.
- [05:46]
A
You are, I admit that. And you're in all the commercials, the studios use the Certified Fresh, like they used to use the two thumbs up from Syscal and Ebird.
- [05:55]
C
Absolutely. Let's start with our critic community. So we have about 3,000 critics that together equal our entire critic community. This includes about 1200 individually approved critics and about 1800 outlets. And that group is what makes up one of our products, which is the Tomatometer. The Tomatometer is that number you see on our site that reflects the critical community, and it gives a temperature gauge of what that community thinks about a film as far as recommendation. So first and foremost, that Tomatometer is expressed in three different ways. If by chance a film gets more than 60% of that critical community that recommend it, it gets a fresh distinction. That's our fresh badge. If the critical community above 75% and also some other stipulations around top critics and some other stuff are met, then it will receive our highest designation on the Tomatometer, which is Certified Fresh, which is the thing you love seeing on all the advertisements in our product we're very proud of. If it's below 60%, it gets the Rotten.
- [06:53]
A
The splatter. The dreaded splatter.
- [06:55]
C
So that is the Tomatometer. Now, how those folks are credentialed is we have a critic relations team, and this is comprised of the folks that once a year they open up our application process. Folks can apply as either outlets or individual critics. If an outlet is approved, every critic while they're writing for that outlet, their reviews will appear on the Tomatometer. For those folks that apply to be a part of the Tomatometer as individuals, no matter where they write, those individual reviews will show up. And then we also have our top critics community. And we did actually a refresh on that community a few years ago in which we added about a hundred or so critics. But the one thing I will tell you is that Critical community is very similar to the critical community of your favorite platform.
- [07:41]
A
You mean Metacritic?
- [07:42]
C
Yes.
- [07:43]
A
They're not my favorite. I just think that they better gauge what the sentiment is than the binary system that Rotten Tomato uses where there's some designation of positive or negative without any nuance.
- [07:54]
C
I mean, that's true, but the one thing I will tell you is I'll put our product to the Pepsi Challenge up against any other product that is out there. And I think that we stand up because one of the things about this is when we express this tomatometer, we have it as the score. Sometimes we can have it as our critics consensus have it expressed. But we also give folks the opportunity, if they want to, to to dive in and read every single review. We link out to all those individual websites so they can read all the reviews.
- [08:22]
A
But I'm curious how these people are chosen. Is there a high court of Rotten Tomatoes where people are looking at their body of work and saying, okay, this person can be a tomato meter critic or a top critic, or is it just you apply, there's a stamp, and all of a sudden you get to do it?
- [08:42]
C
No, we have a very robust criteria. In fact, our criteria is up on our website, if you want to know. Every single bit of the criteria that these folks have to meet to be credentialed is a commitment to journalism. We read their reviews, we look at their history of reviewing, not just one. So like, if somebody only reviewed horror movies, that would be great, but they wouldn't necessarily be someone. We want to see folks that are reviewing a wide vast of films. And also that the criticism is just that it is criticism of the work, that there's not personal biases in there. And no, they're critical, credentialed at a high level. I would just tell you, the folks that work at Rotten Tomatoes, they read hundreds of thousands of reviews. Our curation team curates over 90.
- [09:24]
A
How large is that team?
- [09:25]
C
It's about eight folks that are part of our critic curation team.
- [09:30]
A
Okay, so eight people read thousands of reviews and decide who gets to be among the elite tomatometer critics?
- [09:38]
C
No, I was saying that those folks are a part of our credentialing team.
- [09:42]
A
Okay.
- [09:42]
C
And that's what I was also going to say too though, is that those folks are the folks that we also.
- [09:48]
A
Include in that process, and there is some kind of a designation that you are deemed worthy and you recently extended that or expanded the criteria. Why did you do that? Was that because of the criticisms, that it was too old, white, male? Or was it that you wanted to bring in different types of outlets so it wasn't as elitist? Why did you do that?
- [10:13]
C
What we did when we did our critical refresh in 2018, that refresh, where we decided to credential individuals more so than outlets, was actually us tweaking our products so that it could reflect the changing media landscape. Because what we were seeing, which is something that you also point out in the article is that papers and outlets were sending less traditional critics to to these places. We had more freelancers and so we had to change our product to reflect that change. So the why is that.
- [10:43]
A
Well, and more and more outlets are just doing away with their critics. The Chicago Tribune fired Michael Phillips and they said is because they don't see a value in having a critic anymore and partially because people are looking to Rotten Tomatoes. They're not looking to Michael Phillips. And Vanny Fair just got rid of theirs. Alan Seppinwall just got fired at Rolling Stone. Like the amount of critics is dwindling or serious critics is dwindling, I think because of the rise of social media and aggregation sites like yours.
- [11:12]
C
That's where I'm going to beg to disagree because you're talking about things that are corollary and you're trying to say that there is cause behind it. Really what has happened is the reason why those editors made that decision has very little to do. I think with Rotten Tomatoes. It has to do with economic shifts within the market.
- [11:28]
A
Sure. Social media has killed all media and they are now feeling the pressure. I get that.
- [11:34]
C
I don't think that you have a particular issue with aggregation because there are tons of folks that do review aggregation, both in the audience space as well as in the critical space. I'll take for example, Ty Burr, who worked at the Washington Post for a very long time. That position was eliminated and he goes on to Substack. Now he has his own website. That shift happen regardless of Rotten Tomatoes? Our job as a consumer product was because we know that this is a critical voice that we want to continue to have reflected in our audience is to make sure that our product is available for that to be demonstrated. Because he still has an audience. He still has people that want to see that critical voice. And if they want to read his reviews, they still absolutely can. But if they're trying to make a decision and they want an efficient way to do it, whether it is that they want to engage in it on a shallower level, like just the square the critics consensus, or if they want to dive in deep and consume everything.
- [12:28]
A
There are lots of places now to find film criticism. I would say that the Ringer podcast, the Big Picture exactly is a perfect example. They are critics that are talking about movies and are incredibly influential because they have a big audience, but they are not attached to the traditional critical mainstream. And now they are the mainstream. And how do you account for that on Rotten Tomatoes?
- [12:54]
C
Well, I mean, that's why we have our credentialing process. That's why we continue to look for new voices. That is one of the reasons why we are constantly making sure that folks that remain part of our critical community maintain that standard. We don't just say, once you're in, you're in. There's an evaluation process to make sure folks are keeping up with that standard so that they can stay on the tomatometer.
- [13:13]
A
And my argument that was that basically there's a lot of awards shilling going on. There's a lot of people with awards in the title of their publication or their substack. I mean, I use the example of Pete Hammond just because he's the one at Deadline that everybody knows he's out there shilling during awards season for various movies. And then he also calls himself a critic for the purpose of Rotten Tomatoes. And you guys accept that and link to him.
- [13:40]
C
Well, first of all, I will just say I love Pete Hammond. He's one of my favorite people to talk movies with. And I think he is a credit to film criticism and the film conversation.
- [13:48]
A
Oh, yeah, you do? Okay, we can differ on that, but whatever. He's good for a blurb for the studios, so that's. He will always have value.
- [13:56]
C
I think your question should be with the editor in chief of Deadline, because for us, we've credentialed Deadline and Pete is their critic. We are not in the business of telling people who they should put in. Like, that's not what we're about. Like that. We are in the review and discovery business. We're in the business of helping people find, discover a film, let it be their next great watch. Talk about it online and find something similar next time.
- [14:22]
A
So if an outlet like Deadline wants to designate an advertising salesperson as their critic, you guys will just accept it and be okay.
- [14:32]
C
That is not what I said. We have a very strict code of conduct, and if an outlet was found to be in violation of that, for example, that kind of thing that you just said, that would be a violation of our code of conduct because those people wouldn't be speaking on the films unbiasedly.
- [14:46]
A
Yeah, I want to move on to you explaining the binary scale, because an 85% fresh on rotten Tomatoes does not mean that the average score was 85%. It means that 85% of the critics on the tomatometer gave it. What you guys determine is a thumbs up. Right? So it generally rewards movies that are fine, that are okay. It does not necessarily reward the exceptional movies. It just kind of blends. It Out.
- [15:18]
C
In my opinion, a little gentle pushback on that. That is the metric that would work for you as a consumer. Not everybody wants to see certified fresh baddies. Like, some of them would rather see comedies that have a really high audience score and they're completely like, don't care. Like, they ignore the tomato meter altogether. And that is why they use this. I think the best thing about Rotten Tomatoes is we kind of think of ourselves like Burger K. You can have it whichever way you want. If you're a person that values a curated group of critics from established outlets, we've got top critics. If you're a person that values seeing folks that have bought a ticket to a film so that you can find what they thought about the film before you buy a ticket, we have verified audience. If you want to see what the entire critical community of both new media critics, established critics, and international voices have to say about a film, that's our tomato meter.
- [16:10]
A
But why do you do that? Why is that the rationale for the tomato meter? Like, if you are having a real live person look at each review and determine whether it's positive or negative, why not just have them give it a score like Metacritic?
- [16:24]
C
Because we're not Metacritic.
- [16:26]
A
Okay, But I mean, like, you see how the criticisms would come there. Because it necessarily inflates the number, right? Because if you're looking at a movie, at a criticism of a Marvel movie, and it's like, it's fine for a Marvel movie, whatever, that's positive, all of a sudden you look and Ant man or whatever is getting a 90% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which is then splashed all over social media, which is then splashed on all the advertising campaigns, and it leads the consumer to think that this Marvel movie is something extraordinary. When you then go to see it and it's like, whatever. And people in the industry that reached out to me were like, we are doing a dissertation service to our customers. We are overinflating the quality of these movies so they don't actually know when they're seeing a good movie.
- [17:15]
C
Let me start with first your assumption, the first part that you were stating about why we don't do others. This is Pepsi and Coke. It sounds to me like you want to change our product to be a different product than what we have. Wait a minute.
- [17:28]
A
I get that. I totally get that. It's not what I want. It's what you guys have. And I'm. And I have an opinion.
- [17:33]
C
Okay, but again, you were in the minority opinion because the market share, the volume, the number of People who value Rotten Tomatoes is by far more in the positive standpoint. Now, to bring it to your other point, again, I just think that inherently there's a little bit of disrespect towards the audience. The audience is discerning. They know what they like. And what they like may not be the same as, say, a person of a certain age from an established outlet. I mean, for example, we have moviegoers now that are a part of this younger generation who. Or they don't care at all about those film critics.
- [18:07]
A
No, most people don't.
- [18:08]
C
They do. But the film critic they trust is somebody like Chris stuckman. It's a YouTuber or a TikToker. And I don't think we should be in the business of telling those people that that is not what they should be listening to. I think we are in the business of making sure that our product can help them along that way if they choose to use us or not.
- [18:29]
A
I want to move on to the whole gaming issue and why some studios believe that they can kind of game Rotten Tomatoes. There was an investigation that Vulture and New York magazine did a couple of years ago where there are PR firms that believe that they could flag a review that they believed was inaccurate and get it changed and that they could kind of flood the zone with critics that were friendlier to their movies and get them past whatever firewall you guys have. So what does a studio do if they believe that there is an error or a review has been improperly categorized as negative?
- [19:13]
C
Okay, so I'm gonna take the what happens when there's a question about a review? But first, I just wanna correct a little bit of what you were stating as far as what was written in the Vulture article in regards to bug 15. We were the victim of a crime. We were a victim of somebody violating our code of conduct as a way to justify their own selfish ends around a movie. And the underline I would say about that article in particular is when we found out the malfeasance was happening, we conducted investigation and we removed the malicious parties from our site for violating our code of conduct pretty immediately. More importantly, the underline of that whole affair that I found to be the most sort of, like, heartbreaking about it was the critics. To hear that critics today, because they're so desperate and because the landscape of being able to earn money and criticism is so dire that they were mortgaging and selling their integrity for less than what I made for my first review. That's the tragedy, that's the heartbreak, and it Taught us that there's things that we weren't aware of.
- [20:13]
A
Okay, so Joe Blow, studio publicist, sees that a review that they think was pretty good was categorized as negative on Rotten Tomatoes. What does Joe Blow publicist do?
- [20:25]
C
So first of all, for the most part, I don't think to your quote, this publicist is involved in it. Let me tell you how reviews appear and then you can, we can go in there where you see where if they're involved, we have 60% of our reviews that are submitted by self submitters. That means the individual critic goes on the back end of our site, they load the review, they decide the blurb, and they give the recommendation of fresh or rotten for the film.
- [20:46]
A
Oh, they do? Okay, yeah.
- [20:48]
C
60% of our reviews of that nearly 9,000, 90,000 that we do every year, 60% of those are done by the individual critics. We don't have anything to do with it. The other 40% are curated by our curation team. That's where an individual person reads every single review. They put a fresh or rotten recommendation tag on that. If after that point there is a question, either from the self submitter or from the curated review, and again the studio has no idea which is which, then it is sent to a three person curator panel, meaning three of the curate. Wait, wait. Then three of those critics read the review and decide if there's a plurality still amongst that three critic panel. Then we get our head of curation involved and they weigh in on it. If there is still a question as to whether or not a review is fresh or rotten. On occasion, in very rare circumstances, we will reach out to the individual critic, if they were not a self submitter and ask them or what their sentiments are. And if they were self submitted, we will ask them if by chance it was done by mistake. That's it.
- [21:51]
A
Interesting. I love it. It's ultimately, it's like Gladiator. Joaquin Phoenix is up there with his thumb up or down.
- [21:57]
C
Yeah. And so I just, I'm like, where is this studio publicist? I think the only involvement that I see, and I will say this anecdotally, is occasionally I will see a publicist that says, hey, I think we're missing a review on our site. Can you make sure this gets added? And when that happens, we don't just add the review. The curation team sweeps the entire film to make sure that there weren't any other misses.
- [22:20]
A
Yeah. And ultimately it does come down to relationships that the studios have with individual critics, which I know you cannot control. But if the Critics know that the studios are watching and if they have negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, that they're not going to get invited to the, you know, whatever screening. And they're not with a publication that the studio sort of has to care about. That's where you can see sort of self inflation going on. I know that's not your fault, but that is an area where I know the studios believe they can game the system is through the relationships with vulnerable critics.
- [22:59]
C
This is one of those situations that happens with Rotten Tomatoes. This feels like industry fan fiction.
- [23:03]
A
It's not fan fiction. I know those people and I know the publicists who say, oh yeah, we've got our people.
- [23:09]
C
Lots of folks have big feelings and have a lot of, I would say, ideas around what exactly happens with Rotten Tomatoes. But I think oftentimes, because again, the average film receives over 300 reviews for a wide release. And the amount of gaming you would have to do to even make it would take over 20 positive reviews that you kind of like guarantee just to move the score five points.
- [23:35]
A
But you know, where it might be more beneficial is in the early reviews. And this is where during awards season we see the gaming. Let's use the Springsteen movie as an example where that movie got one screening at the Telluride Film Festival where it was stacked with awards people. And these are people that are going to be covering and interviewing stars throughout the season. And they're at Telluride to get a first look at these movies. And the studio, Disney in this case knows this. They had Bruce freaking Springsteen in the room watching the movie with these people. And lo and behold, after that movie debuts, it's got a 100% on rotten tomatoes from 13 reviews from people that are largely awards people, some critics, but largely awards people that gets put out by Rotten Tomatoes as debuting on the Tomatometer at 100%. The aggregators on Twitter and elsewhere go nuts for it. Put it out there. All of a sudden, this movie that has had one screening in a fan favorite setting is the best movie out there. And it will sit there for weeks before the studio will show the movie to anyone else. And already a consensus has formed via Rotten Tomatoes that may not match reality. Now we don't know. Maybe this is the greatest movie ever. I'm betting that score comes down significantly when real critics are or other critics are allowed access. And there's not really much you guys do about that.
- [25:12]
C
Okay, on the first point, I think your question on the awards journalists that are credentialed at Telluride, that's A question for the people that run Telluride and where individual studios, like studios have always controlled how their films are releases, whether it be embargo dates, where it's screened, who it's screened for.
- [25:31]
A
Yeah. The difference now is it goes viral.
- [25:33]
C
I think there's a level of assuming that people don't know when they see that we post. And by the way, we post this on every single one, but we write how many reviews it is. And I think it's disingenuous to assume that consumers, if they see a movie like this and they see that it debuted at 100% and that score settles someplace later, that they're gonna be like, you know, they said, scammed me. Let's give audiences a bit of credit. Let's understand that they understand that when a film debuts at a film festival, it is very much in that discovery phase. And so, yeah, film festivals, in their very essence, are kind of hype generators. And that has nothing to do with us at Rotten Tomatoes. So this is a snapshot.
- [26:13]
A
Yeah. But you are amplifying it in a way that is very powerful to your credit. The Smashing Machine, another one with the rock, debuted at 100% out of Venice. It's now at 80% two weeks later.
- [26:24]
C
Okay, so you're talking about a film that debuted at Venice and then it premiered at tiff. And, yes, the score has changed over that time, but that is a reflection of the fact that maybe the assembled critics at Venice, which I will admit is a very different critical population than the critical population that's at a film festival like tiff. Those two particular film communities may have judged the film differently. That does not mean we lied at first. That was the accurate reflection of those critics. So the score changing is, again, that's a reflection of time. Let's not talk about the films that stayed exactly the same. I mean, you have films like Parasite that debuted and 95%, it stayed the same. And more recent ones, no other Choice debuted at 100. It's still sitting at 94. So you didn't talk about the films that actually maintain their course through. And the reasons for the change has a lot to do with the films and less to do with us.
- [27:17]
A
Well, it's a strategy. These studios know that you guys will put up an early score score, and everything stems from that. If you waited a couple weeks and let the scores marinate a little while and maybe had a rule where we're not going to post a score until there are 30, 40, 50 reviews, maybe that would trickle down to the studios and they would stop trying to game that.
- [27:43]
C
I'm so glad that you brought this up. So do you know about our thresholding system?
- [27:49]
A
I don't. That's why you're on the show.
- [27:51]
C
So let me explain our thresholding system. So any film that shows up on Rotten Tomatoes that is projected to have a box office less than $60 million, or a film that debuts at a film festival, the score for that particular film will populate at 10. And the reason for this is one, when we did our research, we wanted a way to predict how many reviews that a film would get. And we found that the projected box office was the best early metric that we could take, because we need to have this number early, obviously, and say, okay, if a film is going to be less than $60 million, we kind of know how many reviews will get. So a good threshold for it is at 10. So that's why we decided 10. If a film gets over $60 million in projected box office, up to $120 million of projected box office, the score will populate on rotten tomatoes at 20. For a film that is projected to get $120 million or more at the box office, that projection will. We will not populate a score until it gets 40 reviews.
- [28:52]
A
So why do you think the Rotten Tomatoes scores have increased dramatically over the past 10 years? Do you think movies are just better now?
- [29:01]
C
I would say, and I don't want to quibble with the math of it, but comparing the 300 plus critical community population of Rotten Tomatoes to the curated list of Metacritic, even though both of those scores are expressed 0 to 100, is the statistical equivalent of comparing apples to oranges. A better comparison, if you were going to really talk about quote unquote grade inflation, would be to compare our top critics with Metacritics. And if you did so, you would see that we were in lockstep. For example, from 2014 to 2024, our top critics and our top critics consensus, if that is expressed on a tomatometer, as well as our general community, they're only within two or four points from each other. Additionally, there's other industry factors that contribute to that. Including back in 2014, the number one genre of film was comedy, including rom coms. And the critical reception of films like comedies and rom coms have always been historically lower than dramas.
- [30:00]
A
Well, but now it's just IP extravaganzas, which also tend to score lower. I heard the argument from one marketer that said that now the threshold for a theatrical release is higher, so the movies are necessarily Going to be quote unquote better if they make it to theaters. But it's a 13% increase over that period. So it's pretty significant.
- [30:20]
C
But it's not though, again, your math is not correct. If you actually would compare. Again, I don't want to quibble with your math. I would just say you're not comparing apples to apples.
- [30:30]
A
All right, but take Metacritic out of it. I'm talking about rotten tomatoes past 10 years. Overall critics on the Tomatometer. Not top critics, regular critics, 13%. And we don't have to get into it, but the two biggest studios that have had the increase, the biggest increase, Warner Brothers and Universal, which together own Rotten Tomatoes. But we love to get into that part of it.
- [30:52]
C
So during that same timeline, in the statistics that you looked at, you took out streaming services. And in my personal opinion, only looking at studios during that time, those numbers are not going to be reflect because you're not reflecting one of the biggest changes in our industry during that time.
- [31:06]
A
That is a fair criticism.
- [31:08]
C
Wait a minute, there's other factors. There's the fact that at that time, I know you don't value what I said, but actually right now the number one genre that's produced is horror. And horror scores now are significantly higher than they were 10 years ago because the types of horror movies that are being made on average have higher scores now because of the auteur shift towards horror.
- [31:26]
A
Oh, interesting. You think is that true that that horror scores get are much higher now?
- [31:31]
C
Right now? Yeah, much higher. Because remember back in that time there was more of that like sort of like slasher. So again, films have changed during that time. The way we produce movies. I mean, really what you're talking about is the digitization of Hollywood media. There's also a significant number of more movies that are produced every year compared to the way they were a few years ago. I think all of these factors have contributed to an overall industry wide rise in scores. But that again is seen within our sight. I hold a lot of umbrage for folks that are like, it's our fault. You know what it is? Let me say this. Rotten Tomatoes is a temperature check of sentiment. And these folks are saying it regardless of whether it's expressed on our site. So when people are getting upset and getting big feelings about us, I have a lot of sympathy for Weathermen. I really do. The Al Rokers of the world. I get it because like, it's like you're yelling at us, you're yelling at a weatherman because it's raining all Right.
- [32:26]
A
I get it. I would just argue that a lot of the sicko fans, junket, press, awards, pundit types have crept into the scores, and that is a factor here. But I hear all your arguments and most importantly, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. This was great.
- [32:43]
C
Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [32:45]
A
Matt, we are back with the call sheet. Craig, there's this new movie that seems right up your alley. It's basically the sports version of the Substance where an athlete, a football player, gets attacked by a fan and has an injury, and in order to get himself back to competitive shape, bad things happen to him. He takes. He makes a Faustian bargain to take a drug or some substance that makes him a super athlete but may have negative consequences.
- [33:16]
B
Right. It's. How far would you go to be great? Basically, selling your soul to the devil or whatever to be great, Which I.
- [33:23]
A
Ask you every day on this podcast. How far are you going to be great?
- [33:27]
B
It's an interesting movie because I. I can't really think of another sports horror film. This feels like somewhat of a new blend for the horror genre, and I'm very curious to see what if this will work. I kind of think it might.
- [33:42]
A
Yeah. Produced by Jordan Peele. It's. The director is actually this guy Justin Tipping, who hasn't done much in movies, more of a TV guy. Feels like they're kind of pumping this up. They want us all to think it's Jordan Peele, but it's not really. And I was in New York last week. Shout out to my friend Emmett. His new bar, Peoples. Very good. But ads for this movie were everywhere.
- [34:04]
B
They're all. Every NFL game. The ads are splattered in between.
- [34:08]
A
I think this movie was greenlit as a. Oh, we can sell this during NFL and get people interested in it. But the tracking is at about 15. It's weird. NRG has it at 21 and some of the other services have it lower. Universal Lowballing, of course, at 15. Why don't we put the line at 18 for this movie? I'm going to take the under. I just don't. I don't know, man. Maybe I'm missing something, but it just seems like it's not differentiated enough in the horror landscape. And really. Yeah, you're going to take the over.
- [34:41]
B
I think it's pretty differentiated in that it's a sports horror film, which, again, there's not a lot of that. It's kind of a very unique cast. I don't know if I've ever seen A top five look exactly like this. It's Marlon Wayans, who's playing the old retired champion, who I think kind of brings the younger character into the depths of hell or whatever. And then you have Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker and Jim Jeffries.
- [35:02]
A
Oh, wait, no. Tyreek Withers is the guy.
- [35:04]
B
He's a kid.
- [35:04]
A
Yeah, he's the guy. So. But do any of those people mean anything? Marlon Wayans kind of a name, I guess. White Chick still does very well on Netflix.
- [35:12]
B
Yeah, I just think it's a very interesting top five, but, yeah, I'll take the slide over on this.
- [35:16]
A
Oh, you will?
- [35:17]
B
Yeah.
- [35:17]
A
Okay. Well, it's up against a big, bold, beautiful journey, which your girl, Margot Robbie, we are. This is a pro Margot Robbie podcast, Babylon Forever. But, man, not what you want when you are positioning yourself as a list movie star. This movie is tracking for, like, a $7 million opening.
- [35:37]
B
Yeah. Wikipedia has the budget for this movie at $60 million.
- [35:41]
A
Oh, my God. Sony, what are you doing?
- [35:43]
B
It's way too much. I mean, I'm sure these two, Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie probably got a huge paycheck, but this is an original movie. This is not based on anything. It's an original romance film.
- [35:52]
A
Yeah.
- [35:53]
B
Blacklisted script, which just feels like it's an uphill battle for any of these types of films to work, especially at $60 million.
- [36:01]
A
Yeah. By the way, Sony says it's less. They say 45 million, so. Still, believe what you want. Sony has a reputation for kind of underplaying their budgets. Universal says that him cost 27, so less of a bet there, but not a great weekend overall. I don't think I'm gonna. I mean, do I take the under on 7 million for a Margot Robbie movie? I don't know, man. I guess I have to take the over there. I gotta think at least some of her fans will show up. Will you be there?
- [36:28]
B
I won't be there, but maybe I'll watch it when it comes out. I'm on the road this weekend.
- [36:33]
A
Well, you should buy a ticket for big, bold, beautiful Journey and then see him.
- [36:37]
B
Yeah.
- [36:38]
C
Okay.
- [36:39]
B
The most important takeaway is that the tracking is at 7 million, not whether it will go slightly over or under that. Instead it's at 7 million.
- [36:45]
A
I know. And then Warner thinks Wuthering Heights is going to be this massive hit, but.
- [36:49]
B
Oh, I do think Wuthering Heights will be big.
- [36:51]
A
Okay, different movie. I know this is more kind of schmaltzy, but all right. Not a great weekend. Either way, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Jacqueline Coley, producer Craig Horbeck, artist Jesse Lopez and I want to thank you. We'll see you one more time this week.