← The Town with Matthew Belloni
The Town with Matthew Belloni
Netflix’s Price Hike and Opening Day Debut. Plus, HBO's ‘Harry Potter’ and the Millennial Nostalgia Era.
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:45]
B
This episode of the Town is brought to you by the Madison, the new original series on Paramount. Plus, it's Academy Award nominee Taylor Sheridan's most intimate story yet. A New York City family is uprooted to Montana after an unexpected tragedy. In the quiet majesty of the Madison Valley, they confront love and loss, discovering resilience and the transformative power of family and the land that grounds them. Led by a powerhouse cast, Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer and Golden Globe nominee Kurt Russell. Don't miss the Madison, the highly anticipated new series, streaming now only on Paramount. Plus, it is Monday, March 30th. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Netflix just raised its prices. The standard plan that's no ads is rising by $2 a month from 18 to 20 bucks. The standard ad supported tier is going up a dollar to nine bucks a month and the premium goes up to $28. That's the second price hike in about a year for Netflix and very upsetting for Craig, who recently became a real adult and stopped using his parents account account. This makes Netflix the most expensive standalone service, which kind of makes sense. They're spending the most on original content, and Netflix seems to be further pushing its members to its ad tier, where the revenue per user is higher for most services, although not exactly for Netflix just yet. Wall Street? No surprise, they like the move. The stock price jumped, but will this hurt subscriber growth? Remember, Netflix has lost a ton of value during its whole pursuit of Warner Brothers, and it's really looking for the next growth narrative now that buying HBO Max isn't happening. It's not alone in the strategy of raising prices for ad free tiers as well. Most of the streamers have recognized the value of those customers who don't mind watching ads. Amazon Prime Video first turned on ads for all members who didn't opt out, and now it's asking users to pay $5 a month more to avoid ads. Today we're going to get into that strategy with Lucas Shaw, our Monday guy, and also talk about some of the recent Netflix content moves, particularly, particularly sports. They just aired MLB Baseball's opening day for the first time to some mixed reactions. But MLB is in an interesting spot as well, with a recent resurgence in ratings for the World Series as well as the World Baseball Classic, just as its rights are in play. So today it's Netflix's price hike and baseball's new momentum from the ringer and puck. I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg, our Monday guy. Luc, true or false, did you purchase the $75 Shohei Ohtani commemorative drink cup that only came with free refill? Free refills for one game and then people went nuts and now you get free refills for the entire season.
- [03:31]
C
I did not because I generally don't buy any concessions at Dodger Stadium. Maybe some beer soju. That's about it.
- [03:38]
B
Yeah. When we went, you got some soju.
- [03:40]
C
It's the cheapest way to drink. At dodged in because we were talking about it with the, the, the group next to us for and I think beer is now more than $20 just for a tall boy. It's unbelievable.
- [03:52]
B
We're going to talk sports a little bit on this episode, but I want to talk first about the latest Netflix price hike because I did a little experiment with my 4th grader last night where I had him add up all seven streaming services what they would cost if you purchase them on their own. I understand there are bundles, so this does not include any bundles, but if you bought the ad free tier of all of these streaming services, all seven, it would be $128 per month.
- [04:22]
C
And what are the seven we're including?
- [04:24]
B
We're including obviously Netflix and then we're including Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, HBO Max, Disney plus Paramount plus.
- [04:40]
C
And so we're not, we're not even counting the Disney Hulu Bundle.
- [04:44]
B
We're not. And we're not including Apple because Apple does not offer an ad tier. So this is the second part of my experiment.
- [04:50]
C
And for Amazon, we're counting what you pay for Prime. We're not counting.
- [04:55]
B
Yes. Okay, then if you did it, this is the second part of my problem for him. If you did it with ads, it comes out to $76. Again, not including bundles. So the problem for fourth grade math is how much do you save if you do the ad tier on all of these services. And the answer is you save $52 per month. Pretty compelling, right? So I think that answers the question of why Netflix is hiking prices for their ad free tier and pushing people into their ad tier.
- [05:29]
C
Yeah, well, they have, they're bifurcating the market. Either you're someone with the means to pay for a premium service and really don't want ads, or you're not. And then they can boost the number of people on the ad tier, which will increase the amount of ads they can sell. I mean, they got rid of that plan that was in between the ad tier and the standard because it was clearly becoming the least lucrative for them. Right. They have said that the, the ad tier is still not as lucrative for them as the standard one.
- [05:57]
B
But Amazon, the ad tier is more because they turned it on for everybody.
- [06:01]
C
Well, and Amazon just has a robust advertising business. Netflix is still new to ads and doesn't have the scale of Amazon to just immediately flip a switch and have billions of dollars flowing in.
- [06:12]
B
So, so that would suggest that that's not the reason they're doing this unless they're trying to build that up significantly. Is this just a Wall Street We've got to do something because we lost HBO Max and we, our stock price cratered by a third during that process. So we've got to do something that the market will like.
- [06:31]
C
Wait, why would you say that? That suggests it's not really. I think there's two things at play here. One of which is they are, they have pretty consistently now raised prices on their, on their plans, but especially the ad free plans. You know, I think, I'm just saying
- [06:47]
B
that if they can't monetize it yet, if they're not monetizing as well as some of the others, well, they, they
- [06:52]
C
want to monetize more effectively. And so if they can drive people to the ad tier, it gives them more scale and it makes it easier for them to make money.
- [07:02]
B
And the market likes when you're charging more. They think Netflix has incredible pricing power. They think they have the best content, even though that's debatable. They certainly are spending the most on original content, non sports. And this is the model you keep spending, you keep charging more.
- [07:19]
C
They have the best churn of any video streaming service in the marketplace. I think Spotify's churn is probably still a little better than theirs, but it's a lot less expensive. Expensive. One of the things that's interesting about that with the, you know, their attitude is we raise prices because we Spend more money. And that is 100% true. But if you actually look at the data, the surge in spending kind of happened first and Netflix remained like there was a point in time at which the Netflix. Netflix was such a crazy deal because they were starting to spend like $10 billion a year and it only cost like 8 or $9. The last few years the spending has leveled off, but the price increases have accelerated. So you are actually now paying more for kind of the same.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah, the, the, the ratio has changed. It's not as great of a value as it once was. Right, but that's probably true across all the services. I mean, Disney plus launched with that entire Disney library and it costs what, six bucks a month? Well, yeah, and now they're up to 18 bucks without ads.
- [08:20]
C
No, Netflix relative to the peers has still been the best deal because all these other services have raised prices without really boosting their programmin spend that much. Other than if you include sports for, you know, Peacock and adding the NBA and things like that, I do think
- [08:35]
B
you kind of have to include that. I mean, Disney always talks about how their spend is actually more if you include all the sports rights for espn, but again, they bifurcate that into a different service. And you can't just sign up for Disney and get all the sports.
- [08:50]
C
Well, and if you get the full Disney bundle, it's far and away the most expensive product of these streaming services.
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B
Well, that gets me to my next question. Is Netflix more or less likely to do one of these bundles now that they are getting so up there in their pricing? Does this make it more likely that they will do a partnership? Now, bundles do exist a lot of the third.
- [09:13]
C
Well, define bundles because they have some bundles already.
- [09:16]
B
Well, but they have them through other external services like Xfinity and T Mobile and Verizon. They bundle them.
- [09:25]
C
Didn't they do some experiment of co selling with someone?
- [09:28]
B
The fact is Netflix has been somewhat of an outlier on its willingness to bundle and for obvious reasons, they don't need to. They are the market leader. Amazon would love to sell Netflix with other services via Amazon Prime Video. And they can't. They can't sell Netflix because Netflix does not want to give away money to Amazon for selling its product. Do you think that now that the price of Netflix has reached $20 a month that they are more or less likely to bundle?
- [09:58]
C
I don't know that that's going to affect how they approach bundling. I think that, I think that they are looking for opportunities, especially abroad, to combine with or to Fold in local players that can't compete in streaming. Right. They did that deal in France with TF1. They have some deals in Korea. I think they can just keep rolling. They can look across the world and be like, oh, you're a big TV network in Brazil or Mexico or England and you don't have the resources to compete in streaming, so just make us your streaming service. That feels like their answer to kind of the Amazon channels business. That has worked so well for them. But I guess they could. Netflix would have to do research on how much they thought that they would benefit from bundling with Peacock. Right, right. And also Netflix would probably say to Peacock, okay, your turn is bad, our turn is good. We can do a bundle. But you know, who's taking a price cut? You're taking a price cut. We're going to still get the same amount. You're going to benefit more from our scale than we benefit from your programming.
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B
Yeah. It's like when Disney released Marvel movies in theaters. They were like, yeah, we'll give you three Marvel movies a year, but we want 70% of the first weekend box office. If you do. If we. We're going to do this. And what kind of leverage do you have if you're the theaters or if you're Peacock in this situation? If you want to get in bed with the biggest player, you gotta pay up.
- [11:21]
C
Yeah. For Netflix, it's. What are they missing that they need to offer in a bundle? Right. Okay. They don't have a robust sports offering, so if they wanted to partner with someone who offers sports, maybe that would work otherwise, like, because of the Pay one movies. They have a lot of movies. You know, we can argue over whether their shows are good or not, but from a volume and a breadth perspective, they kind of have everything. So I don't know what they're. I don't know what they're going to gain from partnering with HBO or. Which probably won't happen now in a, In a Warner Mount Universe, but I,
- [11:52]
B
I think it's sports. I mean, as much as they've dabbled, they still don't have that return every day or return every few days for sports. And they've explicitly gone the other direction in sports. They're trying to eventize everything. Which leads us to our second topic.
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C
Well, hold on. Can we. Can I. What about a, a Netflix Fox 1 partnership? I. Because there's no way Disney is going to do an ESPN deal with them. But wouldn't. Fox is probably the second biggest sports rights holder. They have no scale in streaming and
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B
it would give people a reason to tune into Netflix on a Sunday afternoon, which we typically don't.
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D
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- [13:59]
E
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B
Let's get to MLB opening day. Did you watch and what did you think of the Netflix broadcast?
- [14:37]
C
Did I watch the Netflix broadcast? Yeah, I tuned in for a little bit just to see what it was, and I. I've seen clips online.
- [14:45]
B
And you immediately tuned out?
- [14:47]
C
No, I just think I was going to actual Dodger opening day the next night, and I didn't really care about watching a Yankees Giants blowout.
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B
Yeah, well, that's the problem is Netflix tried to turn opening day into a big event when, you know, baseball is 162 games. It's just tonnage. People watch it as background in their lives. They don't consider it to be an event. And it was a blowout game and they were doing all these stunts. They had a WWE wrestler there. They had constant promos for their other shows. Jason Bateman did a hype video for the seventh inning stretch. Like, yeah, he's the Tom Cruise of Netflix. But he's. It just didn't work. It doesn't. Baseball is not eventized like that. So I feel like the fan backlash was justified. Netflix probably doesn't care. It's so small for them, but they did try to do something different, and I'm not sure it worked.
- [15:41]
C
Well, I would say two. Two things on that. One, anyone talking about a March 26 or whatever it was baseball game is a plus for Major League Baseball because it's in the middle of March Madness and nobody really would have cared about a Yankees Giants game. But more to the point, I think the opening day for them was about one telling the customer, we have baseball because what they wanted was Home Run Derby. But I think they felt like if they just had Home Run Derby, that would be weird. And so you take opening day, you say, hey, we have a little baseball, you try some things. You are very comfortable with it. Obviously you would rather that it, you know, work and everyone love it. But then, you know, what does and doesn't work for. For Home Run Derby. I think Home Run Derby is the real test.
- [16:24]
B
You put Bert Kreischer in the ocean and hopefully there'll be a home run ball to him, which there wasn't. Yeah. So I agree. The Home Run Derby is what they want. I mean, they're getting this Field of Dreams game as well. But, you know, my colleague John Arand reported that advertisers were not really convinced by Netflix's sell that this was an event.
- [16:48]
C
Yeah, who cares about one baseball game? And also, if you were to have it, wouldn't you want that opening day game on Netflix? Not. And I'm not saying this because I'm a fan. Wouldn't you want it to have the Dodgers, the two time defending champions with the most famous baseball player in the world?
- [17:02]
B
You might, yeah. But you know, the Yankees aren't bad and the schedule didn't match up that way. They just didn't have the schedule match up.
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C
Well, that's fungible, I guess.
- [17:10]
B
Yeah. But it does get to this question of where MLB is right now. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Not just because you and I are fans, we're trying not to get into the nitty gritty here. But objectively looking from a sports rights perspective at a very interesting time for sports rights negotiations, baseball seems to be on a roll. The wbc, the World Baseball Classic ratings. This is a tournament every three years amongst teams from around the world. The ratings were insane. 10.8 million people tuned in on Fox and Fox Deportes for the final. That is more than double the previous championship game, which did not have the U.S. no, it did have the U.S. it was U.S. japan. And the numbers for the regular games during the WBC were way up. Opening day is now on Netflix. They had three primetime national games during opening week. It seems like baseball, with the rule changes and everything that's going on has been doing the right things for their ratings. Yet still there are challenges in this environment when, when you're not the NFL.
- [18:19]
C
Yeah, well, they fixed a lot of broken parts of the sport that it took them way too long to fix. You know, they address pace of play with the pitch clock and some of the other tweaks around, you know, starting someone on second, second base in the extra innings, which I still don't love. And I think the, you know, people are having fun with the, the kind of the robot balls and strikes because it's making players look, look stupid. It's making umpires look stupid.
- [18:43]
B
Finally, you can dunk on an umpire when you know that you're right and the umpire got it wrong and then the computer backs you up within 10 seconds.
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C
But you're right that, well, one, the rating for the big games are good. I saw someone break down the ratings for kind of like local baseball I think is still worse than local basketball. Or at least the average basketball game is still out drawing baseball. But the real problem for baseball is that the RSN business, the regional sports network business is collapsing. So I think now more than like half the teams have the league handling their local media deal. And that'd be fine if you trusted the league to take all the rights and create one product for People to pay for and watch their local games. But there are big market teams like the Dodgers and the Yankees that don't have interest in participating. And so you just have a bunch of teams getting less money from their media than they used to. And the really big problem is that basically everyone agrees that there's going to be a lockout next year. And so you have baseball. And I think you're right. Popularity cresting.
- [19:41]
B
The World series was like 25 million viewers for that final game. That is insane for baseball.
- [19:46]
C
Well, you have the two best players in the world on the two most famous teams in the sport. And even though they're both kind of boring, like it still means.
- [19:54]
B
How dare you.
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C
It means that they're very compelling.
- [19:57]
B
How dare you say that about Shohei Otani. I, I, I will give you that Aaron Judge is boring. I will not give you that Shohei Otani is boring. But I, I agree with you that they finally have this momentum and they're probably going to have a lockout which will kill the whole thing. But the rights deals are up in 28 and what seems to be happening is MLB is getting all of these rights together. They have these two year deals. You know, Sunday night baseball just moved to NBC from ESPN and they're kind of experimenting right now. There was a joke, I think it was the Onion or Babylon be like that said that, you know, every inning of a baseball game is going to be on a different streaming service. It does feel that way because with Netflix and then the Friday night games were on Apple and then Saturday was on Fox and FS1 and then there's games on TBS and then there's your local games and then NBC has Sunday night. It feels like they are scattering all these rights all over. And the goal, I think is to have some kind of NBA style moment in 2028 where they can take majority of these rights to the market and hopefully get some massive deals like the NBA did. The question is, is that possible with the NFL also looming over the shoulder of all of these media companies?
- [21:11]
C
Makes it harder. But I think the lockout is as big, if not a bigger challenge. If there's no baseball next year, their leverage or their value in those negotiations goes down because people will be worried about falling interest. Look, it's kind of pointless to compare the NFL to any of these other sports. It's just so much bigger and so much more popular. And so yes, if you're a media company, you're going to prioritize having or keeping the NFL. And we've reached a point where almost every major company has NFL rights. But baseball being in a good spot means, you know, between Disney, espn, Comcast, NBC, maybe it's Amazon, maybe it's Netflix, they can probably get some takers. There's just a lot of baseball. And so the bigger issue for them is what do they do with all those local games and who's going to have them?
- [21:56]
B
Yeah, one of the interesting things about this three year deal that MLB did, which runs through 28, is ESPN is still paying 550 million. NBC is paying 200 million for the Sunday night games. Netflix is paying 50 million for the three games that they get. But ESPN is now handling a lot of the local rights for mlb. That kind of puts ESPN in a different position than it was where it was just a broadcast partner. That was Aaron. National games.
- [22:28]
C
Well, they traded Sunday Night baseball, which they had had for decades, for those local rights because they are trying to make their service, their streaming service. Espn, formerly known as flagship, the must have sports streaming service for any fan. Right. And so what does a sports fan care most about, especially when it comes to baseball, is their local rights. And so if you're, you know, if you're a Cardinals, Diamondbacks Marlins fan, knowing that you can get your local games on ESPN means you're way more likely to pay. I do think it's more powerful than having Sunday Night Baseball because baseball is just not. Despite what we said about the strong ratings for some of these big events, it's still a local regional sport more than a national one. People aren't.
- [23:12]
B
And it's a tonnage. It's a tonnage game where you want to be able to offer something every day. And honestly, for a lot of these smaller markets where the rights are in play, they're not going to be on Sunday Night Baseball that often anyways because they don't, you know, unless they're playing the Dodgers or Yankees or Red Sox or Cubs, these big market teams that rate on national games, they're just not going to be there. So now ESPN can get those customers through the local games.
- [23:39]
C
That'd be funny if for Sunday night baseball they just decided we're going to have these four teams on every single time.
- [23:45]
B
What do you mean if they just
- [23:46]
C
decided, okay, for Sunday night tournament? No, no, no, no. Whatever their game is, like we don't care who they're playing. People care. Like people would care more about watching Dodgers Rockies than they would a legitimately like good Mariners Astros game.
- [24:02]
F
I mean, that basically happens in the NFL. I mean, it's just like Chiefs, Cowboys, Eagles, every Sunday night.
- [24:07]
B
It's funny, though, because my parents are Dodgers fans and they live in Arizona and they can watch almost as many Dodger games as I can in the market with the tees, because M has Dodgers on all the time. They're always the Fox game. They're always Sunday Night baseball. Not always, but a lot. And it ends up that because the Dodgers have the most popular players that they end up on national TV at least once a week.
- [24:32]
C
I'm proud of you for managing to to work in a podcast episode devoted at least 50% to the Dodgers so far into the baseball or so soon in the baseball season.
- [24:43]
B
As we say on this show, our personal preferences do not matter. But this is actually a big business issue.
- [24:49]
C
I did. It was a Babylon B that you were referencing. And on the one hand, very funny. On the other hand, I've been thinking about this. Like, people like to complain that there's too many different streaming services, but a lot of those people who like to complain that there are too many different streaming services also then get upset about too much consolidation in media and too much power and prices going up. And, like, you kind of have to pick one, right? There's either going to be a lot of services competing for your attention at less money or fewer services, but they'll have more power, they'll charge you more, and you might not like it and so decide which one you want.
- [25:21]
B
Well, that gets back to the Netflix issue. This is not great evidence that, you know, the government should allow more consolidation because Netflix, the most powerful service, continues to raise its prices. I mean, they're all raising prices. And if you are a government regulator, you think you would look at that and say, well, maybe we should not allow that to happen if our interest is in protecting the consumer.
- [25:44]
C
Will there be a cable like, breaking point? Because I think there's going to be. We've all made jokes about over the years, especially with like bundling or whatever, about like, oh, we're just, this is going to be cable again and it's not. But I do think that we've sort of entered this phase of streaming where because it is the kind of most common way that people consume film and TV now, that and growth in terms. And because almost everyone pays for streaming services, that growth is no longer in signing up new customers, customers, it's making more from the ones that you have. And so the more you raise prices, the more ads, the more it starts to feel like that point. And cable, where it went from being a Product that people love to a product that people sort of like tolerated
- [26:28]
B
in the saturated markets, that's for sure, including this country. It's sort of a sign that it's already happened that the ad tiers are so popular, because in the beginning, the whole value proposition was, holy shit, I'm paying less than $10 for no ads and all of this content. And now it's like $20. Maybe I would consider the ad tier, especially if I don't watch the service a ton. Like the Amazon interface. Like, I'm totally fine with ads because I just don't watch that much Amazon.
- [27:03]
C
Right.
- [27:03]
B
And if the sports is on there that I do watch, there's going to be ads anyways. So why not just watch? You know, why not just pay for the ad tier? And I think that's what a lot of people are doing. And it turns out that for many of these services, that is actually a better business. So hence we have this dichotomy between ad free and ads. And I think that's going to continue. The chasm is going to continue to grow.
- [27:27]
C
Yeah.
- [27:28]
B
Ad free streaming will become a luxury product to the extent it not already is.
- [27:32]
C
Well, just like it used to be. Right? You got ad free on HBO and Showtime and Starz and everything else had ads. Even, you know, fx, amc, they produce these great shows. Mad Men had advertising. The Shield Rescue me had advertising.
- [27:47]
B
I know. And people just tolerate it. I hate it. I hate peacock with ads. I'm willing to spend on it, but you know what? I write it all off. All right, Lucas, thank you.
- [27:59]
C
Thanks, man.
- [28:01]
B
Okay, we are back with the call. Shit. We asked Lucas to stay for this one because he is a certified millennial Harry Potter fan. As is Craig. Are you a Harry Potter fan?
- [28:10]
F
Never read the books, never seen the movies.
- [28:12]
C
Oh, wow.
- [28:13]
B
Okay. So I'm glad we have Lucas here.
- [28:15]
F
Both ends of the spectrum here.
- [28:16]
C
We're disowning Craig.
- [28:18]
B
Honestly, I don't care about Harry Potter. I saw. I saw the first movie. I read the first book. I got it. Not for me, but this past week we saw the first trailer for the Harry Potter series that is coming to hbo. Fans thought it was emotional. Vulture called it Muggle slop. Where do you stand, Lucas, on the trailer?
- [28:41]
C
I guess the preface is that I have read all the books and watched all the movies multiple times each. I did not feel strongly either way. I guess I looked at it and it seemed like kind of more of what we've had before.
- [28:59]
B
Exactly.
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C
And I loved the books. I have come to appreciate the movies, more with time. They're sort of comfort food for me. And so it's gonna just depend on. On how good it is, right?
- [29:13]
B
No, it's not really. It's not gonna depend on how good it is. This is going. My prediction today is this is going to be the most watched television show in the history of streaming, not including Netflix shows. So for HBO Max, it is definitely gonna be their most watched show. I believe it's gonna probably surpass some of the Taylor Sheridan stuff and the, you know, the Amazon, Reacher and those kind of shows to be the biggest show on streaming that is not on Netflix.
- [29:42]
C
Certainly globally.
- [29:43]
B
Yeah, globally. I'm talking globally.
- [29:45]
C
You asked me how I felt about it. I was saying how I feel would depend on how good it is. I agree that the floor on this show is very high. It will be one of the 10 most popular shows of the year, no matter what.
- [29:55]
F
A lot of people are going to tune in. It's the ultimate exploitation of millennial nostalgia. This is like the.
- [29:59]
B
But it's. Isn't that sad. It's just that this is like millennial culture being thrown into a blender and then served back to them like an Erewhon smoothie.
- [30:09]
F
The friends I have that are big Harry Potter fans say that this just looks like the exact same thing and that it's. It's just a TV version that is beat for beat, the same as the. As the movies. And it's. It's very hard to take a beloved movie and turn it into a TV show, or take a beloved TV show and turn it into a movie, not counting the fact that there's also a book like, this is the third iteration of the same story.
- [30:30]
B
Well, there will be more. And I can already see the HBO narrative on this. They're going to say, well, you know, we changed this and we changed that and we added greater depth and we made it an HBO version. And it's like, okay, whatever. It's still going to hit the same beats, still going to have the moment when Harry and Hermione meet, still going to have the train leaving. It's like, all you're saying that's going to work.
- [30:53]
F
You're saying it's going to work, but
- [30:55]
B
it's going to work. And it's going to make me sad, but I know exactly what this is going to do and how it's going to play out for the next eight years. And it's going to justify all the many tens of millions of dollars that they have spent. And Hollywood is going to Learn the exact wrong lesson from this and it's going to be a huge David Zaslav moment.
- [31:14]
C
Okay, a few quick things. One, they have to stick to the books and to the story because that is what J.K. rowling demands. It's one of the only ways they get these things off the ground is to get her to sign off on it. They can't deviate too much. 2. TV show versus movie. Big difference. One of the criticisms, at least from fans of the books, was that the movies had to condense and cut out a lot. You do have a lot more room to explore in a ten hour season than in a two and a half hour movie. The other thing I'd say is the millennial snot blender Slop blender. Erewhon reference or Erewhon smoothie.
- [31:49]
B
You're offended.
- [31:50]
C
That's just culture in gen. No, no, I'm not saying I'm a fan, but like, think about what we're getting. Okay? Biggest movie of a couple years ago, Barbie, which is just what we all played with growing up, but reimagined. Biggest movie of last year. Two years ago, Super Mario Bros. The video game we all played reimagined.
- [32:06]
B
It's all the same shit. There had never been an animated Super Mario movie. There had never been a live action Barbie movie.
- [32:13]
C
I just think they're taking properties that were popular in the 90s and knowing that that can work. Right? We had a phase where they were remaking everything from the 80s. We have a phase where they're now remaking a lot of stuff from the 90s. 90s fashion is back with younger people. This, some of this stuff is just. I'm not excusing it. It's just cyclical culture bullshit.
- [32:31]
B
I know, and trust me, I am not criticizing HBO for doing this. I know exactly why they are doing this. What I am doing is I am trying to head off their narrative in which they try to elevate this into something that it is not just say it. We are regurgitating this because that, that is what people want.
- [32:53]
F
Well, they're not going to say that. Why would they say that?
- [32:55]
B
We added some more stuff. We filled it out. This is, you know, this is the, the millennial version of remaking the hits. And that's fine.
- [33:06]
F
We're just in a weird place now. There's almost an uncanny valley to this trailer where because it's recreating something that was already in the modern era, it feels weird to see it again. Like the original Harry Potters had CGI and the original Harry Potters are in the 2000s, so it's.
- [33:20]
B
And they look better. This doesn't look as good. It looks kind of drained and drab.
- [33:24]
F
It's not some 70s IP that they're recreating with all of this modern stuff that makes it look totally different. It does feel similar visually, which is odd.
- [33:32]
C
The budget for this is obviously lower than the budget for those movies.
- [33:36]
F
Million a season.
- [33:37]
B
I mean, it's 100 million a season is average. I bet it's way more than that. Yeah. They have not. There's some false information on the Internet about this. We do not know what the budget
- [33:45]
C
is, but let's say it's even 200 million a season or 250 million a season on an hourly basis. Much cheaper than those movies.
- [33:52]
B
Yes, Ted Saran is would give his right arm for a Harry Potter show. So we know. We know it will justify whatever they're spending.
- [34:00]
F
So you're saying the most popular non Netflix show ever or just on hbo, you're saying.
- [34:04]
B
I'm saying this will be the most viewed non Netflix show of all time. Okay. That is my prediction. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horbeck, artist Jon Jones, and I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.
- [34:22]
E
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