← The Town with Matthew Belloni
The Town with Matthew Belloni
Paramount Now Belongs to David Ellison. What Will He Do With It?
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- [00:00]
Matt Bellany
If you care about Hollywood, and I assume you do, if you're listening to the Town, you should really be getting the whole story about Hollywood. That's what you get with Puck. I'm a founding partner Puck and I write a newsletter called what I'm Hearing. It's got exclusive news for insiders and analysis of the biggest stories. Puck has a bunch of great journalists. We just hired Kim Masters, who also covers Hollywood from the inside, plus media, sports, fashion, politics and finance. It's a must have for plugged in people. Fans of the Town get a discount on the description page of this episode or at Puck News thetown. Go further into Hollywood by becoming a Puck member today. This episode is brought to you by FX's alien Earth. From creator Noah Hawley and executive producer Ridley Scott comes the first television series inspired by the legendary Alien film franchise. A spaceship crash lands on Earth, bringing five unique and deadly species more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined. And a technological advancement marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. FX's Alien Earth premieres August 12th on FX and Hulu. Amazon Pharmacy Presents Painful Thoughts I read.
- [01:10]
Lucas Shaw
Somewhere that the average American spends 13 hours a year waiting in pharmacies for prescriptions. Clearly I am above average. I thought being above average would feel better. Hmm, maybe I'll read some greeting cards next time.
- [01:26]
Matt Bellany
Use Amazon Pharmacy. We deliver. And here's to being anything but average. Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful. It is Monday, July 28th if it seems like we've been talking forever about the Paramount sale and the federal government's pending approval of the deal, we kind of have this $8 billion sale of the company behind the Paramount movie studio, CBS cable channels. Paramount plus it was announced last July, a lifetime ago in the political world. But on Thursday it finally happened. The FCC issued an order greenlighting the transfer of the CBS broadcast license. The commissioner, Brendan Carr, he said he was satisfied that Paramount agreed to end its DEI programs and monitor CBS News for so called political bias. That was enough. That was the last big hurdle for the deal that will give David Ellison and his Skydance media control of the whole company is now expected to close on August 7th. And then what? We've been debating the politics of this deal for so long, but we haven't really discussed in detail what's going to happen, or at least what we think will happen based on our reporting and what the company and Ellison himself have said. Because changes are definitely afoot. Ellison and his deputy Jeff Shell, they've been putting together their plans for more than a Year. We know Cindy Holland, the former Netflix executive, is going to run the TV group. George Cheeks will stay at cbs. Skydance executives will take over film. But what else? Lots of moving parts here and options are on the table. Most of all, questions are being asked. So that's what we're doing today. Actually, we recorded this on Friday, but it's running today. Lucas Shaw is here from Bloomberg and it's Paramount and Skydance on the brink. What's about to change and what are the biggest open questions from the ringer and Puck? I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. Okay. We are here with Lukas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back, Lucas.
- [03:21]
Lucas Shaw
My final episode from New York.
- [03:23]
Matt Bellany
Oh, you're coming back. You know, you missed beautiful weather. It's like perfect here. I'm feeling very superior to everyone sweating their ass off on the east Coast. All right, we're talking Paramount today because finally, a year after this deal was announced, finally the FCC has given the go ahead. The order came down. Brendan Carr has approved the transfer of the license of cbs, which was the final held up for this deal expected to close within the next couple weeks. The Ellison's, barring some last minute surprise or a possible south park episode that directly, you know, takes down Donald Trump even more. I'm kidding. They will own this company. So that raises a lot of questions. And I want to go through some of the top questions with you because I think we can tease out some of the issues that they are facing immediately. And we both know they have a plan. They've been sitting on this plan for a year. They have executives that are lined up to come in. They have not officially announced yet, but you and I know pretty much who they are. And there are tricklings of the plan that have leaked out, but not the official. This is what's happening. So let's go through the questions. You want me to start or do you want to start?
- [04:45]
Lucas Shaw
I'm happy to start. I feel like the first one is sort of obvious.
- [04:48]
Matt Bellany
Yes.
- [04:49]
Lucas Shaw
What the fuck is the streaming strategy?
- [04:53]
Matt Bellany
Okay. Yeah. That is, I think, the future of this company. We both agree. They say they have one. They say that they are. What was the line that Ellison gave? Like, we are, you know, blend the best of an old media company with the best of a new media company. Leaning on his father with Oracle. They do have a deal with Oracle that they have announced.
- [05:15]
Lucas Shaw
No, they didn't announce it.
- [05:16]
Matt Bellany
They didn't announce it.
- [05:17]
Lucas Shaw
We reported it, but they have not announced it.
- [05:19]
Matt Bellany
Oh, okay. So you announce you reported it. I did not get any pushback from them when I mentioned it. So I'm assuming that is coming. But they will have a deal for technology infrastructure with Oracle, which, you know, Paramount was not at the forefront of the technological innovation category. But it doesn't say what they're actually going to do with Paramount. What do you think they're going to do? Well, merge Paramount plus and Pluto tv, that's the first thing, right?
- [05:50]
Lucas Shaw
I don't know that they will do that. So there are a lot of questions they face. One, do they go it alone or do a joint venture with someone else? I think the previous regime was more interested in a joint venture and maybe folding it into something like Amazon. They talked to Amazon, Amazon or HBO Max or something. I don't see that happening with David Ellison. He believes that he can bring the tech bona fides to make them a player. And also if you're going to kind of buy this company and then basically get rid of the growing part of it or merge it with someone else, what exactly are you buying? The combination of Paramount plus and Pluto. I think there will be a combination on the back end. No question.
- [06:29]
Matt Bellany
That's the fast service. By the way. That is their free ad supported.
- [06:31]
Lucas Shaw
Free ad supported. That was once the market leader and has since lost a lot of ground, mostly because of underinvestment because Paramount put all its money into Paramount Plus. I don't know whether they will actually merge the front end, which means that there's only one service you go to because if you do that you probably lose a lot of customers. It's very expensive, it takes a lot of time. It's totally possible. There will be, there's will undeniably be greater integration of Paramount plus and Pluto. I don't know that there will be an outright merger.
- [06:56]
Matt Bellany
Doesn't long term, doesn't it make sense to have one brand, one service free? You know, it's like the, the good, better, best strategy. Good is the free channel, better is Paramount plus with ads and Best is Paramount plus without ads. Like, doesn't that seem like a more integrated service? Amazon Prime Video had a separate fast service in Freevee and they had IMDb TV previously and they have now integrated that into Prime Video as one service. They didn't do the free tier, although Amazon is arguably free to people who subscribe for shopping. But that to me seems like a cleaner strategy. But you're right, more expensive to integrate.
- [07:39]
Lucas Shaw
What is the programming strategy? Right, because right now the Paramount plus audience or their most popular stuff is basically football and Taylor Sheridan, where there's a lot of overlap between those shows. Right.
- [07:51]
Matt Bellany
CBS shows do well, too.
- [07:53]
Lucas Shaw
CBS shows, a little bit of animation. But Cindy Holland, who's coming in and is going to run streaming, she was the number two under Ted Sarandos for a large chunk of Netflix's history. And her strength as a programming executive, she has. Everyone thinks she has phenomenal taste and phenomenal relationships. But. But the types of shows that she's known for are pretty different from the core audience of the Paramount plus service. And so, in fact, the core audience of the Paramount plus service is sort of like what Bella Bajeri is doing at Netflix now.
- [08:26]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. So can Cindy change or does Paramount plus change? That was going to be one of my questions.
- [08:33]
Lucas Shaw
Right. Which is a corollary to what the fuck is the streaming strategy.
- [08:36]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. We'll move on to my first question here. My first question. I'm going to start with the end question here. What else are they buying? Because I actually think this is the start. This is not the end of this process. And now David Ellison owns Paramount and cbs, and he's going to be happy running these businesses for the next 40 years. I think he sees himself as a version of the new Sumner Redstone or Rupert Murdoch or who took very small media assets and built conglomerates out of them. I think he sees himself as having unlimited money. His father is second richest man in the world. Last I checked. He's 80 years old. He's not gonna be around forever. And he's gonna use Paramount as the first of many things that he will buy and try to create the modern media conglomerate for the 21st century.
- [09:34]
Lucas Shaw
See, I had as a question, what else? Or not what else? But what are you going to sell?
- [09:38]
Matt Bellany
But that's separate. Let's do. What are you going to buy?
- [09:40]
Lucas Shaw
The problem with the comparison to Rupert Murdoch or to Sumner Redstone, setting aside any family dynamics you want to get into, is that they both got into certain industries at, if not the start, the beginning of the boom. Right. You know, Sumner Redstone got into cable at the beginning, basically. Rupert Murdoch got into newspapers right before one of the greatest eras in the greatest era in its history. He got into cable television and movies right before really good eras. David Ellison is inheriting a shrinking business, so it makes it a little bit more difficult to use that, but with.
- [10:17]
Matt Bellany
Unlimited funding and with an. I mean, his dad is talking about buying TikTok, so maybe TikTok becomes part of the Paramount conglomerate.
- [10:26]
Lucas Shaw
The part that makes it different is the family checkbook. And how that may or may not be used right now. It's not a liquid checkbook. I don't believe a lot of that net worth comes from holdings in Oracle. But sure, if you were to look at what does a forward thinking media company buy in this day and age, it would be buying something in social media, it'd be buying something in gaming, it'd be buying something in AI, maybe buying something in sports. You certainly wouldn't add more film and television assets to it.
- [10:59]
Matt Bellany
No. Maybe a creator agency, maybe some big YouTube properties. Like it's an interesting question, like what would you buy with unlimited money trying to build the new News Corp or the new Viacom? Because those guys were visionary when they, when they had their assets. Sumner Redstone had a movie theater chain and he realized it television was a thing. So he got into that business and he bought Paramount, then he bought cbs and all of a sudden he's at one point the biggest media mogul in the world. Same with Rupert Murdoch. Like Fox didn't just happen. He decided there could be a fourth network and went after it and succeeded. Like what's the modern version of that?
- [11:38]
Lucas Shaw
It's not quite the same. We got a little bit of a teaser of this when Blackstone gave Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs who came from Disney a large checkbook to go out and build an independent studio. And they bought a Hollywood production company in hello Sunshine, they bought a YouTube company in Moonbug, they bought a social adjacent company in Attention, they bought a couple of international media assets in exile and I forget the name of the Israeli company and it didn't work. Far away road far away. Now, the Moonbug acquisition, setting price aside, great business that they bought, fine. The rest of it isn't quite the same. And the que. But this I guess gets to a question for David Ellison and first Paramount. Are you a studio at your core or are you a platform company at your core?
- [12:24]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, production or distribution or both.
- [12:27]
Lucas Shaw
If you're production you would go out and buy like IP, you'd buy library, you'd buy YouTube channels, you'd buy that. If you're a distribution play, it's totally different.
- [12:35]
Matt Bellany
And I would argue that with unlimited money you have the luxury of at least trying to become a platform. So far the outlets, the companies that are sticking with the production business are doing so mostly because they don't have the scale and they don't have the wherewithal to compete. And Blackstone gave Candle Media, what was it, $5 billion? Like the Ellison fortune is much larger than that. So maybe there is a path where paramount merges with TikTok at some point or they go after a big platform that is emerging and they grow it with the content of Paramount, something like that.
- [13:14]
Lucas Shaw
Paramount can't really merge with TikTok or whatever.
- [13:17]
Matt Bellany
The US business of TikTok, the core.
- [13:19]
Lucas Shaw
Of TikTok, is not getting sold. So this is all a little bit of, you know what I'm saying, where.
- [13:23]
Matt Bellany
They have some relationship or they have a, you know, some kind of a preferred status or whatever, or maybe TikTok buys Spar. I don't know. All right, so let's move on to.
- [13:32]
Lucas Shaw
What will you sell?
- [13:33]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, let's just go to what would you sell? So you can start with what would you sell?
- [13:36]
Lucas Shaw
I mean, it's all the cable networks, but the question is, can they find a buyer?
- [13:41]
Matt Bellany
I think the three are bet, Comedy Central, and mtv, that have value, have name recognition. Some rich Gen X guy might say, wait, I can own mtv.
- [13:57]
Lucas Shaw
Mtv. I think. I think MTV is the weakest of the three because.
- [14:00]
Matt Bellany
Oh, it is. It is.
- [14:01]
Lucas Shaw
I just don't. I just don't know what it is anymore. BET at least kind of knows what it is. Comedy Central, even though they only have really two shows, it knows what it is. It has a brand. Yeah, there were people who tried to buy bet. There were people who kicked around Comedy Central.
- [14:16]
Matt Bellany
I know. It's funny to think that There was a $3 billion offer for Showtime.
- [14:21]
Lucas Shaw
Unbelievable.
- [14:22]
Matt Bellany
And now what is Showtime?
- [14:23]
Lucas Shaw
It is an appendage to Paramount.
- [14:25]
Matt Bellany
Plus barely. Barely an appendage. We'll see when they do the fifth Billions spinoff. And Dexter, Didn't Dexter die? How is he back?
- [14:34]
Lucas Shaw
You know, people die and come back. That's the beauty of. That's the beauty of the entertainment business. Characters never die.
- [14:40]
Matt Bellany
They never die. If you have a media conglomerate to feed that desperately needs some kind of a justification for their characters carriage on cable systems. Okay, so you think that they are going to be sold individually or are they going to do the Comcast strategy and float all of these cable networks into a spinoff that they can load with debt and they can make them go away. And all of a sudden Paramount is a studio and streamer company and cbs.
- [15:12]
Lucas Shaw
The problem for them is they are the single most exposed company in terms of cable networks. It accounts, I believe, for the largest share of their revenue and profit of any of these companies. And so I don't think they can. They can't get rid of all of them because then all they have left is Their movie studio and a streaming service and Warner Brothers Discovery has done it, but their studio is much larger. In particular, their television studio is much bigger. And their streaming service includes hbo, which is a TV network that makes a lot of money. So, you know, I guess they could spin off some of them into something that people buy. I think.
- [15:48]
Matt Bellany
I think there's also value in having some of them because of the packages they can do with carriers where you leverage CBS because there's retrans fees associated with cbs and you package in some of these old Viacom networks with them and you might get more value than someone might get without a cbs. Because they have NFL.
- [16:07]
Lucas Shaw
I think it would make more sense to sell them individually because you need people who want the individual brand. I don't think BET and Comedy Central together gets you much of anything.
- [16:16]
Matt Bellany
So beyond cable, what else do they sell? Anything else?
- [16:19]
Lucas Shaw
I mean, real estate.
- [16:20]
Matt Bellany
Ed Sullivan Theater is gone. They're selling that.
- [16:23]
Lucas Shaw
They still have some international media assets that they could sell if they wanted to.
- [16:32]
Craig Horlbeck
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- [17:42]
Matt Bellany
My next question, what the hell is a CBS News ombudsman going to do? That was one of the concessions that they made to Brendan Carr and the FCC is that not only will they eliminate their DEI programs, but they will add a viewer representative. Ombudsman to CBS News to monitor bias, wokeness, whatever you want to call it. And what? Report back to the authorities, go public. What is the Ombudsman at CBS News going to do?
- [18:16]
Lucas Shaw
Well, it's that second part that's the problem. Right. Having an Ombudsman is not particularly uncommon.
- [18:23]
Matt Bellany
No. Well, these days it is, but newspapers used to have them a lot.
- [18:26]
Lucas Shaw
Right. The problem is to whom is the Ombudsman going to report? Right. Are we going to have the government vetting this at all? Vetting the news reports from cbs? Because that you don't want.
- [18:39]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And what happens if the Ombudsman sits in a meeting and someone says, you know what? These Trump people screw them. And then the ombudsman goes and tells Brendan Carr. What are they going to do?
- [18:49]
Lucas Shaw
Don't know.
- [18:50]
Matt Bellany
Can you imagine someone that would be more hated at the office than the Ombudsman, who is there only because of a government mandate?
- [18:58]
Lucas Shaw
And what happens when they bring in, like, let's say they buy the Free Press, which I don't think is going to happen, but let's say.
- [19:03]
Matt Bellany
Oh, you don't think it's going to happen? They're, they're negotiating. I mean, Barry Weiss has a very inflated sense of her value. I don't know that the Free press is worth 250 million.
- [19:11]
Lucas Shaw
I don't think that that would end well.
- [19:13]
Matt Bellany
Listen, the history of the media business is things that sounded great and did not end well.
- [19:18]
Lucas Shaw
I don't think it sounds great either. Not as a, not as a spite to the Free. I just. You're going to come in and fire thousands of people or hundreds of people and sell stuff and you're trying to overall. And at the same time, you're going to spend a couple hundred million dollars on a news organization that doesn't make money and like, is run by a controversial person who's going to alienate most of your journalists. It just, it, it feels like a recipe for disaster.
- [19:41]
Matt Bellany
And you know who would be hated more than the Ombudsman? Bari Weiss. Can you imagine 60 Minutes story meeting where Leslie Stahl is going over a story and all of a sudden Bari Weiss chimes in and says, you know, I think that could be perceived as a liberal slant on that story. Leslie Stahl would give her the double middle finger.
- [20:00]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah. I don't know what they do there, but I'm going to choose to believe this. This won't be as bad as everyone thinks it will be.
- [20:07]
Matt Bellany
You think it's just lip service that David Ellison was just dancing for the fcc, telling them whatever they want to hear and that he will get in there and just do what he wants and not kowtow to the administration anymore. Well, sort of. I think he wants Barry Weiss. I think he. He likes that brand of news. He likes that it's considered, quote, unquote, down the middle. I think he does like that. And he's interested in buying this.
- [20:32]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah. His interest in it signals to me that there are many clashes ahead between the leadership of this company and their news division because there's going to be an effort, not even pushed necessarily by the government, but by the leadership of the company to come in and say, we need to be more balanced in our coverage. And I. That never goes over well when you say that to a news organization.
- [20:58]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Especially the number one news magazine, 60 Minutes.
- [21:03]
Lucas Shaw
Right. But if you're. If you go and tell 60 Minutes, hey, you guys, we think you've either we think you've fallen off or we think that you're not as impartial as you used to say, yada yada, then you have a big problem.
- [21:15]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And CBS is a particularly prickly place. The culture of that place, from everybody I've talked to, is very unique. They just hired Bob Simon's daughter to be the executive producer of 60 Minutes and that it was received very well.
- [21:27]
Lucas Shaw
Inside the unit, seen as an encouraging sign.
- [21:31]
Matt Bellany
Yes. And they want David Rhodes to be the head of CBS News. We'll see if that deal ends up happening. But he previously ran CBS News, was not the most popular guy there, and was formerly at Fox, but at least he has experience in the building. So we'll see if that happens. All right, next big question.
- [21:47]
Lucas Shaw
Can your movie studio be relevant again?
- [21:51]
Matt Bellany
That's a good one. What do you mean by relevant? Do you mean profitable or do you mean like winning Best Picture more the former.
- [21:57]
Lucas Shaw
They have one or two big movies a year, but they have been one of, if not the lowest grossing movie studio for many, many years now. They don't make or release as many movies as most of their peers.
- [22:11]
Matt Bellany
And.
- [22:11]
Lucas Shaw
And even though Disney doesn't make a lot of movies, the few movies that Disney makes tend to be gigantic. Paramount makes like one or two big movies a year.
- [22:19]
Matt Bellany
They have singles and doubles when they.
- [22:20]
Lucas Shaw
Have hits and then a bunch of tiny movies. And their big movies are basically all Tom Cruise or Transformers or Transformers. Yeah. So David Ellison loves movies. Right. He spent most of his career financing and producing movies. He got started co financing Paramount movies. They know that they need to make this movie studio more competitive with its peers just in terms of the annual performance. But that's going to take a real investment and it's going to mean that they, they need to be more competitive in buying big packages and working with big filmmakers. And they're going to have to figure out if there's a way. I mean, we were talking about what should they buy? Like, is there a way to bring in more IP that means anything to people? Right. Like they don't have the same stable of franchises that some of these other studios have.
- [23:05]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, I could see them going after like a legendary or like one of these companies that has franchises attached to them to bring in some of those. And I could also see them, you know, this is his background. They've done franchise style movies with mixed success, less success than they would like to admit. But it gets to the question of talent, which was my next question is what big talent deals are they going to do? Because they are going to have to step up and I just wonder if they're going to do do a version of what Warner Brothers did when David Zaslav came in. I reported in my Puck newsletter last week that they're doing a big deal with Will Smith and his company to make movies for Paramount. Now he's sort of a damaged good right now just because the whole radioactivity around him. But he's proven at the box office that people will still show up for him. That to me is a kind of smart move. It's similar to what Warner's did when they did these big deals with Margot Robbie and Timothee Chalamet and Tom Cruise. Right. When David Zaslav came in. And I don't quite know what they got out of those other than just for the headlines of where, you know, we have a. You gave an office on the lot to Tom Cruise.
- [24:17]
Lucas Shaw
Well, they're getting a. That isn't Tom Cruise.
- [24:19]
Matt Bellany
They're getting the Inary two movie with Tom Cruise in it. But then they passed on his second movie deeper that he wanted to do with Ana de Armas. They were like, nope, too expensive for us. My point is they could have just hired him for the Inaritu movie. Maybe he wouldn't have done it for them. But it's a balance.
- [24:34]
Lucas Shaw
Some of it is also signaling. Right. The reason that Warner Brothers wanted to do all of that was partially because they felt that under the previous regime the Warner Brothers reputation had suffered.
- [24:45]
Matt Bellany
Yes. They lost Chris Nolan. You know, the whole.
- [24:48]
Lucas Shaw
They wanted to make it seen as a haven for top talent. It's one of the reasons they also did that Ryan Coogler deal on Sinners, which worked. Right. So are there versions of that that Paramount can do and go out and be in business with a couple of top filmmakers, a couple of top actors, people take some risks, take some swings?
- [25:09]
Matt Bellany
I think CAA and WME are going to salivate when this deal closes because they know they've got a window to pitch as many big, bold, expensive swings as they can and get Paramount to buy them, to send the message to the town that we are the big boy movie studio now. We're going to be in the mix for this stuff.
- [25:31]
Lucas Shaw
And a lot of those Warner Brothers deals were with caa. David Ellison is very close with Ari Emanuel, who runs WME or.
- [25:41]
Matt Bellany
Isn'T running wme, but still happens to be involved in every big deal they do, though.
- [25:46]
Lucas Shaw
Will Smith is a CAA client. Will WME use this as essentially their studio that they shove stuff through?
- [25:53]
Matt Bellany
Right. And that could work or it could not. But a good question. But getting back to that question of what big talent deals are they going to do? Do you think there's any lingering bad taste in the town's mouth over the south park situation and how contentious that was, and Ellison and Jeff Shell stepping in and basically saying, that massive deal you guys were negotiating, that is too rich. We want a shorter window, we want less money. Do you think that message was received in a damaging way around town?
- [26:28]
Lucas Shaw
I think the combo of the Colbert decision and the south park move means that they start on their back feet. And so if there are a couple of more missteps, then I think that.
- [26:40]
Matt Bellany
Like, if day one, they cancel the Daily show, right, I think it's going to be pitchforks in the street, or.
- [26:46]
Lucas Shaw
If there's some big blow up with Taylor Sheridan or some other talent. If there is another one of these, especially one Skydance is in charge, like, officially, then I think they have a problem. But if they do this stuff and it all ends up being like what we had to do to get the deal closed, and they come in and they start spending the money and they like, they don't do some of the stuff that David Zaslav did, then I think they're probably okay. But we'll see because they're going to have to cut a lot of costs, too. So it's one thing to, like go and spend a bunch of money to bring in talent and say you're there, but they're going to be doing that at the same time that they're going to be firing a lot of people and that's going to certainly sully the water.
- [27:24]
Matt Bellany
One thing I can almost guarantee David Ellison will not do is buy Robert Evans house and do a Vanity Fair photo spread.
- [27:33]
Lucas Shaw
He probably also won't host a party at Cannes with Graydon Carter.
- [27:37]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, no cream colored suits, I'm guessing.
- [27:40]
Lucas Shaw
I have one other insider, but they've positioned so the leadership of Paramount, David Ellison, the CEO, Jeff Shell. I forget if his official title is going to be president or whatever. He's essentially the number two. And they have positioned this as the same as Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. When Michael Eisner took over Disney in.
- [27:57]
Matt Bellany
The 80s and Frank Wells was like the brains.
- [28:00]
Lucas Shaw
Michael Eisner was young and creative visionary and I think had come out of more television or correct me if I'm wrong on that.
- [28:07]
Matt Bellany
No, he was at. He was at Paramount.
- [28:09]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, sorry, he's at Paramount. But he, he was the young hotshot and then they had like the steady hand who also understood the business better. And that is sort of how this is being presented. Do you think that that model makes sense and do you bet on that being stable long term?
- [28:23]
Matt Bellany
That makes sense in theory to me. But then Kim Masters reported that none of these big executives are going to be reporting to Jeff Shell. Many of them are going to be reporting to David Ellison. And that is a little bit confusing to me. I don't understand how that's going to work because Shell will have thoughts and they may not be the same thoughts that Cindy Holland has. And Cindy doesn't report to Jeff. She reports to David.
- [28:49]
Lucas Shaw
Right.
- [28:50]
Matt Bellany
So how's that going to work?
- [28:52]
Lucas Shaw
That is one of the reasons I'm asking the question.
- [28:54]
Matt Bellany
Okay, so we don't, we don't know. And we will. See, there's the redbird element of it all. Jerry Cardinale is sitting the background here. They're an investor. Maybe they buy him out. I don't know what's going to go on there. All right, Lucas, stick around for the call sheet. We are back with the call sheet. In addition to Lucas staying on Craig, how excited are you for Happy Gilmore 2? Is this a franchise that means something to you?
- [29:19]
Gabe Lebel
Well, I hate that you're calling it a franchise, but Happy Gilmore, the original, is one of my favorite comedies of all time.
- [29:24]
Matt Bellany
Oh, it is?
- [29:25]
Gabe Lebel
Yes.
- [29:25]
Matt Bellany
I thought that was like a Gen x thing. The 90s Sandler movies. We kind of. We own those.
- [29:31]
Gabe Lebel
No, that was like the VHS movies that you watched growing up.
- [29:35]
Lucas Shaw
I'm sorry, you think gen X owns 90s Sandler's movies.
- [29:39]
Gabe Lebel
Yeah, I was born in 94.
- [29:41]
Matt Bellany
My point is, I was in high school, in college then, and we were. We. Those were our movies. Sandler was our guy on snl.
- [29:49]
Lucas Shaw
I'll give you the SNL part. But millennials grew up with Sandler. Sandler make movies for seven year olds. I.
- [29:55]
Gabe Lebel
Well, yeah, like when I'm 12 years old. Happy Gilmore is huge for me. I can quote it, I think, more than any comedy ever.
- [30:01]
Matt Bellany
Okay, so we are going to try to predict where, if anywhere, Happy Gilmore 2 will fall on the Netflix top 10 most popular English language films of all time.
- [30:13]
Gabe Lebel
Is this minutes or hours viewed, or is this total accounts?
- [30:16]
Matt Bellany
This is views according to Netflix. So views is runtime divided by minutes viewed. So that equals a view, which, by.
- [30:26]
Gabe Lebel
The way, this movie is 26 minutes longer than the original.
- [30:30]
Matt Bellany
Oh, never a good sign, racking up.
- [30:33]
Gabe Lebel
Those viewers those hours.
- [30:34]
Matt Bellany
Well, they got a lot of cameos to get in there. Travis Kelce. They got Ken Jennings. All of them. All right, so let me just give you the list. The top 10 Netflix movies of all time list is Red Notice number one by far. Carry On. Don't look up. The Adam Project Bird Box, Back in Action. That's from this past year. Leave the World behind, the Gray Man, Damsel, and We Can Be Heroes. I don't even know what We Can.
- [31:00]
Gabe Lebel
Be Heroes is not exactly the Criterion Closet.
- [31:03]
Matt Bellany
No, it's not.
- [31:04]
Lucas Shaw
How many of those movies have you seen, Matt?
- [31:06]
Matt Bellany
Seven of them I have seen. Wow.
- [31:09]
Gabe Lebel
I've seen two of them.
- [31:11]
Matt Bellany
But. But a couple of them I saw just because I knew they were inexplicably popular on Netflix. So I figured I should probably know what Damsel is because everyone watched it in the first half of 2024. So, yeah, the lowest number of views on that top 10 list for We Can Be Heroes is 137.3 million views. So do we think that Happy Gilmore 2 will, first of all break this list?
- [31:39]
Gabe Lebel
I would say yes.
- [31:41]
Matt Bellany
You do think so. I actually don't think it will.
- [31:44]
Lucas Shaw
I'm leaning no.
- [31:45]
Matt Bellany
You are? Yeah. I'm leaning no because. Lucas, you want to say why it's.
- [31:49]
Gabe Lebel
Not an action movie?
- [31:50]
Lucas Shaw
No, no, no. I think it being a comedy is the reason, one of the big reasons it won't make the top 10. You look at that list. Back in Action, it's an action comedy that makes it. But they redid this. The best comp for this would be Beverly Hills Cop 4, where they took a classic action comedy from the 80s, brought back the original Star remade it and the numbers are okay.
- [32:13]
Matt Bellany
I don't know. Yeah. What did Beverly Hills Cop 4 get to?
- [32:17]
Lucas Shaw
Well, the problem is is that I have the total number of views. Like, I think The Netflix top 10 stops counting at a certain point.
- [32:25]
Matt Bellany
Right. It's for a certain period, but it.
- [32:27]
Lucas Shaw
Looks like Beverly Hills COP4 got about 111 million views in total as of the end of June.
- [32:34]
Matt Bellany
Okay. But the vast majority of those probably came within the window.
- [32:38]
Lucas Shaw
So let's say it was at about 100 million.
- [32:40]
Matt Bellany
Okay, so that did not make the list. Should we put the over under at 100 million?
- [32:45]
Lucas Shaw
No, I think it'll beat that because Sandler's a bigger global star at this point.
- [32:49]
Gabe Lebel
I don't know if that comp is apples to apples. I agree with you that looking at these top 10 action movies seem to do the best. This is a comedy. You have to like, know Happy Gilmore, I guess, to be interested in this. But Beverly Hills Cop 1, Eddie Murphy does not do the press, nor was he as famous culturally with young people as Adam Sandler is.
- [33:06]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, Sandler is multi generational. Doesn't feel like a throwback like Eddie Murphy does. No.
- [33:12]
Gabe Lebel
Beverly Hills cup was also 10 years earlier than Happy Gilmore. It was an older friend. It feels older.
- [33:17]
Lucas Shaw
But don't you think it's worth noting that there isn't a single Adam Sandler movie in that top 10, even though he's done a lot of Netflix movies?
- [33:25]
Gabe Lebel
That's a fair point.
- [33:26]
Matt Bellany
But Murder Mystery, that Jennifer Aniston movie, had a ton of views. That is not on the list.
- [33:31]
Gabe Lebel
I think they're marketing the shit out of this. And there is a million celebrity cameos, which Beverly Hills Cop also.
- [33:36]
Matt Bellany
You know what, Craig? They're marketing the shit out of it to you. I don't know that they're marketing it to the young girls that watched Damsel five times.
- [33:44]
Lucas Shaw
They also marketed the shit out of Beverly Hills Cop and it still didn't.
- [33:47]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. So let's set the over under at 100 million views in the next Netflix engagement report.
- [33:54]
Gabe Lebel
I'll take the over.
- [33:55]
Lucas Shaw
I'll take the over on 100.
- [33:57]
Matt Bellany
You are. I'm going to take the under.
- [33:59]
Lucas Shaw
You think it'll be less big than Beverly Hills Cop 4?
- [34:01]
Matt Bellany
I think it will be less big than Beverly Hills Cop 4. Yes.
- [34:04]
Gabe Lebel
Okay.
- [34:04]
Lucas Shaw
No, I think it'll top 100, but I don't think it'll get to the 138 it would need to make the top 10.
- [34:09]
Matt Bellany
I just think we are blinded by our love for this movie. And it's not as big as people.
- [34:15]
Gabe Lebel
Think, not as big as we can be heroes or the gray man or damsel.
- [34:20]
Matt Bellany
If only they'd put Billy Bobby Brown in this thing, then number one, she.
- [34:25]
Gabe Lebel
Might be in it.
- [34:25]
Matt Bellany
For all we know, she's doing another rom com for Netflix with the guy from Saturday night, your favorite movie, Gabe Lebel.
- [34:31]
Lucas Shaw
Oh, yeah.
- [34:31]
Gabe Lebel
Gabe Lebel.
- [34:32]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [34:32]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. I'm sure the pay disparity on that movie is astronomical in favor of Millie Bobby Brown.
- [34:39]
Gabe Lebel
Probably record setting for two leads.
- [34:41]
Matt Bellany
Exactly. It's like the old days of Hollywood where the actresses made nothing and the leading men made everything. It puts that to shame. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lukas Shaw, producer Craig Horlbeck, our editor Jesse Lopez. And I want to thank you. We will see you a couple more times this week.