← The Town with Matthew Belloni
The Town with Matthew Belloni
Paramount’s New Team, Fantastic Four’s Nosedive, YouTubers in Theaters, and Peacock’s Future
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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 of the Town is sponsored by Netflix presenting adolescents nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including outstanding Limited Series Writing, Directing and Casting. Stephen Graham is recognized for outstanding Writing alongside Jack Thorne and joins fellow acting nominees Owen Cooper and Aaron Doherty, Ashley Walters and Christine Trimarco. Deadline calls it a world changing phenomenon, while Forbes hails its bold single shot storytelling as a technical masterpiece adolescence for your Emmy consideration.
- [01:06]
Ben Mankiewicz
Hi, I'm Ben Mankiewicz and on this season of the Plot Thickens. We're going behind the scenes on a film whose history it's a little close to home. Cleopatra was my Uncle Joe's biggest gamble and his greatest failure. It had everything you could want in a Hollywood blockbuster, but the budget and and the on set love affair both went off the rails, creating a story even more dramatic than Cleopatra herself. The plot thickens. Cleopatra available now wherever you get your podcasts, visit tcm.com podcast to learn more.
- [01:37]
Matt Bellany
It is Monday, August 4th. It's officially the dog days of summer. I hope you're listening to this on your yacht. Craig and I are relaxing in the town's official above ground pool today, but there's actually been a decent amount of Hollywood business news lately. David Ellison, the about to be new owner of new Paramount, he announced his leadership team this morning, signaling a very different studio from Paramount under the Redstone family this past weekend. Marvel's Fantastic Four, Disney's big summer superhero movie, it dropped a very concerning 66% in its second weekend. That's on the high end for summer movies. It's now looking doubtful that it will beat Superman at the global box office or convince fans that Marvel is quote unquote back. Despite positive reviews and reactions on the streaming side, Peacock released subscriber numbers that were underwhelming to say the least. And Netflix finally has its first animated original film mega hit with K Pop Demon Hunters. That film crossed 100 million views and will likely become one of its top 10 biggest movies ever. Lots to talk about. So I thought I'd do a combo episode today with Lukas Shaw from Bloomberg. Let's call it our top five preoccupations of the late summer in Hollywood. From the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the Town. We are here with Lucas Shaw who is back from Bloomberg. Welcome, Lucas.
- [02:57]
Lucas Shaw
Great to be home.
- [02:58]
Matt Bellany
Great to be home. I know you are in la. I was out last week.
- [03:01]
Lucas Shaw
You were in another undisclosed location.
- [03:03]
Matt Bellany
I was. Thankfully, I missed the entire Sydney Sweeney discourse from last week that seems to have gone full circle all the way up to a social media post by the president at this point. Where are you on the Sydney Sweeney discourse?
- [03:17]
Lucas Shaw
I would like it to go away. I don't understand why we're talking about it and why we don't have to talk about it. I was very discouraged that a friend of mine sent a link to the sent me a link to the Babylon Bee about it, which was concerning.
- [03:32]
Matt Bellany
You put a link in your newsletter though, to some think piece. I'm like, when we've reached Atlantic and New York Times think pieces about a dumb social media scandal slash controversy, I think that the culture itself is dumber.
- [03:44]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [03:45]
Matt Bellany
Good for Fox News. They mentioned her a hundred times last week. I'm sure they showed video after video of her cavorting in her jeans. So good for them. All right, let's talk about the real news. I feel like August, we always say August is going to be the dead zone and then stuff happens. So lots going on. The Paramount transaction is going to close this week or next week. And this morning, hot off the presses, David Ellison announced his new executive reporting structure. Not much is new here. We kind of knew this. And I'm just going to rattle off the name Jeff Shell President Andy Gordon, who's the Redbird financial guy, he's the coo. George Cheeks is running all tv. Cindy Holland is running the streaming services Paramount plus and Pluto. Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, who was a Sony exec who used to work at Paramount. And they are the movie studio chairs.
- [04:37]
Lucas Shaw
Well, the studio in general.
- [04:39]
Matt Bellany
Oh, right. The studio in general over TV as well.
- [04:41]
Lucas Shaw
Dana also has tv. Josh does not, but has some somewhat ambiguous role as the head of or vice chair of platforms.
- [04:48]
Matt Bellany
Right. He's a marketing guy, so I assume that means he's going to be marketing all of the streaming shows as well as the movies.
- [04:55]
Lucas Shaw
I think there are probably some decisions about where projects land as part of distribution.
- [05:00]
Matt Bellany
Would be my guess, but yeah. Okay. So what are your takeaways? I have some takeaways from this. We've discussed this extensively and we know the challenges and we know that we're not going to rehash that. But what are the takeaways?
- [05:11]
Lucas Shaw
That there is pretty much no one from CBS or Viacom left in leadership at this company.
- [05:17]
Matt Bellany
So that is my first takeaway because I thought maybe they would keep Kai's hill Edgar, the coo. I mean, that guy has been involved in so many deals at that company. He really was the institutional knowledge. Everything from, you know, talent deals. He, he did the Matt and Trey deal. He's done Taylor Sheridan stuff. Like I thought they might keep one link to the former company so that they kind of knew precedents and knew what was going on, but nope, he's out as well.
- [05:47]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you look at it and it all makes sense. Right? So Kai's was part of the Chris McCarthy leadership team. And there's no love lost between Skydance and the Chris McCarthy part of that organization. So they're cleaning that out. Talking Tom Ryan, who was in charge of streaming, we already knew Cindy Holland was gonna be brought in to oversee that. George sheeks is the 1 high ranking person, but he wasn't like a Viacom or CBS lifer. He was brought in fairly recently from NBC.
- [06:13]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
- [06:14]
Lucas Shaw
To run CBS and then run broader Paramount. So yeah, there's just no institutional knowledge left at the top. And they would probably say that that's a good thing because they wanna like, you know, refresh and clean house.
- [06:25]
Matt Bellany
Oh yeah. If you look at the statement that Ellison put out, he said each member was chosen to align with our goals and with the intention to drive transformation. Keyword transformation. Together we will foster an environment where creative and technical talent collaborate seamlessly, marrying leading technologies with powerful storytelling and artistic vision to unlock Paramount's full potential and help shape the future of our industry. Okay, so he's leaning really hard on the technical talent aspect there. And we still don't know what that actually.
- [07:00]
Lucas Shaw
Have they brought in any technical talent. Cindy Holland is in charge of streaming and she's well regarded, but not for her technical prowess.
- [07:06]
Matt Bellany
No. She's a taste maker from the early days of Netflix and, you know, more power to her. They want to make different kinds of shows for Paramount, plus which juries out on whether that will work, on whether, you know, they have this lane with the Taylor Sheridan stuff and with the agency and these kind of meat and potatoes, big stars and Big, broad concept shows. She seems to want to go more niche, more upscale, more early Netflix. And maybe that'll work, maybe it won't work. But the technology thing is the question, like, what does that mean?
- [07:37]
Lucas Shaw
I'm waiting on them to explain. Other than the expected, I'd say mostly cleaning of the house, is there anything else that stood out to you?
- [07:45]
Matt Bellany
To me, the fact that George Cheeks, the. The CBS guy, is going to be the chair of TV Media, which is very specific title, and he's not going to touch the streaming stuff. He's only going to be in charge of CBS and the cable networks. To me, that seems to be positioning him as a potential CEO of a spinoff company if they choose to go that route. I don't know that they will. I think they're going to try to sell off some of these networks individually, like Comedy Central and MTV and bet. But if they decide to mimic the Comcast Versant strategy where they spin off these networks, or the Warner strategy where they, where they split these, I think George Cheeks would be a candidate to then float off with these linear assets and be the CEO of the SpinCo.
- [08:34]
Lucas Shaw
I remain skeptical that they're going to do that. Now. It might make sense, but they've communicated that they're interested in cbs, that they want that for the sports.
- [08:43]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And as you've reported and everybody has commented, this company, Paramount, is much more reliant on the revenue from that linear legacy business than some of these others like Comcast, which they have, you know, other businesses that float them. It would be a very difficult transaction and Warner seems to be pulling it off, or at least they have a narrative to pull it off, but it would be tough to do that. That. So that was my big takeaway. George Cheeks potentially position to float away. The other one is the film leadership. I think people are just kind of taking for granted that, oh, okay. The Skydance chief content officer, Dana Goldberg, is now going to be the head of the film studio and picking the movies. But if you look at the messaging from Skydance, it's all about how they want to be in the theatrical business at Paramount and how they want to keep grow and keep up doing theatrical style movies. Yet the past few years of Skydance movies, most of their movies have been for streaming. You know, they had the Apple deal and they had the Netflix deal for animation and they have a bunch of other streaming movies like Old Guard and the Gorge that were hits on their streaming services, but they haven't really done much theatrically.
- [10:01]
Lucas Shaw
Well, their theatrical movies are the Paramount ones. And that's pretty much it.
- [10:05]
Matt Bellany
Exactly. The legacy stuff that they've had help on from the Paramount studio. So now Dana Goldberg is going to be in charge of a theatrical slate when she hasn't really done that yet.
- [10:19]
Lucas Shaw
Just to be clear, the Skydance movie output is not some murderer's row of hit titles.
- [10:24]
Matt Bellany
That's true.
- [10:25]
Lucas Shaw
Even the ones that have done well, like the Gorge, would be more likely to get a Razzie nomination than an Oscar nomination.
- [10:31]
Matt Bellany
But it did pop up on the Nielsen chart for original movies. For Apple tv, I think it's a win.
- [10:37]
Lucas Shaw
Right. But I think a bunch of their other Apple movies have been less successful.
- [10:41]
Matt Bellany
Yes, that is true. And the notion that they are going to seamlessly transition into making theatrical movies, I think is tough. It's a stretch. All right, so we're talking about movies here. Let's go to our second preoccupation topic right now. And it's gotta be Marvel, right? These Fantastic Four numbers from this past weekend, $40 million weekend, down 66% domestic from the previous weekend. Now, little you know, Marvel tends to front load because all the super fans go, but the international numbers are softer than expected. It's at about 370 million worldwide right now. Superman, which had an extra two weeks, is now at 550 million worldwide. Probably going to outgrow Fantastic Four. Now, Superman, the marquee character. Fantastic Four, not a marquee character. But Marvel not used to losing to D.C. in a face off like this is. Our anxiety level on Marvel increased over the past two weeks. Mine has a little look.
- [11:44]
Lucas Shaw
I don't think it's a surprise that Superman's beating Fantastic Four. It should beat Fantastic Four. To your point, it is one of the best known comic book characters in the world. And Fantastic Four is a reboot of a franchise that wasn't super successful. But if you're Marvel and you're looking at it, and this is going to be the highest grossing Marvel movie of.
- [12:00]
Matt Bellany
The year and it's still going to be at about 500.
- [12:03]
Lucas Shaw
Right. And so you will have three movies that collectively get to like maybe 1,5 billion in total. That average, I'd say less than 500 per. That is not the result that you want. And they've all had, to your point, pretty heavy drop offs. All these movies have dropped, you know, between 50 and 70% domestically that second weekend, which means you have a lot of interest from the people who still want to go. But the average person is not going to the theater to see these movies in the way that they were five years ago.
- [12:34]
Matt Bellany
And the reviews are good. If I'm Kevin Feige, I'm worried because they delivered at least what the fans say they wanted. Because the fan scores were high, the cinema score was high, the critics liked this movie. And still it is struggling beyond the super fans. Which suggests that the average Joe Blow moviegoer has checked out on Marvel.
- [12:57]
Lucas Shaw
Right. And hasn't necessarily replaced it with anything at the movie theater.
- [13:01]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Although the F1 numbers pretty strong. Like F1 is likely going to beat Superman this summer. Are we prepared to call that?
- [13:10]
Lucas Shaw
Well, it depends on the IMAX re release. Superman will end its run, the initial run or the current run with more money. But it's very close. Superman's up by only a few million dollars. Like F1's just holding really well. Between it's only losing 20 to 30% of the audience every weekend. Superman is losing 40, 50, 60. I think Superman still ends up beating it by a little bit. But the fact that we're going to have Superman at like 620 and F1 at 580 or whatever the numbers end up being, that's crazy that they're that close to.
- [13:39]
Matt Bellany
What do you think of this whole notion that Scott Mendelsohn has written about and we've talked about here and Disney's certainly putting this out there, that 800 million is the new billion? Do you agree with that?
- [13:48]
Lucas Shaw
Is it even 800 million? How many movies this year have hit 800 million?
- [13:53]
Matt Bellany
No, but how many hit a billion? Typically, like the barometer used to be of a mega hit was a billion. And now without China, without the post Covid people, without Russia. Yeah. Without rushing. Like now they're saying that if you can get to 800, which Jurassic likely will get to Jurassic World, that 800 is the new billion. I don't know if I agree with that. Lilo and Stitch got over a billion.
- [14:19]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, but that was a huge, huge, huge hit. I guess if you, if you look at the numbers and generally the box office is off about 20, 25% from where it was before the pandemic. 800 million is 20% less than a billion. So. Sure, I buy that.
- [14:36]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. It's just crazy that in 2019, Disney released seven movies that grossed over a billion dollars. And now they're lucky if they get to like two.
- [14:48]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, they might have three this year.
- [14:50]
Matt Bellany
Well, Avatar certainly will.
- [14:51]
Lucas Shaw
Avatar will. And then I don't know what happens with Zootopia.
- [14:54]
Matt Bellany
Zootopia maybe. Yeah. It's crazy that that is the new Barometer for success and even with inflation. Because the inflation has propped things up for 4, 5, 6% over the last couple of years.
- [15:12]
Craig Horlbeck
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- [16:05]
Diet Coke
This episode is brought to you by Diet Coke. You know that moment when you just need to hit pause and refresh. An ice cold Diet Coke isn't just a break. It's your chance to catch your breath and savor a moment that's all about you. Always refreshing. Still the same great taste. Diet Coke make time for you time.
- [16:24]
Matt Bellany
Let's move to the third preoccupation right now. And I think it's got to be the Peacock numbers. We had Comcast earnings last week. They revealed some Internet subscriber issues, although they were not as problematic as Wall street had expected. But the Peacock numbers stayed flat at 41 million subscribers. Remember, Peacock is US only, so that is a US number. The losses at Peacock, remember, it's the only streaming service at this point that is losing money. On paper, the mass market ones, they cut their losses to about 100 million in the previous quarter. That is about half as much as they lost in the quarter before that. What are we doing at Peacock? Like, if you are Brian Roberts and you're looking at this as like your play in streaming, like is stagnation. Okay? Like, what are we doing?
- [17:17]
Lucas Shaw
I think they're waiting for the NFL and NBA. They have made Peacock into primarily a sports service. That's where a lot of the budget goes.
- [17:26]
Matt Bellany
The erasure on Poker Face and Ted.
- [17:29]
Lucas Shaw
Well, look, look, they had a hit over the summer in Love Island.
- [17:32]
Matt Bellany
That's not just a hit. Love island is a phenomenon.
- [17:35]
Lucas Shaw
Sure.
- [17:35]
Matt Bellany
That, that, that is like it Was like number two on the Nielsen chart.
- [17:39]
Lucas Shaw
Last week, but they don't have enough of it. They need to consistently deliver for that audience. Like the people who come in for Love Island. What are they watching after that?
- [17:48]
Matt Bellany
Traders.
- [17:49]
Lucas Shaw
Right, but. But not a new show. There has to be a steady diet of those shows to keep them engaged and keep it growing.
- [17:56]
Matt Bellany
But how do you do that when your entire goal is to get to profitability? Like that indicates less content and fewer shows. Not. Let's put five other similar shows around Love Island.
- [18:11]
Lucas Shaw
Well, no, they're trying to get to profitability by jacking up prices. I mean, they just announced a massive price increase for Peacock.
- [18:16]
Matt Bellany
They're not also cutting costs.
- [18:18]
Lucas Shaw
I would imagine that they. They are cutting back on some of the entertainment programming, but to afford the sports.
- [18:25]
Matt Bellany
Right. Okay, you're right. With the NBA stuff that, yeah, the budget is going to go up. But you know, for people who have NBC, they can still get Sunday Night Football without being a Peacock subscriber.
- [18:35]
Lucas Shaw
Sure. And then on the years where they have Olympics, that carries all the way through or whatever that may be. But their problem continues to be what else are people watching besides sports?
- [18:44]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And the merger joint venture conversation around Peacock that we are both sick of, is that still a thing? Is Paramount plus open for business? Like, what are we thinking? Peacock's options are for something transformational.
- [19:00]
Lucas Shaw
Well, it's a question of control. David Ellison is not buying Paramount to suddenly merge Paramount into Peacock and let Brian Roberts run the streaming service. So unless Brian Roberts is willing to give up control, I don't see them doing a deal with Paramount and David Zaslav. If the Warner Brothers company wanted to do something, maybe. But again, this thing has always come down to are they merging or are they just bundling? And if they're merging, is it a joint venture? Is one company in control? Is it one platform and nobody's ever solved that one?
- [19:32]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And this whole notion that Ellison is going to come in and having gone through hell to get this deal done, all of a sudden, buy something big like take over Peacock or merge with the new Warner Brothers. People seem to think that's going to happen. I am less optimistic that that kind of a deal will happen.
- [19:50]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [19:51]
Matt Bellany
At least not initially.
- [19:52]
Lucas Shaw
I have a bet with someone on this already.
- [19:54]
Matt Bellany
Oh, you do share.
- [19:56]
Lucas Shaw
The terms are basically admitting. Admitting defeat or fail or success.
- [20:00]
Matt Bellany
Okay. And you have bet against Ellison buying Warner Brothers is what you're saying.
- [20:05]
Lucas Shaw
No, the other person believes that there will be a transaction involving Warner Brothers by the end of the year. And I have no.
- [20:12]
Matt Bellany
Is the other person David Zaslav?
- [20:14]
Lucas Shaw
The other person is not David Zaslav. The other person is a media figure who is a listener of the town. But no one with direct influence on whether that deal can happen.
- [20:23]
Matt Bellany
Okay. All right. Well, I agree with you. I don't think there's going to be some big transactions later this year, but let's move on. Number four is a transaction that you reported on in your newsletter that I thought was pretty interesting. Mostly because I have a nine year old boy. Dude Perfect is coming to movie theaters. And Regal did a deal with the Dude Perfect YouTube channel. It's a bunch of guys doing trick shots and pranks and stuff that appeals to preteen boys. They are filming their latest tour, which I have seen in person.
- [20:56]
Lucas Shaw
You have seen it in person? How was the show?
- [20:58]
Matt Bellany
It was fun. This was a couple years ago. They do what they do in their videos. They do trick shots, they do comedy, they do trampoline moves. It was great. My kid loved it.
- [21:08]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah.
- [21:08]
Matt Bellany
Question is, would he want to go to a movie theater and watch this? I don't think so. I do not think this is Taylor Swift the ERAS tour where people are going to go and relive the experience of the Taylor Swift tour in theaters. I don't think that is going to be applicable to the Dude Perfect audience because my kid like separates this stuff. These are videos. Movies are movies. He associates movies with movie theaters. He associates videos with YouTube on his iPad. I just don't think this is going to work in theaters.
- [21:43]
Lucas Shaw
I don't know. The Dude Perfect tour is not a mass cultural moment in the way that the ERAS tour is where you then can drive a certain percentage of the people who either went to the show and want to relive it or didn't make it to the show. And this is their way of getting it right. It's a total experiment for them and it's a total experiment for Regal because all these movie theaters are just so eager, one might even say desperate, to find programming that's not a movie that they can put in the theater for people to show up. Or if you look back on the Taylor Swift, like, have we had a major music documentary in theaters since then?
- [22:20]
Matt Bellany
No, I was just gonna say my good friend Adam Aaron at amc, when Taylor Swift came out, he was going on and on about how he's getting calls right and left from different artists that wanna do the same thing. What's come of that? Not much.
- [22:31]
Lucas Shaw
You had the Beyonce movie.
- [22:33]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, he had Beyonce and They've done a couple others, but, like, nothing that resonated.
- [22:38]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, like, Olivia Rodrigo just wrapped a really successful tour. Right. And there's a documentary on. I forget if it's on Netflix or Disney. I think she's done both at this point. Like, sure, if. If someone is staying home and they want to watch that. But would people go to the theater to see the Olivia Rodrigo tour documentary? Probably not. It's why didn't. Didn't appear in theaters. Or the Kendrick Lamar. I don't know that he's going to do it, but he's in the middle of this huge tour with sza. Like, people would almost certainly watch that at home. Are you going to have hundreds of thousands of people go to the theater to see that documentary? Don't know. Probably not.
- [23:14]
Matt Bellany
I don't think so. And the artists don't want to try because if they try and fail, it looks bad. It's like any other movie that comes out in theaters.
- [23:23]
Lucas Shaw
Whereas if you put it on streaming and it doesn't chart, there's no ramifications.
- [23:27]
Matt Bellany
And you still get a $20 million check. Yeah, Taylor Swift is a unicorn. I think that that's going to be tough to replicate.
- [23:35]
Lucas Shaw
The other thing to remember is there was a popular YouTube channel aimed at kids, although younger than dude, perfect in Ryan's World, that tried to self release a movie last summer and it didn't do well. And we have a cocomelon coming to movie coming to theaters in like two years and we'll see how that does.
- [23:50]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, Dora the Explorer, they chose to go straight to Paramount. Plus they didn't even put it in theaters, so good luck to them. I'm happy that Regal is experimenting and hopefully it works, but I'm a little skeptical. All right, the fifth preoccupation is something that we've both written about a little bit, but I don't think we've properly explored. On the Town, which is K Pop Demon Hunters, which arguably is the movie of the summer. If you just look at audience and impact and cultural impact in Cachet, this is, I think, Netflix's first animated original mega hit. Like they've had hits. The Leo movie with Adam Sandler was a hit. CBs, like, they've had movies that did okay. But Netflix knows that animated family films are the golden child of streaming. If you can have a hit, it is a hit forever. These Disney movies, Encanto Moana, they are perennially in the top 20 on Nielsen, and Netflix has so far not been able to do that. Why do you think K Pop Demon Hunter is so resonant.
- [25:04]
Lucas Shaw
So does this mean that Netflix has kind of officially had a movie? That it's a major cultural moment and it sort of contradicts a little bit the narrative that they are not able to do that that you and I have discussed many times?
- [25:17]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, I mean, it's still a TV movie. It's as big as a TV movie can get, I think.
- [25:23]
Lucas Shaw
So if you were to look at this summer and the biggest hits, right, so like Lilo and Jurassic and F1, how would you compare its cultural impact to those?
- [25:32]
Matt Bellany
I think we have to use objective barometers because, as you know, we are not using personal anecdotes to make larger points anymore. And the fact that the songs from the movie are charting on Billboard, I think is a pretty good indicator of cultural relevance. The Rihanna song. Where's the Rihanna song from the Smurfs movie?
- [25:54]
Lucas Shaw
Right.
- [25:54]
Matt Bellany
Is that charting on Billboard? I mean, that was unlistenable, but.
- [25:57]
Lucas Shaw
Well, that movie. That movie also didn't work.
- [25:59]
Matt Bellany
That's what I'm saying. But, like, there's. There's been efforts to put music into the conversation from these movies over the past year and hasn't worked. And this movie did work by that indicator. So I think that's a good sign that it is in the cultural conversation.
- [26:16]
Lucas Shaw
This movie is up there probably with Minecraft for being sort of just a proper cultural moment.
- [26:22]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, I think so. And it's similar in the sense that it's gigantic for particular demos. If we did some market research on the movie that resonated this summer with the under 20 female demo, I don't think we would come up with anything as big as K Pop Demon Hunter.
- [26:42]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah. I can't explain the success, other than it's a good movie. It touches on a couple of cultural movements with K Pop and with anime and all of that. I just think it delivered and as.
- [26:53]
Matt Bellany
With most Netflix, huge successes. They had no idea that was coming.
- [26:58]
Lucas Shaw
Well, I think they did think it was gonna do well. Not as big as it is. Obviously. It wasn't just them. Right. Like, they had conversations with other companies and potential partners. Cause it's a kids movie. And they couldn't get those companies on board a couple years ago because they didn't see it. So now they're in this position. That is the problem when you sometimes when you have the runaway streaming hit of, like, what do we do with it? Right. If you make a sequel, which you could do, but it's animation, that movie's not gonna Come out for two, three, four years. Is there gonna be the same level of interest then?
- [27:29]
Matt Bellany
And keep in mind, this is a Sony movie. Sony made this for Netflix. So the question is, if you're Tom Rothman and you're, you know, having a terrible summer at the box office, do you wish this movie was in theaters?
- [27:41]
Lucas Shaw
Probably it would have been your biggest hit of summer and then it would.
- [27:45]
Matt Bellany
Have gone to Netflix anyways.
- [27:46]
Lucas Shaw
Right.
- [27:47]
Matt Bellany
So I think another big factor for the success of this movie is that we haven't had a big, all encompassing animated family film in theaters this summer. The two big swings, Elio and Smurfs, both kind of fizzled. And the two big kids movies were Lilo and Stitch and how to Train youn Dragon, which are the quote unquote live action remakes of animated movies.
- [28:10]
Lucas Shaw
Yeah, they count as kids movies. They're just not animated.
- [28:13]
Matt Bellany
Sure. And Bad Guys 2 is in theaters now. And we'll do fine. But on a lower scale. There is not the $1.5 billion inside out two in theaters. There is not a Minions movie. There is nothing that is a.
- [28:24]
Lucas Shaw
That's coming next.
- [28:26]
Matt Bellany
Yes, there is nothing Temple. So I think that left an opening there for a big movie like this to be on Netflix. So bummer for Sony. They didn't have this one in theaters. Or would it have done well in theaters? We have no idea.
- [28:37]
Lucas Shaw
Always a question with a Netflix title.
- [28:39]
Matt Bellany
Yep. All right. Lots going on. Thank you, Lucas.
- [28:42]
Lucas Shaw
Thanks, Matt.
- [28:44]
Matt Bellany
We are back with the call sheet. Craig, it's very rare that we do a call sheet that is a follow up to a previous call sheet. But I am all about accountability on this show. And I am prepared to admit I was wrong and you were right about Happy Gilmore 2.
- [29:01]
Craig Horlbeck
What's funny is that's a quote from Happy Gilmore. I was wrong, you were right. I'm dumb, you're smart.
- [29:07]
Matt Bellany
I'm not going that far. I'm not going that far. But yeah. So I predicted on this very show that Happy Gilmore 2 would not cross 100 million views and would certainly not get into the Netflix top 10 of all time, which it would need 137 million views to get into. Then the first week numbers came out. It was the most popular movie of all time for the first weekend in the US and the total views for that first week were 46 million views. So all it would have to do to hit the over on a hundred million would be to double its opening weekend, which is very possible. And all it has to do to get into the top 10 of all time is to essentially triple its opening, which is also very possible in the first six months or so. So I'm going to revise my prediction here and say that, yes, happy Gilmore 2, which is barely a movie and which you are on record on the big picture trashing, is going to become a top 10 movie on Netflix of all time.
- [30:09]
Craig Horlbeck
Yeah, I was right. But at what cost?
- [30:11]
Matt Bellany
You know, this. This one hurt. This one hurt. How bad it is? This one hurt you personally?
- [30:18]
Craig Horlbeck
Yes. The Sandman, the undeniable. Happy Gilmore 2. The question is, is there going to be a happy Gilmore 3? Matt?
- [30:24]
Matt Bellany
Yes. Not for a while.
- [30:26]
Craig Horlbeck
You think?
- [30:26]
Matt Bellany
Really? I do. I do, actually. Not for a while, though. I mean, Sandler's got a transition real quick. He's going to be in the Oscar race for this Clooney movie that just dropped. That's another Netflix movie that they hope will have Oscar aspirations, getting that December release. And Clooney's already defending him as a real actor again, which we already knew. But I think he's going to take a break, do other stuff, and then eventually will return.
- [30:51]
Lucas Shaw
Wow.
- [30:51]
Craig Horlbeck
I don't think so.
- [30:52]
Matt Bellany
You don't think so?
- [30:53]
Craig Horlbeck
I just. I don't feel like he'll do this again. I don't know. Maybe it'll be Big Daddy 2, but I. I don't think it's going to be happy gilmore3 unless it's in production immediately and it comes out next year.
- [31:02]
Matt Bellany
No, no, no. I think they'll wait.
- [31:03]
Craig Horlbeck
Okay, well, we. We disagree once again.
- [31:06]
Matt Bellany
All right. But what we don't know is what percentage of that 46.7 million in the first week, which, by the way, was only three days. We don't know what percentage of that was in the US Whether this is just a US phenomenon or whether this is a global phenomenon. I think to get to that number, you gotta have some people around the world watching this. But unless this movie drops off a cliff, which I don't think it's going to, it's going to get over 100 probably by the end of the month, and it will probably crack that top 10 by the end of the year.
- [31:38]
Craig Horlbeck
Well, that's what Bad Bunny was for, Matt, for the global reach.
- [31:42]
Matt Bellany
Oh, there's a million. I mean, every person in this movie is pandering to some segment of the audience. The Mr. B stuff at the end. I mean, it's amazing.
- [31:52]
Craig Horlbeck
I believe they said the call sheet had 135 names on it.
- [31:55]
Matt Bellany
Unbelievable. Well, good for them. Good for Netflix. Good for Adam Sandler. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horlebach, our editor, Jesse Lopez and I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.