← The Town with Matthew Belloni
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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 Focus Features. Don't miss Focus Features Anemone Starring three time Academy Award winner Daniel Day Lewis in his long awaited return to the big screen, it's the most anticipated performance of the year. Anemone tells the story of two brothers wrestling with their past and the one secret that has kept them apart for decades. Anemone rated R under 17 not admitted without parent only in theaters October 3rd.
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This episode is brought to you by Seen on the Screen, a podcast presented by Make It Universal and Rotten Tomatoes. Join me Jacqueline Coley, as I meet the filmmakers, actors and industry insiders influencing entertainment. Each episode is an intimate, fun conversation about the impact of film as guests share their journeys, inspirations and answer trivia about the movies that shape them. Seen on the Screen is available now. To listen, simply search Seen on the Screen wherever you listen to podcasts.
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A
It is Monday, September 29th. Of all the movies on the 2025 theatrical slate, one battle after another was maybe the most anticipated for the Town, not just because it's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie with a major star in Leo DiCaprio and a budget that far surpasses anything he's ever worked with. Even Warner Brothers admits The movie cost $130 million. Most sources peg it higher than that. It's also yet another referendum on the strategy at Warner brothers under Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy of spending big money on auteur filmmaker driven original projects with big stars. So this weekend, one battle after another opened and it did okay. Not great question mark. 22.4 million domestic, about 48 48.5 million worldwide. On one hand, it's the biggest opening of PTA's career, a great number for an R rated political satire dramedy, and the reviews and exit scores are all very strong, indicating it should hold pretty well. It also did great on IMAX And PLF screens almost 50% of the revenue coming from those. On the other hand, once again, film Twitter may not be real life. This is the lowest opening for a DiCaprio movie since J. Edgar in 2011, if we adjust for inflation. And it came in behind Killers of the Flower Moon, Leo's last movie, which was three and a half hours. Scorsese is a much bigger lure than pta. So what does this opening tell us about the state of the filmmaker driven blockbuster wannabe bigger picture? What about the larger studio politics at Warner Brothers? Mike and Pam's 2025 slate is now finished. Actually, 11 movies. Nine of them opened at number one for Warners. And one battle after another comes after a pretty remarkable run starting in April with Minecraft from sinners, Final Destination, F1, Superman, weapons, the Conjuring. All of them profitable and a few of them despite some pretty significant risks. But Warners will now go almost five months without a movie. News broke recently that the studio could be acquired by David Ellison, which would put it under the same ownership as Paramount. Warner's is definitely the most interesting studio right now. So today it's the one battle after another box office discourse with our Monday guy, Lucas Shaw. How this movie lands in the bigger studio narrative. Plus, we'll do a little on the latest Trump tariff noise as well. From the ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. Okay. We are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg who is back once again, Lucas, you have not been promoting your big upcoming event on this platform.
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C
I rely on you to feather me. That is the goal.
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A
I have been delinquent in that. Your screen time.
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C
Screen time. October 8th and 9th. If there is a prominent person in the entertainment business, I have either interviewed them there or we'll do that this year. We have some of your favorites.
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A
Yeah, I saw. You've got David Ellison, you've got Mike and Pam from Warner Brothers. We got Ryan Coogler, we got Brian Coogler. Good one. I'm sure he has some thoughts on our discussion of his movie on this, on this show.
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C
I think they were. They appreciated it.
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A
Yeah. Okay. Not the discussion of his deal, I'm.
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C
Sure, but no, I think they don't want me to ask too many questions about that if we can avoid it.
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A
Okay, that's fine. But yeah. October 8th, 9th, your big event. The food is excellent. I can't recommend it enough. All right, Enough plugging, enough plugging. Warner Brothers, we're talking about one of these signatures of their 2025 slate. One battle after another. I feel like we talk about this subject at the risk of. Of enraging every film bro and entertainment industry person who really wants this movie to succeed and was going all at it the week leading up to it.
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C
Anytime. The big boast is that it's the record for a filmmaker when the filmmaker has never made a hit movie is, don't get me wrong, great filmmaker, but not a commercial one.
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A
It's shameful. I want to sit all the filmmakers down and do like a airplane style slap across the face for all of them. Okay, 22.4 million for the opening weekend, 48.5 million for the global total. We don't have the actuals yet. Maybe that will go up, maybe it'll go down.
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C
We can round it and call it 50.
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A
Sure. Great. Call it 50. For a movie that you're reporting says costs 140 million, Warner's is copping to 130 million. I have heard that it's like 145. Let's put it at 140. That's not great. This movie has to gross about $300 million to be considered a success.
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C
More. Really?
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A
Yeah. Given the marketing, let's say 300 million is the bar. And we went through this with Sinners. I know that Sinners ended up legging out and ended up being a profitable movie, but the indication here from the numbers is that this is not Sinners.
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C
First of all, sinners cost 40 to $50 million less, which makes a huge difference. I had people telling me like, oh, it's the same opening as Sinners and weapons. And first of all, that's not quite right. But also those movies cost considerably less than this.
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A
Yeah, also it's a vampire movie.
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C
Sinners was a commercial genre. This movie is supposed to have international appeal because of Leo, but it didn't. The subject matter is so US centric in a way, I don't know. We're gonna set aside our opinions of the caliber of the movie that is.
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A
Not like people come at me all the time like, oh, you hate quality. No, I don't. I love this movie when I saw it. But we're not talking about that. We're not talking about how great it is. Only in respect to it could have legs. The cinema score was an A. The post track ratings were good.
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C
To your point, when we say that, the film people come after us and say we're denigrating art or we're too simple minded. We just care about commerce and like, sure, it's more fun to like analyze the movie than to deal with facts.
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A
There's a million other shows that do that.
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C
But calling and calling it a flop or maybe it's not a flop, certainly not, at least not at this point. But calling it a movie that's probably not going to make money in theaters, its value will be sort of as a long term asset title doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It just means that the studio and director failed or are struggling to succeed at a very specific but important part of the job, which is to make money on the project. These studios don't make these movies as like art benefactors. Right? They don't. They don't fund movies to be cool, they fund movies to make money. And being cool is a nice bonus.
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A
And they would argue that the ancillary value of having a movie like this is that it gets them into the high end talent business in a way that maybe when this movie was greenlit, Warner's was struggling to attract high level filmmakers. They had had Nolan defect. And this movie will go a long way towards people respecting the studio again. But David Zaslav's not in this for the respect. David Zaslav is in this to justify the expenditure on the movie. And yes, I'm sure he will be there on Oscar night if it gets a bunch of Oscar nominations. And they will put money into a campaign to try to win Best Picture. But you gotta look at whether the cost justifies the outcome. And we don't know yet. It's going to have a really uphill battle.
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C
What I don't get, and I've never understood about this movie because look, Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the great auteurs of this century. I do think that some film people forgive mistakes or projects that aren't as great from people like pta, people like Scorsese, just because they are that name, they just assume that everything they do is genius. I don't understand giving him $140 million or $135 million when he's never had a movie gross 100.
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A
It's a bet, it's a risk.
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C
And you see this movie and like, yeah, it's got some scale to it. And I get that Leo is a big star, but you see that and I didn't walk out being like, well, that's going to be a big box office hit.
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A
No, but you did walk out thinking it was a good movie. And you know that helps. What I think you're saying is, is that this movie opened to about where it should be expected to Open to.
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C
If this movie costs $60 million to produce, great. You got a single and it's going to win a bunch of awards and maybe then it'll have like a really big afterlife and then you've gotten exactly what you want. But is the Leo quote worth it when he's not the best part of the movie and it didn't open big overseas.
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A
Well, that's why they justified it. They said, we can do this with Leo. And it opened about to what Killers of the Flower Moon did a little bit under that. Now that is Scorsese, who is a much more proven box office draw. And maybe this movie has legs because of the quality, but Leo I think did matter here. I think it got to where it got to in part because of Leo.
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C
Yeah, well, I mean, without Leo, it probably doesn't open to 50 million worldwide.
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A
Yeah, we did get some tracking data. This movie performed much better in big circumstances. Cities New York City overperformed the most. The two underperforming cities were Houston and Dallas and they way underperformed. Not a surprise there. There was also some data that was released today showing that one battle after another performed much better in Blue country cinemas. 72% of the admissions were from Blue Country Cinemas. That's where counties voted in the 2024 presidential election for Democrats. Not a surprise there. This was a bicoastal big city phenomenon. The question is, will it be able to expand out? Can they take this, a CinemaScore and some of these numbers in the big cities and expand it out and turn this into a movie that love it or hate it, you have to see to be part of the conversation. Yeah, there was a.
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C
What happened with sinners?
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A
Yeah, it happened with sinners. But there was a variety piece this weekend that was like, oh, this is the talking point that America needs. I don't think America is talking about this movie.
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C
It's not. I saw that piece and laughed.
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A
And it's just that's such a LA centric view of what people are talking about. It's not even on Fox News radar because it's not something that is like enough to make people outraged.
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C
Paul Thomas Anderson has been working on this idea for a long time. It feels incredibly of the moment. Cause it is a film about, among many, many other things, sort of extremist.
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A
Political factions, immigration and like revolutionaries.
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C
Yeah, but it has not become part of the culture war. There's not for one reason or another. It has not become this really controversial touchstone in a way, in a weird way where like sinners had A little bit of that. Both because of its racial commentary, but also because of like that sort of big fuss about the deal that Ryan Coogler struck with Warner Brothers.
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A
Yeah. And Coogler is a much more commercial director. The dude directed Black Panther.
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C
Right. And Creed.
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A
And Creed, yeah. It's just an entirely different thing. Let's talk about the larger Warners issue here. The narrative on Warners this year obviously has been extraordinary. They have nine movies now that have opened in a row at number one. It's interesting because Warner's doesn't have another movie this year. It's crazy. No one is reporting on. They are going to go five months almost between movie releases. This is the last movie until Wuthering Heights in the middle of February. I have a theory on why it happened, but it's just crazy that this happened.
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C
Well, they manage the schedule really well.
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A
It's schedule management.
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C
I think the movies that they released this year for the most part were sure things or low risk bets. Right.
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A
Or good movies. They knew they were at least good movies.
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C
Right. So one interesting thing that I looked up because I've been doing some. Some prep for interviewing Mike and Pam, if you look. Because this year for horror has been kind of choppy. Right. But Warner Brothers has the four highest grossing horror movies of the year. They're the only studio that has had horror movies GROSS More than $100 million.
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A
Final destination, conjuring. Conjuring and Sinners.
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C
And Sinners, if you count it. And then they have their two auteur movies and Sinners and one battle after another. Where to your point, even if they don't hit the numbers that they want them to, they know that they've made a good movie and they're like, fine. Getting chastised for porn performance. And then they have the tentpoles, Minecraft, which, you know, was a little bit of a question mark but opened obviously Superman, which is technically not Mike and Pam's. And then they have the distribution on F1. And then any risky stuff they've sort of moved to next year.
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A
Yeah, they moved the Mortal Kombat sequel to next year. They moved the Maggie Gyllenhaal movie the Bride to next year. They have the Inuitu movie with Tom Cruise that technically wasn't delayed, but I think they original plan was to have that a little earlier. There is nothing for the holidays. There's nothing later in the fall. And that I think is intentional. I've heard that Gunner, the CFO of Warner Discovery, basically said, we have too many risks in this year. So let's punt to 2026. This company is in a very interesting and some would say perilous situation where there's. Now there's a plan to split the company into two. That's going to require a sales pitch to Wall Street. There is now a potential bid coming for the entire company from David Ellison and his family, which could lead to Warner Brothers being merged or at least owned by the same company as Paramount. And I just think they. Similar to what Bob Iger did at Disney when he was fighting the activist shareholder. He just said, you know what, if it's a risk, if it's Elio, if it's something that we don't think is a sure thing, just punt it to next year and we'll deal with it then.
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C
I don't think that the schedule management of that had anything to do with the Ellison deal. You don't know, because those decisions were made way before then. Obviously they. They knew that there was a chance that they would be in play. Yeah, it may have had something to do with. I mean, to your point about the narrative, the crazy part about it has been that before Minecraft and Sinners opened, it was David Zaslav was sort of openly flirting with replacing them and reaching out to potential replacements. And then they go on this heater and that. That conversation dies down.
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A
It dies down, but I've heard it hasn't totally gone away.
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C
The relationship between them, I think, is still a little frosty.
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A
Yeah. It's like when you. When you're arguing with a girlfriend and you say things that you later regret and can the relationship, even though you make up well, or it's sort of.
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C
God, what is that great movie where they're at the. The family's at the ski chalet and the husband. Force majeure and like the avalanche comes and the husband just abandons them and then he and his. He and his wife, it's like, how do you come back from that?
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A
Right. That's exactly what happened here. It's like if you're Mike and Pam, you basically have a middle finger to your boss saying, oh, you were going to replace us. We just went on one of the greatest heaters in modern Hollywood history. But maybe he still does replace them because, like, you can't have a conversation anymore. Yeah, I don't know how real that is. Everybody in Hollywood secretly hates each other, so maybe they just grin and bear it.
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C
And if this Paramount thing is really going to happen, nobody's going to replace the studio chiefs in the middle of It. So.
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A
Although if that does happen, I can't imagine Mike and Pam reporting to Dana Goldberg at Paramount. That is not going to happen, right?
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C
No, I cannot imagine that either. But the truth is, is that if the two of them really had to, I think they'd be happy to produce.
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A
Oh, I don't think they want to give up that job. I think you have that chairman job and you stick to that until they drag you out of there.
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C
Until. Yeah, they. Till they rip it out of your hand.
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A
Yeah. It's interesting that Warner's will only have released 11 movies in US theaters this year. And as great as the year has been for them, got to 4 billion before others. They are not back to the pre pandemic levels. I mean, pre pandemic, they were consistently releasing more than 18, sometimes 20 movies a year. And the theater community has certainly noticed that. And I reported this past week that the Ellison plan, if they do get Warners, is at least at the beginning to do 15 movies for theaters from Warners per year. But do we have any indication that the David Zaslav led Warner Discovery wants to get back to that 15 or more a year cadence on movies?
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C
I feel like they've said that their goal is sort of 12 to 15, right?
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A
Yeah, they've said it. But, you know, Amazon said that five years ago and we haven't seen it yet. They're ramping up.
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C
It's hard.
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A
I know it's hard.
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C
They have a very diverse slate next year.
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A
It's a very interesting slate because there's no Superman. There's nothing like automatically gigantic other than.
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C
The third Dune movie, which comes at.
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A
The end of the year and is legendary.
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C
Yeah. There's nothing that you look at and are confident it will work. Right. Like, they're DC movies. They have Supergirl, which could work. Heard good things. They have Clayface. I've literally never heard of Clayface. I'm not. You know, they have an Inaritu movie, which he does make really good movies, but not always the most commercial.
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A
Oh, how dare you, Tom Cruise. Come on, man.
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C
Sorry. They have. They have a. They have a Mummy movie. And I feel like people keep trying with the Mummy and it's not totally. It hasn't worked.
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A
Yeah, I know. And then they've got some risky stuff, the Bride. They've got Animal Friends, which is a legendary movie that Andy Serkis directed. It's kind of CG animated, and then they have, like, a lot of horror. So that's worked for them. But, you know, they do have a family Movie for next holidays, Cat in the Hat. But how many times can they do that?
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C
Don't know.
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A
All right, Big picture on Warners. If you're David Zaslav and you can go back in a time machine when maybe now, with the benefit of a little more knowledge about the film business, do you let Mike and Pam greenlight the PTA movie?
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C
I don't know enough about the negotiation at the time to understand if that budget was absolutely necessary. I think if you're telling me you have a Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, like, yeah, I want to release that movie. He's a modern master.
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A
No, no, no. But I'm saying with the reviews and, and the opening weekend and where we.
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C
Are right now, my primary question is, could you have made it for. Forget 60. Like, could you have made it for a hundred?
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A
You know, maybe if you made this in Morocco and not California. But it's got a particular look to it. It helps the movie. My point is, like, is this a overall good movie for Warner Brothers to have a extremely well reviewed best picture contender?
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C
Yes. Considering everything else that they have had this year, it's a no brainer. You have a movie from a great contemporary filmmaker that's gotten good reviews, that is going to be a real contender. You now, between this and Sinners, have two, like, heavy contenders at the Oscars. And if you can go in and PTA can get a, you know, get his Oscar, then you call it a win and decide that your other successes have, have covered the cost of doing it. Look, if you're running a movie studio, you have to be willing to take a couple of big swings. I reiterate that this movie, if they had been able to make it for less, we don't even have to have this stupid conversation and it'd be fine. But you're willing to bite the bullet on that because of everything else that worked. Now, had Sinners not worked and both of these had not worked, then it's tougher. But I think because Sinners was such a success, you're willing to take like. They both got great reviews. One of them was a commercial hit, one of them not so much. But like, is still a nice thing to have in your library.
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A
You're not getting fired. That is the overall worry of studio executives. Is this movie going to get me fired? And I don't think one battle after another is going to get anybody fired. It's a quality movie. It's going to get a ton of Oscars.
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C
It's the same way that, like we talked, you brought up Killers of the Flower Moon. Right. With Apple, the problem.
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A
Oh, but Apple's a whole different. They don't need to make money.
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C
No, no, I know, but they had Killers of the Flower Moon and they had Napoleon and they were both like, you know, they didn't do as well as they would have hoped. But the real pressure came after the Matthew Vaughn movie.
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A
Right.
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C
Because they're like, oh, you want to give a bunch of money to Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott, we can't really fault you for that. You want to give a bunch of money to Matthew Vaughn to make a mediocre movie that also doesn't do well. Now we have problems, right?
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A
Yeah. Although Apple doesn't have $30 billion in debt that Warner Discovery does. But the funny thing is that this movie is considered some gigantic positive for Warner Brothers. When you look at Mickey 17, the Bong Joon Ho movie from earlier this year that Warner Brothers absolutely ran away from, that movie cost less than this movie. That movie costs about 120 and it grossed almost the same in its opening weekend, about 19 million. This movie a little bit higher. And you would have thought that that movie was like, going to bring down the studio. People were going nuts about it so much. Another auteur. I mean, Bong Bong arguably means more to the international box office than PTA does for this movie.
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C
Right. And not that this is the be all and end all, but Bong directed a movie that won Best Picture, which I think PTA still weirdly has not.
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A
He has actually never won an Oscar.
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C
I think that PTA gets treated with kinder gloves by the press than any other working filmmaker. And the contrarian in me, it drives me fucking nuts. And I need to, like, know that about myself and rein it in because.
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A
He appeals to middle aged white men, executives. Like, isn't that the reason? Yeah.
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C
And look, he's made a couple. He's made some great, great movies, but he's also made some movies that I don't want to watch again.
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A
Inherent Vice not going to be a rewatchable. Yeah, I know, but good for him. People love this movie and I hope it can leg out. Yeah. All right, let's move on. I want to briefly mention the Trump tariff nonsense because we got another post this morning from the President saying that the moviemaking business has been stolen from the United States of America. Just like stealing candy from a baby. I don't know what the quotes are around that trump California with its weak and Incompetent governor has been particularly hit hard. Yada, yada, yada. So 100% tariffs on this. Here we go again. This is not a thing like, I don't understand how this keeps coming up. There are proposals. Adam Schiff and another congressperson have put proposals out there for a federal tax credit which could be significant and could make the US More competitive with the UK and some of these other jurisdictions. And then they could have additional credits from the various states on top of that that would allow the states to compete. That's not what Trump is talking about. And do we think this helps or hurts the effort to get some kind of federal tax credit?
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C
It probably hurts.
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A
You think so why?
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C
It suggests to me that the voices in his ear, like, from everything we know about Trump, one of the easiest ways to influence his policy is like, you need to have the last person who speaks to him really push something or have someone whom he trusts really push for something. And it feels like he is not giving up on. He just loves tariffs. And so he's pushing the tariff. And unless they can get him to focus on something that the industry actually wants, the odds of that happening are low. Right. Because nobody in the industry wants this tariff.
- [25:32]
A
Right.
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C
But disagreeing with what he wants usually doesn't work super well when you're trying to get him to do something.
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A
I know tariffs are supposed to protect the local industries, and nobody in Hollywood wants this, but I just think that the bipartisan requirement on getting anything passed for a federal tax credit, it's just never going to happen.
- [25:50]
C
What?
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A
Same thing I said six months ago. What Republican is going to vote for a tax incentive slash giveaway to Hollywood? They're just not going to do it. Maybe if Trump told him to, but there's so many other things that are going to compete for attention that this is the first thing that falls away.
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C
Yeah. Which is what happened last time.
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A
Yeah. I just don't. I don't get that. So nothing burger on this. Do you agree? Nothing burger.
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C
Nothing burger.
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A
Yeah, I agree. All right, Lucas, we're going to have you stick around for the call sheet. Thank you. We are back with the call sheet. Lucas, thanks for sticking around. Craig is coming back from Dublin, Ireland. He was there for the NFL game. We think he's coming back.
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C
He's going to go to the London game next week now, too?
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A
No, no, no. I think he's. He's now a new employee of the Guinness factory. I think he decided to stay there.
- [26:37]
C
He watched the Netflix series and was like, I got to Stick around.
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A
He split the G too many times. All right, so I want to talk about this AI generated actress named Tilly Norwood, which was referenced during a weekend panel at the Zurich Summit, which is an industry get together. A woman named Elleen Van der Velden, who is an actor turned tech entrepreneur, and she's got a company that created this digital performer. She claimed that multiple talent agencies are clamoring to represent this AI actress, Tilly Norwood, and that a signing announcement would be forthcoming in the next few months. You think this is real?
- [27:20]
C
Do I think it's real that they have had conversations with some talent agencies? Yes. Do I think we are going to see one of the two or three majors in Hollywood sign an AI actress and risk having a lot of their movie star clients tell them to fuck off?
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A
No. That is my prediction that none of the big three agencies will touch Tilly Norwood or any AI generated actress. It's just too much of a hot button issue. There was so much backlash. She released a statement this morning, actually, quote, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work, a piece of art. Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation. And that in itself shows the power of creativity.
- [28:06]
C
Okay, whatever.
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A
Now, this entrepreneur person, she may be referring to agencies wanting to represent her company, to perhaps do deals with studios, which I could see perhaps being a thing. You know, a lot of these companies have agency representatives to help them negotiate or navigate the Hollywood landscape. That could be a thing without representing any individual, quote, unquote actress. But no agency is gonna touch this if they want their actual human clients to be clients. Still, none of the majors are gonna do this.
- [28:41]
C
Look, we'll see what happens. But there's been a lot of fuss over the years about sort of virtual influencers, right? And every time people got all excited about it setting East Asia out of the equation for now. It never really hit the mainstream in a big way. You'd have, like little blips. But guess What? The biggest YouTubers are still human beings. The biggest musicians, for the most part, are still human beings. Like, there's been a lot of fuss in the music business about Zania Monet, who's another, a kind of a quote unquote AI artist. And it is worth noting that she was not signed to one of the three major record labels because they would be scared, I think, to take that risk considering that they're in the middle of suing some AI company. So you're going to see some experiments on the sides, and if it works, you know, then then maybe the situation changes.
- [29:25]
A
Maybe. But I asked around this morning, a couple of big agents. Are you guys going to touch this? And the uniform answer was, hell, no. Now, maybe there's a lane there for an enterprising smaller agency to corner this market. In 10 years, we're going to be talking about the rise of, you know, an agency that just does this stuff and how powerful and profitable they are. But I just think that the regular agencies, they gotta be wary of this.
- [29:54]
C
Yeah. Also, of all the ways in which AI is going to affect filmmaking in the near future, I don't think replacing actors fully with AI actors is going to be one of the big ones. At least not in the short term.
- [30:05]
A
Not in the short term, No. I mean, enhancements and tools and all the other things. Yes. But Tilly Norwood, don't think you're getting an Oscar.
- [30:13]
C
Yeah. You're safe, Margot. You're safe.
- [30:16]
A
I know. I know. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horobeck, artist Jesse Lopez, and I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.