← The Town with Matthew Belloni
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This episode of the Town is brought to you by Netflix. Presenting Frankenstein, a film by Academy Award winning director and writer Guillermo del Toro. A retelling of the classic novel about what it means to be human, to crave love and seek understanding. Starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz. The New York Times raves Frankenstein is stunning. The movie Guillermo del Toro was born to make. Now playing on Netflix for your awards consideration.
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An AMC original series.
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You're spy? No. CIA?
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MI6. Who are you? Talamasca, a gritty new spy thriller. Our Order keeps tabs on the supernatural, where otherworldly secrets emerge from the shadows we watch and we're always there. Anne Rice's Telemasca the Secret Order all new Sundays Stream now on AMC.
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A
It is Wednesday, November 19th. This sale of Warner Bros. Discovery is pretty much the only thing people in town want to talk about these days, and in particular, the possible disappearance of another one of the original Hollywood studios. If you've ever been in the Warner's lot in Burbank, it's maybe the nicest of all the studios. It's got tons of history going back 100 years, everything from the Clint Eastwood scoring stage to the Friends fountain. But with the initial bids for the company due on November 20, three main suitors have emerged so far. Paramount, backed by the Ellison family and their insane wealth. They want to buy all of Warner Discovery. And both Comcast and Netflix are interested in just the studios and streaming side. That's HBO Max, the Warner studio, and that great studio lot. All three of these potential deals will trigger heavy antitrust reviews and potentially they'll become political footballs. Last week, the Republican congressman, Darrell Issa, he sent a letter to the US Attorney general and regulators of the FTC and doj, the two main antitrust enforcers. Issa argued that Netflix buying Warner Brothers would, quote, diminish incentives to produce new content and major theatrical releases, which of course would hurt consumers, he argued. Netflix is generally considered the largest and most powerful streaming platform, so buying a big global platform like HBO Max would eliminate a service and a big buyer of original content. At least that's what the Paramount side is arguing. The Ellisons seem to have the backing of Donald Trump, which is probably why the Republicans are so focused on Netflix. But there are big issues with Comcast and Paramount, too, namely the reduction of five theatrical movie studios down to four and the merger of their streaming services. But what are the alternatives? That's the big question here. Does Hollywood need to consolidate to compete with big tech? I've got Jonathan Kantor on the show to discuss today. He was the Assistant U.S. attorney General for the antitrust division at the DOJ under President Biden. He's a big critic of both big tech and the massive corporate mergers that have ruled the day. He led a suit against Ticketmaster parent Live Nation, against Google over its monopolistic practices, and a major case in the book industry that prevented the combination of two big publishers under the theory that it would hurt authors. Very relevant here. So today is Jonathan Kantor, the Warner Brothers antitrust issues and why maybe it's not a good idea to let Hollywood consolidate to battle big tech. From the ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. All right. We are here with Jonathan Kanter, the former assistant attorney general for antitrust under the Biden administration, currently distinguished professor at both Washington University and Carnegie Mellon. Welcome.
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B
Great to be here.
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A
All right. So I know you're sort of slumming it in the entertainment world here, but these are pretty big antitrust issues that could potentially come up in the acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery, either all or part of it from one or more suitors. And I want to get into the legal perspective and both the legal and practical perspective on this potential transaction and each of the potential suitors as we are taping on Tuesday. We believe the three potential suitors for Warner Brothers Discovery will be Paramount and the Ellison family, which they say they want all of the company they currently own. Paramount, as we know, this would be taking five legacy studios in Hollywood down to four. And then there's Comcast, another studio owning company that owns Universal and would be doing the same, taking five down to four. And then there is potentially Netflix. Now, Netflix and Comcast, we believe, are going to go after only the studios and streaming side of the company. That's HBO and the Warner Brothers studio. They are not going to take the TV channels. I wonder if that makes a difference. But first, could you just for our listeners who, you know, are savvy about the business but may not know the contours of of the antitrust regime here, what are the issues that are going to govern this transaction?
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B
So there are often two ways to think about it. One is vertical and one is horizontal or platform. Like the traditional way you might look at an antitrust merger is does company A directly compete with company B? So in the case of Paramount, do they both have big movie studios? Yes. Or do they have streaming assets? Yes. So that's one way in which you look at it. Another way you want to look at it is distribution. Right. Is one necessary to distribute the other? So if Netflix buys important content, what is that going to do to the ability of Warner Brothers rivals to get distribution through Netflix? Will it create a conflict of interest so that it will raise the prices or exclude competitors from getting ready access? These are the kinds of issues that you look at, and you also look at them in different places, and this is a very important part. So there are a number of characters to those in the entertainment industry. You have your DOJ FCC characters, which exist in the backdrop of Donald Trump. Then you have your state attorneys general who have already started to say something here. They have the ability to enforce the antitrust laws. And then you have international antitrust enforcers, including in Europe and the UK and elsewhere, who may or may not block the deal. But collectively, all of these players have the ability to look under the hood and delay it for a year longer.
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A
Okay, so that legal standard is very mushy because in part, it depends on how you define the market that these companies are competing in. Correct. How do you think the regulators will look at the different markets in which these companies compete? Like, there's the streaming market, there's the theatrical distribution market, there's the content distribution market. All of it.
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B
Yes. So there's a traditional way and there's the modern way. The traditional way. And both are relevant here. The traditional way is, okay, what's similar, Right. Studios produce content and then they compete for distribution of that content. And so they really are competing in that space. You know, Netflix might be constrained is competing in the streaming of an aggregate service that includes its own content and other people's content. That's sort of more of the traditional way. Right. And you can kind of see, well, I pay a few bucks a month for streaming, and I can choose between competitor A and competitor B. You know, I am an actor or I'm a producer or I'm a writer, and I want to have a relationship with the studio and I want to produce a scripted series. I have the ability to negotiate with somebody. Who am I going to play off? Each other?
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A
Yeah. That was a big deal in that book merger that was blocked, Simon and Schuster blocked, because authors like Stephen King came out and said, wait a second, there are going to be fewer places for me to sell my books. And that's a. There's an analogous situation in Hollywood. If five studios go down to four means less buyers.
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B
Yes. And so you jumped the gun for me because that's exactly where we're going to take this conversation, which is That's a great analogy because it was a traditional legacy industry merging and they said they were merging in order to compete against Amazon. That argument did not work in court. And that's the second more modern framing here. Right, because the player you didn't mention but is looming in the background of all this is Google. Google with YouTube and its massive amount of scale and advertising revenue from user generated content is now the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. And so anyone who merges is going to say that they need to vertically integrate, they need to compete so that they can put up a competitive alternative to the giant of Google.
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A
Well, the Ellisons said that when they bought Paramount, they're like, you know, we need to get to scale and we have the resources to do that. And they're going to make the same argument when they're being pressed about Warner Brothers is that Hollywood companies just are not big enough anymore. And I understand that argument. I mean, we saw it just now with Disney going up against YouTube over carriage of their networks like YouTube kind of just said, we're bigger than you, we want special treatment. And for most of the analysts that I've seen, they got it.
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B
Yeah. So, but where does that argument end? And this is the question I think we all have to ask and answer because we've heard this before, right? Think about all the mergers. I mean, you can look at Warner Brothers alone in Time Warner. It's sort of like the ring in the Lord of the Rings. Anyone who gets it turns crazy and ends up, you know. And so I mean, one of the first deals I worked on at the FTC early in my career was AOL Time Warner. We can all see how that worked out. But you know, and then you have AT&T and Warner Discovery. The question is, has anybody. And they all said at the same time for all these transactions that they needed them to get scale, right? They can't compete without scale. And then they wait a year and then they say, well, now we don't have enough scale. So now we. The next deal. At what point do you draw that line?
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A
It's a race to the bottom. You think the race to scale is a race to the bottom and it ultimately ends up with the three companies owning everything.
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B
That is the path we are on right now.
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A
Right? So how do we not have that? How do we allow these companies to do what they do but prevent this kind of oligopoly? Because the argument is Warner Brothers is not a growing business. Warner Discovery, the TV businesses are dragging down these companies in such a way that they need to do something to create a growth narrative and they can't. They have been unable to do it on their own. So the only way to do it is to combine.
- [10:54]
B
So there are a couple of different ways to approach this problem. One way we approached it when I was in office was to say, well, if the problem is that the big tech companies have too much power, let's take on the big tech companies. Let's go after Google on search, which we did and we won. Let's go after Google on ad tech and their control over web based advertising. We did that and we won. The FTC today lost a case against Facebook, but at least they took that swing.
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A
I saw that Facebook was found to have not acted in an anti competitive way by buying rivals like, like Instagram and WhatsApp.
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B
Well, because, because TikTok. But at the time, the FTC could have blocked that deal 10 years ago based on the information it had at the time.
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A
But isn't that the argument that like everybody thought Facebook was a monopoly until TikTok came along and everybody thought that Google was a monopoly and now they're talking about AI and OpenAI eating their lunch if that happens.
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B
Right. Except for if you're an advertiser.
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A
Right. I know. And I mean we just like we talk about all the time. It's really hard to have a media business these days when Facebook and Google and Amazon take, you know, 70, 80% of the market off the table.
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B
Right. The media and entertainment industry is turning into theater, a really high end niche product that does not have the scale to compete on the advertising side.
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A
So what do we do about that from an antitrust perspective?
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B
Well, there are a couple things you can do. One is I'm not convinced that merging everybody up and rolling them into a massive platform is going to solve the problem rather than exacerbate the problem. I think we have to hold the big tech companies more accountable. The fact of the matter is they have too much power. And if the media companies can't compete with these massive businesses because the tech companies have too much power, then let's do something about the tech companies.
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A
Yeah, good luck. I mean that it seems like that ship has kind of sailed, but maybe not. And the political winds are certainly not blowing that direction considering how much the tech companies are kissing Donald Trump's ass.
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B
Well, that's the other problem here.
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A
That's the practical matter here.
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B
Yes. And so in my area of the world until the last few years, it was an insular community of antitrust lawyers. Who looked at everything in terms of prices, what is it? Is it going to consumer going to pay more or less? Is their movie ticket going to go up? Is the cost of advertising on a network TV going to go up or is your streaming price going to go up? All that's relevant. But then the world has changed. And you mentioned the Penguin, Random House, Simon and Schuster deal. We blocked it not based on the price of books going up, but based on the negotiating leverage that the publishers had over authors increasing so that authors would get less for their professional works. That's what in the industry we call a monopsony concern. And we won. We won based on that alone. It was the first time ever that we blocked a merger based on that theory. We need to start thinking about that. We also need to start thinking about conflicts of interest. If you own the platform and compete on the platform, is that really the kind of world we want?
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A
Yeah, I've seen some data that suggests that if Netflix takes the Warner Brothers library off of the licensing market and hoards it on its platform, how much damage that would do to the overall licensing market.
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B
Exactly. And so it's about the ability to exercise power. And then the other thing now that has become clear, and we see this with Colbert and Kimmel, is now you have a government that's willing to use the gate or its gatekeeping function on these mergers to influence what people do and do not say, what they can and cannot say and how they say it. And so when you have massive amount of concentration and you have a government that's willing to influence speech, that is a very dangerous situation for our society and our democracy.
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A
Well, and they're also, it seems like, directing certain deals to get done and certain deals to not get done. I mean, we saw this with Trump last time where the Fox Disney merger just went through without much discussion at all. If that were another media company, I think Trump and his DOJ probably would have been a little bit more aggressive there or ftc. And now we're seeing it where he's talking about the Ellison's being so awesome and David Ellison's a great young man and, you know, he's getting a payoff for cbs. So do you think it's just about that now? Do you think it's just about whoever has the most political influence will win the day here?
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B
I hope not.
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A
But what are the legal ramifications or implications outside of the Trump administration?
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B
That's where the state attorneys general come in.
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A
Yeah, that's what I'm getting to. So can the state attorneys general do anything here?
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B
Yes, Right. And California has already come out and said that they're going to take a close look in a big swing. And they have the resource to do that. New York has the resources to do that. Private citizens can also sue. That being said, it's very expensive and difficult, but the states do have a role to play here.
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A
But do you think that will be effective? I mean, when was the last time a state attorney general blocked a big corporate merger?
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B
They can. So the state AGs were effective even in the last administration. They brought their own cases and supermarket mergers, okay.
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A
Oh, right, the Kroger thing.
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B
Yeah, exactly. And the FTC ended up winning in that case as well, much to their credit. But there's a lot that states can do and they've become more active and they've invested more in their litigation capability. And I think this is really important, particularly in the state of California, because I'm a creative rights artists rights person. That's where I think. And I think there's a lot that the industry needs to do to protect itself. And so it needs to make sure that it's protecting itself, not just against corporate concentration and the ability to extract more from the creators, but it also happens at the same time of this AI transformation. And the negotiating leverage, the ability of people who act, the people who write, the people who produce, to make sure that they're protecting their interests has never been greater, perhaps in the history of the industry. And so reducing their leverage is going to be disastrous for the future.
- [17:21]
A
Even if Comcast or Paramount buy this company and dramatically reduce the number of movies released in theaters, that could have an impact on multiplexes around the country and the world. And so it's not just a corporate thing. Like, I could see other states getting involved here and being like, wow, you're kind of killing the theater business. The Republicans have targeted Netflix, or seem to be targeting Netflix. Darrell Issa, Congressman. And there's a US Senator, Roger Marshall. They have sent letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi that have essentially mirrored the Paramount position on this potential auction. And they have said that, quote, to allow this would be to diminish incentives to produce new content and major theatrical releases, as evidenced by Netflix's own statements dismissing MOV theaters as outdated, which could undermine opportunities for the full range of industry professionals both in front of and behind the camera. So this is a political issue. These Republicans seem to be going after Netflix in particular. And Netflix responds by saying that, first of all, they are not the industry leader in TV viewing. If you actually look at the Nielsen gauge. They are the number four distributor behind YouTube, Disney and NBCUniversal.
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B
Do you believe that?
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A
Well, that's why I wanted to ask you, because it depends how you define the market. If you define it just by streaming, Netflix is clearly the leader. If you define it by video consumption, then, you know, these linear channels still pump out tons of hours of viewing via sports and news. So like, how are we going to define the market for the purpose of antitrust evaluation?
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B
Right. And so in my view, the right way to define the market is by power.
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A
Okay, but that can mean different things to different people. What's an objective marker of power?
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B
If I'm negotiating with Netflix, can I credibly say I'm going to distribute my video over as user generated content over YouTube or can I forego Netflix and instead go to linear? The answer to that is clearly no. Right. For a significant segment of high end scripted television.
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A
Well, they want, yeah, they want exclusives and they're trying to get more exclusives. But there are other options. You can sell your show to probably 10, 15 buyers in this country. Just nobody has the distribution power of Netflix. But you can sell it elsewhere.
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B
Not to get what you need though. Right. And so I can go to a fruit stand every week, but it's not going to substitute for my grocery store. The fact of the matter is there are certain realities and the antitrust laws are flexible enough to understand that. They get that just because in theory you can do something doesn't mean it's in the market. It asks the question, practically speaking, do you have an alternative or do they have enough power that they can raise the price or reduce quality or reduce the deal? You're going to get by 5 or 10% without losing enough consumers or artists or others to make that unprofitable. If you take that kind of test that you applied here, you can get a very clear answer.
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A
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with you. In the current market, I think there are enough options right now. But I do agree that if they swallow Warner Brothers, then that significantly reduces the.
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B
Well, that's the question.
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A
I mean, the most prolific TV studio that is not Netflix right now is probably Warner Brothers. They produce a ton of shows for all types of buyers, for themselves and for others. And to put that studio under Netflix with a mandate to produce just for Netflix, I think that does take a big chunk out of the market.
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B
Yes. And the test, the legal test, isn't absolute certainty that it's going to cause harm. The legal test is that it may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. It's probabilistic. You don't have to prove it to a certainty.
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A
And just for the record, Netflix would argue that this deal would increase production because of all the suitors out there, they are the only entertainment company that is making more and more content every year. And they would look to use Warner Brothers to make more content. That's their position.
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B
Correct.
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A
We don't know if that would end up happening. And ultimately they have a long range plan probably where if they can eliminate competitors and some of these linear dinosaurs die off at some point in 10 years, 15 years, there are three buyers or four buyers and then they can squeeze as much as they want.
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B
Yes. So when I was in office I viewed thousands of mergers and every party to anti competitive merger came in and said we need to be a monopoly so that we can make everyone's lives better.
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A
Right. That's what the other Netflix argument is, is that this would give Netflix customers more content for the same or less money.
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B
Right. And probably heard very similar arguments every other time somebody bought or sold Time Warner.
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A
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B
Merger that's a more straightforward, you know, two massive studios coming together and they're just going to exercise more power on both sides of the market if they merge.
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A
But does it matter that Peacock is kind of flailing and kind of needs HBO and the global reach that HBO Max has?
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B
Well, the question is whether that is enough to outweigh the. The harm from the studio consolidation. And I think in antitrust, you typically look at each market on its own in addition to collectively, and I think that's, at least on its face, going to be a tough sell.
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A
A tough sell to block or a tough sell to get it through?
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B
Tough sell to get through.
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A
Oh, you think so?
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B
I do. I think all of these are going to create a wave of concerns. So I think this administration is going to be far more favorable to mergers than perhaps our administration. So will they ultimately get through? Maybe they might.
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A
Well, but. But we haven't talked about the politics of Comcast.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Trump hates msnbc. He hates the Roberts family.
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B
Right.
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A
I've heard that they are going to try to, like, make Mike Kavanaugh the face of this. He is getting promoted to co CEO and he is not in the Roberts family. And perhaps Donald Trump will look more favorably on him. I don't know that they're that stupid. I think they're going to see through that, but maybe it'll work.
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B
Well, they can do what they did with CBS and basically use it as a way to hold up the deal and say, okay, now you need to.
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A
Eliminate DEI and fire Seth Meyers.
- [26:22]
B
Fire Seth Meyers and fix cnn. And then all of a sudden you're okay. I think that's a problem. Right? That's not the right outcome. It's not the way the process should work. But in this day and age, it certainly feels like that's the way things get done.
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A
I mean, yeah, it is kind of unbelievable. And they're already making donations to the White House renovations and all these other things.
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B
They could buy the naming rights of the White House. It'll be the Comcast East Wing. And now we have a merger.
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A
Yes, there's no shame. But you could argue that they need this.
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B
You can argue that. But maybe the question would be, for folks in Hollywood, if you're a writer or producing a show or an actor, do you like it or not?
- [27:04]
A
Oh, it's disastrous. Nobody wants this. Nobody wants this. The only people that want it are the people that are managing these companies who are trying to get scale and who see their stock price languishing. I guess the shareholders want it. They're not nobodies. Like this is something that the shareholders would want. The Comcast stock has been not doing great for the past few years. Right.
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B
And so the question you said, do they need it? That's. That's the wrong question to ask. The question is, does everyone else need it? It and does everyone else want it? And is it going to harm competition?
- [27:34]
A
But isn't the question also to ask what are the alternatives here? You seem to say that this company, Warner Discovery, should stay as it is and should not be allowed to merge with any of these suitors. But what is the alternative there? These cable networks are dragging down these companies, so what are they supposed to do?
- [27:56]
B
It's an important question and there is no good answer. But that doesn't mean you can essentially wave through anti competitive mergers.
- [28:04]
A
Right.
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B
The industry has been trying to fix itself through consolidation now for 25 years and it hasn't worked well and it doesn't seem to be making things better. So that's perhaps where we need some more innovation, frankly.
- [28:18]
A
Yeah, I don't know. Did you see the Moana trailer? They just are remaking. Moana looks pretty much the same at Disney. Yeah, no, I get it. Let's move to Paramount. So what are the unique issues here with Paramount buying this company now? They want the whole thing. The others just want studios and streaming and will figure out what to do with the other side of the company. But Paramount wants the whole thing. Is that better or worse?
- [28:44]
B
Well, it's harder, right, to take Everything. And it has its own set of issues. Now you have the issue of also studios merging. You have the issue of some streaming with plus and hbo, but perhaps they're smaller. And then you have news, right, with CBS News and cnn and then you have all the kind of linear or the traditional networks. The thing that's really interesting to me about Paramount is TikTok. And so it's not in the fold yet. But what you definitely see coming down the pipe is a vertically integrated system that is essentially trying to compete against YouTube. One that has long tail of user generated content and video advertising in its own distribution. And so the world, for example you'd wonder about with respect to Paramount is five years from now are you going to have essentially two mega platforms in YouTube and Paramount with, you know, TikTok and YouTube, the user generated side being the anchor and then all of these other assets.
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A
The question I have for you though is why should these media companies have to sit around and watch this happen? If the Ellisons have more money than God and they want to leverage two studios and TikTok and Oracle to try to compete with these two big tech companies, why not let them? I'm just making the argument, sure, you know, like fuck these guys. Why should Silicon Valley dictate the future of the media business? Because they have been allowed to get this big. Why shouldn't Hollywood at least take a swing and have David Ellison be the guy that rolls this up and takes that swing? I'm just putting it out there.
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B
Yes. So listen, there are multiple ways to look at this. I think, you know, in terms of the threat to society, big tech is a bigger threat than big Hollywood. But big Hollywood hasn't necessarily been great for the industry and it hasn't necessarily been great for consumers. So the question is, you know, why? Well, there are laws. Right. The antitrust laws exist. The Clayton act says you can't merge unless in competition. Right. And so the why is, well, Congress wrote a law and said it was illegal. And so if this merger does that, which it may or may not, then, you know, then they should abide by the law and so should the big tech companies. Which is why I think, and I've been active in bringing antitrust cases against them too. I think there's too much concentration of power in all of these industries and people don't like it.
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A
Yeah, I guess it's just more frustration I'm venting that the tech companies now compete in pretty much every aspect of the traditional entertainment business and have been held to a different Standard.
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B
I think that is absolutely freaking right. And somebody needs to do something about it. And we tried and we started that process and I hope that someone finishes it. But is the answer to that allowing everybody else to get really big too? Is that going to solve the problem? And if you really think it does, great. But I'm not sure it will.
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A
And obviously Ellison is looking forward to this battle. He hired Macon Delrahim as his general counsel, who was the guy at the Trump administration that handled antitrust law. He had your job.
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B
My predecessor, he's a good friend of mine, is a great guy, and it was a wise hire. He's. He's very savvy and very smart.
- [32:10]
A
But you know why he's there? He's there to push this thing through.
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B
Well, we'll find out.
- [32:18]
A
All right, so are you as defeatist about this stuff as I am? Do you think there is a chance that one of these state AGs or one of these cases actually does anything? Like when they announce who buys Warner Brothers, will there be an instant challenge? And will there be some kind of a maybe, a concession? Maybe Netflix will be forced to release 15 movies in theaters for a month window every year. Maybe the Ellisons will be required to commit to keeping Warner Brothers as a standalone theatrical oriented studio for a certain number of years. They can do that.
- [32:53]
B
While I come across as defeatist, I think the message I'm trying to send is that all of these deals have their own hair, meaning they all have their own problems. And it's not going to get waved through quickly. And so if you're Warner and you're a shareholder of Warner. Okay, there's uncertainty here. This thing's going to sit on the vine for a year or longer and it's going to get swept up in politics and it's going to be ugly. And so people are going to have to have patience. And the asset may deteriorate even further during that period. So it's not going to be a smooth, easy process because they can't just snap their fingers and close the deal, even if the Trump administration waves it through. Because you have state AGs, you have foreign enforcers, you're going to have all these battles. And so it's going to be a little bit messy.
- [33:41]
A
All right, well, I appreciate you coming on and explaining this all to us. Thank you very much.
- [33:45]
B
You bet. My pleasure.
- [33:48]
A
We are back with the call sheet. Craig, are you sad that the Wicked for Good premiere was in New York, so we were not able to attend this one?
- [33:56]
C
I had a great Time at the Wicked premiere last year.
- [33:58]
A
You did. You and your wife had a lovely time.
- [34:01]
C
Yeah. I had never seen Wicked have kind of no relationship with it. I love the movie. I know a lot of people have thoughts all over the place about Wicked. I thought the movie was great.
- [34:09]
A
You know what? I did like it. There was some kerfuffle over me revealing that I nodded off a little during the premiere. But you know what? I nod off during most movies and I enjoyed it. It was very brief. I came back, I was never fully asleep.
- [34:23]
C
No, you weren't. You were fine. I waved a little smelling salts under your nose.
- [34:26]
A
Yes, I know. They gave us a drink before the movie. Like all the signs were there for me to nod off a little. And I very much enjoyed it. So Wicked for good is actually tracking bigger than the first one, which I, I, I gotta admit, I thought that the all out full court press of media for the first one would deliver a bigger opening than the second one. But we're at 125 in the tracking for this weekend, according to NRG. Some have it a little bit lower. And the domestic opening of the first one was 112.
- [34:57]
C
Yeah, I mean it doesn't this sometimes happen when the first movie is an unexpected hit? The sequel's often bigger.
- [35:03]
A
It can open bigger. But I, for some reason I thought there would be a lot of looky loos that got lured in to the first one and then saw what it was and were like, okay, I'm good. But I think because people liked it, they're back.
- [35:15]
C
The movie delivered. I thought Grande and Erivo delivered. The music is really good. And they've also scaled back a ton in the marketing.
- [35:21]
A
They have. I was dreading another like full scale press tour for these guys, but they've been doing stuff. But it hasn't been like the first one.
- [35:30]
C
I don't think they needed to. It hasn't been long enough where it's still in people's minds.
- [35:35]
A
It's true. Yeah, no, it's true. Domestically, the first one did 475, which is pretty damn big, I believe. There has not been a higher domestic grocer since this movie. And it's been a year. It's actually interesting. Both Minecraft and Lilo and Stitch did 423 million domestic. Exactly. Now those movies were bigger internationally. Lilo and Stitch got to a billion and overall Wicked only got to 758 because it did 62% of its gross domestically. But this is like the biggest domestic movie in a year. It's kind of crazy. And I think this one's going to open, so I know once you get above 100, it's kind of a crapshoot. I'll take the over on 125, even though I'm a little dubious because it's bigger than the first one. I will take the over on 125.
- [36:27]
C
Last year, Wicked competed with Gladiator 2, which came out the exact same weekend.
- [36:32]
A
That's true.
- [36:33]
C
This year, there is nothing coming out that's big opposite Wicked.
- [36:37]
B
And.
- [36:37]
C
And there hasn't also really been a movie that people have needed to see in theaters in a while. So I. I tend to agree with you that I think this is going to go over.
- [36:44]
A
Yeah. The only other movies opening this weekend are rental Family. The Brendan Fraser Searchlight movie that is only expected to grow is less than 5 million. Sisu Road to Revenge, which I'm not totally sure what that is, but it's not. It's not supposed to be anything Wicked. I'll take the over. Are you over or under?
- [37:05]
C
I'm way over.
- [37:06]
A
You are? Oh, wow. Way over on 125 million. This is not a holiday weekend. Remember, this is pre Thanksgiving. You're over. Yes.
- [37:16]
C
I will take the over on 125.
- [37:18]
A
We will see. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Jonathan Kanter, producer Craig Horbeck, artist Jesse Lopez, and I want to thank you. We'll see you one more time this week.