Matt Belloni on the Oscars, the Ellisons, and Hollywood’s Next Chapter

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That is me. I'm also Chief Correspondent at Business Insider. It is Oscar season. If you weren't paying attention to that, cause maybe paying attention to other things happening in the world. The actual awards are Sunday, March 15th.

That means it's time to talk to Puck's Matt Bellamy, the excellent chronicler of all things Hollywood. I want to talk about the awards, but really this is a chance to talk about the movie business and where it's going at what seems like a crucial moment. Welcome back, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming. Last time we had this conversation, it was just after last year's Oscars. You said you had good but not great seats. Basically your your star had slipped since you were editing the Hollywood Reporter. Are you going this year? And if so, have your seats improved? I am going and it is unclear whether my seats have improved. They do not assign tickets until the night before

the Oscars, so I will they will just pop up in my digital wallet where I'm sitting. I don't think I'm I'm not anticipating much of an improvement this year. I didn't do anything to warrant getting better seats. I don't know, I feel like I read a profile of you in the Times and and some other glossy stuff. Someone had a picture someone profile of you looking pensive at Sundance. I think you're moving up.

Yeah, I guess stars on the studio do not get preference for Oscar t Oscar tickets. Uh no, I don't know. I I think if I think if you're in the studio, which you literally were, then you should get better seats. Uh you know what? From your mouth to whoever at the academy decides. It is it's not embarrassing. Let me be clear. The mezzanine is not embarrassing, but

I hopefully someday will return to the orchestra seats. Okay. Besides Matt Bellamy's quest for better seats, what are the storylines you care about the most with this year's awards?

I mean the the hilarious thing about the Oscars this year is that the leading studio with thirty nominations was just gobbled up by another studio, the fourth richest man in the world. I mean, Warner Brothers, this is almost like a swan song for Warners. This is the best it's ever gonna get. for this studio. Now, put aside the fact that one battle after another lost them tens of millions of dollars and they still ran a, you know, fifteen million dollar awards campaign for the movie.

Sinners did very well for them and is really a validation in their minds of the strategy that has been put in place at Warner's to bet.

hundreds of millions of dollars on Autour filmmakers to make original movies. That people in Hollywood love that. And if Sinners wins, it's because in part People want to thank Warner Brothers for betting on this filmmaker Ryan Kugler and saying, Yes, we will make your hundred million dollar vampire movie and give it a full release and yes, it will make three hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide.

So I still think one battle after another is gonna win, but that's also a validation. I mean, that movie costs they say one thirty. I've heard as much as one fifty. And it grossed about two something worldwide, not gonna make money, but the filmmaker community loves the fact that Warner's did this.

There there were a lot of stories about both centers and one battle after another as they were in production and coming out with lots of people sort of concern trolling, Oh, it's too much money and it's not It's not known IP and what is Warner's doing giving Ryan Kugler this deal? What are they doing spending all and now it's flipped and now they're being heralded for for making movies that are not that are not superhero movies.

Uh at least creatively they worked. One battle did not work financially for all the reasons that people said it wouldn't work. It was just too expensive for what it was. And PTA, Paul Thomas Anderson had never directed a movie that grossed more than seventy five million worldwide.

And the fact that this movie got over two hundred, I guess, is a win. You have Leonardo DiCaprio in it and that's a big draw worldwide. But it's not gonna make money. But I think when you win best picture, It kind of doesn't matter because the value of that movie in the Warner's library will always be strong.

So assuming that one of either sinners or one battle after another wins and the odds right now are are on one battle after another. Does that tell us anything about the state of Hollywood in twenty twenty six other than Warner Brothers made a bunch of suc critically successful and in some cases commercially successful movies in the last year?

Well, it it says something about where we're going in the sense that we don't know whether David Ellison and his Paramount team is even going to allow the kind of bets that Warner Brothers made to get those two movies into production and contention. Like the if you look at the past history of Skydance movies, the movies that David Ellison made at his company, I I highlighted this last night in my puck newsletter because people at Warner Brothers are joking about it. It's a lot of garbage.

It is stuff that, you know, Apple throwaway movies like Ghosted and The Family Plan and, you know, he made Gemini Man and Life and I mean all these movies that kinda came and went. And then he attached himself to the Paramount franchises. Paramount and Tom Cruise. Yeah and Tom Cruise. Mission Impossible, Top Gun. He did Reacher and Jack Ryan on TV. Like he's done He's done okay on the franchise front, although you arguably the the Terminator movies he made were not good and not successful, but

That is his focus, and it's it's gonna be interesting to see if he will even allow the kind of filmmaking at the budgets that were employed on those movies to even happen. So it could be a last guess for that kind of filmmaking or at least for Warner Brothers making that kind of filmmaking. Now now to be fair, they're not saying that. They're saying that Warner's is going to be able to be autonomous and they want them to make these kinds of movies and they have expertise.

But I think there's gonna be a lot more control over Warner Brothers from the Paramount side than there would have been at, say, Netflix, if Netflix had bought Warner Brothers and they were talking about keeping it as a fully autonomous theatrical studio.

So we'll come back to to David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison in a few minutes. Um back to the Oscars for a second. Used to you used to hear stories about APO research. My producer Charlotte was bringing this up, uh, where and I guess the uh Harvey Weinstein sort of pioneered this at Mirimac. So the Zacolites are running the campaigns. These who came up under Harvey.

To improve the odds of you you run an Oscar campaign in part to promote your movie and also to tear down somebody else's. Is was that happening this year around? I didn't I feel like I didn't hear any of that. And the only thing I can think of was there was a California Post. story uh going after the Safty brothers and and some ugliness there that they don't get along.

It was not really even about the movie. It was just that they don't get along. But they don't get along and and one of the safties had behaved extra badly, supposedly, uh on a set. Um or he allowed some people to to behave badly. You know what? The Appo research thing I think it's a little overblown because they the the campaigns don't want to go there. But when they

see an opportunity like last year with the Carla Sofia Gascon controversy where the star of Emilia Perez, which was already it was, you know, it got the most nominations. People forget that last year, Amelia Perez. But it was already kind of weekend in the sense that there was backlash online to some of the gender stuff in the movie. There was

uh kind of a lot of people just thought the movie sucked. Yes. And it's very different to show that movie in a film festival environment where it's a lot of autours who want to believe in the artistic merit of it. And then it drops on Netflix and people are like, uh what? What is this penis vagina song? Like, what are we doing here? So

They were it was weak and then Carlos Sophia Gascon went on this, you know, this resurfaced Twitter scandal. Bad tweets. Bad tweets, and we've seen it before, and people pounced. And all of a sudden the other campaigns were highlighting what she had said. They saw an opportunity to take that movie down and it worked.

We didn't see that this year though. Didn't see it this year and and and then the last couple of days there is a a uh a non story about Timothy Chalamet suggesting that ballet and opera aren't important. Um but that won't First of all, th there I don't believe there's a big ballet and opera contingent in the Academy, but also the award voting is closed, right? So that's a non voting.

scandal, which is a giant nothing burger. I mean, literally it's it's one of those that is only made for Twitter and the outlets that love to get traffic off of Twitter. The the A allegation is that he's going to offend the artistic community, but this broke. At the very end of voting, likely people had either voted or already made up their mind. And plus, even if these scandals make their way into the academy, it takes a while for them to. To permeate.

Academy voters are not very online. They are working actors, directors, writers, etcetera. And it just, I don't, if if Timmy loses, it won't be because of that. It will be because there was a last minute surge for Sinners. It won the SAG Award. Michael B. Jordan won the SAG Award. And it will be because he splits the Leo vote and Michael B. Jordan surges.

But I d I still don't think that's gonna happen. I think Timmy's gonna win. And and this is the first year of the Oscars where prediction markets are are fully mainstream, or at least the idea of them is fully mainstream. Uh I have gone on Cal she'cause it's legal and easy and they will can you can download the app from the Apple App Store and connect it to your Apple Pay in two clicks and be betting and your third click.

The thing I always point out is polymarket, that's not the case. That's not legal in the US. So to use it you need a VPN, you need to pay in crypto. Normally I don't do this stuff, but I've been experimenting On Cal She this season, mostly just to kind of see how it works. And I won like a hundred bucks on Kate Hudson getting nominated. I won three dollars on John Cornyn probably winning the Republican primary. How do you think that affects the the race? Either

I mean, does it there's a couple of things I can imagine. I th it might literally affect the way the the race pans out, depending on I mean, if people have a sense of how the betting is working. Um I also assume it affects sort of the the media that covers the race, it does that if Calci has odds and I can just go to Calci and see what the odds are for one battle after another, does that pull from variety in Hollywood Reporter or even puck coverage of who's winning the race?

A little bit. I mean, these awards prognosticators claim to have the inside track and be able to reflect things that the prediction markets would not. Um, it'll be interesting to see how those prognosticators do against. The prediction markets. But we've seen right now, for instance, Michael B. Jordan is the favorite to win best actor. And

Timothy Chalamet has dropped down. He's at I believe he's at like three thirty percent or something like that now. And I think that is because a lot of people are seeing this stuff online and not realizing how little it's impacting the voting. So Timmy's a pretty good bet right now and this is not betting advice, but

If you were to bet, I might put some money on on Timmy to win best actor because he was the favorite for most of the season. And it's only this late surge that has caused Michael B. Jordan to go ahead. Um, I so I do think it'll be interesting to see. Who ends up being a better prognosticator, the so called experts or the math and the market? The people who promote gambling, whether it's sports gambling or prediction markets, one of the standard raps is

in favor of it is w when you can bet on it, it adds stakes, it it generates more attention. People are more invested in in the game or the awards because they have money riding on it or someone else does. Do you believe that? I do, and I know people at the academy That believe it. They they secretly kinda like this stuff. They like the people'cause they've seen what what it does to sports.

I mean, how many more people are invested in football because of their fantasy team or their betting? It's it's an it's an entirely new avenue to get people invested. Yeah, it's unclear to me still whether people are are more involved in sports because of betting and fantasy betting, but we can table that for now. Um But you don't think so? I don't know. I'll tune into a game if I have someone on my fantasy team playing.

No, and there's a contingent of that, right? And and I just don't know if the audience has grown like if that was happening you'd think the audience would grow for these things, and I think they're they're basically flat to down for most of s for most sports. Yeah. So I guess NFL is the big one. Well I think the NFL betting has permeated society in a way that everybody at least knows somebody who does it. So I I think the Oscars would love

If it if that became a thing. Now they're not going all the way like the Golden Globes did, where the Golden Globes showed the polymarket odds on the screen, which was like the tackiest thing you could ever do for an artistic merit competition. But the globes are tacky and cash grabbing. But the Oscars have not done that. They do not have a prediction market partner.

Give give them time. So that leads me to this conversation, which is normally uh when I cover the Oscars, it's about the television sh it's often about the television show and how the audience is steadily declining and what does that tell us about the state of media and monoculture. And will the uh you know, will this ever return? Will will the Oscars ever get more important? And it looks like the Academy has basically said,

We've had a nice run. Um, we're taking our ball and we're moving to the internet so you no longer have these discussions about our declining ratings. So in a couple of years, YouTube this show is gonna be a YouTube show. What does that tell us about where things are going? It tells us two things. First and foremost, the Academy needs money.

YouTube was stepping up to maintain the license fee that the Academy has become accustomed to. The Academy is like a very well-taken care of spouse, male or female, in a very nice, bunker or mansion where all of a sudden they were potentially looking at a divorce from a ABC that was paying a hundred million dollars a year for the show and offering much less. So they can either Switch up the lifestyle to which they become accustomed.

or they can find a new suitor and the Oscars are so worth it to YouTube as a branding moment and to get everybody talking about how this pinnacle of Hollywood excellence is moving to the internet and moving to the home of cat videos and Mr. Beast. And this will be in the narrative everywhere. Now, will the audience actually grow? The Academy hopes that not only will the audience get younger.

It will grow worldwide because it is so accessible and everybody can watch anywhere they want. I'm not convinced of that. I think they're making a sacrifice here, doing it so soon. Eventually, yes. But in 2029, are a lot of people going to recognize and realize that you've got to download the YouTube. app, put it on your TV or phone and watch it there or, you know, go to a website. I don't know that the older audience for the Oscars is gonna do that.

Yeah, I mean YouTube says, you know, well over half their viewing now is on connected T V is they're already there, but people have figured it out. Connected T V. But what we saw with Amazon Prime Video when the NFL moved Thursday Night Football there was that the audience for that first year after being on Fox went down.

Right. And and now it's back. They've figured out. And now it's back, but that's three, four years later. So That first couple years, I think there is a contingent of people that just won't find it. And this premise that if we make it accessible around the world and we put it on YouTube and never you know, YouTube's got a very young audience, that that will make the Oscars relevant again. This fixes our our relevancy problem.

I find that hard to believe, but also YouTube is a giant fucking platform. Maybe there's some some truth to it. Maybe. But but here's the thing is that the Oscars are pretty accessible worldwide. They air in in most countries. It's just the problem is A five PM or four PM show on the West Coast is the middle of the night in Europe.

Yep. And you wake up in Europe and you see who won and a lot of the value of watching, it's not like the Grammys, where there are performances that you kind of want to see, even if you already know the winners. The Oscars is all about the winners. And the speeches. The winners, and it's also about who wore what, right? And what were interesting things and clips and that that already you don't need to watch live.

And the idea of seeing famous people on TV was a big deal up until the last 10 years when you can see famous people nonstop on the internet. You can't escape famous people. Exactly. And the Academy is trying to rectify that. They have Amelia de Moldenberg as their ambassador doing interviews. She's a big YouTube star. They have ambassadors from various, you know, creators and stuff that they now

allow into the show to try to boost their profile online. Um, I actually do an interview with Amelia on The Town this week where we talk about how to make the Oscars younger and she has some ideas, but like it's just The the fundamental problem with the Oscars has always been and will continue to be until the Academy changes it. They give out twenty-four awards, twenty-three or twenty-four awards.

And until they do what the Grammys did, which was recognize this is a television show. People wanna be entertained. They don't wanna see who wins the best sound award. That's gonna be a problem. So maybe someone in Hollywood who knows how to make a television show could work around that with them.

At some point. You'd think so, but but you but that's not the way it works. The Academy has a board of governors with fifty-four governors that represent the different branches. And they tried it a few years ago. They tried to take some of the awards off camera and put'em on a pre-show. And everyone was up in arms and then they

didn't actually get any benefit in in making the show shorter because everyone else, they lost both ways. Yeah, they just went and they and they still gave them out on the on the air. They need to do a a culling. They need to say, these are the 10 awards people care about. Everything else will be at a pre-show or the commercials, and that's the way it is.

And the messaging from YouTube after they won this deal was, by the way, we're not gonna YouTube up this show. It is gonna be the show you're used to seeing on ABC. We're just gonna move it over to YouTube. I understand why they both say that and probably believe that's the case, but that can't work long term. Well, the Academy produces the show. The Academy selects the producer in consultation with the broadcast partner, but ultimately that person works for the Academy.

So there's the problem. We'll be right back with Matt Bellamy, but first a word from a sponsor. Harvey, Zoe, Group Selfie. Ooh, nice new iPhone 17. formation. I'm in front. With a center stage front camera, everyone fits in the shot. T-Mobile Switching tickets. Not anymore. Now you can switch to T Mobile in just 15 minutes. Focus, people, nail your pose. New iPhone 17 on them. No way. Yes way. No way. Yes way, guys. Switch to T Mobile and get iPhone 17 on us.

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And we're back. You and I l sp spent time last year's talking about the notion that Netflix might buy the the the awards. Um why didn't they? Why is it YouTube instead? They they both they both the argument you made for YouTube buying this, that would work for Netflix as well, right? It would, and they were interested, but the first of all, you uh Netflix already has the SAG awards, which were renamed the Actor Awards. Not as cool. There's also a political thing within Hollywood.

Netflix is already controversial within the film industry because they do not put their movies in movie theaters and give them wide releases generally. So there's a lot of people that believe that's the reason why Netflix has not won Best Picture, despite campaigning heavily for a decade. Now. And they're kind of stand in their stand ins for

You're mad about the way technology has changed and audiences have changed and Netflix is the avatar of changing Hollywood. If you're angry at it absolutely vote against Hollywood. fix that. I mean Ted Serrandos is on all the boards of the academy and he does the fundraisers and they put they their awards movies in theaters. And if you want to see a Netflix movie that's up for awards, you can go to a screening most nights in LA in some movie theater. But it doesn't change the fact that people

have substituted Netflix for the digital boogeyman. And if Netflix started airing the Oscars, I think that might have been a bridge too far for many Academy members.

So gets us right into the thing that Netflix is also not doing, which is buying Warner Brothers. Uh the Ellisons are going to buy that instead. We spent the last couple of years is watching David Ellison buy Paramount and now Warner's. We're gonna spend the next couple of years watching him combine those two companies. It'll be an ugly process. Um

There was optimism at one point, I feel like last fall, or people preferred the idea of David Ellison buying Warner Brothers again because they didn't want Netflix to buy it. It feels like once Netflix got it and then lost it, that that narrative has flipped. What's what's the thing people are most correctly scared about when they think about the Ellisons um buying first paramount and now Warner Brothers? I think that the thing people are scared about is simply the math.

If you look at the contours of this deal, they are taking on eighty billion dollars of debt. to buy this company. And when you just went through what happened with Warner Brothers Discovery, which also took on tens of millions of dollars to combine those companies, they spent three years cutting costs. Right. That was the the one hundred percent North Star, so much so that they changed the compensation structure for David Zaslov, the CEO, so that he would one hundred percent focus his time

on cutting the debt. And to his credit, he did so. But he did so at the cost of a lot of spending that people in Hollywood are used to. And when you're combining these two storied studios The Ellisons are already talking about six billion dollars in cost cuts. That's a lot of people. Now they say that there are a lot of things. Jerry Cardinal came on my show and talked about how.

It's not primarily gonna be employees. It's gonna be better tech and we're gonna save money with an Oracle cloud deal. Yes. Nobody believes that. They think that it's gonna be painful. And I think they're probably right. Um You know, it depends what you consider to be painful. Is twenty percent reduction of employees painful? Uh you know, that's thousands of employees. This is a company combined that has, you know, more than fifty, sixty thousand employees.

So that's a lot of people. Um, so that's the first thing. And then I I do think that the freak out over the tenor of CNN and CBS News and the the kind of uh positioning of those networks. I think people are right to recognize that Ellison has a very different view of the news than the previous ownership. He is going to move those those two entities rightward. He calls it towards the center. It's gonna be more like Fox.

And whether he's doing this to appease Donald Trump or because he genuinely thinks that's a good idea for a business reason or ideologically doesn't matter, that's where it's gonna go. Yeah. And knowing him a little bit, I and knowing Ellison, I don't think he's a particularly ideological person. He's not doing this in order to y cr you know, create some kind of Fox News competitor because he thinks that the world needs more conservative news.

I think he's looking at the market and he's saying there's one news network and cable that kicks everyone's ass. And why are they doing that? Why are they kicking everyone's ass? Because it's the one place that a center right comp country can congregate around a news product that they feel reflects their sensibility.

So why not compete on that playing ground then compete with this ten other outlets that are espousing a left center view? Yeah, I guess I would point him to all the other networks that are trying to compete with Fox News, that that market already exists, but You mean like News Nation and OAN and yeah. Yeah, there's something about Fox and the populist nature and the vibrant screen and all the things that Roger Ailes invented that that does resonate, but But I see why he's doing this.

I also think his father is a is a role here, like plays a role. His father is a conservative guy, has a relationship with Trump. And the political stuff, they recognize very early that they had an inn here. They've got two and a half years to

be in the good graces of the government, they're gonna do everything they can to exploit that relationship. Do you think there's anyone in Warner Brothers Discovery who is happy that the Ellisons got this deal? You heard a lot that, you know, it seemed like if Netflix bought them that they would more or less leave Warner Brothers Studio alone.

They basically said they were gonna leave uh HBO alone. Those guys seemed like they were pretty psyched for that. Is there any is there anyone in that in it, you know, Warner Brother Discovery's a big company. Is there anyone there? It's like, oh, I would love to work with the Ellison's or that's a better option for me.

Well, first of all, the shareholders of Warner Brothers Discovery, which does include a lot of senior level employees. They got more money for their shares than they ever thought they were gonna get when the stock was trading at seven dollars less than, you know, six months ago. Uh, but I think that for for people who believe in theatrical. And theatrical distribution.

I think that Ellison is at least saying the right things. Now, nobody in town believes he's gonna get to thirty movies a year for both studios. He's saying that Paramount Paramount and Warner Brothers will both release fifteen movies a year in theaters, which would be more than both of them released last year, a lot more. Um but if he's committed to the theatrical experience.

And he doesn't do what Disney did when they bought Fox, which was just kind of uh neuter and and downsize the Fox studio into just a label that produces a few movies a year. Then that could be good and much more so than potentially what Netflix was gonna do. Now, Netflix was also saying they're gonna maintain the theatrical windows, but I After a couple of years, I could have absolutely seen Ted Serrando say, you know what, we tried it. Not our model.

We're gonna go back to h producing all of our movies. for Netflix with a few big superhero movies and theaters. And I think we'll spend a couple of years speculating about, you know, is Casey Blois from HBO gonna stay and where else would he go? And we'll see how all that. Yeah, that's not I mean, they're saying the right things and I'm told that that David did call

Casey and a number of the top executives and say hello and you know, tell them that they're great, which is I guess a first step there. Uh but It doesn't change the dynamic because if you look at what Cindy Holland is doing at n at Paramount she's the head of streaming. Former Netflix. Former Netflix head and she's the head of streaming at Paramount.

She's greenlighting a lot of shows that arguably could be considered HBO style shows. She's, you know, this Jeremy Strong nine eleven show where he plays a firefighter. There's a lot a number of other things. She's got the Duffer brothers. Like, I I think that That there's going to be conflict there, not just in who Casey reports to. He could report to David Ellison as is in his contract, but.

What do these platforms mean? What do they go after? Is Ellison going to take the max part out of HBO Max and just have them focus on the prestige of the prestige? Or is he gonna let them do shows like The Pit? Or the penguin or um, you know, Welcome to Dairy, or these more populist. style IP-driven HBO shows that they've been doing over the past year, couple years now to try to broaden out the HBO Max brand. That's an interesting question. We'll be right back, but first a word from a sponsor

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And we're back. As you know, one thing I am obsessed with and also obsessed with the fact that fewer people are obsessed with this is where the money is coming from and and are we gonna see twenty four billion dollars in Gulf money and not again not from c companies in the Gulf but Gulf countries. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar were supposed to kick in twenty four billion dollars, uh, when this deal was being discussed late last year.

Now Paramount won't talk about that, uh, at least on the record at the moment. Well, they're not yeah. Jerry Cardinal basically says we're going to syndicate this money, we're meaning we're gonna bring in investors. But they won't say who, and guess why? They're still trying to get this deal approved. And last thing they want is an entire street full of Democratic senators with pitchforks.

going after their Saudi money, even though they've already said that they're likely gonna have Saudi and Qatar and Abu Dhabi money. That's one so I thi my two theories were one, they just don't want to talk about it and they'll wait as long as they can. But y again, you interviewed Jerry Cardinal and he basically said

It's great to have Gulf money if we were to have Gulf money. Uh the positive things that are happening in the Middle East right now, it's from these sovereigns, which is a yes, a wild quote. Um, to say and the other theory is maybe these deals actually aren't done. And maybe the fact that there is a war in the Middle East right now may make Saudis or somebody else more reticent to put money in.

I'm kind of assuming if the Saudis wanted to put ten billion dollars into this last fall that they still want to put ten billion dollars, it's not very much money for them. There's been some reporting that that that might change and there's also been some reporting that that ten cent in China might be back in as well. I I think what's probably going on with Jerry is they want to keep their options open. And even though they may have these handshake commitments from these groups.

They they wanna potentially bring in others. I mean, uh some of the analysts, one of the analysts, Peter Supino, suggested they bring in more equity investors to bring down that debt. And maybe there are others out there they can recruit now that they have more time to come into this deal. So assuming this deal goes through and there doesn't really seem to be any practical way to stop it, as far as I can tell. Maybe you think differently. Yeah. I mean it seems unlikely, but you never know.

Um you certainly don't want to prognosticate too much. Well and so Elizabeth Warren, people like that, people like me will say, Hey, it's pretty w wild to have Saudi Arabia putting ten billion dollars into this company um that controls CNN, et cetera. Will anyone else care? Will Hollywood care that there is golf money? You know what? I don't think so. I think that when push comes to shove, people want their projects made and

They worked with Rupert Murdoch for many years at Fox and there was a he was very smart. He kept it separate. Fox News was in New York, separate leadership team. The studio was the studio and they worked with the kind of creators that very much did not like Fox News. And I think that that will be the prevailing wisdom unless it becomes Something that people that stars get asked about on the red carpet.

Mm-hmm. Or becomes embarrassing for them. Maybe it could be a deciding factor if a hot project is going to one of two buyers and one is the Ellisons, the other is someone who's you're not involved in this stuff, maybe it could decide. But I don't think first of all, there's only a certain number of buyers in Hollywood. So you've got to you've got to, you know, work with everyone if you can. And It it just people want to see their projects made.

I was talking to someone who's probably gonna get Saudi money and they were sort of practicing their like explanation for why they need it and it comes down to I want the money. Uh but they've got a whole rap about. Did they make a mistake it was like what we saw last summer with the comedy festival. Did they make a you know, uh they're they're modernizing. They're not the country you think. And did they make a mistake when the when the head of Saudi Arabia had Jamal Khashoggi uh dismembered?

Uh yes, was that a big mistake? Sure, but you know, we gotta move on. And I think you'll never do that. And listen, I get it. I get it. Again, there's only a few entities that are willing to support these kinds of projects. And most of them have something that's wrong with them.

Whether it's a human rights thing. I mean, Hollywood was was enamored with China for many years because the market was opening up and the movies would do well there. And, you know, they have their human rights issues as well. Disney does business with them, has a theme park there. There is a it's the world is a complicated place. I understand that. This one irks a lot of journalists. Because of the nature of the the mistakes, as you put it. So uh you know, but

Jerry Cardinal doesn't have any problem with it. The money men don't have any problem with it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and their point is and and his point specifically is not only do we not have a problem with the government doesn't have a problem with it. The Trump administration is is actively encouraging investment in Saudi Arabia, brought all the CEOs there, uh had the prince at the White House, literally ruled out the red carpet for him. So that's

Complaining about it is a pre twenty twenty four thing, it sounds like his argument is. Um Last question for you. We had uh Janice Min, your your former colleague slash competitor, uh on a few weeks ago and I was asking her for a sort of vibe check from from Hollywood and She said it's really grim. Um, she said, you know, they say Detroit like vibes going on here between consolidation, production leaving town, the threat of AI, a threat of tech in general.

Wanna make an optimist case for for Hollywood? Anything any green shoots that you see as a s is is the Hollywood is cooked meme overdone? I think this is a period of transition. And it's gonna be an extremely painful period of transition. But there are opportunities.

And you see them everywhere. What's going on in the creator space right now is pretty exciting. And the opportunities for people to build their own brands. and creators to have not just a springboard to getting traditional deals. or, you know, y you you're markiplier and you have a following on YouTube and you use your own money from YouTube to make a movie and your fans show up and it opens to twenty million dollars. That's an incredible success.

story that would never have been possible even 10 years ago in Hollywood. I mean YouTube has been around for 20 years. We've been waiting for someone to come out of YouTube or MySpace before that.

And make that leap to movies and it hasn't happened. It's really interesting that it took that long. And I don't know whether that means it's gonna be incredibly rare or we'll see more of it. The business is becoming more sophisticated. I mean, everyone's like, Oh, everyone in Hollywood is downsizing. That's true. But there's this entire diaspora of creator and podcast and video and microdramas and all these other things that have popped up around Hollywood. And the Borg of Hollywood is sort of

assimilating them. The agencies now all cater to this area of the business. The studios are becoming interested. The money is finding them. So it's just a different the definition of Hollywood is expanding. And while we're seeing the decline of the traditional studios, I think overall, once this transition period is over, you are going to

You did an excellent job of of answering the optimism question. Spoken like someone who is a successful creator himself. That does newsletters and audio podcasts and and we're still doing audio only here, but you're doing you moved into video, so maybe maybe the future looks brighter. The world needed to sing my face. From the town, thank you for joining.

Thanks again to Matt Felony. I should have him on more than once a year. I'm gonna try to fix that in 2026. Thanks to Charlotte Silver who produces and edits the show. Thanks to our advertisers who bring it to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening. See you next week.