The Ten Biggest Hollywood Fiascoes of 2022

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. This year, Peloton is gifting you their best offer of the season. Get up to three hundred dollars off accessories, like recycling shoes, a heart rate monitor, and more. When you purchase a Peloton bike, bike plus or tread, whether you have ten minutes to spare for a trained class or thirty for a cycling class, there’s a workout that works for you. To learn more, visit one Peloton dot com.

All Access membership separate offers starts November fourteenth and ends November twenty eighth be combined with other offers the additional terms at one peloton dot com.

Welcome back to The Bulwark. It goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bunch from Culture Editor at The Bulwark. And I’m very pleased to be rejoined by Ryan founder this week to talk about his ten biggest fiascos in the year twenty twenty two biggest business fiascos in Hollywood. And I first off, congratulations to Ryan.

New new father three months into the game. He has known How are

you feeling? Still alive? The hallucinations have faded a little bit. But yeah, things are going good. Thanks for asking, Sunny.

Congratulations.

Alright. So let’s get let’s get enough of that happy stuff. Let’s get to the the business here. So we’re talking about the year end fiasco’s. We’re talking about the the ten biggest and and kinda strangest and weird stories and how they impacted Hollywood.

And it was funny to look at the first item on this list because it’s something I had totally forgotten had happened — Yes. — this year or really hit all. Neil Young versus Joe Hogan. And I would I like I like starting here because it’s a really great demonstration of the the fairly limited impact of any controversy that originates in social media.

Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s also just kind of the archetypal controversy of our modern age where it combines all this stuff of, you know, you got you got public health misinformation. You’ve got online personality. It’s just people who are just chronically online fighting over these things and I think the net result of it is kind of what I what I think about the most, which is that in the wake of all of this, the boycotts joining Mitchell kneely young, all of his bandmates and everything. Spotify subscriptions actually increased, and we all ended up kinda sharing our Spotify wrapped playlist at the end of the year.

Anyway, just like the year before. So it’s so if it feels like that controversy kind of feed it from the back of your mind. You know, judging from my Twitter feed, it certainly seems like it it didn’t have a huge impact on by vice relevance as a as a commercial vehicle for music?

Yeah. No. I mean, it is it’s just one of these very very funny things where you’re like, I remember being very angry about that. And then, you know, six months later, like, what what happened? What was going on with Joe Hogan and Neil Young?

It is what it is. Alright. The slap, which is back in the news now because Will Smith Will Smith has a, you know, his new awesome screws, season, movie out of anticipation. It’s on Apple TV plus. What what happened there?

What was the what was the end result in the fallout?

Well, Will Smith is still banned from the ceremony for ten years, but the apology tour has officially begun, you know, doubling as this promotional campaign for an apples, antoine Fuqua, slavery drama, emancipation, which I think they’re hoping for some awards love for. I’m not sure if they’ll get it based on how things shook out with the Golden Globes and some of the and some of the sort of tertiary awards body voting. But, I mean, Chris Rock seems to be doing fine. He’s got a Netflix deal to do a live comedy show for them, and that should be fun. So for the beginning of the year, which I’m guessing happens pretty close to the Oscars, but I’m not inside Tetsorito’s brain.

Right now? Yeah.

That would be good. That would be good timing. I mean, I it it’s interesting because I, you know, I have seen a manifestation. We talked about it on across the movie aisle, one of my other podcasts here this week. And and the real the real issue with that movie, I Like, I don’t think anybody’s even really talking about the slap anymore because the movie’s just not good enough to, like, be in the mix as a real Oscar contender.

Yeah. I mean, he went on the Trevor Noah show, the Daily show, to talk about, like, his his feelings and his bottled rage and, like, why it all happened. Right? And, like, that seemed to be the thing that really people paid attention to as far as bringing the slap back into the news cycle, but it’s kinda been this thing of, like, oh, yeah, that thing happened a year ago. Can we move on now?

And but but, no, we have to have this sort of ritual of of of everybody coming out of the woodwork and and revisit thing. Sort of like Sundance movies being nominated for Oscars. It’s a similar length of of of news and production cycle.

Yeah. Yeah. It is always fun to think back to the movies that were sold, you know, twelve months before the Oscar ceremony takes place. And see what what makes it through that that period of time. Alright.

Disney Disney has had an interesting year So Disney and don’t say gay, walk us through that one and how it it resolved.

Yeah. I I mean, I think Disney and what Rose discovery have been in a tight competition for most fiascoed company of twenty twenty two. But, of course, this all starts or, I guess, doesn’t start for Disney, but sort of the biggest example is Bob Chapek, not wanting Disney to become a political football. Sort of forgetting that Disney is always a political football. And trying to set out the discussion of Florida’s, don’t say gay law, which was, you know, backed by governor Ron DeSantis, And, you know, he managed to do the seemingly impossible, which is piss off people on the left.

And maybe even more so when he backtracked people on the rights resulting in, you know, right wing media figures calling Disney a bunch of rumors and all that kind of thing. And I don’t know. Again, I kinda look at the net result of this, which is that JPEG is out of his job now replaced by Bob Iger at the end of the year in a pretty dramatic faction. We’ll get back to it. And then, you know, during the midterms, the governor won reelection.

He’s he’s like a national figure now and this whole Tiffany with Disney certainly didn’t hurt.

Yeah. I mean, I I this is a this is an interesting one because it really does kind of like the Joe Rogen Spotify Neil Young fight, but to a much larger degree, kind of brings together all of our disparate warring factions, politics, culture, online, media into one one swirling pot. I I still contend that JPEG had the right basic idea of just trying to stay out of it. Entirely and and avoiding avoiding getting into it. But obviously, that was not sustainable internally at Disney.

Yeah. My view on that is it’s trying to think about what would have happened if Iger were there and you know, had tried to walk the tight rope and had or had just full on condemned the bill. And, you know, I think something something would have would have given the scientists the opportunity to seize on Disney anyway. And, you know, it’s it’s if they had come out swinging on this, certainly. But, you know, Disney’s always gonna be in the spotlight or in the crosshairs.

With especially on the current version of the political. Right?

Yeah. It it it the the, you know, kind of flipside to to to my coin here is I I do find it very funny that that some some folks are like, oh, look, you know, Disney Disney went rogue. They’re going broke. That’s why they’re getting rid of the CEO. Like, I I don’t do they remember what Bob Biker is like like Bob Biker is not a a shrinking violet in terms of the political landscape.

He is he is a pretty straightforward liberal. He’s not I don’t I don’t think and he was even kind of in the background and then in the foreground saying like, JPEG is handling this very badly. We need to support our gay employees. You know, it was it was Yeah. Yeah.

No. Aguirre is, like, capital d democrat and was toying with the run for president. As a Democrat. So I’m not really sure what the anti woke crowd thinks like, this is all about, if it’s about, you know, throwing out the the woksters and and bringing in some some other regime that’s gonna go back on that. I mean, Iger is the guy who spoke out against against abortion laws in in Georgia threatened to move snee out of Georgia.

Obviously, that that never happened, but he was talking about it. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Next up is Wall Street. Turning on streaming.

This is the biggest, I think, business story of the year, the —

Yeah. —

shift in focus. So what what is the what’s what’s going on here with Wall Street and streaming and how that that kind of calculus has changed for some of these studios? Well,

it

seemed like for the longest time investors were looking at Netflix as kind of this miracle growth story where, you know, subscription numbers were going up. Netflix is profitable. I mean, they’re they’re throwing up money. So they and they rewarded companies that imitated Netflix by boosting their stock prices. Like companies, like Disney and HBO, they threw with billions of dollars in capital to produce movies and TV shows for streaming to to get subscriber numbers.

And it worked. And during the pandemic, especially it worked really well because people couldn’t go to movie theaters and people couldn’t. There was there was not that much else to do But eventually, Wall Street, I think, decided that it would be nice if these things started to make money and or started to see it in the results that, you know, Disney’s losing, like, a billion dollars a quarter on its streaming platforms and doesn’t really seem to have a convincing case that it’s going to be profitable anytime soon even though it’s projection, sir, that’ll break even twenty twenty four. So now Wall Street, you know, looking at the macroeconomic environment, consumer spending, interest rates, they’re looking for cash flow. And so that means that there’s gonna be that there’s already a pullback on all this spending on content for streaming, and you’re seeing a lot of layoffs as a result.

Like, Yeah. You’re right. It’s a it’s a mess. It’s a huge about face. It’s like a big, you know, loosey pulling the football.

Moment for for the business that was all all in on streaming, and then all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, wait. We we got you guys want us to make money on this now. Okay. Interesting.

Yeah. I I mean, it it really does it drives home a thing that I have kind of thought and argue for a while now, which is that streaming makes sense as a way to replace revenue loss in the in the upcoming cord cutting era when when there’s gonna be less money spent on rights for, you know, movies and TV shows and everything that the studios are making. But also as a replacement for DVD and Blu ray revenue, which is obviously fall off a cliff. People don’t buy physical meeting anymore because they’re they’re fools and they wanna get it all up streaming all the time. It’s bad bad choices all you people out there, buy buy stuff that you can hold in your hands.

But think but but it is a it’s a it’s a big it’s a big shift because they went from, alright, we’re willing to lose money to grow our subscriber base to then of, like, shifting on a dime to, like, alright, we gotta make money now.

Yeah. And, you know, I I don’t wanna, like, oversimplify what’s going on. Like, they’re still spending an awful lot of money on on streaming content exclusive streaming content, but I think, you know, as you’ll see in our next item, certain companies are trying to kind of transition to something that makes a little bit more economic sense in a traditional traditional sense of the word.

Alright. So let’s let’s move with an x thing. The the item here is titled Zaz swings the ax, and that that covers a lot of stuff. Mhmm. Because David Zaslav, who has taken over at Warner Brothers Discovery is the CEO there.

He is in the midst of a a kind of radical rejiggering of what Warner Brothers means, what HBO means, what HBO Max means, what Discovery means as a channel, what is going on there, and

how are they how are they cutting those costs? Well, when Zas came in and I’m using sort of the the the the honorific Zas for David Zaslow. Yeah. He was very much, like, buddy buddy, Hollywood, you know, mister, I’m gonna talk to all my all my friends in Hollywood and and be talent friendly. That honeymoon ended pretty quick as soon as he started to get under the hood and figure out how he’s gonna make make good on this promise to Wall Street to save three billion dollars a year in costs.

So he gets in there, he starts he first of all, he kills CNN plus immediately. This this three hundred million dollar boob doggle for streaming online news. He goes through the movie slate, decides that streaming big movies going straight to streaming makes no financial sense, kills Batgirl as this ninety million dollar movie that was basically pretty much on on the on the landing strip ready to go. And talent this is just the start of it. I mean, Gordita Chronicles from H.

V. Max, like, they start promoting episodes of Sesame Street from from from the service. All kinds of stuff gets canceled. And this is a pretty radical shift from the AT and T era of WarnerMedia, which is the previous owner, where they were throwing everything at at HVOMAX to try to get it to compete directly with Netflix and Disney Plus. And then, you know, of course, you have the layoffs at the cable networks and Warner Bros.

Studios and CNN also that’s I that are not done. You know, this is this is a continuing effort by by Zazilift.

Well, let let’s dig into a couple of things here because I do think it’s I think it’s interesting. I don’t think people entirely understand the financials behind some of the decisions here. Right? So, you know, I I I think I’ve talked about this on the show before, but HBO Max making the decision to take off some HBO Max originals, HBO originals, like shows that they were they were that they were technically licensing. Right?

That that HBO has always paid for. So a show like Westworld, for instance. Right? Westworld was just taken off of HBO mass MAX’s or is going to be leaving HBO Max. Right?

Yeah. How does how does that save them money? I guess is the basic question that people don’t understand. People think that this is some sort of, like, spiteful, like, oh, they’re just getting rid of things. But it it it is an actual cost line item on on the budget.

Right?

Yeah. It’s it’s it is that. It is like you have to pay residual to to your creators when you have that stuff on the air and perpetuity. And the other part of it is that, you know, I think in some of the cases of of these shows, Azulff wants to take a lot of this stuff that’s just been in this HVOMAX while it’s garden and drive subscribers, take that content and license it to other places. You know, TV, other streamers, Netflix, so that they’re not only saving money, they’re actually bringing in revenue, which is how it used to work, you know, Sony Pictures, for example, pull it remains in so a so called arms dealer in the business because it doesn’t have its own streaming service.

It sells its programming to other networks and other streamers, like including Netflix, and it’s been a very profitable model for them. And so I think what Zazilab is saying is, yes, streaming is great, but it’s it can’t be the only thing that we’re doing right now because it’s not profitable. We have to maintain some of these business models that have actually been making this money. Like, licensing movies and TV shows to a sensible competitors and, you know, especially putting movies in theaters. For — Yeah.

— a long time. Yeah.

I

remember I remember somebody breaking down, you know, the the kind of thought process between about for licensing a show like Friends. Right? It’s like we can we can either spend a billion dollars and keep friends on HBO Max and, you know, we’ll pay for it and we’ll we’ll have it there. Or and and try to try to make a billion dollars worth of subscriptions on the people who are coming here just for friends. Or we can license it to Netflix or Hulu or whoever for a billion dollars.

And, like, it it just the the the cost the cost benefit ratio there is is just off.

Yeah. It’s fascinating. And I think what we’re seeing right now is there was a lot of experimentation and a lot of excitement that was was testing that balancing act. And now we’re seeing what people do when they decide. Okay.

Maybe that wasn’t quite worth it or maybe that didn’t make all that much sense.

Yeah. Yeah. And and as you mentioned, Sony is considered an arms dealer in this in this whole thing because they, you know, they got they sold off their shares of Crackle or whatever whatever service they have. Right. The the Sony PlayStation, video service doesn’t nobody wanted that.

So they’re just like, alright. Fine. We’ll sell it to everybody. And Sony Movie Bulleitrain has been, like, number one on the Netflix charts in the US for the last week because it’s new to the service. People are watching it was just in theaters four months ago.

Now it’s on Netflix, everybody is watching it there. And and that — Yeah. — that’s that’s just a win mean, that really is kind of a win for everyone. It’s a win for Netflix. It’s a win for Sony.

And I’d be

curious if people who see that, you know, bullet trains, number one, on Netflix right now. If they see that as a Netflix movie or if they’re even thinking about movies and TV shows in those terms, like, I think peep it seems like people understand that stranger things is a Netflix show, but can the general public tell the difference between, like, something that was made specifically for Netflix like Greyman, for example, and and bullet train. And I think this kind of proves the point that a lot of people have made is that movies that do well or even just okay in theatrical can do really really well on streaming. Like, those two don’t capital don’t cannibalize each other when the theatrical comes first. I think it’s fairly clear that theatrical is a great marketing tool for films, especially if they’re, you know, big stars and get that on the poster and people have heard of these films.

So when they come to Netflix, people watch them and they’re very valuable to both sides of that that deal.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ll see if Netflix really moves into theatrical exhibition in a strong way. The the numbers on glass onion the new knives out movie were pretty promising but still limited. I mean, it was only in, what, six hundred screens.

Yeah,

seven hundred theaters total and, yeah, Ted Sarados has been basically adamant and rehastings too going out there. And saying, look, we are not trying to build a theatrical business. Stop trying to make this happen. People in theatrical. I know if you guys want movies theaters, but this is our business, and we’re gonna do it our way.

That’s kind of the Netflix attitude. But that was kind of the Netflix attitude towards advertising. And now we have Netflix with ads. So Yeah. Yeah.

We’ll stay on Warner Bros. Here for a minute for the next one off screen drama. I mean, obviously, there’s the Esremiller situation, capital capital s situation that that is still resolving itself in also everything that went on with, don’t worry Darling. So what what what walk us through what happened with Ezra Miller and kind of where things are right now with him and the flash and and everything else.

Yeah. So as reviewers been on this sort of spiral for quite a while, you know, he was charged with felony burglary in for months, in October, e but not guilty to that, we should mention. And there’s been all this sort of speculation over the flash because it’s on the schedule for next year. What are they gonna do? How are they gonna market this?

Or they’re just gonna, like, talk around it. Warner Bros. Seems pretty confident in this movie and maybe they should be. DC movies tend to do pretty well, and they’ve actually moved it up a week. So, well, the backstory mattered to audiences.

I think this is gonna be a really interesting test of that. And then with I mean, this is it’s it’s a very different kind of kind of backstage drama. But with Olivia Wild, don’t worry darling, that was kind of the the ultimate it was almost like an old fashioned celebrity entry behind the scenes kind of Are they feuding with the stars? Is the director feuding with the stars? There’s, like, custody battles going on between between Wilde and her ex Jason Sidakis.

There was this whole thing at screening where people fervent thought that Harry styles had spit on crisp pine, which turned out to be totally made up. And so it was just one of these it was like the Internet version of one of those old school behind the scenes chaos. Storage that was entertaining, but ultimately fairly harmless because the movie ended up doing pretty okay at the box office. This.

Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing is that the movie just ended up doing okay. It didn’t didn’t blow the doors off, but it also didn’t crash and burn. I mean, it was a

— Yeah. —

you know, It was what like a thirty million dollar movie ended up grossing about eighty to ninety worldwide. That’s, you know, that’s gonna be okay.

Yeah. And it was on HBO Max within a couple of months. So if people wanted to see it there, you know. Yeah. And I I think it did fine especially for a movie that got pretty dismal reviews.

Yeah. Alright. This was a a a a sadder story, the Johnny Tap versus Amber Heard, Yeah. A lawsuit. But it is an interesting media story as well.

I mean, the the the the ways in which you know, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard got I mean, obviously, their own thing is is controversial enough. But, you know, the the reason that this suit came about is because of an op ed in the Washington Post of all places.

Yeah, which should be noted, didn’t mention Johnny Depp by name, but anyone who knew the backstory could probably glean what she was talking about, you know, in terms of describing herself as a as a victim of abuse. Or survivor of abuse. And there was so much, like, there was so much discussion of this topic throughout. There was, like, all these legal influencers, like, people on law tube or law talk trying to make a name for themselves. And this just seemed to be a brilliant ground for really talks of stuff.

Like, a lot of it’s your all that throwing ground in the Internet, especially at Heard. Just kind of an ugly situation, especially, you know, not not great for people who were watching this as survivors of abuse. So definitely a mess I get I guess, you know, depth comes out of it, the sensible winner with a ten million dollar jury verdict, but no one comes out of this looking good.

Show. Alright. Kanye, we’re headed we’re headed towards the end of the year now. Kanye West. Obviously, we’re getting some dark territory here.

I feel like I I feel like the there there are, like, six different Kanye West controversies all at once here. But what was it that damn it damaged him the worst? With everyone?

Oh, just going full Hitler. Apologies, basically.

It’s going full it’s pro Hitler. That’s

always

a glad sign.

I think that was probably the nail in the coffin there. Definitely, the the arpeggiosus of this was the now infamous interview that he did on Alex Jones show, you know, being sort of associate of Nick Fuentes, the well known white nationalist voice. It certainly did not help And, you know, that was kind of the but the the thing with Kanye that’s interesting is it’s it’s been sort of a gradual spiral until now. Like, his views have always been hard to place. Like, and he’s, like, he’s worn the MAGA hat.

He’s worn the White Cliffs mattered t shirt in a more recent example. Then this was and still this was the guy who, just a few years ago, was telling the world that George Bush didn’t care about black people. So it’s been such a wild evolution for for Kanye West who now goes by yay.

And

And I think now for people who really loved Kanye West and left him for his music, and we’re sort of willing to overlook the ichy weirdness of the of the politics. This is really a breaking point. And, you know, a lot of people that I talked to, a lot of people that might music reporter colleagues talked to were kind of in mourning about this whole thing while of course being, you know, furious at Kanye for for for doing this.

Yeah. Well, for for understandable reasons. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, here’s the story.

I have actually paid as much attention to as I probably should have, but Taylor Swift versus Ticketmaster because I like, it there there are two interesting stories here. One is the eternal struggle against Ticketmaster, the worst company in the world. Everybody hates Ticketmaster for good reason. But but two, there there’s an interesting angle here that this this this really only happens because there is only there are only like two or three people like Taylor Swift in the world who can command this sort of attention and ticket demand and everything else all at the same time. So what what’s the story here?

Yeah. I mean, so what happened was Ticketmaster has this verified fans program where it does presales for tickets. Right? And there’s a certain time everybody goes, everyone who’s in the fan club, goes online, and they’re able to buy tickets before the, you know, the pleads in the general public. So what happened was there was so much demand.

And if you listen to Ticketmaster, there was a lot of bot accounts and fake accounts as well, and people without codes trying to log on. And it broke Ticketmaster even though Ticketmaster had, apparently according to Taylor, assured her and her team that they were able to handle the demand. Now I look at this, you know, you see with presales, especially for things like you know, even AMC’s site during the presales for Avengers: Endgame, that site broke down. Right? Well, it like, high demand events will break your website often.

It’s just it’s just kind of a fact of life on the Internet sometimes. But this was pretty the lesson here is you just don’t want Taylor swift fans to be pissed off at you. Especially when they’re already in the crosshairs for for regulators. And the thing with Ticketmaster and and and Taylor Swift is if Taylor Swift didn’t like how Ticketmaster was running its business, it’s not like she can go to some other ticket seller right now. Right?

Like, there’s pretty much one in the market that runs everything. So it’s kind of a walking anti trust case. Yeah. Wait a minute. I

mean, do we do we think that this is going to lead to the the this is is this the the straw that breaks the camel’s back and and gets regulators to finally break Ticketmaster up?

I don’t know. It’s gotten it’s gotten some politicians pretty excited and, you know, AOC tweeting about it and other people will try to sort of join the bandwagon and grab a headline for for criticizing Ticketmaster. But Ultimately, it’s gonna be in the hands of regulators, the DOJ, or MetaCon’s Federal Trade Commission. Which in the recent months has shown itself to be pretty aggressive when it comes to blocking mergers in a way that you wouldn’t have necessarily thought before based on sort of the traditional antitrust model. So breaking up the Simon Shuster Penguin Random House deal that was supposed to go through.

Now they’re zwing to block the sixty nine million sixty nine billion dollar acquisition. Of Activision Blizzard by by Microsoft. So, yeah, that’s gonna be a huge story, I think, and twenty twenty three. It’s just like how the climate of antitrust changes.

Yeah.

Like, are we like, even if Disney wanted to be sold to Apple, which it does not — Uh-huh. — and Bob Iger had said. Mhmm. Even if that kind of a deal was in the office, would it pass muster with the current current regime? I mean, probably not this might have a chilling effect on on deal making.

We’ll have to say

that. Yeah. Big story, antitrust for twenty twenty three. Alright. And we’re speaking speaking of Disney, this is the last the last of the ten fiasco’s the Bob Swap.

We’re we got Bob Iyger’s back. Bob Cheah Pack is out. What is How did this happen? Because I I I I again, I mentioned this on a on another show, but the the way that the the the final the final kind of push out the door for tray pack occurred was that he sounded and, again, there’s a friend of mine that has how he described it. He said that Bob Chapeck sounded psychotic.

On the earnings call. Just sound sounded like a crazy person. Just like hyping up totally inconsequential things and ignoring the big problems and people were like, this guy cannot be in charge of the company anymore.

It was I I covered the that earnings call. And it was at a time when there was just there was a midterm election going on. Like and, yeah, he I mean, The thing with the thing with covering earnings is that you kind of expect the corporate happy talk to try to cover up the the even when it’s a huge mess on the earnings, but the fact is that they they they missed on, you know, on revenue, they missed on profit, they lost a billion and a half dollars from their streaming services in in one quarter. And, yeah, I mean, he was talking as if they just won the Super Bowl. So yeah.

I I I suspect that’s I suspect there’s something else going on there. There’s been a lot of sort of macularies behind the scenes stories about their CFO, Christine McCarthy being the one who ended up being the king’s lair, just knighting him in the back, after all this. And the the the reality is that this was a buildup of a lot of things. Leading to this leading to the shakeup. One earnings report doesn’t typically take out a CEO.

Like, they have to be really concerned about how he’s running the company, how this how some of the decisions have affected the brand, which is very important thing to Disney. And just like what the strategy is, like, you say you can get Disney plus profitable by twenty twenty four. Show me the money. Let’s prove it. And, you know, now that’s now it’s a pod buyers’ problem.

So Yeah.

Let’s That’s for

sure.

Alright. Ryan, thank you very much for being on the show. I always like to end by asking if there’s anything you think folks should be folks folks should know. What what what should be what should folks be looking forward to ahead in twenty twenty three aside from antitrust? Obviously, that’s the

Oh, twenty twenty three. So streaming consolidation is probably the safest and most boring answer. That that I that I can give. And then, I mean, I guess, that relates to ADDRESS because if these things wanna combine or or something, then they have to get approved by the government. But, you know Well, let me let me

Let me drill down on that for one sec. Because when you say streamer consolidation, do you mean beyond, like, you know, HBO Max discovery coming together for for its own thing, you know? Or are we talking about, like, maybe somebody I I like, I I don’t even know who

would Yeah. I mean, like,

the

the long rumored NBC universal Paramount Global merger, which would bring together, you know, eventually peacock and Paramount Plus. That would be interesting. This is something that people have talked about without, you know, maybe they’re being so much fact behind it, but, you know, it’s that kind of thing. It’s like, oh, just just Disney behind Netflix or something, you know. I don’t know.

Like, you know, there’s some there’s some crazy ideas out there, but never say

never. Yeah.

It’s it’s So that’s the kind of thing. Like, I was talking to Tony Moncicara of of Sony fairly recently for industry panel that we did that’s on level of website now and, you know, the view from his point of view. It’s just that there just aren’t gonna be a million streaming companies. In, you know, in the next few years? Like, it’s gonna consolidate into the ones that are successful.

Or does that mean that some of these companies give up and sort of sort of take their streaming services offline and decide they wanna be the arms dealer. Or does it mean they just combine and and do mergers, acquisitions, yada yada yada. The bottom line is that bankers and lawyers are gonna be in great shape.

That’s always always That has death and taxes, truism right there.

Yeah. It’s very death and taxes.

Alright. Ryan, thanks for being on the show. I’ll I’ll have a link in the email. You can go sign up for his email newsletter. It’s great.

You should do that. Always always great to have him on. And congrats again on being a new father. Yay. K.

Thanks.

I

mean, that’s the most important fiasco of all.

Yes. Number one fiasco of the year for Ryan. Alright. That is that is it for this show. I will be back next week with another episode of The Bulwark goes to Hollywood.

See you guys

then.

Get an inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum at get inside Deborah and Whoa. If you had to choose between true blood, daredevil, to do again.

Partially because the Marvel series feel unfinished to me because we got canceled when we thought we were gonna have more. Whereas True Blood, we did get to wrap it up. I knew that we were wrapping it up. I could say goodbye to everyone. I stole something from the set.

I know I didn’t get to steal anything from our daredevil set. Inside

of you with Michael Rosenbaum, wherever you listen.