The 2026 Summer Movie Preview "Boom or Bust" Game

On today’s show, Sean and Amanda bring back the Summer Movie Preview game—with some additional clarity around scoring—where they preview every major release slated across the summer and predict its box office and Metacritic score (4:47). Then, Sean is joined by Daniel Goldhaber to discuss his new film, ‘Faces of Death,’ starring Barbie Ferreira. He cites how the attention economy has drastically impacted young people’s lives, why he’s pushing the envelope of including radical leftist politics into his work, and breaks down his personal experience with the studio system (1:28:52). Have a question for our 900th episode mailbag? Email us at [email protected] or call us at 323-488-3241 and leave a message! Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Daniel Goldhaber Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 0:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big picture and conversation show about the summer. Today on the show, we're previewing the summer movie slate with another one of my little games. Later in the show, I'll be joined by Daniel Goldhaber. He is the co-writer and director of Faces of Death, the new super smart, super nasty reboot of the 1978 cult horror curio. Danny was last on the show talking about his second feature, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which was one of the best movies of 2022. A great thinker about movies and media and excellent discussion. Listen to it after our chat here. Programming reminder, Amanda, we are just a week away from our 900th episode.

• 0:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, don't jinx it, but yes.

• 0:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, unless something fiery and terrible happens in the next six and a half days. To celebrate, we're going to do a mailbag. You can email us at what?

• 1:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Big Pick Mailbag at gmail.com.

• 1:05Sean Fennessey?

  You can email us, however, you can also call us. You can call us. The number is 323-488-3241. And you can leave a voicemail. We've done this before. It went very well last time.

• 1:20Amanda Dobbins?

  You're all very normal.

• 1:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And we encourage you to be creative. And but let's be real. I want to bring I want to bring the younger generation in. There's a difference between a voicemail and a voice note.

• 1:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:34Sean Fennessey?

  Speak on that.

• 1:34Amanda Dobbins?

  So if you don't know, if you don't know, call a call an elder. One is one's shorter, one's to the point. And then one is seven minutes that I'm never going to listen to whether I know you or not. So voicemail, we'd love to hear from you.

• 1:48Sean Fennessey?

  I've never sent a voice note.

• 1:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I have a couple times because I felt like someone had sent me a voice note and then I was like, I gotta, you know, but I've like, I'm terrible. It's really the most boomer in me. I don't know how to do it. I sent it to the wrong person. It's just,

• 2:03Sean Fennessey?

  I assure you, it's not the most boomer thing about you. Anyhow, if you want to talk at us and have us respond to you, you can call us. Once again, that number is 323-488-3241. We will send a reminder about that later this week, too. We got to get into our show now. Before we do that, some movie news and then we'll chat.

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• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  Not a ton of movie news out there.

• 3:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Sean Fennessey?

  Did you take a look at the box office? You were gallivanting over the weekend.

• 3:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 3:56Sean Fennessey?

  Traveling the world.

• 3:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, where I was traveling the state of California. I had a lovely time. Thank you to the people of Berkeley.

• 4:02Sean Fennessey?

  So, did you go to the movies several times this weekend as well? Okay, you didn't see what was happening.

• 4:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I did go on Thursday afternoon to a solo screening of You, Me and Tuscany. I was the only person there.

• 4:13Sean Fennessey?

  I was supposed to see it this weekend. Couldn't go.

• 4:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You skipped that.

• 4:16Sean Fennessey?

  And we're not discussing the film today. We will discuss it in a future episode. I was also quite busy this weekend.

• 4:22Sean Fennessey?

  Super Mario Galaxy still on top, unsurprising. I just wanted to talk quickly about Project Tell Mary and the drama. The holds were very strong for these movies.

• 4:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Sean Fennessey?

  And Project Tell Mary is heading towards like 600, 700 million dollar zone. And the drama is heading towards like 100, maybe 150 million dollar zone. I know we've talked about it three weeks in a row. This is just awesome.

• 4:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It's great.

• 4:42Sean Fennessey?

  This is good news.

• 4:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Very pro.

• 4:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of interesting to be heading into CinemaCon. We're both headed there later tonight, which is the annual trade federation meeting of various movie theater owners and the movie studios who present their wares to those groups. And I think that it's going to be like a positive vibe for a change in those rooms, I think. What do you think?

• 5:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope so. And I think that there is enough this summer, as we'll discuss, to look forward to that. The indications are good.

• 5:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, there's some other sky falling in news. You know, that's never far away from us.

• 5:20Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's a giant merger.

• 5:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Sean Fennessey?

  That seems to threaten the entire totality of the business. I wonder how that will be addressed this week.

• 5:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I will say, at this time last year, we were getting ready to go to the Warner Brothers presentation and Mike and Pam were in the balance.

• 5:40Sean Fennessey?

  Under fire.

• 5:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And I remember we were sitting through that presentation, being like, well, this is pretty awkward. And then Warner Brothers ran the table.

• 5:48Sean Fennessey?

  They did.

• 5:49Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, maybe.

• 5:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe it'll be good news. Maybe, maybe what we learn can be positive.

• 5:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think last year, CinemaCon, was it a week before Sinners was released?

• 6:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 6:00Sean Fennessey?

  And, and then they went on that, you know, incredible run throughout the rest of the year. I don't know if any studio will have that kind of 2026. But anyway, just interesting that, um, a couple of grown up movies with real movie stars and real ideas is, are thriving in this environment right now. I find it very promising. And so we're gonna do the summer movie preview game, the boomer bust game, which we did last year, which I thought was a fun experiment, but I kind of fucked up the rules a little bit, I think. Or maybe more specifically, the scoring. That was the thing that seemed confusing and obtuse to both you and I think many of the people at home. So I've refined it. Do you remember what we did last year? Have you looked at what we're doing this year?

• 6:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I did look at what we're doing this year.

• 6:39Sean Fennessey?

  Does it make more sense to you?

• 6:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I, no, it's still, it's just like, I feel trapped in the confines of your mind. And as I was preparing for this diligently last night before I went to bed, I once again got angry at the experience of spending too long in that particular prison.

• 6:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's full of wonderful couches.

• 6:56Amanda Dobbins?

  The number of times that I almost texted you, just being like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, why, like, why, you know? And I'm guessing the Metacritic numbers, because this is how we do the game, right? We are gonna project both the box office, domestic, and the Metacritic score for these movies.

• 7:12Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 7:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And what we learned last year when doing our exercise, at least with respect to the Metacritic, is that it's actually a pretty narrow window and it is sort of just like throwing numbers at a, you know, throwing darts at a dartboard.

• 7:24Sean Fennessey?

  I thought we did fairly well on the Metacritic scores last year.

• 7:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's true, because it's not that wide a range.

• 7:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, which indicates something to me interesting about the middleness of film criticism, because I don't, I know, I didn't want to use the Rotten Tomatoes score, because I find that it's very inflated and it's very inaccurate and there are a lot of people that participate in that score. Metacritic is much more stringent about what the sources are and how they identify the score, but-

• 7:51Sean Fennessey?

  Very rarely these days do you see a film get zero stars, a zero out of 100. You know, also on Metacritic, you very rarely see, I shouldn't say rarely, but you don't often see 100 out of 100.

• 8:01Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 8:02Sean Fennessey?

  So, everything tends to sit between like 48 and 84.

• 8:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 8:05Sean Fennessey?

  And so, it, but, so I've changed the scoring a little bit to reflect that. Likewise with, with the box office. So, shall, shall I describe?

• 8:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Go ahead.

• 8:14Sean Fennessey?

  What I've done, okay, just, just like, just work with me here. Just, just be my, just be my partner. Okay?

• 8:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I did this. I, I prepared.

• 8:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm here, I'm ready, I've got thoughts. At some point, it did just become me, like, thinking of numbers that sounded nice in my head.

• 8:32Sean Fennessey?

  Me too. Did you do any research into previous scores and franchises?

• 8:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, not really so much Metacritic scores. I wanted, Metacritic, I was just all vibes. And then, box office, I did research.

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, the reason we're doing this is that we could talk about all the movies that are coming out for the next three months. That's the idea of the game. It's not really to be right about it, because I don't know how you can be right about this. I never would have guessed that the drama was heading towards $138 million worldwide. That's wonderful, it's nice to be surprised. Here's the scoring. The margin of difference between your guesses and the final data points determines your score for the film. The highest total score wins. So, you get one point if your guess falls between, within five points of the Metacritic prediction in any direction. Okay? So, if you guess 68 and a film comes in at 63, you get a point. Got it?

• 9:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Sean Fennessey?

  Five points if you get your guess exactly right.

• 9:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:28Sean Fennessey?

  I don't remember how many we got exactly right last time. It might have been zero. This is a little bit difficult, hence the number of points you get. You get one point if you are within $50 million of the box office prediction. So, you're gonna get a lot of points here, because a lot of these films are very small. So, we're gonna get within. This is just to kind of boost the point total.

• 9:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:45Sean Fennessey?

  However, you will get five points if you are within $10 million. You will get 10 points if you are within $5 million. Do you think there should be a bonus if you hit it exactly?

• 9:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 9:56Sean Fennessey?

  What would that bonus be?

• 9:58Amanda Dobbins?

  20 points.

• 9:59Sean Fennessey?

  20 points for an exact right guess. I like it. You guys listening in the booth there?

• 10:04Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 10:04Sean Fennessey?

  You'll be tallying all of these totals.

• 10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Is the booth ready? Because this is, this is your math project.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  Well, the good thing for me here is that I don't really need to lock into this until like two months from now. So right now I'm just kind of enjoying the vibe.

• 10:18Sean Fennessey?

  We did do a check in, I believe in July last year, just to see how things were going.

• 10:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's just gonna be like a really shitty Sunday night at 10:30 for you guys when you're just there like with your, did they even teach you long division in your schools?

• 10:33Speaker 05

  Oh, come on, Amanda. Really?

• 10:35Sean Fennessey?

  What are you talking about?

• 10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you guys know cursive?

• 10:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:38Sean Fennessey?

  Long division? Why would they not learn that?

• 10:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Aren't they? Because computers can do it all. He's 25.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Do you think I'm 12?

• 10:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Listen, there were way too many AI signs in the, in the Bay area. That's all I have to say. That's my feedback.

• 10:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's unsurprising. So anyway, whoever gets the highest point total is the winner of the game. The winner, what is the winner again?

• 11:00Sean Fennessey?

  A lovely steak dinner. But the twist is...

• 11:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know how many either reorganizations of your closet, your DVD closet? And or Blu-ray, fine, whatever. I like to call it DVDs to annoy you. Um, and or like fancy dinners? You have promised me and I've gotten none of them? Haven't been to Dunsmore.

• 11:19Sean Fennessey?

  When did you earn a fancy?

• 11:19Amanda Dobbins?

  We haven't been to, yeah.

• 11:21Sean Fennessey?

  When are we going to Dunsmore?

• 11:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I haven't been to Dunsmore. I haven't rearranged the closets.

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  Well, look, the closet thing, the closet thing, that's on you. You want to make some time on my schedule? I'm available. I haven't left my home.

• 11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  No, you are not. And that is the scheduling with you when I don't have to for professional purposes?

• 11:41Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I know.

• 11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Is, is, I don't want to ever do it again.

• 11:44Sean Fennessey?

  What's that about, you think?

• 11:45Amanda Dobbins?

  What, scheduling with you?

• 11:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just, I'm just doing a lot of stuff. I'm a busy person.

• 11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're also such a great communicator, you know? So it really makes the planning so much easier.

• 11:52Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't you not describe this as the great communication of our times? This is the portal through which we talk.

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Now is when I'm remembering that some event just like disappeared off our calendar with like no explanation. And you're not, you just canceled it. And I'm like, well, what happened? We can talk about that later, but this is how I'm...

• 12:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you.

• 12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, there we go.

• 12:12Sean Fennessey?

  No, I did send a note.

• 12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You sent a note that it was happening, but not that it was not happening.

• 12:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's not correct. Check your email.

• 12:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't get it.

• 12:21Sean Fennessey?

  This is great podcasting.

• 12:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway, so.

• 12:23Sean Fennessey?

  We were gonna have a very important meeting together.

• 12:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 12:26Sean Fennessey?

  And now that meeting has been rescheduled.

• 12:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:28Sean Fennessey?

  And we will discuss it, not on the podcast.

• 12:31Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 12:32Sean Fennessey?

  One other thing about this game, before we start playing it. Streaming movies are not eligible. Here's my note to the studios at home. Put your movies in movie theaters. If you do, you'll be a part of this game. If you don't, you're not. So movies like, here's a handful of bigger streaming movies that we know are coming. So Netflix has, um, Swapped and Remarkably Bright Creatures. Amazon has Jack Ryan Ghost War. And The Dink is on Apple. That's a comedy. We won't be discussing those films. They will have Metacritic scores. They will not have box office totals.

• 13:07Sean Fennessey?

  Anything you want to say? You think this is gonna be a good summer? You indicated that you think it's gonna be a healthy summer at the box office. Quality wise?

• 13:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm open. I've got a couple of, of high Metacritic scores. And I think that, without spoiling any of my predictions, I think the overlap between box office and quality, or I guess that like the meeting, the center of the Venn diagram, is gonna be a little closer this year than it has a couple of years prior. Which feels nice, right? Wouldn't it, if it happens?

• 13:42Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, obviously, the Odyssey kind of stands alone in terms of, and that, that is definitively what you're describing, I think. How many more we have beyond that? I'm quite curious to see.

• 13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:52Sean Fennessey?

  How many good movies will make more than $100 million? And good, obviously, being subjective from our point of view.

• 13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess not that many when I look at it, but that's okay.

• 14:02Sean Fennessey?

  I'm hopeful.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe, yeah, maybe one or two more.

• 14:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Should we begin?

• 14:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's, we have a lot of films. It's, you didn't, you didn't skim.

• 14:10Sean Fennessey?

  Anything that I think is either going to be in wide release, with a strong release from a boutique studio, or is an awards player, I put into the mix here.

• 14:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 14:21Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, every studio movie is here. Most of the indies are here that I expect to get wide release. We're gonna start with the big one. We're gonna start with the real summer kickoff.

• 14:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Sean Fennessey?

  Summer kickoff used to be Memorial Day. Now it's usually last week of April, first week of May. That film, of course, is The Devil Wears Prada 2. I ask you, what is your box office prediction? Remember, domestic.

• 14:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 14:44Sean Fennessey?

  And what is your Metacritic score guess?

• 14:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Just to, just to start things with a bang in this exercise.

• 14:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 14:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And also to, to be positive.

• 14:57Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And to put my hopes and my beliefs and my projections on one page together.

• 15:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm going big.

• 15:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So the Devil Wears Prada 2 is apparently tracking at 66 million for the first weekend.

• 15:13Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's, that's good.

• 15:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's very good.

• 15:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So I'm gonna go with 210 domestic.

• 15:18Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Now, that's a good guess.

• 15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's a big guess.

• 15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It, I, as I said, I'm, I'm going big. I'm, I'm taking the, the over, as it were. I am, I'm, I guess, a little bit in a cheerleader, you know, aspect of this, even though I have not seen the movie. And if it's not good, I will be the, the most hurt of anyone.

• 15:40Sean Fennessey?

  Of anyone?

• 15:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Of anyone.

• 15:41Sean Fennessey?

  More than Meryl Streep?

• 15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Meryl, Meryl's fine.

• 15:44Sean Fennessey?

  Or David Frankel.

• 15:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Meryl is.

• 15:46Sean Fennessey?

  Or Anne Hathaway. Or Emily Blunt. Or Stanley Tucci.

• 15:50Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think they'll all be fine. Maybe, maybe Aline Borch-Mackenna, who's the writer of the, the previous, will also be a little disappointed. Everybody else is just, you know, on their global press tour.

• 16:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so just for context.

• 16:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Sean Fennessey?

  The previous film made $124 million in 2006.

• 16:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Inflation has been skyrocketing since then. Also, this movie, as, as you pointed out, as Bill Simmons has pointed out, has become.

• 16:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Sean Fennessey?

  A big deal in that 20 years. It has become a proper franchise, oft rewatched. Um, I went a little bit below you in that, but before I share mine, what, what is your Metacritic guess?

• 16:25Amanda Dobbins?

  68.

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  68. Now that, to me, is high.

• 16:29Amanda Dobbins?

  You think so?

• 16:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. The previous film got a 62.

• 16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 16:33Sean Fennessey?

  And there is, there is a potential for a downgrade in quality here. I think the, I think the critics are suspicious of this one.

• 16:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know how much I trust a Metacritic.

• 16:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Aggregation score of like pre 2010 movies, just because the not, not that anyone is was doing anything wrong, but it's just because like new movie reviewing culture was so different in 2006 that what even counts and the type of criticism and everything.

• 17:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know if I think it's like a one to one.

• 17:06Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I think there's something to that for sure. I think there's, there was also something with this film where it was perceived as like 13 dresses, you know, that it was kind of flimsy.

• 17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  27 dresses or.

• 17:16Sean Fennessey?

  13 going on 27 dresses.

• 17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 17:19Sean Fennessey?

  Got it. Nailed it. Um, as you can see, I love those films.

• 17:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 17:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think it was discounted in a way. And so that might've spoken to the first wave of criticism. That being said.

• 17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Are the discounting discounters in the room with us right now, Sean?

• 17:34Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I was not reviewing films at that time, so I can't really say. Uh, I'm going into this film with an open mind. I have to revisit the original.

• 17:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Sean Fennessey?

  Cause I have only seen it a couple of times. Um, I guessed 184 million domestic.

• 17:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think that's good. The, the two triangulation points I used for this, which are in no way exact were Thunderbolts, which was the same weekend in May.

• 17:56Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And like.

• 17:58Sean Fennessey?

  And both films are about trauma.

• 17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And lower grade franchises, you know, so sorry to Thunderbolts, Asterix, whatever's going on there. What's it called now?

• 18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Avengers.

• 18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Yeah. Congratulations to all of you. Um, and that was around 180 domestic, I believe.

• 18:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I looked at Twisters, which is a legacy sequel in that is like different and obviously like an action movie, but also bringing in a similar generation of, of movie viewers. And that was much higher. I think that's like the high 200s to 70, 280. So I went, I went in the middle.

• 18:36Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you just described two movies that are high action spectacle. And now I think for a lot of female audiences, this is high action.

• 18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I, and I do think it's a different type of high action, but you know, even the Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep, like, you know, global press experience, like all of the tie-ins, they are, it is a different type of movie and it's a different audience, which I think could actually be a positive, but it's big. This is.

• 19:03Sean Fennessey?

  What even is a comp? Like a female-led, I mean, I guess anyone but you and the housemaid are probably the two closest in terms of like what audience they're shooting for.

• 19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so. I mean, I think they're shooting for the Barbie audience, but they, it's obviously not that big. And I'm like, let's not, let's not be crazy. But even the rollout and the way that they have been, you know, doing the, like, the fashion and the costumes and the.

• 19:28Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think the Devil Wears Prada 2 appeals to like 11-year-old girls?

• 19:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No. So that's why, that's why this is, you know, 200 million, why I'm going big with 200 million instead of 600 million, you know, like it's, I know it's a much smaller audience, but that phenomenon and that audience of a, that concoction of like, a female audience that doesn't normally go to the movies for an event in this way.

• 19:56Sean Fennessey?

  My metacritic guess is 57.

• 19:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  Just because sequels tend to come in behind originals.

• 20:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Sean Fennessey?

  And I looked at the original. I didn't do that for every single film that was in a franchise, but in this case, I don't know, I think there's a little bit of skepticism based on some of the glossiness of the trailers.

• 20:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Yeah.

• 20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Which I don't think are bad, per se, but.

• 20:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I've stopped watching them. I would just like to see the film.

• 20:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, understood. So that's our first film. We only have 78 more to go. Um, we probably won't spend that much time on all the other movies that we talk about here. The next film on our list is called Hocum. It is a new horror movie directed by Damian McCarthy. Neon is releasing it. It stars Adam Scott.

• 20:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a man, I think, who gets trapped in a scary Irish hotel, which is kind of what it was like for you preparing for this episode.

• 20:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. You go first.

• 20:47Sean Fennessey?

  My box office guess was 18 million.

• 20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 20:49Sean Fennessey?

  My metacritic guess is 78.

• 20:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 20:52Sean Fennessey?

  Now Damian McCarthy has released two films that are available on Shudder that are very acclaimed. However, since I wrote down 78, I saw a couple Letterboxd reviews that were not very kind to this movie.

• 21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 21:01Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen it yet. A bunch of these movies we'll talk about, I have seen. This is one I just haven't gotten out to a screening yet.

• 21:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 21:06Sean Fennessey?

  I was just banking on my previous experience with the Damian McCarthy oeuvre to determine this number. So what do you got?

• 21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I bounced around on this box office, which is just anywhere from, I think, the eight to $14 million range, and I landed at 10.

• 21:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, seems reasonable.

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So 10 million, and I have a Metacritic of 62.

• 21:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. There's a thing with the horror movies this summer.

• 21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Sean Fennessey?

  Where every two weeks, one of the studios is putting out a horror movie. So they've kind of like caught on.

• 21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:38Sean Fennessey?

  To the wave that has been going on in the last eight to 12 years. So, you know, we've got Lee Cronin's The Mummy coming out this Friday. We just had Faces of Death last weekend. On May 1st, we've got Hocum. On May 15th, we've got Obsession, which we will get to. On May 29th, we've got Backrooms.

• 21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 21:57Sean Fennessey?

  And most of these movies are coming from relatively new filmmakers, and they're trying to, you know, who's the next Filippo Brothers? Who's the next Zach Cregger? Who's the next Jordan Peele? There's this attempt to filter these people up. I don't know if Damien McCarthy's gonna get there, but I'm looking forward to the film. Okay, the next film on our list is called The Sheep Detectives.

• 22:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a new film from Amazon MGM about some detectives who are sheep.

• 22:23Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 22:24Sean Fennessey?

  That is quite literally what the film is.

• 22:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, it also stars Hugh Jackman and my beloved Emma Thompson.

• 22:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and a myriad of young stars.

• 22:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is, it's a cozy mystery.

• 22:35Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm, yeah.

• 22:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's an adaptation of a cozy mystery book. The comps for this have all been direct to streaming. So like literally every single one of them. So there's no real number, and that also did inflect my guess, which is an 8 million box office.

• 22:52Sean Fennessey?

  Total.

• 22:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Total. No, who's gonna go see this respectfully?

• 22:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think this movie's gonna do okay.

• 22:58Amanda Dobbins?

  You do?

• 22:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, because I think old people are gonna be into this.

• 23:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but if, even if you look at like all of the recent old people movies, they're not, I mean, what's your guess?

• 23:08Sean Fennessey?

  $51 million.

• 23:09Amanda Dobbins?

  That's absolutely insane.

• 23:12Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, it's like.

• 23:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Song Sung Blue.

• 23:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's talking animals and a mystery.

• 23:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Only did 39 million. No, I know.

• 23:19Sean Fennessey?

  Song Sung Blue is a hard to watch melodrama.

• 23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But that is sold as Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson singing Neil Diamond songs at you in sparkly outfits.

• 23:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, it's a talking animal movie. I would guess that we probably land somewhere between us. I would guess, given this conversation, maybe we land at 27 million?

• 23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe.

• 23:40Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, look at all the people in this movie.

• 23:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 23:43Sean Fennessey?

  Nicholas Kelton, Emma Thompson, Molly Gordon, Bryan Cranston, Nicholas Braun, Brett Goldstein, Regina Hall, Hong Chow, like those are all voice performers.

• 23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm a fan of all of those people.

• 23:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 23:54Amanda Dobbins?

  But, and I am also familiar with the cozy mystery genre and like I, it just needs, why is this not being released on Amazon?

• 24:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, because they're making a push towards theatrical and they're trying to make money on these sheep.

• 24:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I understand that Project Hail Mary worked and I don't know if this one is going to.

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  Sheep, you like them?

• 24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Indifferent.

• 24:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Metacritic score, what did you guess?

• 24:16Amanda Dobbins?

  63.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  I also guessed 63.

• 24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  There we go.

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  How wonderful.

• 24:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 24:21Sean Fennessey?

  The next film, I have no idea what to do with this movie. It is Billie Eilish, colon, Hit Me Hard and Soft, dash, The Tour Live. Not The Tour, comma, Live, The Tour Live.

• 24:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:32Sean Fennessey?

  Is the name of it The Tour Live? I have some questions about the grammatical choices in this film's title.

• 24:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we need a copy corner with Craig Gaines.

• 24:39Sean Fennessey?

  This film is directed by Billie Eilish and James Cameron.

• 24:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Sean Fennessey?

  James Cameron, who's never made a film that has made less than $50 million, I think.

• 24:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 24:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think?

• 24:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm. I mean, I-

• 24:51Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe Piranha 2, the spawning?

• 24:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, I don't know what was going on there with the 80s, 90s early releases. Okay, I, it's your turn.

• 24:59Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed 42 million.

• 25:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I went really big.

• 25:02Sean Fennessey?

  You did?

• 25:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I went 160 million.

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  I, you could be right. I don't fucking know.

• 25:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I went era's tour and then revised down, but like people, the children, they love Billie Eilish.

• 25:13Sean Fennessey?

  Do they know this is happening, though?

• 25:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I have, I have seen a lot of trailers for this on YouTube while getting my nails done.

• 25:20Sean Fennessey?

  I guess the movie is 3D, right?

• 25:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't have, it doesn't have IMAX screens, does it? Cause it's coming out the same day as Mortal Kombat 2, which we'll get to momentarily.

• 25:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. What, what do you think Big Jim's up to in terms of-

• 25:31Sean Fennessey?

  160 million?

• 25:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the era's tour made 180 million. People really-

• 25:36Sean Fennessey?

  But Billie Eilish is no Taylor Swift when it comes to-

• 25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  But still, she has, has more Oscars, you know?

• 25:44Sean Fennessey?

  You believe in Big Jim. You really do.

• 25:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I believe it. If I have learned one thing, it is do not underestimate Big Jim. Learned another thing, it is that Jack and Lucas's generation will give Billie Eilish her flowers at the expense of Dua Lipa whenever they need to.

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  Two people I know who love Billie Eilish are my wife, who is not in Jack or Lucas's generation, and my daughter, who is not in Jack and Lucas's generation.

• 26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  See, there you go. You're surrounded.

• 26:10Sean Fennessey?

  There's no chance that Eileen brings Alice to see this movie. No chance.

• 26:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't know.

• 26:16Sean Fennessey?

  She doesn't know it exists.

• 26:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Will you be in Cannes?

• 26:19Sean Fennessey?

  Not yet.

• 26:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. I was gonna say, there's gonna be time to fill.

• 26:23Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe I'll take them.

• 26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 26:25Sean Fennessey?

  It'll be a family outing, and I'll contribute to that 160. Okay, I don't, I don't see that happening, but you know what? We're doing this because maybe it lands somewhere in the middle. Maybe it goes, maybe it exceeds 160. That seems very hard for me to believe because of the number of films that are coming out in this month, but we'll see. My Metacritic guess is 71.

• 26:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Mine is 65.

• 26:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You know, James Cameron, a lot of, the reviews of this will be, you won't have, yeah, and it will be like a little bit more fandom oriented, like the, the critics who raised their hand to take this one on are probably not doing it because they hate Billie Eilish.

• 26:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Sean Fennessey?

  So we'll see what happens there. Okay, Mortal Kombat 2. Did you see the first Mortal Kombat?

• 27:03Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't.

• 27:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think you were on leave for that film.

• 27:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, it's 2021, right?

• 27:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  So I, no.

• 27:12Sean Fennessey?

  You just skipped it.

• 27:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I just skipped it. It was, it was pandemic. I was pregnant for a lot of 2021, so, and also.

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  I was also pregnant with the future of Mortal Kombat films.

• 27:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, respectfully, this is not, I did occasionally play a Mortal Kombat, like, arcade game at the, the beach where we went to the snack bar.

• 27:32Sean Fennessey?

  Who was your character of choice?

• 27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't, I didn't know their names.

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  You have Scorpion energy.

• 27:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, thank you.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  Do you know about Scorpion?

• 27:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 27:40Sean Fennessey?

  He is, has the yellow fighting costume. He wears a mask. He throws like a, some sort of demonic hook tail at people.

• 27:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:49Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 27:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Like a scorpion's tail?

• 27:51Sean Fennessey?

  Like a scorpion's tail. And he says, get over here! And he pulls you towards them, and then he does something very violent. You know about the, how you conclude a battle in Mortal Kombat? With a fatality?

• 28:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 28:02Sean Fennessey?

  You can kill them.

• 28:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 28:03Sean Fennessey?

  Slice off their head, explode them, any number of.

• 28:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  Brutal mutilations.

• 28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Who are you in Mortal Kombat?

• 28:11Sean Fennessey?

  Good question.

• 28:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you ever dress up as a Mortal Kombat?

• 28:13Sean Fennessey?

  Raiden, perhaps?

• 28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And?

• 28:15Sean Fennessey?

  A mysterious figure who is able to channel the power of lightning?

• 28:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:20Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm getting that right. Is that accurate? Thank you. Yeah, Lucas gave me a huge thumbs up there.

• 28:25Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, yeah.

• 28:26Sean Fennessey?

  The movie, this Mortal Kombat 2 movie, which was supposed to come out last year and is now coming out in the May window, is projected to make a lot of money. Karl Urban is the star. He plays the Johnny Cage character.

• 28:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:39Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what's your guess?

• 28:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I just wrote down a number. 60 million? I don't know.

• 28:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I wrote down 137 million. So you think that Billie Eilish is going to dominate Mortal Kombat 2?

• 28:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I do.

• 28:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I don't think that's the case, but I could be wrong. What's your Metacritic guess?

• 28:57Amanda Dobbins?

  46.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  44, I guess.

• 28:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't think this is going to be a critical darling. I do think it might gratify the people who were disappointed by the first Mortal Kombat movie, which was like the origin story of the Mortal Kombat tournament. Instead of being just a series of guys saying, "Get over here!"

• 29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Sean Fennessey?

  Which I enjoyed. Yes, thank you, Jack. Um, okay. May 15th.

• 29:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Sean Fennessey?

  We have a handful of movies. The first one is Is God Is? Now, this is also a new film from Amazon MGM. It's directed by Alicia Harris. Uh, it stars, uh, Vivica A. Fox, Janelle Monae, Eric Alexander, Sterling K. Brown. It's about two sisters who go on a quest for revenge against their father. What'd you guess?

• 29:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's your turn.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's my turn. I guessed 12 million box office, 74 million Metacritic.

• 29:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, 74, not million.

• 29:52Sean Fennessey?

  74 million positive reviews.

• 29:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 11 million box office.

• 29:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, close.

• 29:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And then 57 box, uh, Metacritic.

• 30:02Sean Fennessey?

  They showed us a teaser of this last year. Do you remember it?

• 30:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I do.

• 30:06Sean Fennessey?

  It seemed like a very kind of like outsized exploitation-y, like Kill Bill-style movie about two, um, sisters who will stop at nothing to destroy their enemy. Um, it's definitely my flavor of movie. Haven't seen the movie yet, so it's a little hard to say. But does seem like a challenging movie to drop right in the middle of May.

• 30:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 30:24Sean Fennessey?

  Obsession, May 15th. I've just seen this movie.

• 30:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:26Sean Fennessey?

  I really enjoyed it.

• 30:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Good.

• 30:28Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's your turn to guess.

• 30:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I wrote down 15 million.

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote down 42.

• 30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's great. You think this is the one that's gonna happen?

• 30:37Sean Fennessey?

  It has a chance to break out.

• 30:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 30:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's directed by a guy named Curry Barker. It played at TIFF last year. It's about a young man, I don't know what age he is, somewhere between 18 and 24, who is in love, infatuated with a close friend of his. And he wishes upon a special item for her to be obsessed with him. And his wish comes true. And that wish has tremendous consequences. Real classic monkey paw kind of a movie. Thought it was very effective. Metacritic score 69.

• 31:14Amanda Dobbins?

  66 is what I have.

• 31:16Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty close.

• 31:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of curious what you think about this movie. I think you might find it a little bit frustrating. But I had a grand old time with it.

• 31:24Amanda Dobbins?

  That's great. I know that there is going to be one horror movie that is the your long legs or your, you know, your weapons. And I was like trying to, but I I don't know if I picked which of them will be. It does really feel like everyone's throwing spaghetti at the wall and one of them will be the breakout.

• 31:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there's a lot of them this year.

• 31:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I couldn't suss it out.

• 31:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's suss out In the Gray.

• 31:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:53Sean Fennessey?

  This is the new, this is the 387th film from Guy Ritchie.

• 31:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 31:57Sean Fennessey?

  All made in the last two years.

• 31:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Sean Fennessey?

  Stacked cast, Henry Cavill, Iza Gonzalez, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rosamund Pike. It's about a covert team of elite operatives getting up to some stuff.

• 32:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like the other 12 movies.

• 32:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, something he's interested in thematically, sort of like Scorsese with gangsters or Celine Sciamma with the female identity in The Modern Times, but just for operatives hanging out, doing stuff.

• 32:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's what Guy Ritchie does.

• 32:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I, it's, I am also interested in that premise. It is the execution that sometimes comes short.

• 32:33Sean Fennessey?

  This movie doesn't feel real to me.

• 32:34Amanda Dobbins?

  No. What did you write down for box office?

• 32:36Sean Fennessey?

  37 million?

• 32:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I wrote down 18.

• 32:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's possible.

• 32:40Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think it's because I looked at the last three to four Guy Ritchies. And one of them did break 30 and the rest were between 15 and 20.

• 32:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, there was like the League of Ungentlemanly Warfare?

• 32:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I fell asleep during that.

• 32:54Sean Fennessey?

  That was one.

• 32:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I was pregnant and I laid down on this before they redid the Regal Cinema closest to us and I just was on several seats.

• 33:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's very rude to Guy Ritchie.

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the movie was rude to me.

• 33:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Amanda, I'm very curious because last year, we're kind of having the inverse of last year where last year you were consistently saying bigger box office numbers than Sean and this year it seems the exact opposite. I'm curious if there's anything.

• 33:21Sean Fennessey?

  Except in the case of Billie Eilish.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  That is true. I was just curious if there's anything that informed that thinking. If you were looking back at last year's doc, if there's something you think that's different about this year's slate.

• 33:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I was looking back at last year's box office and I, I mean, I, and 2024 and I pretty much went by distributor and then type of movie and looked at all the comps and went in there and, and often with the smaller movies was a bit generous. So I, you know, like for every, that's, it's the way the box office is now, right? Like for every $500 million, though I don't even think we got a $500 million last year.

• 34:00Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe one?

• 34:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Sean Fennessey?

  In the summer?

• 34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  There are a lot of movies that, I mean, Eddington made $10 million last year, you know?

• 34:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And yet it grows every day in stature.

• 34:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And a lot of the movies that we loved are under 15.

• 34:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You're right that we did not get a $500 million movie. Lilo and Stitch made 423 million.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think, especially with all of the small movies where, um, like the non-event, I was sort of unimaginative. I really am in the 15 to, to 20 million range for a lot of them.

• 34:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's wise. I probably went a little bit over on too many things, including this one. I went 37.

• 34:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 34:38Sean Fennessey?

  Just because it's like Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill blowing stuff up.

• 34:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  To me, there's like, there's a bar there, but I could be wrong.

• 34:45Amanda Dobbins?

  One of them did, maybe the League of Gentlemen was in the 30s, but I think The Covenant was 18.

• 34:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was low. CR and I saw that together, holding hands, thinking about the future of our country.

• 34:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's beautiful.

• 34:58Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what's your Metacritic guess here?

• 35:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, 37.

• 35:04Sean Fennessey?

  I said 52.

• 35:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 35:05Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see. I love boosters Boots Riley's new film, his first feature since Sorry to Bother You, which was, I think, eight or nine years ago. Um, this one comes out May 22nd. It stars, uh, our beloved Kiki Palmer.

• 35:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:19Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed 18 million.

• 35:21Amanda Dobbins?

  19 million.

• 35:22Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. I guessed 81 Metacritic score.

• 35:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good. That's high.

• 35:25Sean Fennessey?

  It had good reviews out of South by.

• 35:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited to see it. I'm guessing 64.

• 35:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 35:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, just because it's about the fashion world, sort of, right?

• 35:35Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yes, it is.

• 35:37Amanda Dobbins?

  And I just, and it seems, in the same way that you think that critics are going to be resistant to the Devil Wears Prada 2, you know, people don't take that seriously.

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good point. What was, what was Sorry to Bother You's Metacritic score?

• 35:53Speaker 05

  I'll look it up right now.

• 35:54Sean Fennessey?

  Look that up quickly. I'm quite curious. Um, all right. The next film is a movie called Passenger, which was recently dated into this spot. Um, Andre Orv- Ovredal, who is a Norwegian director who's made some horror movies in recent years, including The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Here's the premise of this new movie, which stars a bunch of people I've not heard of and Melissa Leo. A few weeks into their van life adventure, a young couple witnesses a horrific accident that leaves the driver dead. Soon they're being pursued by a demonic stalker who's impossible to outrun and follows them wherever they go. Um, this movie kind of popped up out of nowhere.

• 36:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:35Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen a trailer. It's coming out in a month.

• 36:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  What's your guess?

• 36:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Nine million?

• 36:42Sean Fennessey?

  I said 12.

• 36:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 36:44Sean Fennessey?

  Metacritic?

• 36:45Amanda Dobbins?

  52.

• 36:45Sean Fennessey?

  34.

• 36:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 36:47Sean Fennessey?

  Now, Ovredal got really good reviews for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, or pretty good reviews, I should say. Much less so for Voyage of the Demeter. Do you remember what that was?

• 36:56Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I read about it last night and have since forgotten.

• 36:59Sean Fennessey?

  It was the first chapter of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

• 37:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right. Yeah.

• 37:06Sean Fennessey?

  Anyway. The next film is a big one.

• 37:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 37:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Sean Fennessey?

  It comes out on May 22nd, Memorial Day weekend. And, I mean, the streets are in tears. I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this film is coming to us. I've been waiting seven long years for a new Star Wars film, they're saying.

• 37:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:31Sean Fennessey?

  And through those tears.

• 37:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Sean Fennessey?

  They're feeling redeemed. They're feeling seen. They're feeling understood. They're feeling a sense of deliverance. Because they love Star Wars. And they love Star Wars in the cinema.

• 37:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Sean Fennessey?

  And I predict $275 million for this movie domestically.

• 37:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, that's so low.

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 37:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Because you think that all of your cohort will be mad? And all the Chris Ryans of the world?

• 37:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think they'll be mad.

• 38:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Here's the thing. Everyone's like, oh, Chris Ryan's not gonna see Mandalorian Grogu. Yes, he is, with my child. So there are a lot of people who are gonna try to-

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  You're making that sound like a threat.

• 38:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know, I haven't bought the tickets yet, but I probably need to lock those down. I know that there's resistance. I know that among the, you know, the community.

• 38:20Sean Fennessey?

  What community?

• 38:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Of people who are older than five, who are really, really into Star Wars.

• 38:28Sean Fennessey?

  Have you ever wished anyone may the fourth be with you?

• 38:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 38:32Sean Fennessey?

  On May 4th?

• 38:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I have not.

• 38:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And when you were saying that, I was like, is today May 4th?

• 38:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'm making some plans for the week of May 4th with my family.

• 38:46Amanda Dobbins?

  That's nice. That's beautiful. Listen, Star Wars is big in our house. Both children can now say Grogu or Grogo. So I just went with Lilo and Stitch numbers, so I'm going 420. 421 is actually what I wrote down because I found myself not wanting any more round numbers.

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  My only concern here, my primary concern here, is that this is committing a sin that Marvel has struggled with, which is that they have made something that is connected to a TV show. And then not everybody is up on the TV show. And that that sometimes limits the audience for who decides to go out to see a movie like this. Now, it is the first Star Wars movie in forever. I may be making a huge mistake and it may be a $700 million movie domestically, but I'm not so sure. I have my doubts. What's your Metacritic score for this movie?

• 39:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Forty-eight.

• 39:34Sean Fennessey?

  I have 52.

• 39:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 39:35Sean Fennessey?

  Jon Favreau directed this.

• 39:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You know.

• 39:38Sean Fennessey?

  He's directed many movies people like.

• 39:40Amanda Dobbins?

  People like Sigourney Weaver. They like Grogu.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think Sigourney Weaver is gonna be like in a lot of the movie.

• 39:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, you know, don't tell Max that.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  She should play her Navi character, Kiri, is that her name? In this film. That would be interesting. Could we crossover? Like, does the-

• 39:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Griffin and David explaining Sigourney Weaver's character journey in the Avatar films on Blank Check was very special to me.

• 40:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, it's like the ninth time they've done it, though, so it's not as though it was novel. Um, okay. What, your Metacritic score was 48?

• 40:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Sean Fennessey?

  So you think this is gonna work?

• 40:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, box office-wise, financially, yes. I mean, I, listen, I have a skewed perspective, which is like two tiny men in my house yelling, "Grogu, Grogu, Grogu", but I'm not, you know, I, it's Star Wars.

• 40:28Sean Fennessey?

  What does Zach think?

• 40:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I, we haven't talked about it.

• 40:32Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 40:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I wouldn't say that we talk a lot about Star Wars in our adult life.

• 40:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's something that my relationship has that yours doesn't.

• 40:42Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay, May 29th, Pressure. This is the new World War II film.

• 40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is about the meteorologist who determined the correct day to launch D-Day.

• 40:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's the premise.

• 40:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Are they releasing it on D-Day?

• 40:55Sean Fennessey?

  Uh-

• 40:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Or like a week before?

• 40:57Sean Fennessey?

  Around that time.

• 40:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Amanda Dobbins?

  They're getting, they're, you know, doing the soft release and then windowing.

• 41:03Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe early access, screening for influencers.

• 41:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Sean Fennessey?

  How many World War II influencers do you think there are?

• 41:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 41:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's kind of a lane for me I could lean into in the second half of my life. Just a guy who knows a lot about that stuff.

• 41:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Sean Fennessey?

  But maybe like only in a very narrow way. Like, I only know about how Belgium worked during World War II.

• 41:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know a lot about Belgium?

• 41:22Sean Fennessey?

  I don't.

• 41:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Generally?

• 41:23Sean Fennessey?

  But I could learn.

• 41:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you speak Flemish?

• 41:25Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, no, no, not even, not a lick.

• 41:27Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be incredible if you knew, if you knew all like Lenin's full Russian name and spoke Flemish, you know?

• 41:33Sean Fennessey?

  Nope, I don't know any Flemish, unfortunately. What's your prediction on pressure?

• 41:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I looked up the box office for Nuremberg, which was $14 million. So that is what I'm predicting.

• 41:42Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote 27 million just because it's a summer release.

• 41:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And you think all the old people are just like, well, it stays late later so I can drive to the theater.

• 41:52Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, yes.

• 41:55Sean Fennessey?

  Is Brendan Fraser a bigger draw than Russell Crowe right now? Probably not, but maybe. Also, what's more appealing, D-Day or the Nuremberg Trials as an idea? I would say The Great Attack more so than The Aftermath Trial.

• 42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but meteorology movie or courtroom drama?

• 42:17Sean Fennessey?

  But see, that's 1989 talking.

• 42:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm talking about meteorology is big now.

• 42:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Sean Fennessey?

  You've been to weather.com? You looked at those apps?

• 42:24Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I've moved on to Weather Underground because AI hasn't ruined it because it uses your local weather station.

• 42:32Sean Fennessey?

  Meaning you're part of the revolutionary force that is looking to upend American power structures?

• 42:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think, no, I wish.

• 42:39Sean Fennessey?

  What is Weather Underground?

• 42:41Amanda Dobbins?

  It's an app. Am I saying it?

• 42:42Sean Fennessey?

  They named an app after the Weather Underground? That can't be right.

• 42:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I guess it's Wonder Ground, which I couldn't really say outside. So I was, you know, ascribing to, I can't say out loud. So I was ascribing to them, politics or leadership that perhaps they don't have. Yeah. Wonder Ground.

• 42:59Sean Fennessey?

  Wonder Ground, not Underground.

• 43:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonder.

• 43:03Sean Fennessey?

  Did you say Wonder Ground?

• 43:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I said Weather Underground because saying Wonder Ground out loud is really stupid.

• 43:10Sean Fennessey?

  What is happening?

• 43:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Because Weather Underground, you know, has my respect.

• 43:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, have you seen my new social media app, Military Honda?

• 43:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Anyway, Wonder Ground uses local stations. So because AI has ruined the traditional weather apps, as you know.

• 43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Metacritic score for pressure?

• 43:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, 61?

• 43:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly what I guessed.

• 43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  There we go.

• 43:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's very funny. The Breadwinner.

• 43:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Sean Fennessey?

  This is the debut lead feature film from the highly successful comedian Nate Bargatze.

• 43:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Sean Fennessey?

  A comedian whose work I've enjoyed over the years. The movie comes out May 29th. What's your box office prediction?

• 43:49Amanda Dobbins?

  35 million.

• 43:51Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote down 52, which feels like a reach.

• 43:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Sean Fennessey?

  The film, to me, does not look good. However, Nate Bargatze is straight up selling out stadiums.

• 43:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 43:59Sean Fennessey?

  He is huge.

• 44:00Amanda Dobbins?

  But there is not, I even looked for recent comps of comedians making that, which has not happened in the last few years.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't happen as often, yeah.

• 44:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It does not happen that often.

• 44:11Sean Fennessey?

  Used to be one of the surefire things we can expect out of the movies.

• 44:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and I was, like, I looked up the last movie that John Mulaney was in was like the Chippendales movie.

• 44:20Sean Fennessey?

  Rescue Rangers.

• 44:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Rescue Rangers, which he voiced, which did not make 35 million. So I just, I just wrote a number down.

• 44:28Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like he's making a bid for, like, the Kevin James Corner.

• 44:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Sean Fennessey?

  And Kevin James was in an Angel Studios movie this year, I think, called Solo Mia, which I think made like $27 million. It did pretty good business. So like, there is definitely an audience for this kind of thing. This is a family comedy about a man whose wife, I think, wins something on Shark Tank, and so she has to leave for like a month.

• 44:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Sean Fennessey?

  And he has to take care of, I think, three daughters and their home, while their home is under construction. Things go terribly awry.

• 44:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, my Metacritic score is 27.

• 44:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow. Mine is, well, this seems too high now. 48 is what I'll say.

• 45:05Sean Fennessey?

  May 29th, tuner, new thriller from Daniel Rohr. The film stars Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman. It's a movie about a piano tuner who becomes entrenched in a world of crime. Box office, I'm going 9 million.

• 45:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I went bigger on this one.

• 45:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 45:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I guess the Leo Woodall of it all, and there are some other people, and I feel like I've been hearing about this.

• 45:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Hannah Rose Lewis in it.

• 45:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I went 28 million.

• 45:34Sean Fennessey?

  I hope that happens, having seen the movie. I think it's hard. It's an indie studio. It's Black Bear is putting it out. It's gonna be a little more challenging to get in front of people. They've had some troubles.

• 45:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 45:44Sean Fennessey?

  But it's a really good movie, so I hope people check it out.

• 45:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I picked this as the one that would go relatively viral as far as these movies go.

• 45:51Sean Fennessey?

  I hope so. Uh, Metacritic score, I guess, 74.

• 45:54Amanda Dobbins?

  That's exactly what I have.

• 45:55Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, we've matched on a lot of these. I think three Metacritic scores so far. Okay, May 29th, Back Room.

• 46:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I did finally see this trailer.

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think about it?

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, well, I, again, it's one that I saw as a YouTube ad at the nail salon, and it, on YouTube with those specs, really just looked like a YouTube movie.

• 46:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so I have not watched the YouTube video that this is based on that Kane Parsons made when he was a teenager. I'm, I think I'm gonna watch it beforehand. It's very popular. It went viral. And, you know, it does look similar to the way that the film looks, but the film is obviously shot with different cameras and it has movie stars in it like Renata Reinsphah and Chuchua Edgfor. So I'm really looking forward to this. There's just something in my gut that tells me that this is the one in terms of the horror movie.

• 46:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, because I think that there's a very young audience that is very tapped into this. It's also an 824 film. I think it's been marketed very well thus far. What's your guess on the box office for this?

• 46:55Amanda Dobbins?

  So I did 16 million.

• 46:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I guess 67 million.

• 46:59Amanda Dobbins?

  That is like, that would be 824's, what, third biggest movie ever?

• 47:05Sean Fennessey?

  Probably fourth or fifth.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I mean, if you think that's where it's gonna go.

• 47:09Sean Fennessey?

  I got a feeling.

• 47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 47:11Sean Fennessey?

  I just got a gut feeling about it. I could be wrong. I think it's kind of a weird time, too, because how is that audience being served? You know, you've got the Star Wars movie, which is kind of playing a little younger. And so you've got this two-week, three-week period after Mortal Kombat 2, where that just seems like a big fit for them. And then after that, we'll get right into what are gonna be the June 5th movies. And I think they're all a little soft. So...

• 47:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, too.

• 47:38Speaker 05

  67 million domestic would be 824's fourth biggest film, but Heinz Civil War at 68 and right above Uncut Gems at 50.

• 47:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow. All right.

• 47:50Sean Fennessey?

  Just a, just a, just a guess. My Metacritic guess is 82.

• 47:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Mine is 61.

• 47:55Sean Fennessey?

  So you're not a believer in this movie. Good to know.

• 47:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I, what is interesting about it is that I only saw it like in its natural habitat, which is a YouTube ad. And I was like, hmm, I don't know. But maybe, maybe it'll be great on film and maybe many people...

• 48:09Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't seen it. Just want something to be, like this to be good. Um, June 5th, Masters of the Universe.

• 48:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. How you doing? How you feeling?

• 48:18Sean Fennessey?

  I've got some concerns.

• 48:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Sean Fennessey?

  I've got some real concerns, you know, Travis Knight's made a lot of good movies. He made the Bumblebee film you recently referenced.

• 48:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 48:27Sean Fennessey?

  He made many stop motion animation films for his studio, Leica. I think he's super talented, the son of Phil Knight, the Nike founder.

• 48:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 48:36Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed 88 million dollars for the box office.

• 48:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 90 million.

• 48:39Sean Fennessey?

  We're very close. Now, this, I think, would be considered a disappointment.

• 48:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Based on what I know about the budget and your reactions in the room at last year's CinemaCon?

• 48:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 48:52Sean Fennessey?

  I have been told that the trailer is not properly communicating the tone of the film, which is a little bit more of a comedy.

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  And that they're given real like, this man must pick up this sword to rule the land, which is of course in the text of He-Man. But even the He-Man cartoon, which I adored as a five-year-old, had a real camp quality to it. And if they don't hit the camp on this, I'm going to be worried. Also, Jared Leto not doing the Skeletor voice, I don't know if you're familiar with the Skeletor voice, but he plays the villain in this movie. There's a very specific Skeletor voice.

• 49:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Do it now.

• 49:24Sean Fennessey?

  I really couldn't if I tried. It's in a register I can't reach.

• 49:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it high or low?

• 49:29Sean Fennessey?

  High.

• 49:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, so it's sort of like the...

• 49:31Sean Fennessey?

  He's like a maniacal, annoying...

• 49:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Like the Skinamarink, like, hello, John.

• 49:35Sean Fennessey?

  Not, not quite, but you're not that far off. Okay, what's your Metacritic guess on this?

• 49:41Amanda Dobbins?

  My Metacritic guess is 49.

• 49:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't even know what Skeletor is.

• 49:51Sean Fennessey?

  You haven't seen Skinamarink?

• 49:52Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  Will you see Masters of the Universe?

• 49:56Amanda Dobbins?

  If, if you invite me.

• 49:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 49:59Amanda Dobbins?

  But you won't, because you're like, I have to have a safe space for this to talk about my feelings about He-Man.

• 50:04Sean Fennessey?

  That is what I said.

• 50:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think Knox would like it?

• 50:07Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 50:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well, you guys can go.

• 50:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, actually, that would be fun. Unless it's terrible and then Knox has to see me sob in a theater as my childhood is destroyed. My Metacritic guess is 55.

• 50:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 50:20Sean Fennessey?

  Next film, June 5th, Power Ballad.

• 50:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Sean Fennessey?

  This movie debuted at South by Southwest. I just saw it this weekend.

• 50:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 50:24Sean Fennessey?

  It was okay. I don't want to spoil my review.

• 50:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Sean Fennessey?

  New film from John Carney, of course, a musical. It's got a cool premise. Premise is there is a never-quite-made-it singer-songwriter played by Paul Rudd, who has moved to Ireland. He has a family there. He's playing an American man. And he performs in a wedding cover band in Ireland and does weddings. And one night randomly at a wedding... A huge pop star is a former boy band member who's played in the film by Nick Jonas, shows up to perform with the band, they strike up a connection, and the Paul Rudd character shares a song that he's written with the pop star. And months go by, and then all of a sudden, that song that he shared with him, you hear it on the radio, and it's being performed by the boy band kid, who's having a huge comeback with this song.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  And then, the film is about the guy's quest to get credit, get acknowledgement for something that he couldn't get throughout his career, as kind of a never was. I guess 26 million for box office.

• 51:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess 16 million.

• 51:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think maybe you might be more right than I am. We'll see. Lionsgate film, Metacritic, I guess, 71.

• 51:29Amanda Dobbins?

  74.

• 51:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. John Carney usually does pretty good. This was no once, is what I'll say.

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• 53:37Sean Fennessey?

  June 5th again, scary movie. This is the, either the sixth or the seventh scary movie film. How many of them have you seen?

• 53:45Amanda Dobbins?

  The first.

• 53:45Sean Fennessey?

  That's it?

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  So, one.

• 53:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, did you enjoy it?

• 53:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Uh, I love the scary movie, movies. I guessed 84 million dollars for this movie. Cause this is a built-in brand that hasn't been around in a while. I kinda compare it to Final Destination Bloodlines. With the like, oh, I forgot how fun it is to see these movies in movie theaters.

• 54:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Sean Fennessey?

  I could be wrong about that?

• 54:06Amanda Dobbins?

  That's smart. I, I want 52 million.

• 54:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 54:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is lower, but not like

• 54:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that seems reasonable.

• 54:13Amanda Dobbins?

  disastrous. That people who are excited to go see it, will go see it.

• 54:16Sean Fennessey?

  One thing in this movie's favor, I think, is just that like, everybody came back. Anna Faris came back, Regina Hall came back. All the people who are known for these movies came back. So, we'll see. Metacritic, I guessed 52.

• 54:26Amanda Dobbins?

  54.

• 54:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're pretty close on that one. June 12th Disclosure Day.

• 54:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 54:32Sean Fennessey?

  Steven Spielberg's new film.

• 54:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 54:34Sean Fennessey?

  Shrouded in secrecy.

• 54:38Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, this is a hard one.

• 54:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I went back and forth.

• 54:42Sean Fennessey?

  Really hard one.

• 54:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Because it's an original, but it, but it is sci-fi. Uh, it, Spielberg has been not on a huge box office streak the last 10 years, but also he's Steven Spielberg.

• 54:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 54:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, many movie stars, but they have to keep the, the reveal. It's sort of a marketing challenge, just in terms of what is in the movie and what, what you can tell people. So, I went

• 55:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I wish I could remember the, the math and the triangulation I used. I did 165.

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  Ooh, that's big.

• 55:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I, I, I went big.

• 55:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 55:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought that, because as, as Jack observed and kinda, you're doing the math, I like, the smaller things are gonna be small and I think the bigger things will get at least some attention. I mean, you know, 165 is still like, I'm in, I'm projecting it lower than Devil Wears Brata 2.

• 55:40Sean Fennessey?

  Right. No, and I think wisely. Um, I went 121.

• 55:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 55:47Sean Fennessey?

  The thing is, is I do think that the film can play overseas as much as here. I mean, Ready Player One only made 137 million and that was pre-branded IP.

• 55:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I looked at that and thought about that a little bit.

• 56:02Amanda Dobbins?

  But Ready Player One, even at the time, well, first of all, it doesn't have any of the, like, the movie stars.

• 56:08Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And it, there is, there's a difference between aliens and, and robots and whatever is going on over there.

• 56:16Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And it also had a little bit of like built-in backlash, I think.

• 56:22Sean Fennessey?

  It did.

• 56:22Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 56:23Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't very well reviewed.

• 56:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Sean Fennessey?

  Although I kind of, I, I did enjoy it at the time and I, I think I, I think I might have even written about it. This is very much like a much more serious.

• 56:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Sean Fennessey?

  State of affairs. And I think if the film is able to really tap into the anxiety of UAPs, then they'll be able to really do some business.

• 56:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And to, your, your good friend Steven, our third chair, is just out there being like, I believe in aliens. You know, he's like, he's, he's doing it.

• 56:48Sean Fennessey?

  It was how to sell.

• 56:49Amanda Dobbins?

  He's working.

• 56:50Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed 74 for Metacritic.

• 56:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 83.

• 56:54Sean Fennessey?

  I would guess we're gonna end up somewhere in the middle of that.

• 56:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:57Sean Fennessey?

  These, this is a challenging genre to nail if you're not like Denis Villeneuve right now. Um, in terms of the critics.

• 57:04Amanda Dobbins?

  He, he is Steven Spielberg. And the last few.

• 57:08Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm undershooting for fear to protect myself.

• 57:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's fine. Um, the last few Spielberg movies have been critically beloved.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  True, especially, uh, West Side Story. Um.

• 57:19Amanda Dobbins?

  At Fableman's.

• 57:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Fableman's did very well too. This is, it's more of a swing in a big genre like this, but we'll see. The next film, there's only, the one thing that is in this movie's favor is that everybody cleared out for it. There's only one other movie coming out on June 12th. It's called Stop That Train.

• 57:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's a comedy starring RuPaul, directed by Adam Shankman. I guessed 16 million.

• 57:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 3 million.

• 57:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You could be right. It's counter programming, obviously. I didn't even watch the trailer for this yet. It just came out last week. I guessed 43 for Metacritic.

• 57:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 47. So there we are.

• 57:52Sean Fennessey?

  Next film is Toy Story 5.

• 57:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Sean Fennessey?

  The Toy Story films have been very consistent at the box office. Did you look at the history at all?

• 58:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. A lot of money.

• 58:04Sean Fennessey?

  This film comes out June 19th. I guessed 401 million dollars.

• 58:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 503 million.

• 58:10Sean Fennessey?

  Has a Toy Story movie crossed 500 before domestically?

• 58:12Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but Inside Out 2 was such a banger. Like, it was over 600 million. And I think just the, the breakdown of the kids of it all and what we have seen about kids movies with recognizable IP built in, they're doing well. So I kinda, I rounded up slightly from Lilo and Stitch and Minecraft and some other stuff.

• 58:43Sean Fennessey?

  You might be right. This might be huge.

• 58:45Amanda Dobbins?

  It's also just iPad, the villain. Really smart.

• 58:47Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. It looks good. My daughter's really pumped about it. My Metacritic guess is 89.

• 58:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Mine's, wow. Okay.

• 58:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's pretty much in the, in the median of the Toy Story films. They're all kinda between 86, 84, and 92. You gotta remember the first Toy Story film, one of the best reviewed movies of all time.

• 59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I know that Toy Story 3 is Tarantino's number one. Yeah, I want 78, which is not bad, but.

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. That would be a low for the Toy Story movies.

• 59:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know.

• 59:17Sean Fennessey?

  A lot riding on that movie for the health of this summer, actually. If it's like a $2.5 billion movie, I don't, what did, where did, what did Inside Out 2 get to? Did it get to 2 billion?

• 59:25Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think it was like 1.6 or something.

• 59:30Sean Fennessey?

  Be very curious to see how, how many legs the, how the legs are on that movie. Okay, and the next movie is The Death of Robin Hood on June 19.

• 59:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:37Sean Fennessey?

  This is a revisionist portrait of the Bandit, the English Bandit.

• 59:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  Robin Hood starring Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer.

• 59:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:45Sean Fennessey?

  Also a 824 film.

• 59:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:47Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 26 million.

• 59:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess 12 million.

• 59:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that wouldn't be good.

• 59:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but, you know, there are the 824 experiments that work and there are the ones that do not. And I, I don't know.

• 1:00:01Sean Fennessey?

  This comes from Michael Sarnoski, who directed Pig and A Quiet Place Day One.

• 1:00:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I like those films.

• 1:00:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Uh, I guess 66 Metacritic.

• 1:00:08Amanda Dobbins?

  64.

• 1:00:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Girls Like Girls, which is a new coming-of-age dramedy from Focus, is coming out June 19. We'll see probably a little bit more about it at CinemaCon shortly. I guess 9 million.

• 1:00:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 5 million.

• 1:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  Metacritic score 78.

• 1:00:25Amanda Dobbins?

  58.

• 1:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  Damn, not feeling it.

• 1:00:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well-

• 1:00:29Sean Fennessey?

  Is it because it has girls in it?

• 1:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's, it's because it's only girls.

• 1:00:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:00:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Glad you know.

• 1:00:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's tough. Haley Kyoko is the director of this film. Um, all right.

• 1:00:40Sean Fennessey?

  Now, these are, these are tricky, these next two.

• 1:00:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  We've got two movies on June 26.

• 1:00:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, did I forget one? I think I forgot one.

• 1:00:48Amanda Dobbins?

  What did you forget?

• 1:00:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think I forgot The Invite.

• 1:00:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, you did forget The Invite.

• 1:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  Let's add The Invite as well, because we have three movies coming on June 26.

• 1:00:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  Let's just add that, and in real time, we're going to be able to guess what we think the scores in the box office are. Let's start with Supergirl, while you're thinking about The Invite.

• 1:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Supergirl, new DCU movie. Um, directed by Craig Gillespie.

• 1:01:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Sean Fennessey?

  Starring Millie Alcock, is that her name?

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:01:15Sean Fennessey?

  From House of the Dragon.

• 1:01:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  The titular girl that is super.

• 1:01:21Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, got some worries about this movie myself.

• 1:01:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Sean Fennessey?

  I, I guess 159 million.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 190 because I think that, once again, I just looked at what Thunderbolts made. And there was maybe another, even, I, I can't remember my other comp. I don't know. It's the one word title where it is in the title, something very recognizable. Superman, Supergirl. It's, it's, it's good marketing.

• 1:01:52Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 1:01:54Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a dog. People like the dog.

• 1:01:58Sean Fennessey?

  Got some concerns.

• 1:01:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Your daughter's really excited?

• 1:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not, this movie looks very violent.

• 1:02:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure if I want to put her in this because we've been watching the live action Spider-Man movies.

• 1:02:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  The Tom Holland ones.

• 1:02:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  And they do have violence in them, but they do have a cartoon quality. This had like a, she's shooting lasers out of her eyes at a thousand robots. Kind of energy that like even the Star Wars films don't really glance at. So I'm a little worried about that. Uh.

• 1:02:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But she knows about it.

• 1:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  She does. She said, who is that? That's my friend. Um. Metacritic score of 50.

• 1:02:31Amanda Dobbins?

  53.

• 1:02:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Jackass, five.

• 1:02:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Sean Fennessey?

  Now, the Jackass films have done very well at the box office, surprisingly well and very sturdy. The most recent film actually did very good business. There's not as much pre-release hype for this movie right now. I'm wondering if it will be one of the centerpiece things we see from Paramount. Um, at CinemaCon later this week.

• 1:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you guess?

• 1:02:55Amanda Dobbins?

  60 million.

• 1:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 81 million.

• 1:02:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I mean, we're not that far away.

• 1:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  You never know.

• 1:03:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Metacritic?

• 1:03:04Amanda Dobbins?

  56, but that's their review, not mine.

• 1:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  Right. I guess 64. Greatly looking forward to this movie. One of my favorite franchises in act of moviedom. Let's talk about the invite. You haven't watched the trailer. This is the four-hander about two couples who come together for some sort of interesting evening.

• 1:03:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, 824 picked it up out of Sundance. Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton, Penelope Cruz. Box office, I'll say.

• 1:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  Thirty-four?

• 1:03:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna go forty-four.

• 1:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:03:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty-four is, thirty-six was materialists.

• 1:03:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:03:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think it'll

• 1:03:40Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of in that zone?

• 1:03:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Be in that zone, but I'm looking at the last year's forty-four to forty-eight range where Downton Abbey, Paddington and Peru, Mickey seventeen and Regretting You.

• 1:03:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I, you know, all in my own way, I had lovely times at the cinema for all of those.

• 1:03:59Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:59Amanda Dobbins?

  But sort of the, if you're interested, you'll, you know, you'll go to the movies. So, and I think people are interested in the invite.

• 1:04:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm interested to see it myself. Metacritic, I'm guessing seventy-nine.

• 1:04:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Seventy-six.

• 1:04:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Minions and Monsters, your most anticipated movie of the summer.

• 1:04:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right now, before we leave, do you think I'll get to take a picture with a minion this week?

• 1:04:22Sean Fennessey?

  I one hundred percent do.

• 1:04:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Will it only be one?

• 1:04:25Sean Fennessey?

  Thousands of Universal employees waiting to help you.

• 1:04:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one?

• 1:04:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what their names are.

• 1:04:30Amanda Dobbins?

  The goggles, the overalls, which one's Bob?

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  You mean Kevin, Stuart and Bob, who are apparently are not even gonna be in this movie. What are we doing?

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  What? Is that true?

• 1:04:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, where are they?

• 1:04:39Speaker 05

  I don't know. That's what I've heard. I don't know if that's confirmed.

• 1:04:42Sean Fennessey?

  I saw them in the trailer. I did not in the trailer?

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  I don't think so.

• 1:04:46Amanda Dobbins?

  They do all look somewhat alike.

• 1:04:48Sean Fennessey?

  They do?

• 1:04:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Do-

• 1:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's minions racist.

• 1:04:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Do minions drink Negronis? I think the answer is yes.

• 1:04:55Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna find out shortly.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  According to r/letterbox, Bob, Stuart and Kevin will not be the main characters.

• 1:05:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's different than not being in it.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  That is true, but isn't, they're the main draw.

• 1:05:10Sean Fennessey?

  The thing you gotta remember about this movie is, is there are minions, but they're also monsters.

• 1:05:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Sean Fennessey?

  So what's gonna be the balance? Will there be more monsters than minions? We don't know.

• 1:05:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, what about, what if it's about the monster inside of every minion?

• 1:05:21Sean Fennessey?

  Good point. It's a metaphor for trauma, the minions' trauma. I feel so monstrous, even though I'm a springy, yellow, pill-shaped creature. Uh, three hundred and fifty-two million.

• 1:05:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Three fifty?

• 1:05:33Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:05:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  Now that's, now that's close.

• 1:05:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's really close. Uh, Metacritic sixty-one.

• 1:05:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Fifty-four. Again, their, their score, not mine.

• 1:05:44Sean Fennessey?

  To me, the blooms off the rose on the Minions franchise.

• 1:05:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:05:46Sean Fennessey?

  I don't care.

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine.

• 1:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  Not of note to me, gentle minions.

• 1:05:50Amanda Dobbins?

  This is a movie about making movies.

• 1:05:52Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And this is a movie about creature features. It is where you and Negronis and Scrabble humor.

• 1:06:00Sean Fennessey?

  Why do you keep trying to make Negronis a part of this?

• 1:06:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I really, when I was at the film for the absolutely execrable Super Mario Brothers Galaxy.

• 1:06:07Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I once again was treated to this trailer.

• 1:06:10Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm pretty sure they were drinking a Negroni in one of the.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  Minions were drinking a Negroni?

• 1:06:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, in like a, in a sort of like Musso and Frank's type bar, like a banquet. And like, if you look at the cocktail and the glass choice, it looks like a Negroni. I mean, it could be an old fashioned, it's not a martini.

• 1:06:29Sean Fennessey?

  I've never.

• 1:06:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not a margarita.

• 1:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  I've never heard of such wish casting in my life than my minions drink Negronis.

• 1:06:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I was just there engaging with cinema, you know?

• 1:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  Understood.

• 1:06:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I meet the films where they are.

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  We gotta get through the rest of these movies. Okay. So, couple of big ones coming up. The first one is Young Washington.

• 1:06:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:06:49Sean Fennessey?

  Which comes to us from Angel Studios on July 3rd, trying to get that Independence Day dough. This new film stars Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis, and William Franklin Miller as George Washington. It's the story of George Washington.

• 1:07:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Sean Fennessey?

  As a young man. What'd you guess?

• 1:07:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm going 15 million because the angel, with the exception of, um, not The Sound of the Fury. What was that? What's the big one called?

• 1:07:15Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 1:07:15Amanda Dobbins?

  The Sound of Fury is not by William Faulkner.

• 1:07:18Sean Fennessey?

  Sound of Freedom.

• 1:07:19Amanda Dobbins?

  The Sound of Freedom is an Angel Studios breakout.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, movie. But otherwise, you gotta have Jesus in the mix for those, those movies to really pop.

• 1:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:07:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and this is, you know, this is about Washington, George Washington. So I only did 15 million.

• 1:07:34Sean Fennessey?

  I did 19 million.

• 1:07:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:07:35Sean Fennessey?

  Close, 44 Metacritic.

• 1:07:37Amanda Dobbins?

  39.

• 1:07:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Let's talk about Moana.

• 1:07:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:07:41Sean Fennessey?

  Comes out July 10th. It's a live action remake of the beloved Disney classic, Moana. I guessed 412 million dollars.

• 1:07:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 410.

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:07:52Amanda Dobbins?

  There we go.

• 1:07:53Sean Fennessey?

  Perhaps we're spending too much time together talking about movies. Metacritic score?

• 1:07:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Fifty-three.

• 1:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  I have thirty-nine.

• 1:08:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:08:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think people are very mad about this.

• 1:08:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:03Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't matter to seven-year-olds. I think they're gonna be just fine.

• 1:08:05Amanda Dobbins?

  When you say people, once again, are the people in the room with us right now.

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I don't know. The reviews on that trailer are bad.

• 1:08:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:12Sean Fennessey?

  They're very bad. The movie looks bad. Um, we don't need it. I'm sick of the live-action thing. I think it's gonna do fine business. It does feel a little bit like Low and Stitch. I am genuinely curious to know if they change anything from the original Moana, which is like, maybe not a perfect movie, but is pretty damn good. So it just feels too soon. It just feels like that movie just happened like ten years ago. Why are we... Anyway. Okay, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, new movie from David Wayne.

• 1:08:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:38Sean Fennessey?

  Love wet-hot American summer film and many other great comedies. The State TV show comes out July tenth, starring Zoe Deutsch. Box office, I said six million.

• 1:08:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Nine million.

• 1:08:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Metacritic fifty-eight.

• 1:08:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Seventy-one. I think it looks charming.

• 1:08:51Sean Fennessey?

  I saw it. It was okay.

• 1:08:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  The Odyssey.

• 1:08:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Eat shit.

• 1:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry to say. I love David Wayne. I'm a big fan of his. The Odyssey, biggest movie of the summer.

• 1:09:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  Comes out July seventeenth. This is a new film from Christopher Nolan adapting Homer.

• 1:09:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:05Sean Fennessey?

  What's Homer's last name?

• 1:09:07Amanda Dobbins?

  He's like Madonna. He's one name only.

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Uh, I guessed... What did you guess?

• 1:09:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I did three-hundred-and-fifty million.

• 1:09:18Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed four-twelve.

• 1:09:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:09:20Sean Fennessey?

  Which is really high.

• 1:09:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's great. So Oppenheimer was three-hundred-and-thirty.

• 1:09:24Sean Fennessey?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:09:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And that was with most of the premium screens.

• 1:09:30Sean Fennessey?

  But not all of them.

• 1:09:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But not all of them. You're right.

• 1:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  And there's no one coming for this movie for two full weeks.

• 1:09:36Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. It is also still... Well, you know, Oppenheimer was about the American history and American Prometheus and the bomb and, you know...

• 1:09:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's an epic action film.

• 1:09:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. That's true. Swords and sandals.

• 1:09:51Sean Fennessey?

  In theory, and it's got more, way more stars.

• 1:09:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I like it. It would be fun if it were four-twelve.

• 1:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  Now, that would be a huge accomplishment, because if a movie like this makes four-hundred-million dollars domestically, it's making... Is it making two-billion dollars worldwide? I don't know. It's possible.

• 1:10:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be wonderful.

• 1:10:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'm so interested. What's your Metacritic guess?

• 1:10:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Eighty-three.

• 1:10:11Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed eighty-eight.

• 1:10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Wow.

• 1:10:13Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like the tide has just fully shifted with him, not just with me, but with many people.

• 1:10:18Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think so. I mean, eighty-three is high.

• 1:10:20Sean Fennessey?

  It is high. It is high. I'm really interested to know if this is like a Oscar contender or not, or if it's just a spectacle film. July 17th, Cut Off. This is a new comedy starring Jonah Hill and Kristen Wiig about two rich kids who are cut off from their parents' wealth.

• 1:10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Sean Fennessey?

  That I've heard good things about. Dangerous date to put this movie on, though. Opposite the Odyssey. I guessed forty-seven million.

• 1:10:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed twenty-eight million.

• 1:10:47Sean Fennessey?

  Seems logical.

• 1:10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.

• 1:10:50Sean Fennessey?

  Metacritic score?

• 1:10:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Fifty-nine?

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Sixty-six. July 24th, my birthday movie, Evil Dead: Burn. This is the one, two, three, four, five, sixth Evil Dead movie?

• 1:11:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:03Sean Fennessey?

  Last one I loved, Evil Dead: Rise, directed by the guy who's got the Mummy movie coming out this week, Lee Cronin. New director on this one, Sebastian Vannichek. Pretty sturdy franchise, the last few of them. I guessed sixty-seven million.

• 1:11:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed sixty million.

• 1:11:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Metacritic sixty-four.

• 1:11:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Sixty-three!

• 1:11:19Sean Fennessey?

  Damn, we're getting too good at this. Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

• 1:11:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Sean Fennessey?

  We talked about the trailer. It's coming out July 31st, your birthday film. Tom Holland's in Daya. The whole gang is back.

• 1:11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Sean Fennessey?

  We got Burnthal in as the Punisher. We got Michael Mando in as Scorpion.

• 1:11:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Sean Fennessey?

  Got a whole bunch of other villains. I think Tombstone's in this one.

• 1:11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So do you remember how much Spider-Man: No Way Home made domestically?

• 1:11:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna guess it was like six thirty, seven hundred?

• 1:11:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Eight hundred and fourteen million dollars domestic.

• 1:11:53Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. And it was like 1.9 total?

• 1:11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I remember the total.

• 1:11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And that was December 2021.

• 1:12:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, but it had a superpower that this movie does not have.

• 1:12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's true. I'm not-

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  It brought the movies back, right?

• 1:12:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, totally. Well, actually, Top Gun Maverick did, but that's mine.

• 1:12:09Sean Fennessey?

  They did it together.

• 1:12:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really beautiful. I'm sure that that is, you know, what David Ellton would say.

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  What's your guess?

• 1:12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I did go big on this, but not each. What did I put down? This seems crazy, but I wrote it down, five eighty.

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  So I have five twenty-seven.

• 1:12:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:12:27Sean Fennessey?

  Could be under. I think I'm just accounting for The Odyssey. That The Odyssey is the movie that's like, you have to go see this in a movie theater. Spider-Man, of course, has a built-in audience and is huge. 527 would be a huge hit. No Way Home was like, that was like a quasar. That was very unusual.

• 1:12:45Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see. We'll see what happens. Metacritic, I said 62.

• 1:12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I said 51.

• 1:12:50Sean Fennessey?

  Damn, you think it's gonna take some hits?

• 1:12:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you know, they've, they've already reached the pinnacle. We were all very, very generous about No Way Home, which was very charming, and now they gotta keep going and no one remembers anybody. Like, okay.

• 1:13:05Sean Fennessey?

  Understandable. Did you see the film Fall? We're entering August, by the way, which is when things get a little dicier.

• 1:13:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I did not see the film Fall. I read about it last night.

• 1:13:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's a film about two women who climb a giant tower and then maybe, or maybe they don't fall.

• 1:13:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you afraid of heights?

• 1:13:19Sean Fennessey?

  Nope.

• 1:13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Not at all?

• 1:13:20Sean Fennessey?

  Nope.

• 1:13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I am afraid of heights.

• 1:13:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so you should check out Fall. It would really tap into your cerebral cortex.

• 1:13:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:13:27Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Fall was fine.

• 1:13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this is called Fall 2. It's a sequel to Fall.

• 1:13:34Amanda Dobbins?

  They just go back up the tower?

• 1:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's two new people.

• 1:13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Oh, no.

• 1:13:38Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what they're going up this time.

• 1:13:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:13:40Sean Fennessey?

  This was like an abandoned electrical tower in the middle of the desert.

• 1:13:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Would not do that.

• 1:13:44Sean Fennessey?

  It seemed like something you wouldn't want to climb.

• 1:13:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Sean Fennessey?

  This film, who knows what they'll climb? Maybe they'll climb Jacob Elordi.

• 1:13:51Sean Fennessey?

  The box office, I guess 29 million.

• 1:13:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I guess 7 million.

• 1:13:55Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's possible. I don't know. Metacritic 53.

• 1:13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  41.

• 1:14:00Sean Fennessey?

  Also on August 7th, many movies on August 7th. Ice Cream Man.

• 1:14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:14:04Sean Fennessey?

  This is Eli Roth's new horror movie about an ice cream man.

• 1:14:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 17 million.

• 1:14:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess 9 million.

• 1:14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Metacritic 36.

• 1:14:11Amanda Dobbins?

  34.

• 1:14:12Sean Fennessey?

  Damn, you're down on Eli Roth. Thanksgiving was actually a hit.

• 1:14:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I just, the Metacritic was very easy. You go look at Eli Roth, director of Metacritic, where they're not fans.

• 1:14:21Sean Fennessey?

  He's not, he's not beloved critically. I'm a fan of his movies. One Night Only.

• 1:14:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:14:26Sean Fennessey?

  Now... I just booked a vacation, so I'm not going to be here for this episode. This might be a solo Amanda pod.

• 1:14:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think this is also when my vacation is.

• 1:14:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, yours is the next two weeks.

• 1:14:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, interesting. Okay. Oh, great.

• 1:14:39Sean Fennessey?

  This is written and directed by Will.

• 1:14:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. I'm very excited.

• 1:14:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's his first film since Anyone But You. And of course, he's made Easy A and a number of other quality films.

• 1:14:47Amanda Dobbins?

  The. Stars Callum Turner and Monica Babara.

• 1:14:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And it's a, it's a, it's a rom com. It's a romantic dramedy about two strangers try to fall in love on the one night a year when pre marital sex is legal.

• 1:15:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they filmed in Manhattan.

• 1:15:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible supporting cast here, including Molly Ringwald, the Var Burton, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, Esti Heim, Ziwei and King Princess.

• 1:15:13Sean Fennessey?

  What's your guess?

• 1:15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  What is my guess? My guess isn't, is not at the levels of Anyone But You. So 38 million?

• 1:15:19Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 76.

• 1:15:21Amanda Dobbins?

  You did. You think it's gonna be the thing? I would love for it to, to be a thing.

• 1:15:25Sean Fennessey?

  There's been a Colleen Hoover movie in this zone the last couple of years. I think obviously Anyone But You was a, was a winter release, but.

• 1:15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Callum Turner, Monica Babara are not nearly as famous, but I don't, there's not really a lot of movies for women in the entire month of July. And it's going to feel like a little bit of a desert. And I think this movie could fill that in. Okay, Super Troopers 3. Oh, my, my Metacritic is 61.

• 1:15:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, what is, where is mine? 52.

• 1:15:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Super Troopers 3.

• 1:15:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:15:57Sean Fennessey?

  Um, beloved franchise. Haven't made one. I think I had Jay Shondra Shaker on the show in like 2017 when Super Troopers 2 came out and really fun conversation. He came into the studio. I guessed 48 for this.

• 1:16:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess 22.

• 1:16:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Metacritic 52.

• 1:16:13Amanda Dobbins?

  47.

• 1:16:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Here's a, here's a sticky wicket.

• 1:16:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Sean Fennessey?

  Some, some hope dicting going on here for me on this one.

• 1:16:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Mine too. This is, this is, I think, my last high number. Not, well, not totally, but yeah.

• 1:16:27Sean Fennessey?

  The end of Oak Street, new David Robert Mitchell film.

• 1:16:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And I don't remember why it's this high. I mean, I, I know why, but I can't remember what my comps were.

• 1:16:35Sean Fennessey?

  Comes out August 14th. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor star in a Twilight Zone-esque fantastical story of a suburban community that undergoes some dramatic changes, apparently. I guessed 81 million.

• 1:16:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, mine's way higher.

• 1:16:51Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 1:16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I guess 131.

• 1:16:55Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that would just be a home run if this movie did 131.

• 1:16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I kinda, I don't remember why. I think, I wish I could.

• 1:17:04Sean Fennessey?

  Damn, what a summer for Anne Hathaway.

• 1:17:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess, you know what it was? I remember what it was. I put this in the weapons slot.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it is in the weapons slot.

• 1:17:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It is the same weapon slot and we were all like, wow, what's happening?

• 1:17:16Sean Fennessey?

  Visionario tour.

• 1:17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And so, you know, by this point, people who are gonna see The Odyssey will have seen The Odyssey.

• 1:17:24Sean Fennessey?

  This, this really feels like it is entirely dependent on pre-release hype. If they get people to see it a month early and are like,

• 1:17:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Sean Fennessey?

  this movie, um, I think that actually will help it, the same way it helped Weapons.

• 1:17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. What my Metacritic is 71.

• 1:17:42Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 73.

• 1:17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:45Sean Fennessey?

  Paw Patrol, the Dino Movie.

• 1:17:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:17:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is either the second or the 900th Paw Patrol film. I don't know the answer and I don't wanna know.

• 1:17:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask, so how are the dinos involved with the, do the dinos join Paw Patrol?

• 1:17:58Sean Fennessey?

  This is a prequel to The End of Oak Street.

• 1:18:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, box office 42 million.

• 1:18:04Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 59.

• 1:18:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe a little high. Metacritic 39.

• 1:18:08Amanda Dobbins?

  29.

• 1:18:09Sean Fennessey?

  The Rivals of Amzea King.

• 1:18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Sean Fennessey?

  Now, this is a, a very interesting movie that I'm very eager to see. It premiered, I believe, at South by 2025 and is also coming out from Black Bear. It's directed by Andrew Patterson, who made a little movie during COVID called The Vast of Night.

• 1:18:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. And you guys would not stop talking about it.

• 1:18:33Sean Fennessey?

  Chris and I love that movie.

• 1:18:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Sean Fennessey?

  This movie stars Matthew McConaughey. It seems like a very hard sell. I've had it, had it described to me as a very odd movie, but I was such a big fan of The Vast of Night. I guessed 6 million for the box office.

• 1:18:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed 11 million.

• 1:18:48Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds good.

• 1:18:48Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know, we're not that far away.

• 1:18:50Sean Fennessey?

  Metacritic?

• 1:18:51Amanda Dobbins?

  68.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 84.

• 1:18:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:18:53Sean Fennessey?

  It got really nice reviews. There's even some people who think it's possibly on the outskirts of the Oscar race. I don't know. I haven't seen it. I don't know. Next film, we're getting down to the end of August here, Insidious, The Bleeding World.

• 1:19:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But we have like 18 more movies.

• 1:19:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Uh, I wrote down thirty-eight million.

• 1:19:11Sean Fennessey?

  Fifty-seven.

• 1:19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:12Sean Fennessey?

  I guess I'm fifty-four Metacritic.

• 1:19:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Forty-four.

• 1:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  I, the Insidious movies are solid.

• 1:19:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but this is sort of a restart, right?

• 1:19:19Sean Fennessey?

  Is it?

• 1:19:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Patrick Wilson is not in this film.

• 1:19:22Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's right.

• 1:19:22Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 1:19:23Sean Fennessey?

  These worlds are bleeding.

• 1:19:24Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a down, that's a downgrade for me.

• 1:19:26Sean Fennessey?

  Where, is, is the bleeding world our world?

• 1:19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, you know, I know that Patrick Wilson directed the last one, right?

• 1:19:34Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 1:19:35Amanda Dobbins?

  But I, I confess I didn't see it.

• 1:19:38Sean Fennessey?

  A trio of stalkers infiltrate a quiet suburb and force a new family into the astral plane. Hate when that happens, where they uncover a terrifying truth. The further is bleeding into the real world.

• 1:19:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I guess we'll have to look into that. The next film is Mutiny. I'd like to speak about this briefly.

• 1:19:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:19:55Sean Fennessey?

  I watched the trailer for this film. It's the new Jason Statham movie. It looks fucking awesome. It's about Jason Statham getting stuck on a boat and having to kill everyone on the boat.

• 1:20:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Sean Fennessey?

  I, it used Step Into a World by KRS-One as its music in the trailer. You know, there's like two Jason Statham movies a year.

• 1:20:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 1:20:12Sean Fennessey?

  Most of them are not really very interesting or useful.

• 1:20:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:16Sean Fennessey?

  I got a feeling about this one. I'm not saying it's gonna be a huge hit, but you know.

• 1:20:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But you're excited. This is Beekeeper land for you?

• 1:20:21Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it will be as absurd.

• 1:20:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Than Beekeeper.

• 1:20:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't think it will have the, the political trenchancy of, is that a word?

• 1:20:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, also remember the cold open of Beekeeper? And the, uh, you know, online scam. It's just absolutely epic.

• 1:20:34Sean Fennessey?

  It totally rocked. This movie is from Jean-Francois Richet, the French director of Plane. And the Mesreen movies starring Vincent Cassel. So he's, he's a, he's a good director. I don't know. I just got a vibe. Watch it after this. It's got style. It's got a great look. Statham, you know, punching people in the throat, something I enjoy.

• 1:20:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, what's your prediction?

• 1:20:52Sean Fennessey?

  Thirty-eight million.

• 1:20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Twenty-nine million.

• 1:20:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Metacritic fifty-eight.

• 1:20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Forty-two.

• 1:20:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  But again, their score, not ours.

• 1:20:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Spa Weekend, August twenty-first.

• 1:21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Sean Fennessey?

  This is a new film. It's a comedy.

• 1:21:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:21:04Sean Fennessey?

  Starring Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Anna Faris, and Michelle Buteau. It's about four gals who go for a spa weekend.

• 1:21:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know what happens after that? I have no idea. So they get into some hijinks?

• 1:21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And probably some fights also.

• 1:21:15Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of girls trippy.

• 1:21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Sean Fennessey?

  Um, comes to us from John Lucas and Scott Moore.

• 1:21:23Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think?

• 1:21:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Eight million.

• 1:21:24Sean Fennessey?

  I guess 41 million.

• 1:21:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:21:26Sean Fennessey?

  This is in the bad mom zone?

• 1:21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but bad moms now would just go straight to streaming. This, I mean, this is just a very classic, like I can watch that at home.

• 1:21:38Sean Fennessey?

  You might be right.

• 1:21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sorry about that. And some of that is just because of the demo that it is, it is recreating.

• 1:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  So you're saying that because you hate women?

• 1:21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and spas. Do you like spas?

• 1:21:49Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of don't have an opinion.

• 1:21:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like a lot of money for something that disappears quickly.

• 1:21:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't really like them. It's not how I would like choose to spend a day, even if the resources were given to me. It's just, it's forced patience. It's kind of like, you know, meditation. I can't really go there.

• 1:22:08Sean Fennessey?

  Patient.

• 1:22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I can't, I can't turn it off in that way.

• 1:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Is that a phrase that you invented?

• 1:22:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I invented that.

• 1:22:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting. We should explore that.

• 1:22:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't think we need to explore it. I think we explored on every episode of this podcast and it's just that me not really wanting to deal with this shit. But yeah, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not good at that type of lounging.

• 1:22:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:22:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like lounging by the beach where I have a book to read and then I can go swim. Perfect. But where you're just supposed to sit there peacefully without any stimuli? It's not me.

• 1:22:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thanks for sharing those feelings. Cliffhanger, August 28th. This film is coming-

• 1:22:43Speaker 05

  Wait, can we get your Metacritic score for Spa Weekend?

• 1:22:45Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry about that.

• 1:22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty-nine.

• 1:22:47Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, fifty-three. So Cliffhanger is coming us to, coming to us from Row K, which has been under some-

• 1:22:57Amanda Dobbins?

  So is it?

• 1:22:58Sean Fennessey?

  So it may not be coming out and we could take it off the board if we think we're not going to see it. This is a remake of the Sylvester Stallone action classic starring Lily James. And when I think Sly Stallone, I think Lily James.

• 1:23:12Sean Fennessey?

  I'm guessing 27 million.

• 1:23:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm guessing 14.

• 1:23:16Sean Fennessey?

  I guess it's at least got the Cliffhanger.

• 1:23:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so, yeah.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'm probably going over on my small movies and under on my big movies. That's something I'm learning.

• 1:23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:23:23Sean Fennessey?

  Metacritic score 54.

• 1:23:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty-three.

• 1:23:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Coyote versus Acme. This is the film that was sacrificed at the altar of Big Warner Brothers.

• 1:23:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well, of, of their taxes.

• 1:23:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the altar of their taxes, which is an altar we all share.

• 1:23:41Sean Fennessey?

  I am gonna say, this is a new Looney Tunes movie. There hasn't been one in some time. I'm gonna say $36 million.

• 1:23:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's great. I'm saying 10 million.

• 1:23:52Sean Fennessey?

  You're probably right.

• 1:23:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, this is, so it's now.

• 1:23:54Sean Fennessey?

  Catch up entertainment has it now, yeah.

• 1:23:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, and they have not released a lot of giant movies.

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  They've never released a movie with the Looney Tunes in it.

• 1:24:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's true.

• 1:24:03Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, or maybe they have. Maybe they, was that actually that Porky Pig and Daffy Duck movie, the animated movie that came out from catch up? It may have been, actually.

• 1:24:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Catch up entertainment. I looked at this last night. I'm pulling it up right now.

• 1:24:17Sean Fennessey?

  Did they get both of them?

• 1:24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  The Day the Earth Blew Up?

• 1:24:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:24:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:24:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, they did get that. And they have this movie too, right?

• 1:24:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And it grossed a 9 million, 8.9 million in the United States.

• 1:24:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:24:27Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 1:24:28Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Well, we'll see what happens there. A couple more movies to go.

• 1:24:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:32Speaker 05

  Wait, did we get your Metacritic score for that?

• 1:24:34Sean Fennessey?

  78.

• 1:24:34Amanda Dobbins?

  72.

• 1:24:37Sean Fennessey?

  Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars.

• 1:24:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  This is, is it Callum Turner? Action movie?

• 1:24:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's Jacob Elordi. How dare you.

• 1:24:45Sean Fennessey?

  Sheesh. Uh, who's the female lead? I feel ill-prepared.

• 1:24:50Speaker 05

  Margaret Qualley.

• 1:24:52Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. And Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, and Benedict Wong. This comes to us from Markel Smith, who wrote The Revenant. And shot by Eric Messerschmidt, David Fincher's cinematographer.

• 1:25:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:07Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's a movie that is set in the aftermath of a catastrophic flu virus, a post-apocalyptic thriller. What do you, what do you got?

• 1:25:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm probably going too high here, but it is a Ridley Scott movie, albeit one that was delayed. 85 million?

• 1:25:22Sean Fennessey?

  I went 61.

• 1:25:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm just being cautious for some reason.

• 1:25:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think that's smart. I think Napoleon was around 60 million, but that was still sort of COVID-y.

• 1:25:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And you wonder if the, the Lordy and the Ridley Scott of it all will pick up, pick up some juice.

• 1:25:41Sean Fennessey?

  It would really help this show.

• 1:25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:25:43Sean Fennessey?

  For this film to be good.

• 1:25:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Sean Fennessey?

  Because it would do a lot towards two young stars. Obviously Ridley, somebody we really enjoy despite, you know, not always, not always hitting it.

• 1:25:53Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. It would be.

• 1:25:55Sean Fennessey?

  We gotta do an episode before we go to fall film festivals, you know?

• 1:25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:25:59Sean Fennessey?

  Don't want it to be just cavernous out here. Okay. I'm guessing a 70 on Metacritic.

• 1:26:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm guessing 53.

• 1:26:09Sean Fennessey?

  Damn.

• 1:26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's late, it's late Ridley, you know?

• 1:26:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's late.

• 1:26:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I love him, but he, he fast forwards through things.

• 1:26:15Sean Fennessey?

  Very true. August 28th, we also have Finding Emily.

• 1:26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  We do.

• 1:26:21Sean Fennessey?

  Finding Emily is basically like a teen dramedy. When a lovesick musician is given the wrong number for his dream girl, he teams up with a driven psychology student to find her. Together they spark a hilarious campus-wide frenzy. And Gori Rice and Spike Ferne last seen in Ella McKay. I guessed.

• 1:26:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right.

• 1:26:37Sean Fennessey?

  Nine million.

• 1:26:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed four million.

• 1:26:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Metacritic score?

• 1:26:41Amanda Dobbins?

  61.

• 1:26:42Sean Fennessey?

  72.

• 1:26:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:43Sean Fennessey?

  And then Idiots is coming on August 28th, formerly titled The Shitheads. Debut at Sundance, new film for Macon Blair. Heard this is really fun.

• 1:26:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  Dave Franco stars in it alongside. Shay, oh Shay Jackson.

• 1:26:58Speaker 05

  Yes, really, really good trailer.

• 1:27:01Sean Fennessey?

  I guessed eight million.

• 1:27:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I guessed seven million.

• 1:27:03Sean Fennessey?

  69 Metacritic score just for the jokes.

• 1:27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  53 because the jokes only get you so far.

• 1:27:12Sean Fennessey?

  Who do you think won this? That's every movie coming out this summer.

• 1:27:16Speaker 05

  Can I, can I add one quick? I put at the bottom of the dock.

• 1:27:19Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:20Speaker 05

  Honorary Cliff Booth guess rumored August. It's very difficult.

• 1:27:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not, do you know where that is being released? First of all, Netflix. So even though it will get a limited release, would it be?

• 1:27:32Sean Fennessey?

  They probably won't track the box office.

• 1:27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Number two, Venice Film Festival, baby.

• 1:27:37Speaker 05

  Is that confirmed?

• 1:27:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but it's confirmed in my soon to be booked plane ticket.

• 1:27:42Sean Fennessey?

  We could guess what we think that movie would have made if a different studio released it.

• 1:27:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well.

• 1:27:48Sean Fennessey?

  There will be no way to check against it, but just as a thought exercise.

• 1:27:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Once upon a time in Hollywood, domestic box office.

• 1:27:54Sean Fennessey?

  What was it, like 350?

• 1:27:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see, domestic was 142.

• 1:27:59Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, am I thinking worldwide? What was it worldwide?

• 1:28:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And worldwide was 377.

• 1:28:02Sean Fennessey?

  377, okay.

• 1:28:07Sean Fennessey?

  I would guess that it would have made 107, domestic.

• 1:28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  If Warner Brothers were releasing it.

• 1:28:19Sean Fennessey?

  Or Sony, which released Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

• 1:28:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:23Amanda Dobbins?

  95?

• 1:28:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, and we'll never know the answer. Metacritic score?

• 1:28:34Amanda Dobbins?

  73?

• 1:28:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was gonna say 78.

• 1:28:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but only because people are too sour about David Fincher.

• 1:28:42Sean Fennessey?

  So I saw the man on Saturday night. I went to-

• 1:28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Mr. Fincher?

• 1:28:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I went to a screening of Zodiac at the Academy Museum.

• 1:28:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's so fun.

• 1:28:49Sean Fennessey?

  And there was an interview before the film played with Fincher, conducted by Bong Joon Ho.

• 1:28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That's so cool.

• 1:28:56Sean Fennessey?

  Because the movie was screened as part of a series of inspirations for Bong. And he talked to Fincher for 30 minutes or so, 35 minutes. And it was fascinating. Bong, director Bong, just fanned out the whole time.

• 1:29:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Love it.

• 1:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  Real Chris Farley Show vibes in a very charming way. And Fincher was incredibly withholding.

• 1:29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  That's my guy!

• 1:29:21Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, he had some answers that went into great depth about the making of Zodiac. And there were many times, I mean, at least three questions, I think he gave a total of like 12-word answers. With a real shit-eating grin on his face. I found it very charming and funny. I do think some people were probably a little bit frustrated by his unwillingness, mostly because- I think Bong was experiencing something I've felt many times while interviewing directors, which is you want to ask about an idea in the movie.

• 1:29:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Sean Fennessey?

  Say, I feel like thematically this indicates this. For example, in Zodiac, there's this passage of time in the final third of the movie where the San Francisco Chronicle offices, they shift a kind of color tone from yellow in the late 60s, early 70s to blue in the late 70s. In particular, there are three huge columns, pillars in the middle of the office that are painted yellow in the first half and then in the back half are blue. Bong located this fact and asked him directly about it and said, is this supposed to indicate something about our feelings about the characters, the murder, the movie? A precise question, what he was looking for in that answer. And Fincher was just like, yeah, that was the idea of Don Burt, who's a genius, a production

• 1:30:38Sean Fennessey?

  designer. And yeah, we just thought, you know, that's what it would look like, like just like a real, just like not giving you anything on the metaphorical insinuations of a creative decision. And I felt seen.

• 1:30:51Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really beautiful.

• 1:30:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was great. Fincher, seems like he's doing well.

• 1:30:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought a lot about him this weekend when I was in the Bay Area.

• 1:30:59Sean Fennessey?

  Berkeley, of course, his old stomping ground.

• 1:31:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I guess he's who I think of most when I'm, when I'm up there.

• 1:31:07Sean Fennessey?

  He seemed to be having a very fun time not giving anybody anything.

• 1:31:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. That is what he does.

• 1:31:13Sean Fennessey?

  Very admirable.

• 1:31:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's what I love about him.

• 1:31:15Sean Fennessey?

  Something unfortunately I'm not able to do in my walk of life. Well, this was fun. You think you won?

• 1:31:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I have no idea. I guess you, you kind of kept to a median and I kept to big and little.

• 1:31:29Sean Fennessey?

  The only one that I think is, is quite large is Billie Eilish that you guessed. Everything else feels totally in play. If I'm wrong about Billie Eilish, that'll be great. I currently don't even have it like on the discussion plan for the show, but maybe we should.

• 1:31:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess I'll go see it, learn about Billie Eilish. There's one song I like.

• 1:31:46Sean Fennessey?

  Bad Guy?

• 1:31:47Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I like Lunch. Yeah.

• 1:31:49Sean Fennessey?

  Don't know that one. I have nothing against Billie Eilish, just haven't spent too much time.

• 1:31:52Amanda Dobbins?

  She and I have the same, the same J. Crew shirt that we wear from time to time. She looks great in it.

• 1:31:57Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds like we should wrap this episode up.

• 1:32:01Sean Fennessey?

  Let's go now.

• 1:32:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you ready? Are you ready for the amount of clothes you have to talk about in Devil Wears Prada 2?

• 1:32:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'm ready to listen to you say things.

• 1:32:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, good. Thank you. That's all, that's all I ask.

• 1:32:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I do. I listen, I listen to women and men.

• 1:32:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:32:14Sean Fennessey?

  And let's listen to this conversation with Daniel Goldhaber right now.

• 1:32:22Sean Fennessey?

  Almost three years later, Daniel Goldhaber back on the show. Okay, Danny, so when I was a teenager, went to a sleepover and they had Faces of Death on VHS. And we watched it and we believed it to be true. We believed it to be the most vile and yet accessible in video stores product imaginable.

• 1:32:42Sean Fennessey?

  I, I assume you had a similar experience, but maybe you did not?

• 1:32:45Speaker 05

  I did not.

• 1:32:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:32:47Speaker 05

  I was talking to a friend earlier today and they were talking about how like there are few things that are kind of like the JFK assassination where everybody like knows where they were when and like, and like Faces of Death is kind of one of, one of those things, which I think is kind of funny. Like everyone has like such a tactile and you know, like evocative way of describing their first time. But for me, my first like real encounter with Faces of Death was getting an email from my agent in 2019 saying Legendary has acquired the rights to do Faces of Death. And there was an exec there named John Silk who I really liked and he was interested in talking to me and Issa about it. And so like we went and watched Faces of Death and.

• 1:33:28Sean Fennessey?

  Was this because they had seen Cam? And they just thought this is the kind of person who would get what this material is?

• 1:33:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, John had, you know, I think identified as, as kind of a like, you know, what do you do with Faces of Death? I think John had identified the exact thing that like Faces of Death is everywhere now. And that was, you know, Issa and I's experience generationally is that after we saw the movie, we realized that we had seen Faces of Death, just like clips of it on rotten.com or eBombs world or whatever. Like it, it, we remembered it, but it was totally decontextualized from this original movie. And so for us and like for John, that was like an immediate like point of connection of being like, okay, like there's something here at this thing that like used to be this like cursed object that was really hard to get a hold of, all of a sudden is accessible by basically anyone in the world 24 hours a day.

• 1:34:18Speaker 05

  That feels like a pretty profound shift in our relationship to violence and media, our relationship to media in general. And so that was very much a starting point for talking about the movie. And then, you know, I worked for a summer as a content moderator for very somewhat informally, but for some friends who had a startup. And I'd always thought that that would make for like, it's just a great character, somebody who kind of like, you know, they're seeing stuff you're not supposed to see. And so I thought that that would make for like a really good, you know, way into this subject matter. And then once we kind of combined the two of those, we were off to the races.

• 1:34:59Sean Fennessey?

  Can you tell me a little bit about that time as a content moderator? And so like, what did you see? And maybe even explicitly what it was that you had to do?

• 1:35:08Speaker 05

  So basically, in this particular case, this was in the early 2010s. I had some friends who had a social media startup that was like just getting off the ground. And at the time, I don't know how true this is today. You know, there was a thing where it's like, okay, a new social media app goes up on the App Store. People who like, you know, the kind of dregs of the internet know there's no robust moderation department here. There's no, you know, pipeline to law enforcement that's been set up. And so they just start, you know, using it to like share child porn and, you know, snuff tape. And I think that, you know, this was something that the people that ran the company, I think were a little like, oh, weren't entirely anticipating that.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  And so basically, they just like hired friends of theirs, just camp on the feed, watch everything that was coming in, and then just like try to take down, especially like the child porn as quickly as possible. And again, it was a small app. And so it was like, it was a very different kind of like moderation than what we see in the movie and then this kind of like, you know, very corporatized moderation that you have now that often is even just like a smokescreen for companies to kind of, you know, enact censorship of speech that they want or to otherwise kind of try and try to protect their liability when it comes to what's on their platform. But, you know, I, and, you know, the first Few times you're doing this, some of the stuff you see, you're like really deeply affected by.

• 1:36:34Speaker 05

  And then at a certain point, you just, you stop feeling the effect of it. Even if that doesn't mean that you're not still on some level being affected by it. You, at the very least, kind of just adjust. And yeah, so I only did that for like a summer. It was a virtual job. It was nothing, you know, I was, I was, I needed money.

• 1:36:54Sean Fennessey?

  One of the ideas that I really like in your movie is this very thin line between what we are allowed to let titillate us and what we are not allowed to let titillate us. And this idea of a person whose job it is to kind of enforce, you know, I guess that kind of, that ethical gray line. And also that a movie like Faces of Death is, is your movie is doing the same thing. Which is, it is a discreet slasher with like sincere hardcore violence, which we know is like something we're allowed to enjoy.

• 1:37:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:37:27Sean Fennessey?

  In these defined buckets.

• 1:37:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:37:29Sean Fennessey?

  I'm curious like how you thought about blending what the original project was doing with where we are now and what we're allowed to be excited about in a movie in 2026.

• 1:37:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it's like, that's also like the whole thing. Maybe like one of the best ways I can talk about that is like, for us, the kind of cornerstone movie that we were looking at is Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, which I think is like one of the greatest movies of the 1960s. But it was like very similarly, you know, Korman had this like Boris Karloff movie that didn't totally work. And he had a few extra days on Boris Karloff's schedule and going to Bogdanovich and was like, you know, if you do the Korman formula, I'll let you do whatever you want. And then Bogdanovich turned that into this like unbelievable meditation on, you know, alienation and media and the suburbs and violence. And when I watched Targets, this kind of research for this, I kind of realized like, you know,

• 1:38:23Speaker 05

  it was part of what really strengthened this kind of like dual perspective narrative we have. But also it was like one of these things of. That's kind of a weird assignment. Like, I have this kind of, these elements for a movie and, I don't know, do something with it. And it's not dissimilar from how it felt, kind of, having a company be like, we've acquired the remake rights to Faces of Death because we understand that there is, like, value in this IP, but like, this is not a movie that needs to or should necessarily exist. And it's, it's, I think that, like, that's something that the movie is ultimately reflecting on, like, at its core, is like, why remake Faces of Death? Like, you know, and, because the movie is about somebody remaking Faces of Death and

• 1:39:06Speaker 05

  trying to squeeze value out of this IP for his own personal gain. And I think that, you know, ultimately, I think, from my perspective, the movie, more than anything, is about the kind of, just like, idea of what has happened now that our media has become centralized in these giant corporations. Um, you know, there are very, very few corporations that essentially control the vast majority of human speech. Um, you know, not even just public speech, but even the way that we communicate with each other. And it's ultimately these companies that are the ones setting the parameters for what we are and are not allowed to say, what we are and are not allowed to, to see, you know,

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  just how easy it is for them to adjust an algorithm and bury a movie because they might find some of the ideas in it unpalatable. Um, which is something that we definitely dealt with with Pipeline, you know? Um, and, and so I think that that's the thing, is like, you know, the movie very much starts with this perspective of, like, kind of getting the audience to think about the fact that, like, the people that are adjudicating what is and is not going on to our phones are ultimately employees at a, at a company that has its own goals and, and ambitions, and that I think that relationship, um, applies to all of the media that we see.

• 1:40:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm curious how you and Issa worked together. So this is the third film in a row that you've written together, right?

• 1:40:35Speaker 05

  No, Issa wrote Cam solo.

• 1:40:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so she was not on Pipeline?

• 1:40:38Speaker 05

  She was a producer on Pipeline. So she came, she, you know, she was a creative producer on the movie, along with myself and Ariella.

• 1:40:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:40:45Speaker 05

  Producers too, who made the film, but the three of us kind of developed the material.

• 1:40:46Speaker 05

  Two other-

• 1:40:49Speaker 05

  And then this one we co-wrote.

• 1:40:51Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, I know that a lot of her personal experience went into cam. But how do you guys write now? Like, I always ask duo writing teams, like, are you like back to back typewriter to typewriter? Like, how are you kicking ideas around in this world? Because you do have this raw material of the original film, which you've managed to work into this project. But then you're also creating a whole world of characters that were not previously there before.

• 1:41:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's always, it's just a lot of conversation. Ultimately, like when we get into the writing process, like it generally is passing drafts back and forth. You know, she'll, she'll do a first draft, I'll do a big revision. And then eventually it gets to the point where like you're just doing line edits. And then you're just kind of, you know, that's when you're in the room together, usually, you know, like on set or the night after a shoot. And then I think, you know, obviously he says, you know, a co filmmaker on the movies. And that writing process extends all the way through production, through posts, through the marketing. You know, in terms of not just coming up with lines on set, but you know, other ideas, you know, costumes and performance.

• 1:41:57Speaker 05

  And, um, you know, I think, uh, I, I, you only benefit from, from that. And in the case of this, because we're kind of conceptualizing what the movie is from the ground up together. You know, uh, it, it, it's great to have somebody who is able to kind of really have their eye on the prize of what movie are we trying to make? Well, I can, you know, have the benefit of going, getting lost in the weeds of, you know, just the logistics and minutia of pulling it all off. And always have somebody I can turn to, to kind of be like, hey, are we on track? You know?

• 1:42:30Sean Fennessey?

  When you finally got a chance to watch the original, what were your, like, what did you make of it? Especially being at the age you're at now and what you'd heard about it and how you'd consumed pieces of it over the years.

• 1:42:43Speaker 05

  I can't say I thought it was a good movie, but it's an interesting movie. And I think that what I find so interesting about the film is also like, there's a lot of Mondo horror. There's a lot of, you know, fake snuff film. There's a lot of, you know, gross out movies. This came at a moment where like, there was plenty of kind of cursed horror stuff to choose from. Like, why this one? I think that's one of the most interesting questions around Faces. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that like, it doesn't feel like a movie anybody would make on purpose. It feels like it just like appeared on VHS. And I think that that's, that's one of the questions that our movie is asking too, is like, you know,

• 1:43:26Speaker 05

  when I was doing my content moderation job, the most disturbing thing that I honestly felt about the footage was this question of like, who's posting this stuff? Like, yeah, the content's bad, but I'm way more frightened about the person on the other end of this. And I think that that is, you know, very similar with the original Faces of Death in the sense that you feel like a truly deranged and like diseased-minded this. Cause it's like, it's like horrifying images and it's like jaunty music, you know? And, um, and like even just like some of the like, like the monkey is so macabre and like, and like,

• 1:44:06Speaker 05

  it's goofy, but that only weirdly makes it more disturbing because it's presented so straightforwardly. And I interviewed the director of the movie before doing this. You know, I had a long conversation with him. And, you know, as he told it to me, cause, cause there's a director that's credited. It was not the real director. He was like the writer and the collaborator who essentially like, took the public credit for the film. But the actual guy that made it, um, made nature documentaries for ABC. And he had a big documentary production company and he was approached by a group of investors who were like, we want to make Mondo Death. And he was like, that sounds like a weird art project.

• 1:44:49Speaker 05

  And he didn't want to be credited because he didn't want it to like, um, you know, disrupt. His actual day job.

• 1:44:54Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:44:54Speaker 05

  But he approached it to something where he's like, I can't really lose here. I'm just gonna have fun with this. And so like, you know, he was like, yeah, what if I put jaunty music in like, that's like fucked up and weird. But like, the combination of all those elements really does leave it feeling like it's something that, that, that, you know, no human hand like would ever make.

• 1:45:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's so interesting though, because that perfectly echoes the, probably some of the content that you experienced in moderation, where people are submitting material anonymously, and then also what the killer in the film is doing, which is operating in a kind of shadow. And it's so different from the act of public creation, especially historically promoting a movie through a corporate studio system, where you kind of have to put your name on it.

• 1:45:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:45:41Sean Fennessey?

  And that friction between those two ideas is really, really fun.

• 1:45:45Speaker 05

  Exactly. No, and I mean, it, it, it's, it's one of the interesting things about Arthur as a character to me is that he's, he's chasing something, but he's not chasing any version of fame that we really understand, because it's his, his, his name isn't on it, his face isn't on it, and yet it's so clear that what he cares about is kind of like what he's getting out of it. And I think, for me, one of the fundamental ideas of the film is that, you know, we live in an attention economy. And, you know, in that, we've said, the more attention that you have, the more value you have. And simultaneously, we've gone and said, do you know how to generate a lot of attention very quickly?

• 1:46:29Speaker 05

  Go commit an act of mass violence. And so we've set the incentive structure up for young people that like, very literally, it's like, if you commit an act of mass violence, you have a lot of value as a person. You know, or at the very least, your name does, your reputation does, your go down in history. And you see the way that, you know, people talk about this stuff on message boards, you know, where they talk about like, high scores for kill counts, you know? And then, and then those conversations also generate attention. And so for me, Arthur is in many ways just a literalization of that. He's somebody who is actually. Be very rationally looking at the system that has been set out in front of him and say, how can I feel like I matter? How can I feel like I exist? How can I feel seen?

• 1:47:11Speaker 05

  And you you see where he lives and and and and you kind of get a sense for how kind of totally isolated and alien to this guy is. And on some level, it's like, you're like, yes, this, what he's doing kind of, it it makes sense. It's awful, but it's it. There's a logic to it. And that, I think, is a logic that is, again, something that has been systemically given to us by media companies.

• 1:47:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's fascinating because I know you finished this film some time ago, but our hero Balthazar and the drama and your film coming out effectively within a week of each other is also fascinating because they're all kind of, they're not about the same thing, but they're located in the same vibe of how can people say, how can people be seen through something cruel and dangerous and violent? Tell me about making a slasher movie because one of the things I love about Pipeline is is it just use like a pure heist model mentality to demonstrate something socially, politically different. But, you know, in in the execution of it, it seemed like you had some real standards

• 1:48:19Sean Fennessey?

  that you were trying to follow. How did you think about this? Because there are thousands and thousands of slashers.

• 1:48:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's interesting because in all honesty, I never really thought of it as a slasher movie. I thought it's because it's

• 1:48:34Speaker 05

  it's not really, right? You don't this a slasher movie doesn't introduce you to the slasher on minute fifteen and you're not spending, you know, about half the movie with him. Like genuinely, the model was whatever targets is, you know, like it's it's a thriller. It's a, you know, and like there's a Silence of the Lambsy kind of, you know, cat and mouse ness to it like that. That was always the conception. Then it's just a movie that then has a handful of slasher set pieces in them, right? And and those were very conscious.

• 1:49:12Speaker 05

  Supposed to kind of be riffs on old classics. Cause I think there's this fun thing about Arthur, which is like, he's very clearly an extremely media literate person like. And so people are like, oh, I love this talking on his head. It reminds me of, you know, Tom Noonan in Manhunter. It's like, yes, it also reminds Arthur of Tom Noonan in Manhunter. You know, like, like he's aware of the kind of homage and illusion that he himself is engaging in.

• 1:49:37Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like he's only an agglomeration of his influences, really.

• 1:49:39Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. And, and so I think that like.

• 1:49:44Sean Fennessey?

  Which is how a lot of people like communicate their personality on social media as well, which is another, another thing I like about the movie.

• 1:49:49Speaker 05

  And, and, and so, but you get this, there's this moment I really love where, um, you know, I should get fine grained about the movie.

• 1:49:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:50:00Speaker 05

  I guess it's, it's out at this point.

• 1:50:03Speaker 05

  Where Margot is hiding in the garage from Arthur and Arthur walks in, there's this like really amazingly just tense moment where, you know, she's hiding. Does he see her? Does he not? And it's kind of unclear if he sees her or not. And then he walks out and then she runs out and then she's like about to jump the fence. And then all of a sudden he's back in the garage, door goes up and he shoots at her. And it's this really great question of like, does he, does he know? Is he actually chasing for himself a greater slasher set? Does he want to jump scare her?

• 1:50:36Sean Fennessey?

  To just shoot her in that moment would have been boring if he had spotted her, yeah.

• 1:50:40Speaker 05

  Exactly. And he's not in it to win necessarily like that. He's in it for the narrative. And, and, and so I think that like, there's something about the way that I wanted it to be a slasher movie that also is like, is performative in itself in a certain way. You know, and, and, and, and without, without.

• 1:51:03Speaker 05

  I never really wanted the movie to be self-aware and meta, but I wanted Arthur to be someone who is so completely seeing his existence through this performative lens that even he is kind of seeing the movie that he is experiencing and living was was kind of part of the goal.

• 1:51:23Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Doc Ray Montgomery?

• 1:51:25Speaker 05

  Daker.

• 1:51:25Sean Fennessey?

  Daker. So just amazing performance.

• 1:51:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Sean Fennessey?

  And it's it's hard to do this because of what you're saying, which is there are a lot of sort of reference points, but I do feel like he makes something that feels also like a singular person in its own disturbing way. How'd you guys talk about the character? Well, you know, how did how did his performance shake out the way that it did?

• 1:51:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I Daker's an incredible actor and just like, I think, in general, an incredible collaborator, both he and Barbie are. And and with Daker, when I first met with him for the film, I'd met with him for Pipeline, which hadn't ended up really being a fit, but I really liked him. And we met for this and, you know, he got on the Zoom and he was like, I have to play this role. I've never felt more passionate about a role. And he's like, I grew up, I have severe OCD. I was also like a super alienated bullied kid. He's like, but I had this problem where I cannot, I could not sleep for 10 years under the covers of my bed because if I felt even a crease in the bed sheet, it would

• 1:52:28Speaker 05

  keep me up all night. So I slept on top of the covers for 10 years. And he goes, I really relate to Arthur. I feel like, you know, I see this guy's aversion with blood. I see his like compulsion to do things that even hurt himself. And he's like, I really feel that. Everyone else I'd met with had kind of been talking about like this other guy they'd seen in the media, but Daker was like, this is this is how I am Arthur. And I think for me, as a starting point of a collaboration, like, that's, that's a great place to start because as you're then building the character from from the inside out, everything is coming from something that's like profoundly honest to the actor. And so for Daker, he has a real obsession with textures and fabrics. And I think because that was the starting point of his connection to Arthur.

• 1:53:13Speaker 05

  Arthur that became the starting point for, you know, the entire thing. So a lot of what was originally scripted changed dramatically, especially just in the details of how this was rendered, based on what felt the best to Dacre. Like, we would go in for fittings for his character, and for him, it was all about kind of like, Skin tight. Literally the, the skin tight suit and the way that felt on his body. And like, it was more important to him that the fabric of the clothing felt better than, than, than maybe even like, the look or, or the fit. Um, and, and, and that's the thing is like, okay, then I'm trying to back that into an aesthetic that works for the film. But I also know, I can see it in the fitting. He's like rubbing, the way he rubs himself, like, he's doing that because he's finding that part of the character, you know, in the fitting. So like,

• 1:53:58Speaker 05

  the stocking over his head, that wasn't in the script. That was something that he wanted to do. Like, that's something that Dacre felt like spoke to him about kind of like the way that Arthur would want to access, uh, that kind of performance. And then for me, I'm like, oh, that's also like Man Hunter. And then, you know, we're, we're bringing that in. And, and so it's, it's a lot of just kind of a, a, a back and forth with, I think, you know, hearing how he's personally engaging with this and then finding a way to just make that work for the movie. Hmm. Um, but I, I, I think maybe the only, one of the other funny things that I can share is I, I was about six months into the edit of the film and we were going back through some take,

• 1:54:43Speaker 05

  uh, or something. I, I heard me give a direction to Dacre and then I, I heard Dacre do the take and I, when I called Dacre, I said, Dacre, are you, are you doing my voice? When Arthur's directing?

• 1:55:00Speaker 05

  And he goes, you, did you just figure that out?

• 1:55:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:55:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I have a theory that all of your films are about young people trying to utilize the media to seize control.

• 1:55:17Speaker 05

  I think they're about young people who feel driven nuts by the world that they live in and are trying to do something to change it, to break free of it. And they're ultimately kind of trapped by the fact that ultimately, even if they have essentially what becomes a personally redemptive act of violence, you know. I always felt the ending of Pipeline was a little misread because you see comments of people like, and all they do is post a TikTok. It's like, yeah. Because ultimately, if you've done the thing, how do you communicate it?

• 1:55:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:54Speaker 05

  Oh, you're right back. You're right back where you started.

• 1:55:57Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:55:58Speaker 05

  And there's something.

• 1:55:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. So that, but that's, that's a slightly more cynical.

• 1:56:02Speaker 05

  I think it's just, it's just realistic.

• 1:56:04Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:56:04Speaker 05

  I think that this is the problem is that like, we're at the point where there is so little free media and communication, you know, we don't have alt weeklies, we don't really have zines, we don't have underground newspapers, we don't, you know, we don't congregate in public, especially in the US nearly as much as we used to, you know. And I think that that, like, you're, you're seeing the effects of that, which is that even when revolutionary acts take place, telling the story of them and finding a way to tell that story in, in a way that actually brings people together around a movement, around a progressive idea is harder than ever before because with a push of a button,

• 1:56:47Speaker 05

  you can completely disrupt how that storytelling is actually disseminated to people. And this is, I think, the most clearly communicated at the end of Faces, right? It's that in order to prove that there's a sadistic serial killer who's murdering people on the loose and making snuff films and posting them online, she's got to make a snuff film.

• 1:57:08Sean Fennessey?

  Got to post about it, yeah.

• 1:57:08Speaker 05

  And then she's got to post about it. And, and because, because everybody in the movie has kind of told her that's the, that's the only thing that will take is truth, is once we see it on the internet.

• 1:57:17Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel as helpless and as stuck going back to where you started as the characters in the movies?

• 1:57:25Speaker 05

  I feel totally trapped by social media.

• 1:57:30Speaker 05

  You know, I grew up on the internet. I grew up as a very alienated person. But also, like, I think I've built a life in which I'm very reliant on. You know, I live between, you know, Berlin, New York, LA. I work in film and media. You know, it ends up being a very effective way to keep in touch with a very large group of people that I work with and that I care about. And it's also an important vehicle for me to broadcast about my work.

• 1:57:58Speaker 05

  But it's also like, it consumes my life and I can feel it like sapping and stealing the minutes from me. And, and I don't know, I don't know how to escape it because I don't really know. It's like I work in film, right? Like, how do I, like, there are people that, that aren't online, you know? But then even some of the people you think aren't on Instagram, like, they have, they're, they have Finsta, you know?

• 1:58:21Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:22Speaker 05

  They're, or they're paying attention.

• 1:58:23Sean Fennessey?

  I have learned at the highest levels that this is true.

• 1:58:27Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. Cause like this, you mean to tell me that like, you know, some big actor doesn't want to know like what the, what the skinny is on them? Like, no.

• 1:58:34Sean Fennessey?

  They definitely do.

• 1:58:35Speaker 05

  And so it's like, yeah, I'm like, how do I, how do I belong to a culture that is so online? And then at the same time, like, there's so many parts of the online culture I don't understand, like something like Iron Lung, kind of like.

• 1:58:48Sean Fennessey?

  I thought that was so exciting.

• 1:58:49Speaker 05

  It's so exciting. It's also like, it's like, it indicts like absolutely every element of like how Hollywood thinks it should be working.

• 1:58:56Sean Fennessey?

  That was where, exactly where I wanted to take this conversation too. Cause you know, you're working as an independent filmmaker. You're making movies now that are pretty actively kind of poking the bear and trying to say like, how close to the edge of like, radical leftist point of view? Can I get into a mainstream experience?

• 1:59:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:14Sean Fennessey?

  Into an AMC movie theater?

• 1:59:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:59:15Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a, a really, I really admire that as a, as a, as a mission creatively.

• 1:59:23Sean Fennessey?

  But I also think that there's like, kind of an inherent anxiety around that too. Where like, how far can you push it? And how big can you get? And how successful can you be? And what do you ultimately want for yourself out of all of those things?

• 1:59:38Speaker 05

  I think, I, you know, it's interesting with Faces finally coming out and I think just like the movie finally seeing the light of day, getting a pretty, I think, the reception that I think it should get, which like some people like really love it and champion it. So a lot of people are like, this movie shouldn't exist. And I'm like, yes, I agree with you. That's probably true. Think about that, like, you know. Yep. Um, but it's, it's, I think that like, I'm very happy to be trying to continue to just prove out that this work can be entertaining and theatrical and fun. And like, ultimately,

• 2:00:20Speaker 05

  even though there's like, I think some radical ideas in the work, like, that's very rarely what we're thinking about on the day. Like, I'm thinking about like, how do I make a fun movie? How do I, how do I stage the scene in a nice way? And, and, you know, how do I just like, keep the audience's engagement? And that's ultimately like, I think, for me, it's just very hard to want to make a piece of entertainment for the sake of making a piece of entertainment. I only get excited when I feel like I'm doing, you know, hopefully, something new in terms of, you know, cinematic form, something new in terms of like, you know, narrative form, and something new in terms of thematic form. And generally speaking, the new thematic stuff

• 2:01:04Speaker 05

  that I'm interested in is leftist. And so, like, there are obviously ideas I care about, but I think, um, yeah, it's, it's, in all honesty, I had, I think, hoped that, it's not like that I hoped that Pipeline would get people to go blow up pipelines, but it, I had hoped that would maybe have served as a little bit more, we got like so much press and like, you know, national security bulletins. And I'd hoped it would like, at the very least, maybe engender like a bigger conversation about, you know, just tactics and what's working and what's not working and, you know, how we should think about

• 2:01:46Speaker 05

  organizing differently potentially. And what I saw was like, a lot of people watched the movie and were like, I watched the movie. And that's my catharsis and and like and that's fine.

• 2:01:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:56Speaker 05

  I have to meet the audience where they're at, you know? And I'm like, OK, that's interesting. Like, I don't think movies. I think there was a time that movies were like, get people to go out and do stuff. I don't think that's how movies operate anymore.

• 2:02:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, that's that idea is in your mood. I mean, there's the refraction element of like, I said something out loud and so I have done my my duty. You know, I've done my Starship Troopers moment, you know? And it's like, did you, though?

• 2:02:18Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:02:19Sean Fennessey?

  You consumed something.

• 2:02:20Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  And then you went home.

• 2:02:21Speaker 05

  And and so I think for me, I'm also trying to get, I'm more interested, I think. And this is something that we started with faces that I will be digging into more and more. I I think I'm actually becoming a little more interested in like, instead of trying to like spur people to action or spur people to change. It's it's more about like getting them to understand more, using film as like a way to be like, this is how the world is working. Like, and and if you can kind of like peek under the hood and look at the little watch gears running, you're like, oh, that's what this is doing to me. Just just an idea. And like, again, this is like a little bit a design idea in Faces of Death that like, you know,

• 2:03:04Speaker 05

  when you're texting somebody, when you're doing email, that's a video game. That's a video game. It has little notifications. It has things you have to check off. It's like, I had this revelation during the pandemic when I was just like in my computer. I was playing Zelda Breath of the Wild and a new email notification popped up on my computer. And I was like, wait, I also have like, I have a task to do over here and I have a task to over here. And like, I actually am having the exact same feeling.

• 2:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the endorphin rush.

• 2:03:29Speaker 05

  Exactly, from both of these things.

• 2:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, something new.

• 2:03:31Speaker 05

  New quest and new email, same thing. And I'm like, oh, my God, like, everything is a video game right now, right? But like, no one's thinking about it that way. No one's seeing it that way. No one's experiencing that reality or like, because because there's also like, there's no good video game criticism, all sorts of stuff like that. So it's like, for me, I'm like, OK, how can I get an audience to like, start thinking or feeling or like perceiving these kind of ways that like, systems are being built around us in ways that like, at the very least, will allow them to reflect on their experience differently.

• 2:04:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:04:04Speaker 05

  Um, you know, even just thinking about the fact that like, That that an attention economy does really kind of engender somebody wanting to commit mass murder is like, that's the argument of the movie. And I think if somebody walks away from the film being like, oh, that's, that's interesting. I think that there's a tremendous amount that could be extrapolated from that, that, you know, would hopefully be productive for that individual.

• 2:04:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think there's also something interesting about that, which I don't think is quite true for Pipeline, which is that I think a lot of people will also see the movie and be like, cool serial killer movie, and then stop thinking about it.

• 2:04:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:04:40Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, you know, that's an unusual opportunity that I think filmmakers have that very few other artists have, where sort of like, I have all of these thematic load bearing ideas that I bring to my project, but I have to accept and probably even know clearly at the head of time that like, it is also a product and that people will receive it in different ways, too. Like, your intent can't be confirmed.

• 2:05:03Speaker 05

  I think that, at the same time, one of the beautiful things about being a filmmaker is, I think that sometimes movies operate on people five years after the fact. You know, there's a movie that, for no good reason, you can't shake, but it lodged itself in your brain like a thorn. And I think that, you know, and like, that's obviously true of Faces of Death for a lot of people. For no good reason, that movie is this thing, but it is. And who kind of knows why? And who kind of knows what that means? And I think that, you know, we also know that like, our images will now, more than ever, become decontextualized from our movies. Like, the ways in which, you know, you see like, the

• 2:05:44Speaker 05

  White House posting fan cams of war films is like, that's a real total shift.

• 2:05:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Speaker 05

  In terms of like, just, one way I put it is, up until 10 years ago, we never, as humans, used images to communicate directly one on one with each other. You know, people would make images and then show them, and then that would be something that was experienced. But now, if I want to communicate an idea to you, I can send you a GIF. I can send you a GIF of a movie. So now, all of a sudden, like, the like, legacy of like, you know, cinematic imagery has become language.

• 2:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm. There's also something else that is a consequence of that, which is the extraction of language from communication, which is a whole other kettle of fish. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:33Speaker 05

  But I think that that's the point, is that it's It's like, okay, so that's language now. And like, that also is like, a complete change in terms of like, I'm definitely aware now when I'm making a movie. I'm like, this image, this shot, I hope that could be a good meme.

• 2:06:49Sean Fennessey?

  You think that?

• 2:06:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Do you think a lot of filmmakers think that way now?

• 2:06:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think anyone who's online, and I think they might pretend that they're not. But it's like, how, that's, I know that's how I'm gonna live in the cultural imagination at this point. That's how my work is gonna live on. Like, it used to be like, oh, you got a great quotable line. Now it's like, no, you have something that like, communicates a very specific feeling and emotion and aesthetic in a way that like, actually, language feels like it can't totally capture. And like, you've done that and you've brought a cultural moment around it. And now it's being used as language, and that's cool. That's, that's interesting.

• 2:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, there was a thing previously when we didn't think about communicating in this way. And I love how you've put, how you've circled this. That was about the primacy of the shot. That had to be something grand or epic or physically difficult to achieve. And now it is about the image, like the still or the locked, you know, moving gif. And that is different too. And like, that, I think, pretty dramatically changes like, our cinematic expectations of what we think is good, what we think is memorable, what we think has value. And so the idea of someone like you saying like, I'm gonna try to make one of these, or at least I think this could be one of those things, is really fascinating.

• 2:08:05Speaker 05

  I'm never, I'm never approaching being like, ah, yes, this is like, and this is the meme moment. But it's like, maybe I'm on set and I see something and I'm like, oh, I can see how this could be used and captured that way linguistically. Cause that's just, that's how my mind has become wired.

• 2:08:20Sean Fennessey?

  Fascinating. Um, so, as I alluded to, we spoke three years ago. You said, I'm just about to start doing Faces of Death. And that's a long time has gone by since then. If you would have asked me a year ago, will I ever see this movie? I probably would have said no, just based on how I know things work. What happened? How did you get here? Like, maybe we can close with that?

• 2:08:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that that this is a project that Issa and I initially pitched in 2019. And, you know, just for context, like when we were putting together our, you know, our idea. And we were trying to figure out, you know, like which platform does this take place on? Is it Instagram? Is it YouTube? In terms of not literally, but you know, spiritually. Issa was like, have you ever heard of TikTok? And I go, no, what's TikTok? And she introduced me to TikTok. And I think, you know, she immediately had this vision of like, with what TikTok is, with how it works, like the kind of phenomenon that we're talking about in the movie becomes like much more plausible.

• 2:09:20Speaker 05

  And so we built around TikTok and then, you know, we pitched, we got the job, we closed our deal like March 10th, 2020. So then COVID hit and by the time we finished the script and we were like thinking about making the movie, like the business had completely changed and Legendary, which was kind of trying to get into the low budget genre game. That started to make a little bit less sense and, you know, but they still had some projects that they were passionate about, but we couldn't really figure out a path with faces. And then I used that moment to go make pipelines. I kind of used faces as like a cudgel to get pipeline together. So that's how I put my cast together. And, and, and then I finished pipeline, then all of a sudden like I had heat and they were like, great, let's go make faces.

• 2:10:03Speaker 05

  And then the writer's strike happened two thirds of the way through our shoot, which was very challenging. And we were like, you know, writing as we were shooting and that caused some, some issues. And then, you know, even getting into the post-production process, you know, we had to hiatus for long periods of time because I wasn't allowed to do writing work on the film. Right. And Issa wasn't allowed to do writing work on the film. You can't work with the actors on anything because you can't record ADR. So like, that just made that whole experience very complicated. And then I think by the time the movie was done, I think it became very clear that like, as you said, it is a movie that's poking the bear in a number of ways in the kind of extremity of its content.

• 2:10:45Speaker 05

  But also in the fact that like, it is very explicitly kind of calling out corporate.

• 2:10:53Speaker 05

  Media culture for also trying to kind of like own our nostalgia, our childhood, wring every last dropout of it. Like, it's a weird question, like, why remake Faces of Death? And I think it's an interesting prompt, but it's one that ultimately we are kind of like, you know, pointing the finger back and being like, yes, why make Faces of Death? And that's not exactly the kind of thing that I think, you know, the big studios are going to be excited about releasing. I know that at least the head of marketing for one major studio said that he thought the movie was morally despicable. And so I think that, you know, because a lot of Legendary's business, you know, like, the way that company is structured is they put movies out through the studio system.

• 2:11:37Speaker 05

  When it became clear that that was not really going to be a viable path for the movie, when I think that we hoped it would be, then it was about, okay, now we have to kind of figure out where this lives in the market and the marketplace. And that just, that just took time because it was, it was a shift for them and a shift for, you know, how the movie was kind of initially built. And then even once we had found IFC as a partner, you know, because that conversation with IFC started a year ago. You know, so it just like, once we even figured out, okay, this is maybe a place to do the movie, just building out the deal and figuring out how to put the movie out, you know, just, just, just took, took, took time.

• 2:12:21Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think you'll try to make another movie that could be released by a major studio?

• 2:12:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm working on one right now.

• 2:12:30Sean Fennessey?

  So what were your takeaways from going through that particular process with this movie?

• 2:12:35Speaker 05

  I think, you know, I, I've actually been trying a different process with the way I've been working with studios. I think it's like, studios.

• 2:12:49Speaker 05

  Everybody is just trying to value the movie. And everybody has their ideas about what is going to get an audience to go see a film, tell their friends to go see it, all of that. As William Goldman famously said, "Nobody actually knows anything about that." And I think that what I've witnessed is that as more and more of a private equity mentality moves into Hollywood, there's more and more of a push to kind of like get rid of the old "I in my gut as a producer, as a studio head, I just got a good feeling about this. I know enough about the culture, I know enough about the zeitgeist, let's go make this movie." That's how it used to work.

• 2:13:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:13:28Speaker 05

  You know? And now it's like, "No, no, no, no, no. All of this stuff has to be like somehow proven out and de-risked and like in a way that the model likes." And part of that is so that then if the movie doesn't work, everybody goes, "Hey, the model said it was okay. It wasn't my fault."

• 2:13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:13:43Speaker 05

  Like, you know?

• 2:13:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:13:44Speaker 05

  And so I think for me-

• 2:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  I have a whole jag about how the like, the death of the Hollywood studio executive, which is, used to be a villainously perceived character in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, but now that person has been transformed into the de-risked analysis monster that you're describing, which is actually, in many cases, significantly more insidious.

• 2:14:04Speaker 05

  Because I think there's some incredible execs I've worked with, you know, like John Silket, legendary, who hired us, you know? Alex Garcia over there, like, you know, helped with like, really brilliant people, you know, but they're, they're, they're often sometimes, I think, the executive class in Hollywood right now is by and large, like, they just have a fraction of the power that they used to have, you know? And so I think that, um, for me, it's really about seeing the ways in which I did not understand the valuation mechanisms of pipeline, of faces of death, and knowing a lot more

• 2:14:47Speaker 05

  of the questions to ask from like, a very early on part of the process, like, you know, very exactly like, what, what are the set pieces you need? What do they look like? Whether it's in a horror, whether it's in something else, you know? Understanding like ahead of time, like where is the value add cast for you? How are we, you know, I have a product I'm working on where like, you know, I think figuring out even just the age range with a studio partner of like, you know, here's what we would want, where does that leave, like what our possible talent pool would be. So then I can actually like go and build a great story around something that I know makes sense

• 2:15:30Speaker 05

  for my partner's valuation incentive structure, you know, because like I can like, you're always working with like a limited set of things as a filmmaker in the studio system. You're always kind of working with like what you have. And so I'm kind of just trying to figure out like, okay, what, what do they care about? And then how can I make that a movie that I really also 100% want to make? And again, that's what everybody's been doing. But I think that as every financier and buyer and distributor becomes more and more boutique, you know, everybody has their own cast list. Everybody has their own idea of like what set pieces matter, you know? You know, um, um, some director will come down where somebody's like, we did a case study

• 2:16:14Speaker 05

  and jump scares aren't working anymore. And then that company will be like, well, we're not into jump scare game anymore. But then another company will like not have gotten that memo and they still feel like, you know, the jump scare ride is like the thing that matters. And like, now you're trying to take this project out to marketplace and like, people are making decisions based on like whatever market research they've done. This is like a very different kind of situation. And so I'm trying to really like find partners very early on and then like ask a lot of questions and build something from the ground up with them. So I feel like there's a studio buy-in on every single major decision and that's all essentially documented.

• 2:16:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's really interesting. You have to be an anthropologist and a data scientist in order to be a director now.

• 2:16:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, but that's filmmaking and art making is always a reflection of the time. You know, I think for me, I had a A big revelation, I took a Renaissance art class in college that I rarely showed up for.

• 2:17:13Speaker 05

  But I, I just like, there was this thing where like, you kept showing these like, great paintings of the Western canon. And then you realize that like, it's all spawn con for the church and the king.

• 2:17:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:17:27Speaker 05

  It's like, like, the entirety of like, what we think of as like, you know, Shakespeare was spawn con for, you know, Queen Elizabeth.

• 2:17:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Who can afford to pay these artists to make something?

• 2:17:37Speaker 05

  Exactly. And they're always, they're trying to figure out, how do I do, there's this amazing painting, Las Meninas, by Velazquez. And like, this was like, learning about this painting and it's like, well, this is like, this is like a super critical painting of the court. Like, this is a painting where he's like, he's like, really like, giving the middle finger to, to the court and to the king and, you know, and, and then, but like, he paid for it. You know? And so it's like, I was like, okay, this is just the game. This has been the game since the beginning of time. It's always going to be the game. You've always had to figure stuff out about art that has nothing to do with art, especially if you're working in any sort of a bigger commercial system. And then hopefully that experience feeds back into the work.

• 2:18:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I, as I've been thinking about your movies, I did feel there was something really interesting and, and convulsive about Pipeline that I liked because it felt like more of a stick-up and less of a smuggle. And I think that your other movies are kind of smuggles. And there's like a difference and kind of like, how, you can't get away with a lot of stick-ups. You know, it's like, you might get shot. And a smuggle is a different venture, you know?

• 2:18:41Speaker 05

  It's funny though, because I think that, I really do feel like Faces of Death is, is a bit of both. But I think it, it, it is working inside of a genre that I think is just the, the ways that you are fulfilling those genre expectations are inherently kind of like, they're big, but they're very expected. There's lots of tropes that you kind of end up following. So it ends up feeling like it's more in one lane. But what, again, what I feel really proud about with Faces is like- Like, I do hope that the movie is also in many ways a reflection on those tropes,

• 2:19:22Speaker 05

  on those tropes as they're deployed in kind of a big, you know, studio horror IP film and that, you know, there is this question of like, why is, why is this a structure that we kind of keep returning to and obsessing over? And so I'm hoping it's doing both, but I also know at the end of the day, I also just want people to go have fun and, and, and enjoy the ride.

• 2:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Danny, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? And now I follow you on Letterboxd.

• 2:19:56Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:19:56Sean Fennessey?

  You're logging frequently?

• 2:19:57Speaker 05

  Yes, I, I honestly, like a real all-timer, like top 10 for me is the Wachowskis' Speed Racer, which I think is a movie that has still not gotten its due. And I think it's a movie that it came at such a strange moment where, you know, digital tech was just getting good and the Wachowskis were like, what if we did everything that we could even think of? And you watch this movie and there's like shots that still don't have names that I've seen nowhere else. And I saw a 4K restoration of that at Beyond Fest, my first time seeing it in a cinema. And it's incredible. It plays like gangbusters. It still plays like a movie from the future.

• 2:20:43Speaker 05

  It's amazing. And for those people who haven't seen it, I highly recommend seeking it out. It's a, it's a really, really, really special film that I think works on every single level.

• 2:20:56Sean Fennessey?

  Great recommendation. Congrats.

• 2:20:57Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 2:20:58Sean Fennessey?

  On the new film. Thanks for coming back.

• 2:20:59Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:21:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Daniel Goldhaber. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thanks to our production support from Lucas Cavanagh. I mentioned we're heading to Vegas. I'm getting in the car in one hour. How long is it going to take me to get there?

• 2:21:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. You've alleged that you'll be able to be there for dinner and drinks before CinemaCon starts.

• 2:21:27Sean Fennessey?

  I hope so. That's my plan.

• 2:21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:28Sean Fennessey?

  I've got to see the Sony presentation at 6:30 as well.

• 2:21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. With all respect to Zach Craig, I will be having family dinner before I fly into Las Vegas.

• 2:21:36Sean Fennessey?

  Girl dinner?

• 2:21:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Here. No, no, family dinner.

• 2:21:39Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 2:21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  With, I dine with boys. So.

• 2:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  Boy dinner?

• 2:21:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, boy dinner. I will be having three-boy dinner.

• 2:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  We'll have a great dinner.

• 2:21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I will meet you in Las Vegas.

• 2:21:49Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds good. See you then. And we'll see you back on the big picture at the end of this week, where we'll be joined by Matt Bellini and Craig Horl back to talk about CinemaCon.

• 2:22:15Sean Fennessey?

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