The Five Biggest Hollywood Storylines for the Rest of 2026

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So cut the bullspend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash the town. That's linkedin.com slash the town. Terms and conditions apply. It is Monday, August 31st. It's been a. Cautiously optimistic summer around town. Box office is up 20%. World Cup ratings far exceeded expectations in this country. Even the maitre d' at the polo lounge told me last week that business has been up slightly this summer. Always a strong Hollywood indicator. Everyone seems to have had a pretty good few months, except maybe David Ellison and his Warnermount merger. And Netflix, the engagement numbers haven't been great. But now fall is here, and the reality may be about to set in. So what are the big stories going to be for the rest of the year? More Netflix, of course. More Warnermount. But some other interesting narratives as well. So today I've got Lucas Shaw here to discuss and prognosticate. One note, we taped this this morning before Trump posted in support of the federal tax credit for production. So note that when we get to it. Today is the fall narratives for Hollywood. And can the relative recovery keep going? From the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg, our Monday guy. Welcome back, Lucas. You had a wonderful little get-together this weekend. I was honored to be invited. And I got to say, you make a very delicious lemon loaf. Thanks for coming. Dragged my ass to the east side, unlike Craig. Craig can't be bothered to go east of downtown. Craig can be forgiven during fantasy football season. And it was my wife's birthday this weekend. We can all calm down. I really appreciate being invited, Lucas. I'll be at the next one. Okay. Well, you missed out on the lemon loaf. So let's get started. Let's get into this because we got lots of narratives for the fall. And I wanted to distill them with you. Can we first just get the Paramount stuff out of the way? What do you think is the most important question? If we're thinking about this, like most pressing questions for the fall, what is the number one question? Well, obviously, whatever happens with the Watermount merger. If they settle, if the talks break down and they continue going towards trial, if David Ellison, then buys a mansion in Franklin, Tennessee, like all of this will be a factor. And honestly, I think one of the biggest sort of ancillary issues is are they going to start to see a brain drain as this drags on? Are we going to see more executives jumping ship? How many Warner Brothers employees will Netflix hire in the next three months? Exactly. And are these employees going to start to get antsy? And not just employees, but producers. And projects and things that, you know, you want an answer. You're a big filmmaker. And maybe the Warner Brothers people can't give you an answer because it's the kind of movie that they would need to bring in the other, the new owners on or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, when the AT&T Warner Brothers deal got held in limbo for two years, I can't speak to the movie studio, but at least in the case of HBO, HBO didn't seem to really miss a beat. They did just fine. I know. And at this point, they are all used. They're all used to this chaos that has enveloped the company for the past 10 years. Well, and if you're a producer with a deal, you know, you can't really move that quickly. If you're making a hit show like The Pit, it's not like you're going to go, well, we're not going to do any more of this because, like, we're tired of the uncertainty. But I am curious what David Ellison will give up in order to convince Rob Bonta that he needs to negotiate seriously. Yeah, that'll be the big issue. Whatever Ellison is willing. I mean, I don't know if he's going to be willing to part with or, you know, create some shockingly complex new vehicle for divestiture where they will own some but not all or whatever the calculation is to try to get this through. But we don't have to talk. We've talked enough about this lately. Okay. We've talked about it enough. Yes. All right. So let's go to our big. You want to go first here? I'll give you first pick of the big issues for the fall that we're going to be talking about that people should be put on the radar. I mean, I feel like. You got to start with the biggest, the most valuable entertainment company in the world. That would be Netflix. Okay. So what about Netflix? Two related questions. And but let's start with a stat, which is Netflix's stock is down 32 percent, more than 30 percent over the last year. Over that time, the S&P is up almost 20 percent or about 20 percent. That is not good by any measure. Right. And Netflix is a company that where, you know, you zoom out 20 years. The. It's been a remarkable success story. Stock has outperformed the market, all these things, and there have been swoons before, but this is an extended one. If you talk to folks at the company, they think it is still a kind of a hangover from the Warner Brothers deal that the Warner Brothers deal really through investors. And they're going to struggle for a couple of years to convince people that the company is self-inflicted by the way, the company is doing just fine. But I think there are two questions that are sort of on everyone's mind, the, the, the bigger picture one, which I think is tied to Warner. Warner Brothers is what is next, right? Streaming is still a good business. The company is just minting profit. It's incredibly profitable, but it's growth has slowed a lot. It's trying a bunch of different things. It doesn't know which of those is going to work. And so what are those comes next and, or what, what comes next? And sort of the growth engine and related, and that's more specific to this year and getting into the kind of the Hollywood rumor mill when or how can Netflix break its programming slump where it has gone most of the year? Without having the kind of consistent hits that we have become accustomed to seeing from Netflix, which has led to all sorts of conversations about what changes do or don't need to be made over there. Particularly in the second quarter, because I think the comps for this year's second quarter and last year's were particularly brutal. There weren't as many, you know, returning hits. They didn't have the breakout of K-pop demon hunters like they did last summer. And, you know, I just was reading a report from Peter Supino, the analyst. And he was citing a lot of his clients who are looking towards the third quarter and are seeing better programming. But we're in, we're, we're in the middle of the third quarter. I know, but they're seeing, they're seeing at least some titles for the fall that will juice the, the engagement numbers. But who knows? I mean, we, Netflix hits tend to come out of nowhere. Yep. That is the track record. Yeah. So we have no idea. But I do think that question of whether the drought. We'll continue at Netflix. We'll the, the drum beats will start to get louder. So what do they do? Do they just start throwing more podcasts on there and, you know, or do they start to make some big, tough changes either on the executive front or on the content strategy? Yeah. Well, look, the content strategy, they're already doing it. Right. So they have, they've done the, all these YouTube deals this year. They've gotten in this essentially bidding war with YouTube for they've signed deals with more than a dozen. Creators, I think my understanding is there's another 12, basically Netflix made a list of like, here are the 30 or 40 creators we care about. We're going to go for all of them. They've signed a number of them. They're going after the rest of them and we'll see how that shakes out. There is the, the, you know, the, the big podcast push obligatory reference that are obligatory ringer disclosure, because they have a deal with Netflix. I don't even work for the ringer, but I'll make it on Matt's behalf. Sure. Well, this show is not on Netflix, so at least we don't have to have a Sean fantasy rant here. And then. There is sports, which they continue to dip into and you know, they've got some football. People assume that they're going to have to go bigger and do more. There is gaming, which they continue. Again, they, they did another restructuring in that group. So they're doing more and more. I think the big question everyone has for something else they could do is, are they going to try to, you know, license or syndicate another big service? I think they would have loved to do a version of what YouTube did with peacock. Um, and there's, there's been, I know. And others have reported that they had at least some preliminary conversations around that. They've had preliminary conversations with Fox around Fox one, which would bring in a lot more sports without Netflix having to buy the rights. Yeah. And an underrated aspect of these ingestion deals is all of that viewership gets counted for Netflix. It would be on the Nielsen gauge, like when you watch an HBO show via Amazon prime video channels. That viewership doesn't get counted HBO Max, it gets counted for Amazon. And a big chunk of their viewership comes from that. And you know, Ted Sarandos would love to capture that viewership and to do a victory lap when they got closer and closer to YouTube. Side note, I think that should reinforce generally how little time people are spending watching Amazon original programming. Because Amazon channels is the number one, like third party distributor by a mile people spend a lot like services like Paramount Plus, HBO Max have a lot of customers via that via that throw in all the niche services. And Amazon is still less than half the viewing of Netflix every month. Yeah. And with a programming budget that isn't nearly what Netflix does on originals, taking out the NFL, right? Well, that's a big one. And I know the NFL is a big chunk. Listen, I don't know. I feel like I'm defending Amazon lately, because I do feel like they've had shows that have broken through. No, I think they've had a good they've actually had a decent run. It just people watch it a lot less. Yeah, when we see the Nielsen numbers on Reacher, the new season, it's going to be number one for a few weeks. Yeah. What do you think you we sort of talked about the programming side on the like, or the content strategy? What would you if you had to bet? Do you think that Netflix will make some executive change between now and the end of the year? And and if the answer is yes, how high? Yeah. Up the pecking order? Does it go? I don't think that they will do it before the end of the year. I think they'll see what the results are for the rest of the year unless something emerges where they get an activist shareholder or something where they really have to act. I don't think we're at that yet. And at least the strategy is coming from coming from the top, you know, and they're doing this Greg and Ted, like they are fully on board with these content strategy shifts to the YouTubers and all this stuff. So I think they're going to see how that plays out. And also it becomes like, who do they go after? Like everybody keeps talking about Casey boys from HBO going over there. But if I'm Casey, I'm going to sit and ride out this Warner Brothers Discovery thing, because his deal is up next year. I've said this before. And they're going to have to figure out what to do with him, possibly before this deal closes. So he could be in a particularly good situation to extract a new deal, or to leverage another company. And possibly go there when his deal is up. So I don't know if he's going to make a move now. Before that before there's resolution there. Yeah. So all right. How much do you think this Netflix versus YouTube war escalates? You've done a lot of reporting about Netflix's attempts to bring YouTubers over. And in addition, YouTube's efforts to keep people on the platform? Do you think they YouTube increases their offers to their creators to keep them or do they just not get them? Well, I think we're in the middle of a bidding war. There's it has escalated, right? What happened? And I've reported on it a few times. What's happened over the last, you know, let's call it four to six weeks is YouTube went from wondering, should we respond to Netflix's pursuit of a lot of our biggest stars to we are going to and we're going to both make them a compelling offer, which is we will help to fund your programming either directly or indirectly. And also, we will threaten to punish you if you do these things. Because YouTube's concern is the programming goes day and date on Netflix and YouTube. And then when YouTube's talking to advertisers, it can't tell them, hey, this, you know, we are the only place you can come for these creators. And I think also perceptual in terms of perception, YouTube does not like that it presents Netflix as sort of the where you graduate to the major leagues and YouTube is the JV team and they don't like that. A related question will be, you know, there's been more and more noise about Disney and Amazon and even Paramount and others trying to get into the business get into this same and it like is it is it too little too late for any of them to have meaningful creator partnerships? Or is it just going to be all Netflix and YouTube? We did see Howard Stern go to HBO Max today, which is interesting. I thought maybe he would do a Netflix deal. But and Ted Sarandos huge, huge Stern fan. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so my first narrative for the fall is how big and how disruptive will Grand Theft Auto six be? I didn't know you were a gamer. I'm not a gamer, but I celebrate success. And this is one of the biggest properties in the history of entertainment. Yeah, you know, the the pre sales for this game doesn't go on sale until November. Pre sales are already at $260 million. There was a CNBC report from a company, an analytics firm called New Zoo that predicted $4.5 billion in sales. By launching. Yeah, that would put it up amongst the biggest properties ever. Yes, it will probably it will make more money this year than any movie has ever made in a calendar year. And it'll do it in six weeks. And the stock of take two, which is the parent of Rockstar Games, the stock has already doubled in the past three years, because people are anticipating this. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO has been talking about like, how do we prevent disruptions? In streaming services, when this comes online, because there's going to be such I mean, we saw this past week, when Netflix put up the trailer, and they put out a statement saying, quote, some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered. Like, you don't see that with the latest season of, you know, Wednesday. Yeah, I mean, I guess speaking, tied to our last conversation, do we think that the Grand Theft Auto trailer will be the biggest hit for Netflix in the third quarter? They're accessing it early, or they're getting something early? What does the Netflix deal with? I forget what that is. So your concern or question is that the enthusiasm for this game and the time and money spent on this game will affect other types of entertainment, much in the same way. That concern, I mean, obviously, you know, in a year where there's a World Cup like this year, right, that everyone that had delivered huge ratings in the US, it suppresses viewership. of other types of television, because people are watching that it did not seem to have a particularly negative impact on the box office. Maybe it did a little bit, I guess some of the bombs were during the World Cup. Yeah, and some of the studios did avoid that time, because of World Cup, but it did. But the movies that were hits were hits. Anyways, I do if I was releasing the Hunger Games movie in mid December or mid November, I'd be a little concerned about this, that it's going to take all the oxygen. If I was releasing Hexed, the Disney animation movie over Thanksgiving, maybe a little concerned, meet the Fockers or Focker in law. How many eight year olds are playing GTA? Their parents do we need their parents are? No, but I do you know what I'm saying? I think it'll it's just going to it's going to eat up the first Grand Theft Auto in 13 years, it's going to eat up the culture. Why do you think we never talk about individual game titles in the same way that for the most part that we do individual movies? It's just a subculture. People like you and I don't play games. And we're not familiar with it. People who are into gaming talk about it. And I just think that it's just a subset. But I mean, but I'm not talking about us specifically. I mean, the video game business is really interesting right now, because the console business is in the toilet. Yeah. And all of these publishers are not all but a lot of them are struggling. There's been massive layoffs. Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard, and that doesn't seem to be going great. They had huge layoffs this last month. I reported this last week, that Microsoft wants to do a blanket deal for film and television adaptations of Xbox titles, in part because they want money. Yeah, you're not excited. I think you're right, because it is seen as a subculture. There's got to be as many people who play Grand Theft Auto as watch a lot of these big movies. Now it's different games are more expensive. And so you get to a higher gross with a smaller base, especially with the way video games work now. Where you're often kind of continuing to spend money on the game. As you go, I just think that the business press, and I wouldn't say this about Bloomberg, we have two excellent video game reporters on my team. But for the most part, you know, you look across the journalistic outfits, and like, they'll have way more people covering media and entertainment than even like publishing than they do video games. Yeah, we're trying to change that. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, campaigns slow down, insights get buried, and opportunities get missed. That's why Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. To learn more, check out Accenture.com slash Spotify. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. 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I had been skeptical for a long time because it just doesn't seem like most senators or representatives would want to put their name on a bill that is giving money to Hollywood. But it feels like in this more nationalist moment where we can say we don't want jobs to leave the country, that there's enough momentum behind it. Yeah, I've been skeptical as well. I think the key factor here will be if Trump supports it. Because Trump has not said anything. Remember, he did his outcry. Last year, well, he was all about tariffs. He wants the tariffs to prevent the outsourced production. But nobody believes that's feasible. So if Trump if they can convince Trump, whether it's John Voight, or Sylvester Stallone, or someone else, David Ellison, and Ted Sarandos, and all because that was where it was funny during the Netflix Paramount bidding war for Warner Brothers were like, both sides didn't want to talk about the fact that they were also pushing for this tax credit in their meetings. But then on the slide would be like, by the way, we're really pushing for this. And like, don't report it. But David Ellison, Ted Sarandos really pushing. Well, there was a Politico report this weekend that this bill could be introduced in September, so very soon. And the key here, I think, is Georgia. Because Georgia, not a, you know, super liberal state has really been decimated by outsourced production. Obviously, the production went there and ran away to Georgia and has now run elsewhere. And that there's a Senate race there that is pretty contentious as well. So I think that if Georgia becomes a factor that Republicans can care about, maybe this becomes something that they push. And maybe it's something that Donald Trump gets behind. And obviously, it won't solve all the problems. It's, you know, if you give every state the same amount of credits, they still battle each other. We'd still have wars between states over production, but it but it would help with the London issue, right? Or the Eastern Europe. issue or the pick, or even the Canada issue, seeing as Trump is at war with Canada right now. So this could give him a something against Vancouver in Toronto. Yes, I know. We're both going to the Toronto Film Festival. Are we going to get like hassled at the border? You specifically will get hassled. Why me? I've just I've heard that people really look like a Trump supporter. You look you're just as much of a white male. I just think I've heard that there are issues with you in in the north. Sure. So yes, exactly. No, I'm huge in Canada. Trust me. The Niagara Falls area. They love me. All right. I want to talk about another topic. Yeah. And that is who is going to get the 2030 World Cup rights in the US. This is a huge issue, very important for all the media companies to be in on this. Fox, as we know, got a sweetheart deal for this year's English language rights. They only paid $485 million. And this was a make good for the 2022 tournament that was in Qatar and had to be moved to the winter because of the weather. So basically, FIFA gifted Fox this below market deal. Then it turns out the ratings are gigantic. And both on Telemundo and on Fox, Fox, Telemundo paid 600 million for the Spanish language rights this time. Both companies said they ended up selling $1.2 billion in ads. Yeah, that's a huge deal for this World Cup. Expected that the next one in 2030, maybe not as big because it's not going to be in the US, but still going to be big. And FIFA has had some preliminary talks with potential partners. The speculation is that they're going to bundle the English and Spanish language rights in the US to potentially get streamers involved, because obviously they could have both on their platforms. This is going to be resolved, I think, before the end of the year, and will be a pretty big deal. And I think it's going to be a pretty big deal. I think it's going to be a pretty big deal. I think it's going to be a big moment for whoever gets these rights. And I think it's probably not going to be Fox. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think the question is who's going to overpay for World Cup rights, because World Cup is all about location, at least for the if you're talking about the US rights. And so surprise, surprise, the US World Cup sets all sorts of records. And so then that is going to make it only about location, because of time zones. I mean, it's mostly about time zones, right? But that's what I mean. It's about time zones. So then the next one is Western Europe and North Africa. So the games will be on middle of the night, first thing in the morning, depending on when it is not, not a great time. The one after that, assuming they sell the two together is in the Middle East, these are going to be the ratings are going to go down a lot. And so it'll be very interesting, because I think because of the popularity of this summer's World Cup, companies will be willing to spend more than they will. It'll be the opposite of the fox situation, whereas they sort of got the obvious most popular World Cup in the US for a low price. And now you're going to have people overpay for World Cup or the ratings will go down. Yeah. And to be honest, I'm not, I think they will schedule a lot of those European games like at 10pm 11pm, which they did in this country, too, in order to get the weekend afternoon audience on the East Coast. And I don't think it's, it's not going to be like calamitous. It's not like they're in China or something. No, that the 2034 will the 2034 will be calamitous. Disney feels like the favorite here just because they always are with sports rights. But it also I think Netflix, I was about to say, let me finish. Yeah, perfect for Netflix. Yes, I was gonna say, I think it's between Disney and Netflix. The World Cup is the perfect event for Netflix. They always talk about other strategies built around big events. They're already doing the Women's World Cup in 2027. And I yeah, I think it's that would make a lot of sense for them. And what did we talk about in the beginning of this show? They need splashy things like part of the problem for them in Q2 was that everybody was watching the World Cup on Fox. And they had no they had no sports to speak of. Yeah, well, how dare you? What about the ringer sports adjacent programming? You know, that is lots of sports documentaries and podcasts. And the MLB All-Star Game. Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And the MLB All-Star Game that I didn't realize was on until it was over. Right. Oh, that was Q3. Okay. I think it's between Disney and Netflix. And I would not be surprised if Netflix came out. I mean, look, it could if YouTube really wanted to say fuck it, they could go for the World Cup to that. I think that we've talked about this before. I feel like if they if the World Cup could sell global rights, that would be the bidding war between YouTube and Netflix would be so outrageous. That it would be really interesting. But they would never do that. I don't think because no price that they pay would approach what they get going territory by territory. Oh, no, I think they could get more money. I just don't know that they're going to do really what would what would YouTube have to pay for global rights to the World Cup? I don't know. I'd have to do the math on what it what it is and all. Yeah, I don't even know. But the viewers, I mean, the viewership in Europe and Latin America, it would supercharge one of those businesses so much if they had global World Cup rights. Yeah, if we want to go smaller on things like the Tom Cruise comeback train, I got excited a little bit for the Days of Thunder sequel. But there's a reason why they're announcing that now. I think that he wants to get in front of this movie. So it doesn't feel like it's reactive if this movie figure doesn't work in in October. Are we how early is it to talk about Pam and Mike at Warner Brothers having trouble with a capital T trouble 2.0? They were the bells of the ball in 25. And they've probably been and they've been the probably the worst performing studio in 26. Paramount like doesn't have a lot of movies, but they haven't had notable bombs. So we'll say Warner Brothers is probably bringing it in the rear. This is like feast or famine with the two of them, especially with the transaction. It's not like I think they're on the hot seat or something. Maybe I'm wrong. Well, they didn't think that they would have to have these movies come out under their purview. Yeah, because Zaslav thought this deal would be done. Well, I think there's two it ties into two questions. One is like, can the momentum that the movie businesses have throughout the spring and summer continue throughout the rest of the year, which I guess GTA plays a factor in. And I feel like we're sort of in the middle of another one of those rumor mills about Studio Chief Roulette that oftentimes nothing actually happens, but maybe this time will be different. Yeah, there's a lot of rumors about them going to Netflix or them going to Sony or something like that. Well, tied to Tom Rothman, who's been going to retire for five years, or Dan Lin, who people have been gossiping about ever since he got there. I know. And a lot of that, I think, benefits them at Warners because obviously they want to be perceived as being in demand, and it gives them leverage with their owners as well. I think Practical Magic 2 will probably work. And I think that Dune will obviously work, although that's a legendary movie, so they don't really get that. Cat in the Hat, not sure about that one. We'll see. And then just Digger. I mean, the price. The price tag on Digger is pretty outrageous. It's like they're admitting to $130. I've heard well above $150. So we'll see what that ends up coming in at. I'm feeling good about giving you that in the draft. You are feeling good. You don't think it's going to turn into one of those like gotta-see-it-in-theaters moments for the filmmaker? Totally could. That is the risk. But I still feel good about it. Yeah. They're spending a lot of marketing, too. And bypassing the fall festivals, which is another narrative. They don't want a Joker repeat. They don't want a Joker. Nobody wants a Joker. But I'm not saying this is a Joker, too. But the narrative is interesting on fall film festivals. None of the studio commercial movies are going. And it's a real problem, I think. When we just had this conversation around Cannes, too, right? Where none of the studios. Yeah. Yeah, and we're going to see it. Toronto has some. You know, they just announced a Zack Snyder movie with a bunch of stars. But, like, I don't know, man. You hope to see some of these big studio swings go to the festivals. And they're just too terrified. They got to open these movies. And to be honest, I don't blame them. It's smart. I get why that was the lesson from Joker. But maybe the lesson was just make a better movie. It wasn't Joker. It was Elemental. It was Indiana Jones. Okay, but Elemental ended up doing okay. And Indiana Jones was an abomination. So, like, what are we talking about here? It ended up doing okay, despite. Despite the ding that it took at Cannes. Because people just weren't as enthusiastic as they thought. And it was the lowest opening Pixar movie. So, like, there's a direct correlation there. And if they had done a traditional marketing campaign and held the reviews like they do nowadays and put all the sycophant, influencer, trade, you know, blowjob people in their premiere to get the first reactions that are all positive, like studios do these days, they could have opened it. All right, some good narratives there. Excited for the fall. Thank you, Lucas. Thanks, Matt. We are back with The Call Sheet. Craig, our guy, Adam Aaron at AMC Theatres, he's at it again. A new press release crossed the wires today. Did you see this thing? I did. So, my movie that I just made and shot this weekend, I should just go right directly to Adam. Absolutely. On your iPhone. It's going to be a huge hit. No, they announced this new venture called Leawood Films, based on AMC Theatres being based in Leawood, Kansas. Mm-hmm. Where they are going to distribute films that are produced elsewhere. So, if you've made your movie, fully financed it elsewhere, they're not putting money into production, they will distribute it for you. It's building on their success with the Taylor Swift movie and what Markiplier did earlier this year, where he made his own movie, the YouTuber, he came on the show and talked about it, and then distributed it directly to theaters. That was a little bit different because he had a little, like, rented distributor, but AMC wants to essentially be the distributor for these movies, go around the studios, and direct-to-consumer get these movies out. I think it's actually a pretty smart maneuver. Why has no theater ever done this before? Well, first of all, the rules prevented the distributors from owning theaters and vice versa for many years, but as we saw with Sony buying Alamo Drafthouse. Well, because a long time ago, studios used to own the theaters, correct? Yeah, yeah. The reason. the Westwood Theater has a giant fox on top of it, the big village theater in Westwood, is because Fox owned the village theater in Westwood, and the studios used to do that, but then Paramount decrees, they couldn't own theaters, but now those have been abolished, so now the studios could own theaters, so there's no reason that vice versa, the theaters can't own studios, and that's what Adam is doing here. I think he's trying to carve out a niche where if you, random YouTuber, want to fully finance your movie like Markiplier, you don't need to go to a rented distributor to put it into theaters. AMC will do that for you, and they have, you know, their largest theater count in the country and in the world, and they can get this out for you, and it does seem from the. But what's the difference? Either way, they're going to take a distribution fee, correct? Why wouldn't you go to a more established distributor? They will take a distribution fee here, but I don't know what that's going to be. Presumably, they will undercut what the traditional distributors will do. They will charge, but the big thing is they can guarantee the theaters. The question here is if AMC is distributing your movie, will the other theater chains take it? Because that's the big question here. I don't know that they have the others on board yet, or if they're going to try their own venture. Is Regal going to have their own thing where you can go to them and get your movie on all the Regal screens? Yeah, but I have to imagine, you know, if you're a YouTuber and you have a huge following and you want to put out a movie, and AMC's going to just distribute it, if you have a huge following, Regal, I imagine, would want to get in on that profit. They're not just going to cut out, you know, popular IP or something just because AMC is distributing it, I would imagine. Yeah, but that's the best case scenario. I don't know, maybe if you have something that's a little weaker that they would have to kind of take a flyer on, I don't know that maybe they would want to support an AMC venture, but who knows? You know, desperate times, they want titles. And my prediction, I think this is actually a smart move, and there will be more and more of these as the movie and TV universe kind of disintermediates, there will be more of these YouTubers who try to release their movies on their own, and it's smart for AMC. If Sony can own Alamo Drafthouse, why can't AMC take a little piece out of Sony? Which is what they're doing here. Something like Markiplier, where he did Iron Lung, he didn't have a traditional distributor. He just had a booker book the theaters, but if you're going through AMC, you don't need a booker, because they are the theaters. This is good to know. I'll keep this in my back pocket. When the Ringer Fantasy Football Show makes their own movie, I might go right to Adam. You can motivate your millions and millions of fans to go to the AMC theaters, and Adam will help you out there. But no, I'm being serious. I think this is actually a good move, and it probably won't deliver many returns right now, but in the future, it's good to have. And they've actually got some big Hollywood names involved, like Toby Emmerich. He's advising, he used to run Warner Brothers, and Ricky Strauss, who was at Apple and Disney, and they've got Kyle Davies, as well. Like, there's some real people involved in this, so hopefully it's not just a press release, and they'll do something with this. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guests, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horlbeck, artists Jesse Lopez and Stefano Sanchez, and I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week. 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