The WarnerMount PR War and the 'Dune 3' Ticket Crash

This episode of The Town is presented by HBO Max. HBO Max presents The Pit, nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. The staff of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, Juggle Personal Crisis, Workplace Politics, and High Emotions in this Emmy-winning drama series. Don't miss the series USA Today called The Absolute Best Show on TV. The Pit is now streaming on HBO Max. It is Monday, August 24. Another big twist in the Paramount Warner Brothers merger drama, Rob Bonta, the California Attorney General, he first agreed to settlement talks with the Ellicins over the antitrust issues that have stalled that deal. The lawyers met on Friday in advance of formal talks that were supposed to start today, but then around midnight last night, Bonta gave a statement to the New York Times calling off the talks and blaming Paramount for leaking news of the Friday meeting to the Wall Street Journal, calling it a lack of good faith. Quote, "As soon as Paramount stops playing games and engages sincerely, my office is happy to meet again," Bonta said. Paramount then fired back, claiming it wasn't the source of the leaks. They actually put out their own statement, saying, "We remain hopeful and stand ready to continue good faith discussions to resolve the attorney general suit and move forward yada yada yada." So sounds a little like who stole the milk money in junior high, very petty here, but clearly this is all part of the negotiation game, both sides trying to get some leverage. Or is it what's actually going on here and the communication strategies in particular? Lucas Shaw is here to discuss he's our Monday guy. We're also going to get into the recent Dune Part 3 movie ticket debacle. Yet again, a big IMAX release by AMC has left some fans pissed off. They can't get the tickets that they want. The ticket site wouldn't work. And scalpers gobbled up a lot of the 70 millimeter tickets. Not great. So a little Dune 3 tickets and a lot of the Paramount versus California update, the PR strategies at work. From the ringer and puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back. Lucas, you are in San Francisco today. San Francisco. What are you doing there? By the way, you should be plugging your big conference. You don't use this platform to plug your shit. Do it. You just did it for me. No, give us the details. We interview a, I don't know, doesn't 15 of the most important people that all listeners of this podcast will know. It's coming up at the end of September, top of October. It's one of the reasons I'm up here. So we've got Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. We've got Disney President Dana Walden. We've got NBC universals, Donna Langley. We've got Ben Affleck. That's the big one for me. We just booked someone else that I think you're going to be pretty excited about that I'm not allowed to disclose yet. Casey Boyz from HBO. Adam Aaron. Was it Adam Aaron? No. We have not had Adam if Adam has the only comes on the town. Yes. If Adam has any interest in having a relationship, he knows where to find it. Okay. Well, it's a good event. You and I do a live show from there. So it's a good time for all I recommended highly. All right. So let's talk today about the latest in the Warner Mouth saga. Unbelievable. We got word on Friday. We're going to meet. We saw some reporting over the weekend about how one side or Paramount says not them, but somebody characterized this meeting and then boom, Rob Bonta issues a statement to the New York Times around midnight and says, no, we're not meeting. So what is going on here? I have my take on this. Please, you please enlighten us. No, I want, I want your take first. I have slightly different take on this. People are like, oh, was it Paramount? Was it not? They've denied it. Rob Bonta says this them. It sort of doesn't matter, right? You and I know how this works. Most of the time when people start pointing fingers at who leaked something, they're wrong. Or they did it. It's like the classic Trump, like how dare you do this. But in fact, that's what I do. Well, that's what people think about Bonta. I mean, the Paramount friendly interpretation here is that Bonta realizes he's dining out on this and getting himself on talk show after talk show and raising his profile and raising his name recognition, which as we know in California is sort of all that matters in politics. If people know who you are, they're much more likely to vote for you. So he, potentially, I'm not saying this happened, may have gin this up and called this off to get himself some more attention, which worked. The problem with the, because Paramount and a lot of people I think have been pushing the like Bonta just wants attention. This is all political blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And sure, maybe long term, there's some benefit. But like, Rob Bonta is going to win re-election as the attorney general of the state unless something crazy happens. And then he has nothing else to run for for a while. What about Congress? I guess he could run for Congress, but there's a governor's race right now that he did not jump into. So yes, he could run for Congress. He could run for Senate. I guess some of these are possible. Or he could try to be attorney general under, you know, President Newsom or President Shapiro or someone like that. Sure. All those things. I have to admit, my initial response when Bonta cancelled the meeting was, I kind of enjoyed it. Why? Because it poked the eye of Paramount. Because Paramount has spent two years now, but maybe longer than that because I've lost track between the Paramount. Well, between David Ellison's initial pursuit of Paramount, then his pursuit of Warner Brothers playing all sorts of games in the press and being very manipulative and like very, very gifted at it. But I think spreading a bunch of stuff that was like sometimes true and sometimes not. And really trying to use the press and public interest to their advantage in these days. I mean, just look at their pursuit of Warner Brothers, which they tossed out there a few times. Well, but let's go back to the Paramount Skydance merger because Sherry Redstone was absolutely manhandled by them. Yeah. Well, yes, she was manhandled by them. She also did her own leaking, but yes, the Ellisons have very successfully managed some of these. And so just seeing someone kind of like push back on them and try to use their same playbook against them, I have to say I kind of enjoy because when it was Netflix, Netflix didn't really do that. Like they weren't interested. It seemed like in sort of playing those games in quite the same way. We still don't know where some of these stories came from. And I would not be surprised. Netflix has a lot of lobbyists and special PR people in DC. Paramount has their own as well. One of the Paramount has a far more sophisticated kind of lobbying and legal group, at least when it comes to politics than Netflix did because that's who David Ellison had surrounded himself with in a lot of ways. Whereas Netflix had mostly avoided trying to kind of get in DC's cross here. Anyways, we don't need to talk about it. If you go on social media these days, there is an organization called Neighbors for strong communities. Have you seen these ads? They're random advocacy groups. They're pushing, it's anonymously funded and they're pushing for the Warner Mount merger. And they won't say who is funding them. Now Paramount says it's not them. I would not be surprised if ultimately it linked back to some LLC called Larry's Lanai pineapples or something like that. This stuff is all very thorny because if you remember the day before or like the week Ted Sarandas testified at the Senate over that deal, there was a report that came out that was leaked to deadline that was all about sort of like Netflix being pro-trans and peddling LGBT stuff. If you talk to people in Netflix, they're convinced that Paramount was indirectly behind that. I have no evidence of that. And I'm really reluctant to get into like, unless you can try it to the person, I don't want to tie it to the person. Exactly. And the day that Rob Bonta sued, remember that was the day that we learned that David Ellison is putting together this coalition to get a federal tax credit in DC. So like the timing of that was fishy as well. And when I pointed that out, I got in a lot of trouble. So let's just not let's just stick to the facts which are that Paramount has waged very effective campaigns eventually. They've they've often they're I'd say the trajectory for Paramount has tended to be over confidence at the beginning kind of like screw it up but eventually get their way and very effective kind of use of the press and the media and of lobbying. And so I don't know who leaked what. I just think it's funny to see someone else kind of almost doing the same thing right back at him. It's not great for the people stuck in limbo. I get that but no, it's it's awful for people who are sitting there waiting if they're to see if their job is going to be eliminated or if they can buy the movie project that they're competing with for their studios to buy or if they are looking at an potential opportunity elsewhere and deciding whether to move which a lot of these people are. So it's it's just a it's the whole thing is a bad situation. And I I just I wonder if all of this like if it's if they're just playing for the chess here and Bonta is looking down the line because keep in mind this is all normal in litigation like my colleague Eric Gardner made this joke online like we've reached the stop playing games portion of the settlement negotiation because this is what happens. One side accuses the other of leaking this is going on in the range CIA lawsuit. Where, you know, they're accusing each other of leaking and one of them accused them of leaking to me and I was like, "Guys, I wish I was not, that was not the case!" And there's other, like this whole Mark Ruffalo anti-Semitism thing is part of this as well. Because, you know, obviously, Mark Ruffalo's comments about, you know, linking Oracle and some of their support of Israel and all this stuff to this merger, not great. You know, he says, "Adimately, he's not anti-Semitic." Trump says pretty adamantly that they think he is, but that's a debate that they would like to have. Right. Because it completely distracts from the criticism of the deal. Yeah. Exactly. And that's, I've made this point before. The political stuff is actually good for the elephants because it takes the focus away from the merits of the case, whatever they may be, and puts it on other things that can be explained away. So, deep down, they hope Mark Ruffalo keeps yapping his mouth. It's good and bad because I believe you have said in the past on this show that you think that the elephants politics and their occurring favor with Trump are a big reason why they have this lawsuit, where they may be been a little more diplomatic with that, that they wouldn't be. So, the politics catch both ways. Well, this is so clearly kind of pretext to a settlement conversations, and it's just like, who is going to have maximum leverage, and what are they going to ask for, right? Do you think that this kind of helps pave the way in any way for Paramount making structural concessions? Yeah. They know they're going to have to. But what the Journal reported this weekend was that the two things Bonta wants are divestitures of some cable channels, they did not say which ones, and structurally to keep Warner Brothers separate and not interfere in the operations of Warner Brothers. I think that one, you know, a little bit more difficult because what's the point in owning two studios if you can't manage them bold, but they know, I think Paramount knows they're going to have to sell some cable networks. So, that's going to include CNN, they say no way, but maybe if it gets a deal done, sure. I just, I don't know, I don't know that we know anything more today than we do than we did last week on that front. It's going to be really funny if the conclusion of all this is like David Ellison has to sell food network in a GTV, like we go through all of this, and the outcome is he sells some of these these networks that we never talk about in the context of this deal. Yeah, that is enough. I don't know that that's going to be enough, because I don't think that makes the Democrats go away. Rob Bonta is looking for a political win here. He wants something that he could put in an ad when he runs for Congress, or when he's up for re-election, or when he's running for governor in four or eight years. So, I just don't think that's going to be enough, but we'll see. I mean, the interesting dynamic to watch is the dynamic amongst the politicians and Bonta, because you now have the three most prominent voices on the Democratic left that are relevant here. You have the current governor, you have the incoming likely governor, and you have the mayor of LA all saying, settle this. Right. And the longer he goes on this, the more those voices could get louder. And you know, on the on the Paramount side, what is it? 3736 days until this is a meaningful problem for Ellison. October 1st is the deadline where they're going to have to start paying money. So, if they see this as a 30 something day plan to get to a resolution, then they're not in the danger zone quite yet. I guess it depends on how long you think settlement toxic. This is part of the settlement talks. This is part of the gamesmanship. I understand, but they are not, but I'm talking about like meaningful trading of ideas. Right. And maybe that can come together really quickly. Maybe it can be something that you do in a week. But seeing as it feels like they're going to be pretty far apart at the start, it probably takes longer than that. The last thing Bonta wants is states withdraw from this. And I don't think it's going to happen. But if that does, then that puts additional pressure on him. I'm sure that that the Ellison team is looking for any and always to apply. I know they're going to hear this and start calling them. I'm sure they already know I'm sure they already have. I'm sure they've called every single person they know who could possibly whisper in the ear of Rob Bonta. And they are all on his call sheet not getting their calls returned right now. It is not a coincidence that you saw a steady drum beat of prominent Democratic politicians coming out and saying satellite. Yes, exactly. This episode is brought to you by peacock presenting all her fault nominated for seven Emmy awards, including outstanding limited series and nominations for both Sarah Snook and Dakota fanning. NPR praises the series exceptional performances and the rap calls the series an adrenaline filled psychological thriller full of jaw dropping twists and turns all her fault is streaming now only on peacock. All right, let's move on to the other big topic from this past week that I have an opinion on, which is the the debacle of ticketing for 70 millimeter I max we saw with the Odyssey. And now we've seen it again with Dune part three people are pissed they want tickets to something that they there aren't that many tickets for and they are flooding the servers and AMC cannot handle it. The question is why can AMC not handle it? It's the same discussion we have every time there's an issue around concert tickets when there's a lot of questions a lot of demand and limited supply this is just the concert businesses problem coming to the movie business and if anything I would do this as like a weird thing to say but like huge positive for the movie business. I know it's so funny I talked to Adam Aaron at AMC about this and first of all he pointed out that they sell five million movie tickets a week so it's not an insignificant amount and they're having problems on essentially four theaters the big four I max 70 millimeter theaters New York L.A. couple others that those are being overrun and the fact that they sold 75% of their available inventory for opening weekend for a movie that doesn't come out for four months like that is a problem he will take the week for a business that as he told us last year. They have a what 20% occupancy typically of these theaters teens to 20% like of course they're going to take some people pissed online do you have a because in the concert business is like not really an answer for this right it's it's it's what's inspired all types of legislation one could argue it's why the the DOJ kind of. Started looking at live nation again which owns ticket master but the music business hasn't can't really solve for it do you think there's a solution on the movie business. More theaters that show this and Adam told me that they're trying to figure it out he's talked to Rich Gelfon about it at i max they're trying to figure out because it's not a theater problem it's a projector problem we did a whole episode on this two weeks ago you can listen to that they they're no manufacturers for i max 70 millimeter. Projectors anymore so there's two separate issues here there's the ticketing issue and then there's the supply and demand issue. He said they're going to fix their website he says there's like a two million dollar fix where they can make it better so that people don't get locked out and there aren't you know people buying. Twenty tickets when other fans go without there's stuff going around reddit of some guy who apparently bought like 80 tickets for one of the i max 70 millimeters of dune and they can stop that via their ticketing system with a little bit more investment that doesn't change the demand problem and the demand problem is what we talked about there's only a couple of these movies per year so if that investment if that so the investment. It is essentially betting on the future where there may be more of these which I think if you build them they will come the movies will come and it's about getting. But he's going to build them do we're going to have Christopher Nolan start a company that I made that joke I made that exact joke. I don't think it's a joke I think he could you think he could he would raise money and starting manufacturing firm for i max projectors why not if martin scorsese has a you know film preservation company that's sure i mean if you were younger i may like why can't Jim Jim camera covers and cares much about 70 millimeter or like Quentin or can we can we have a bunch of these directors band together well no one's going to make more than a hundred million on Odyssey way more don't. aggregate me do not aggregate me on that i've not done the reporting but he's going to make a shit ton of money on the Odyssey maybe plows it into an i max camera manufacturing company maybe he could do that and then second he could buy city walk and turn it into a good mall. Christopher Nolan should not have to spend time in a crappy mall like city walk. Better than that he can just talk the to don a language about that she doesn't care because city walk makes money if Christopher Nolan care is I think she'll care okay maybe he may be perfectly content having city walk. Be what it is because then he's allowed to just blend in yeah it's still embarrassing to see those videos of him walking from the parking lot like he's better than that you know who could start a 70 millimeter company. to reinforce his love of cinema and Hollywood. - Who? - David Ellison. - Oh, that would be great. - He has the money. - That would be the hero of Hollywood. - He would all the people who've decided that he's the villain or at least some of them would swing to support him. - Yeah, maybe free pitch for David Ellison. You don't have to give me any fee. - Maybe Larry Ellison could make this part of one of his data centers for Oracle. It's like half data center and half projector company on the outskirts of Texas. That would be amazing. Yeah, so Adam Aaron our guy, he wrote on the Twitter that to "protect all our guests, your scalping days are numbered," he says. We are monitoring eBay and other sites. We will do our best to cancel your tickets and close your stub's account. It is a violation of our ticketing terms to scalp AMC tickets. I think that's gonna work. No, God forbid you lose your AMC stub's membership. - I don't think it's gonna work. - No. - I mean, it's the same problem that the music industry has had. It hasn't stopped there. If there is demand, the scalpers or resellers in the parlance of our times will come in and take advantage. - Yeah. It's very hard to come up with a fix beyond limiting who can access a sale, which people don't wanna do. - Yeah, I know. I think they could limit ticket buying though. - How? - Significantly limit. No, just like, instead of Joe Blow being able to walk up and buy 80 tickets or whatever. - You're limited. - Oh, you mean just limit how many tickets you can buy. - Yeah, you limit names or credit cards or whatever and try to apportion it a little more equally. I know that won't stop the bots. I know that won't stop creative people, but it would at least try. Craig, do you have your tickets yet? - No, because I couldn't get them and the one bummer, I agree with everything you guys are saying and it's a good thing and demand is good, but it's just more exclusionary now than it's ever been before because normal people cannot go see a movie now in the format that they are told they should see it in. It's really hard to do that for a normal movie fan and that does kind of suck. You have to do it four months in advance and even then you probably won't get it, which is kind of a bummer. - You know, I'd like you to get into a time machine and come back to the '90s with me where we literally had to stand outside the theater for hours and hours in order to get into the movie and our seats were not reserved. If you were last in line, you were sitting front row. So you had to be there in the morning to see the evening show if you wanted to get into that like a very popular movie. - Yes, but in the '90s, every theater was the same, more or less, right? There was no IMAX 70 millimeter. - There were bigger theaters. Like I would go to a theater in Orange County that was considered the cool big theater and everyone wanted to see the movies there. - Now at least, if you're savvy about this stuff, you can get tickets in advance or if you don't get 'em, just get 'em for later in the week. - Yeah, I also, I don't know. I'm not as worried about people having access to the 70 millimeter IMAX. If you can get, if you can see it in IMAX, if you can see it, like, I don't know. You don't have to see it in one particular format. - And if you don't know, I think it's pitched that way though. It is sold to you as, like, you have to see it in IMAX and if you don't, people will wait to go see it. And then you've now waited a month to see a movie that everybody's already talking about and all the plot lines are spoiled online. - Look, obviously it would be better if there were more of those theaters. I do think that the vast majority of people are content to, like, see it on a normal screen. And if you care so much that you have to see it on that one screen, then yeah, you may have to wait or buy early. That's where, you know, that's why super fans are willing to spend more money in all these companies, whether it's a studio or a record label or a theme park or trying to squeeze more money out of them. - Yeah, there's gotta be a way for AMC to profit up this. - Yeah, right, how can we make money out of this? It's just interesting that the directors themselves are telling their fans, this is the way you should see the movie. Ryan Kugler's talking about how he films centers. No one is, you know, the first full movie on IMAX 70. So it's like, it is communicating to fans directly from the guy who made it. This is how you should see it. - And you can't. - The converse, if you see it on a regular screen, you're not, you're not a big fan, you have missed out, you have, correct. - And overall, until then, it's sort of a comms issue for AMC. They need to, like, better communicate and, like, set people up for this. And to be honest, they should hire the paramount apparatus to handle the AMC communication strategy. They'll start shitting all over Regal. They'll start going after people personally. It'll be great. Look at you just getting, we're, both of us job creators. We are, we are the true job creators in this economy. - Of this, of this paramount deal, where the one's coming up with this new jobs for everyone. - Yes. All right, Lucas, thank you. - Thanks, Matt. - We're back with the call sheet, Craig. Did you happen to catch any of the Rosio Donald episodes of Jimmy Kimmel live last week? - I did not. I did catch Rosio Donald on Amy Polish podcast Good Hang, which was recently. - Oh, good company, man. Listening to the Ringer podcast. - Little plug. I think it was really good though. Those videos popped on social, the Rosie and Amy videos. - Yes. So that is interesting. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole on YouTube watching clips of Rosie. And honestly, it reminded me how good she is at this. She is a very good talk show host. The Trump stuff was funny, but it wasn't just the Trump stuff. It was a lot of her demeanor with the guests. It was her jokes off, riffing off people like, she's good. And the ratings for this week of guest hosting, we don't have the final Nielsen's for the full week, but the first week, she got almost two million viewers and she beat Fallon in the 18 to 49 demo. - Wow. - Which is hilarious considering I think that people at Disney were probably pretty nervous about having her on ABC given that she is like, number one Trump target. And they are involved now in litigation over the FCC's actions against Disney related to Kimmel. - Do you think they would have tried to throw their body in front of that? - No, I mean, I don't know, I don't want to say. But Rosie is certainly not the average guest host for that show. They are used to be getting people like Anthony Anderson or Coleman Domingo or people that are not controversial. - She has a much stronger political sensibility. - Yes, but shocker, it turned out that the ratings were good and people liked that and Kimmel's audience was into it. So my prediction today is I think this is actually going to lead to something for Rosie. - Oh. - She posted something on her Instagram about how one of the tabloids in the UK said that she was now jockeying for a late night job and she responded saying no interest in late night, but I'm interested in daytime, which obviously she had her daytime show in the '90s that was very popular. I don't think that will happen. I think the traditional daytime show is kind of going away or the economics are not what Rosie might demand in that market, but my prediction is Rosie O'Donnell will have a popular podcast within the next year. And I say that knowing full well that she already had a podcast that she stopped doing in 2024, it didn't have very good guests. It was distributed by I Hard. It was not a big deal, but I think she will get a major deal for a major podcast with a major partner and will have a thing in the celebrity podcast world based in part on the performance of this past week. - I mean, a high end glossy looking podcast is basically the same exact thing as a daytime talk show. And so if that's produced properly, it will effectively be the same thing and she'll just have even more freedom on it. She could just do the Kelly Clarkson thing. Like Kelly Clarkson has the daytime talk show that's successful, something like that. Drew Barrymore. - Yeah, but that's a traditional syndication deal. Like Kelly Clarkson has a, I believe it's with the NBC owned and operated stations and they pick up the show. The whole syndication model for these talk shows is kind of falling apart. We're seeing them one by one fall off in part because YouTube and Netflix and places like The Ringer are creating shows that are directly competitive and now often have bigger and more popular guests than the actual talk shows can get. So Rosie has credibility in the celebrity world. She could get bigger guests. It might be a little complicated as Rosie lives in Ireland, she's got kids in school but and also she claimed that she didn't want to live in this country while Trump was president. So maybe it doesn't happen till 28, end of 28, but it'll happen. - I mean, look, there's all these talk show hosts that are losing their jobs, the Stephen Colbert's and whatever's coming next. - I wonder if they would ever try to start something that's like a YouTube or a Netflix or some type of podcast series where they build their own talk show kind of-- - It's the Conan model. - Yes. - It's the Conan model. - But something a little more organized. - Conan's making more money now than he ever did on his show. Like, it's a great model. - Yeah, I wonder if like the John Stuart's and Colbert's of the world will ever try to do their own thing in a more organized fashion. - Yeah, we'll see. - But okay, my prediction, Rosie has a podcast. - Rosie's back. - Rosie's back. Rosie's officially back. All right, that's the show for today. I wanna thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horoback, artist, Jesse Lopez, and Stefano Sanchez. And I wanna thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week. (upbeat music)