Welcome to Skydance! Movies, TV ... and Massive Debt

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impact the Home Depot has it make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want all waiting for you at the Home Depot it is Wednesday October 7th it finally happened as of yesterday Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery are now Skydance we predicted that name on this show and you can see it in Burbank the WB water tower now says a Skydance corporation I'm in New York City I'm in New York City I'm in New York City I'm in New York this week the offices of CNN and the old HBO building both have the Skydance branding on them kudos to whoever stayed up all night for that one yesterday David Ellison and his executive team made the rounds in a town hall and a media get-together and they're here in New York tomorrow they'll ring the bell on the stock exchange what they're not talking about at least not when they can avoid it is the massive debt bomb that is hanging over this company the complicated financing that led to this media behemoth it saddled this company with nearly 80 million dollars and it's not just the company that's the media behemoth it saddled this company with nearly 80 billion dollars in debt on day one and that debt is going to influence every aspect of how this mega studio and mega streamers run remember paying down debt was a big focus of the previous ownership so much they decided to sell the whole thing when the economics of the TV business turned out to be weaker than they envisioned Skydance is a bit different it has all that Larry Ellison money backing it as well as the Middle East money and they sold a bunch more in debt this week but interest rates have been going up which the the company every year it's a lot of movies and TV shows they could have been making or does any of this matter Ellison and his co-CEO Enon Kreitz who came over from Mattel they say they have a plan for this financial tightrope they can make it all work others are more dubious Fitch the ratings agency they downgraded Skydance because of those fears and as of today the company's newly traded stock has dropped more than 10% since its debut just a couple days ago so today we're going to get into that Skydance financials with rich Greenfield the analyst from light shed media a usual disclosure when we talk about Skydance one of its backers Redbird Capital is a big investor in puck where I work today it's the Skydance financial tightrope all that debt and could Hollywood's new mega studio come crashing down from the ringer and puck I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town okay we are here with Richard Greenfield the analyst from light shed media returning champion to the town it's been a while rich has it not you know it's been a little bit we took a little break we took a little break as this all unfolded and I was more focused on whether this deal would get done but now it is done this behemoth of a media company exists it is trading publicly although the stock isn't doing so great so far and I wanted to have you all on because we need to get into the financials of this new company I don't think people in Hollywood and elsewhere really understand the tightrope that this company is walking we knew about it with Warner Brothers discovery we knew that the financial projections of the television business almost immediately did not add up and they looked at a pretty pricey debt price tag on that deal 50 billion dollars that they were constantly trying to pay off this sky dance deal makes Warner Discovery look like you know the the most a-grade bonds you've ever bought in your life give us the lowdown on exactly how much debt is involved in this deal and what this company needs to deliver to pay down that debt I mean really Matt this is deja vu all over again right I mean from the starting point you know the the the irony of all of this is when David Zaslav closed the transaction to merge Warner Media with Discovery Communications they started with 12 billion of EBITDA and the pitch if you remember back was hey we're going to grow 12 billion to 14 billion over the next few years that is their earnings before a bunch of other things are taken out that is generally a measure of profitability for sure and that number instead of growing from 12 to 14 went to nine and a half last year sad trombone for David Zaslav and even more so more painful it actually never reached 12 billion again like it was straight down like it never got it's not like they went up and it crashed it just never went up and so what's the irony here is that you're starting the combined company now when you put paramount with Warner Brothers Discovery so you've added yet another company together now on the lower base that you're starting with we're back once again to 12 billion of EBITDA so the cash flow 12 billion dollars is what you're starting with they think they grow it you know they think they can grow from 12 to 20 over the course of the next several years by 2030 that's obviously a very aggressive target now that includes 6 billion dollars of cost savings but remember Zaslav and team had billions of cost savings too oh yeah we saw the firings happen every six months or so and remember the write offs of films and shutting down productions and all of that CNN plus everything so the the problem wasn't realizing the cost savings the problem was that the underlying floor of earnings kept falling the melting ice cube of television correct and that problem and even the investment that was required in streaming was larger I mean everything got worse and so you know there was obviously real challenges in living up to expectations and I think what investors are trying to figure out and I think you commented in terms of the stock being under pressure I think the main thing we're hearing is skepticism of whether this company can really grow revenues top line revenues can they really grow it at 5% over the course of the next several years can they grow that EBITDA double digits over the next several years obviously those are growth rates that other media companies certainly legacy media companies have not been able to achieve like that would be a very aggressive growth rate it's obviously a very ambitious team yeah give us the argument give us what they are saying we so there was a media gaggle yesterday where they talked to the media about basically the press release come to life and you know what their plans are we're going to invest invest invest the creative community is our friend yada yada yada you guys got your own explanation the analyst community how do they plan to grow the revenue of this company to where this deal makes sense and 79 billion dollars worth of debt makes sense I would say there was no material there was nothing materially new in that discussion yesterday I think the answer though let's let's break it down because 75% plus of this company on day one is coming from the legacy linear TV business so that's CBS which is a good strong asset TV stations tied to CBS and and a whole host 50 cable networks that are not good assets I mean are they do throw off a lot of money 700 million dollars a year from CNN all the garbage Viacom networks like MTV the zombie networks that are playing ridiculousness all day long they still throw off money correct so the question really becomes you know when you listen and this goes back to something you've heard from David Ellison really from the first day that he was pitching this transaction and he's used this term bending the curve and so let's let's dig into what does it mean to bend the curve on the decline of linear television I think that is essentially code for hey we are going to use the baseball bat of the NFL and we're going to use that to drive better pricing for our cable networks they're basically going to say hey you want the NFL you are going to give us much better rates on all of these cable networks that you don't really watch or don't really want to take anymore or aren't watched all that much anymore but it wasn't paramount already doing that they were but so now you're going to do that across the Warner networks too and you can get rid of a lot of the sports stuff that they bought at Warner because they lost the NBA sure did they just pay a lot you know Warner was doing deals for like sub licensing college football playoff rights from Disney now again Matt Matt, you just contracted those. You can't just say, sorry, I don't want that. Right. Could you get out of Major League Baseball when that contract comes up in a couple of years? Like there are certainly things you could do, although I will say it does sound like if you know, if you're listening to what Paramount says, they really like the sports business. And so I think the reality is, well, I'm not sure how many sports they're going to keep on cable television. My guess is they're going to try to lean in and sort of push more and more of those sports rights from cable over to broadcast and how quickly they can do that, whether they can open up current deals. It's going to be interesting. They are using it to strengthen the power of broadcast television. And that is something I think you're going to see CBS use sports because. The stronger they make CBS, just like they did, you know, last Saturday, I haven't seen the ratings yet, but they simultaneously aired UFC on Paramount Plus and on CBS. It's the first time they did the complete card on CBS. And so this trend of using your broadcast network for linear sports distribution, I think you're going to see CBS really lean into that. And my guess is use that as. As a hammer back, whatever you want to call it, to really try to push as much leverage. And again, you're at the you're at the tail end of the cable network world, right? Like this, this ecosystem is eroding. How far can you push? Because if I'm sitting there at DirecTV, I'm going, hey, guys, I'll take I'll take CBS. I'll take CNN. Do I really need these other forty nine networks anymore? Like the answer is no. And the answer is throw in your other streaming services for free or give us a. Package that everything is either in or out or allow us to tear it so that people can opt out of your garbage channels if they don't want them. The leverage seems to be moving the other direction. That's what I don't totally understand. And look, the proof in some ways, Matt, because I do want to give you credit for that glass comics. I think it's important on the leverage is moving the other way. Look at what's happened at Disney. Disney has basically said we want to keep the power and strength of ESPN and ABC, but we're going to concede on all of. The non-sports networks. And so Disney's been pretty public. You know, if you listen to Hugh Johnson and other executives at Disney, they've been pretty clear that the headwinds facing the non-sports cable networks are growing for exactly this reason. They're getting deep. Like when you think about YouTube TV doing a sports package, most of the channels from Disney are not included. Right. The question is going to be as these renewals come up with CBS or sorry, with the combined Skydance, I'm going to, you know. With the combined Skydance portfolio of networks, they will certainly get for now because of sports, they will certainly get TBS, TNT and CBS included in something like a sports bundle. What happens to all those other networks? And I think that's going to be the big question is like how how much can how much leverage does does Skydance, how much power do they try to throw around? Remember, there is the consent decree that they're supposed to negotiate. That's what I was going to ask. Doesn't the consent decree require. Them to keep these negotiations separate or is that all bullshit? Well, you know, funny enough, it requires them to keep the cable network discussion separate. Bonta, which was always odd to us, somehow missed the most important leverage point of the prior Paramount and the new Skydance. The leverage point is CBS. Right. And just to be clear, that is not technically carriage. That is retrans fees because technically the broadcast channels are free. But there is a equivalent fee. That the carriers pay for CBS. And again, the interesting part of this whole conversation is it relies on one piece of content, literally football and NFL. And so the question becomes, will the NFL how does the NFL I mean, I'm sure the NFL has thought about what we just said, 80 billion dollars of debt, six, seven times leverage. Everything is sort of based around the power of the NFL. Does the NFL, which has a change of control through August 20, 27. Do they trigger it and force CBS to pay more? Well, wait a second. Jerry Carnale said last week at the Bloomberg event that they're not going to do that and they're going to wait till the next negotiation. I mean, again, it's not Paramount or now Skydance's decision. It's the NFL's decision. Now, look, he seemed pretty confident, though. I don't know if that's true or not. But one of the other analysts put out a report saying it actually makes sense for them to wait because they'd rather have everything up at the same time and completely rebalance the NFL rights. And dole it out as they see fit to everyone at the same time. There's no doubt as you look at the structure of how the media world has played out, there's a lot of logic to rethinking. Like, do you need two different owners of packages on Sunday afternoon? Should you build an event package for someone like Netflix that has, you know, an international package for YouTube? Like we could go through all the mechanics. We don't have to get into it here. Yeah, yeah. This is not an NFL pod. But but it is the most important piece of content. And that makes sense. So let's get into the streaming aspect here. But first, they asked me this on CNBC this morning. And I think I said, yes, they are going to consider selling stuff. But do you think Skydance is open for business if people want to come in and pluck off different cable networks? See, I would argue you're wrong because they've said no to CNN. But we know they've talked to people about BET, Comedy Central, some of these others. The problem is, you know, look at the multiple that A&E just traded to Hearst, you know, a low single digit multiple of EBITDA. That would actually work against them. They're leveraged. So that's six and a half times plus leverage ratio. So debt relative to their cash flow, their EBITDA, that's like six and a half plus times. If you sell assets, if you sell assets at three times, your leverage goes up. So the reality is, sure, if somebody walked in and said, oh, I'll. I'll buy Comedy Central at 10 times EBITDA. I'm sure they would sell it tomorrow. But the reality is seeing where we are in the life cycle of cable networks, it's very hard to see anyone paying the multiples that would need to be paid. Sure. Could you sell something small like Food Network to a Versant or an HGTV? Maybe there's small one offs to be done. But in terms of like major transactions to really to delever, to your point, I think those are. Very hard to achieve. And I think they're more likely to harvest cash slash the cost structure even further of these assets and use it as much as they can to delever. And the question is, how much can you cut the cost structure while then trying to use the hammer to drive the distribution fees on a channel that has less and less content? Like those would seem to be at odds with each other. Right, Matt? Like. And these contracts have guaranteed content in them. You have to have a certain amount of original. Programming on these networks, and maybe they renegotiate that. This episode is brought to you by the new movie, The Social Reckoning. 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Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects. Kaplida is for adults with major depressive disorder. and HBO Max are profitable services and growing. So do you see the upside, or the better question is, how much upside do the Skydance people see in their streaming business? Because as Ellison said in this press meeting, they are not going to create one service tomorrow. They are gonna continue to bundle these services together, or not continue, they're going to bundle them because they need the revenue from both of those services as they exist today, and there is a risk that when you combine them, some of those subscribers go away. So what is the plan there, and how likely is it to work? - I think you really have to look at the Walt Disney Company as your guide, and no one's really done that, which is surprising to me, because what Disney's done, right, they took Disney+ and Hulu, and they effectively jacked up the price over the last three or four years, dramatically of each service, while keeping the bundled price much, much more compelling. And so they've made it, over time, they basically have walked you up to a combined price by raising the individual prices so aggressively. - Well, and they eventually will get rid of Hulu. - But again, you couldn't do that until you made it so that a consumer looked at it and said, "Oh my God, why would I just subscribe to one, when the bundle is a dollar more?" - Yeah. - And so I suspect what will happen is a very similar progression, where the HBO Max and Paramount+ prices go up far faster than normal, while the bundle of the two of them goes up very slowly. The question for Paramount+ and HBO is over the course of, you know, as you think about the course of the next several years, they have to grow, call it, and they have to grow. And so I think if they can do that, and if they can do that with the $100 plus billion of studio and streaming EBITDA, they have to more than double it. And look, I can't tell you what the studio slate in 2030 is. I'm sure they can't either, 'cause they honestly just don't know. You know, making movies, you know, look, the movie business, it's funny, I was sitting at Lucas' screen time conference last week, and, you know, seeing all of these magazines that, you know, they're giving out, you know, a hundred percent from pre-pandemic. So box office is back, but attendance is not exactly robust. - No, but the trend line is encouraging for the industry. There is a path there to a real studio business. And I want to get into that, because they are promising these 30 movies a year, and they now have their leadership in place. And we've seen these initial moves that they've made with, you know, they're doing a GI Joe movie with Bradley Cooper. They're doing another Transformers with Michael Bay. Like, we see the strategy here. They're doing the Warner assets and having all of that IP. They can build a real studio business. And the question I have is, are all of these economic forces that are putting pressure on this company ultimately going to doom the studio strategy because there just won't be enough to invest how they need to invest? - You still have the owner of this company, the majority shareholder, is one of the wealthiest humans on planet earth. - Sure. But he's also challenged as well. The Oracle stock price and the Oracle debt has been under fire because of this Skydance transaction that Larry has been funding. So does this all require Larry to just keep putting unlimited money into this company? Or is there a real business that can allow for the sufficient studio investment while also paying down the debt? That is the question. - I think you're going to need to do both, right? This, you know, honestly, like- - You know, Redbird just put in $4 billion extra. I mean, it's funny, $4 billion is a lot of money. Seems like small potatoes in a deal of this size. - How do you project? I mean, on paper, Superman was going to be amazing. It wasn't, you know what I mean? - It was fine. Supergirl was not fine. - Superman did not make money. - Superman made a small amount of money in theaters. It got to like six, 700 million. It costs like 200, 250. - That is not how you get to a doubling of evil. - It's not, you're right. - Let's just be very clear. Restarting the Superman franchise so you can make four or five more Superman movies, that's how you get to profitability there. - If you can make good content. I just want to be clear, just because you want to make more movies doesn't mean you make more profits in movies. - So wait, Rich, are you saying only make the hits? The secret of Hollywood, only make the hits. - I mean, how many times have we heard this? I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make more movies and I'm only going to make the good ones. We're not going to make the bad ones. And you know, look, look at Disney. I mean, some things have worked this year really well and other things have been- - No, I know, but we're not talking about Disney. We're talking about a company now that is so saddled with debt that they have a very, very thin needle to thread. So I think people in Hollywood should know how challenged this fight is going to be to make Skydance work. - I mean, think about what has happened. Stock is down over 50% over the last year. If you look at the predecessor Paramount to the new company Skydance, you know, you look at across the whole sector, you know, look at the pressure on Disney, which is, you know, at, I don't know, at 12-year lows. Comcast is at 13-year lows. Like this industry is under real pressure, Matt. There is no magic bullet. Adding Leverage, I mean, look, Leverage was not the friend of David Zaslav and the management team that tried to do something new and exciting when Warner Brothers Discovery was formed. Now look, Paramount is obviously saying all the right things. They have a wildly ambitious CEO and the founder of Skydance in David Ellison. You see how he's been incredibly successful, you know, getting these deals done against pretty tall odds, whether it was getting Paramount, you know, ending up, fending off Netflix, winning this deal, beating the government, one after another. - Well, having Larry in your corner, certainly helps. I mean, that seems to be the differentiator here. They were able to make proposals and deals that were better than what Netflix offered. And they were able to strong arm the government and get their way. - But the challenge now is not, you know, this is less about buying things. Now it's about operating and sure. - Right. - You can cut costs. - Well, they have an experienced operator in Enon Kreitz, who you, what did you call him on your pod? You called him. - We called him the fix. - The fixer. - The fixer. - Yeah. I was thinking of sort of a Ray Donovan, like, you know. - He's the hatchet man, right? - Sure. - He's going to be the guy that you don't, if trust me, if you work at Paramount and Warner brothers and you get a call from Enon, bad news. No, no good coming from that call. - You ever shake Enon's hand? Like it's a serious handshake. - He is a man's man for sure. - But look, this is about operating and they have to figure out how they slow the decline of a business that others have not been able to slow. And they need to have six repeated long-term success in the production of new content for the movies and for streaming. That is not easy. I mean, think about Disney. They thought putting Marvel and Lucas films onto Disney plus was a no brainer, right? Like that was the whole plan was we're going to leverage all of our franchises and we're going to have tremendous success on Disney plus now they're basically back to we put our movies on Disney plus, and we do a little bit of television, but not much. Like the question is going to be, can they really execute creatively? And you know, there isn't enough proof in Paramount. If you think about where Paramount is, since Skydance bought it, there's not enough proof to know. I mean- - Well, you can look at the movies they've made. I mean the Skydance slate, we can quibble over certain titles, but it is not exactly lit the world on fire. I mean, they've done a lot of movies for streaming, movies like Ghosted or The Gorge, which was kind of a hit for Apple. And they've done, they've had Troubles in Animation, although they've got this Ray Gunn movie coming out with Brad Bird and Netflix. And a lot of this stuff that they have kind of looked at as wannabe franchise movies has not exactly worked. I don't want to, you know, prejudge them, but it's a challenge. And I want to ask about the tech pixie dust, because that's the other element here. Because throughout this whole process, Ellison has promised us that he has this Oracle pixie dust that he's sprinkling over the entire company. They hired a guy from Facebook, Dane, I forget his last name. - Glasgow. - Glasgow, who is, you know, supposedly very competent. And they are going to revolutionize the streaming business and finally have an interface and a tech stack and all of it that is going to be light years, above these other tech competitors like Amazon and Netflix. How real is that? And how much do they need it to be real to make this work? - There is no doubt that Paramount, you know, pre-Skydance, there's no doubt that Paramount was under-investing in technology. You could pull up any employee, they were on a shoestring, trying to pay the dividend and help Shari survive. So there's no doubt that they were under-investing the tech stacks, needed to be unified. Pluto and Paramount+ ran on different tech stacks. Like that has just become, started to come together. over the last several weeks. Dane has hired a lot of really interesting employees with AI and tech backgrounds. I mean, we sort of have been saying that they're sort of have hired the Google mafia. Like you keep seeing more and more people from the Google side coming into Paramount+. That's a good thing. I mean, look, Disney brought in Adam Smith, who was at YouTube. Like the legacy media companies hiring from places like Google, that's a good, smart decision. But it doesn't make them Google. It does not make them Google. It does not make them YouTube, right? You know, so the question is going to be, is this a step in the right direction? Absolutely. I've already noticed the interface of Paramount+, is better today than it was six months ago. It is not even debatable. Now, is there as much content? No, not even close to something that you would look at like on a Netflix. Obviously this transaction, you know, the reason David Ellison chose to lever up relative to. to just investing aggressively the way a Netflix did over the last decade is he wanted to do it quickly. This was the fastest way to get streaming content to scale. So he's got the content scale now. He's going to improve the tech. It'll take time, as you pointed out. They're not just creating one service instantaneously. It sounds like it's going to be a process of time to where these things get integrated into one service. Is that a year, two years, three years? I have no idea. And it actually makes it hard to forecast right now. Because you don't actually know what this looks like and how they sort of market it and what it looks like. But I will say the challenge is, you know, you've got a very competitive marketplace, right? You know, Disney's consolidating Disney and Hulu. Amazon is scaling. YouTube Premium now has Peacock, Netflix. And then the beast in the room is obviously YouTube, you know, and so the idea that all of this is going to scale, all of a sudden, just because you put these companies together, you take two relatively small streaming services and instantaneously you output a Netflix. I think that's going to be hard. You know, you're smiling. So for the people that are listening, I am laughing to myself because it sounds kind of ridiculous. All right. The thing that everyone in town wants to know is what are the chances that this whole thing crumbles under its own weight and that? In a few years, we are talking about a catastrophic situation where they're selling off assets. They're bringing in whatever equity investors they can find, whether it's Elon or the Saudis or whoever. And this thing just becomes a debacle. What are the chances of that? I mean, look, if you woke up tomorrow morning and YouTube TV said, we are no longer carrying the Skydance networks, we're just dropping them. You know, like that would be, you know, and if you want to sign up for, you know, Paramount Plus or whatever the new combined service is going to be called, go sign up for it. Like that would be relatively catastrophic financially for Skydance. Do I think it's going to happen? No, I think it's unlikely. My guess is, do they lose, you know, do they lose some distribution of some of those non-sports networks? Probably. Like there's going to be tough battles ahead. They are going to generate, I mean, look, there's going to be a lot of costs, probably two to two and a half billion dollars of cost, to achieve six billion of cost savings. So the near-term free cashflow, like how much cash the businesses actually generate to pay down debt, will be limited over the course of the next year and a half because of all the costs of achieving those cost savings. But, you know, they should generate billions of free cashflow before those costs next year. So they have a path to not paying down all that debt quickly, and maybe their leverage targets are too aggressive for 2029. But the idea, that this implodes, Matt, I think that feels a bit aggressive now. I agree. And you're not talking about the big elephant here, which is Larry. I don't think Larry is going to let this implode. As long as he's alive, and as long as he can support this endeavor, he will support it, even if it becomes troubled. So I don't want to be a doomsdayer here. I do think that this is not going to get very bad very quickly. The single most important, the most important place to watch is going to be distribution of those linear assets. The fundamental question, if you go back to the very beginning of this discussion, what are they trying to do? They're trying to be Netflix, like, right? Like that is the goal. They want to be a streaming superpower. They see it as there'll be three or four winners, and they want to be one of them. The question is, is it too late? Or are we asking the wrong question? Because, you know, Netflix is already under a lot of pressure, trying to evolve its business away from just pure movies and TV. It's going to be interesting to see, you know, Skydance is certainly very interested in the gaming space. You know, Ellison has always, going back to even pre-Paramount, been very interested in gaming. One of the first announcements they made was on the gaming front in terms of that consolidation. Do they make a move and try to, you know, where do they go with gaming? And then, you know, what happens with all of this Pluto, AVOD, free, ad-supported content? And how do they balance not cannibalizing Paramount+ and HBO Max as they try to get into this, or expand in this AVOD world? You know, Fox doesn't have that conflict. They just have Tubi. They don't have a subscription video business. I guess they'll have a small one when the Roku deal closes with Howdy. But this is really that delicate balance. And again, all of the pieces that we're talking about, nobody knows because they haven't explained it to, the press to the analysts, like investors, nobody knows these answers of how all of these consolidations are going to work and over what timeframe. And so it makes forecasting profitability hard. Well, the one thing we know is a lot of people are getting fired because that's what they need for these billions of dollars in cost savings. So we'll see when that starts to happen, which I'm, I'm told is very soon. All right, rich. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Matt, to be continued. Okay. We are back with the call sheet, Craig, big weekend, my favorite movie of the year, favorite title of the year, other mommy shout out to Michael Moses at universal pictures for coming up with that amazing title for a horror movie. Other mommy, we have you and I both started laughing at cinema con when they showed that. Also, I just want to point out terrifying trailer and the movie has, the trailer has already gone viral for being incredibly terrifying. People were upset. In the previews of the odyssey with how disturbing other mommy looked any time that like people kind of bend their limbs backwards and like contort themselves in horror trailers. Like that's the surefire way to get a reaction. Yes. So we have other mommy and then we have other daddy with Jeremy strong playing Mark Zuckerberg and the social record social reckoning. All right, let's do other mommy first. Cause that's obviously going to win the weekend. Um, the tracking, I, I haven't seen the latest NRG, but screen, dollars has it at like high twenties. And, and I think the NRG number, at least last week was a little lower. Let's put the line at 26 for other mommy, which honestly, I think this is going to be one of those where people see other mommy and are like, I have to see other mommy this weekend. And the number, I mean, that number has come up a little. So I think it's going to surge. I think unfortunately it's going to take some audience away from maybe, maybe Verity, some of these others that are out there. So I'm going to take the over on 26 for other mommy. I agree. I'm going to do the same thing. This is the same guy who wrote bird box, which was obviously a huge hit on Netflix. Well for Netflix, but yes. Yeah. And then the director did boogeyman, which opened to 12 million. I have no idea what that is. Oh, it came out a couple of years ago. Boogeyman. Remember that I do not, I didn't see it, but I think other mommy has buzzed Chastain, the poster that the trailer is Oscar winner, Jessica Chastain in a horror movie. What else do you want? Yeah. I mean, I think formula for bird box, honestly, Sandra Bullock, Oscar winner. Uh-huh. So I think this movie is going to do well. I'll take the over on 26 as well. All right. So let's get to social reckoning, which I have seen and I enjoyed social reckoning. It is a movie made for me. It is a journalists are the heroes exposing big, bad Facebook. Our guy, Jeremy strong going for it as Zuckerberg. I'm not sure who this movie is for though. I, the tracking, it's like not great compared to where social rec or social network was 15 years ago. And you know, if this movie came out and it was on its own, a Facebook movie and everyone was like, Oh, this is cool and interesting Facebook takedown. But the problem it has is that it's coming as a sequel of sorts to the social network. One of the best movies of the 21st century. So the reviews have been good, not great. The tracking's at about 7 million for the weekend. What are you saying on this one? Are you, are you surprised that the tracking is so low? A little only because of the original. But again, when you see what this movie is, it is a, like, I don't want to spoil anything, but it is a kind of a January 6th movie. It is about how Facebook has polluted the national discourse. And there are pretty bad consequences from that. So, you know, I, I love Mikey Madison. I like Jeremy Allen straw or Allen white. And Jeremy strong is amazing, but I gotta think, that this is going to be one of those where people pull back And it's not going to hit the $7 million. So I'm going to take the under. Wow. So the original social network opened to $23 million 15 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, this is just like an adult drama. This is like the Steve Jobs movie. That opened to $7 million, which was also written by Sorkin. Maybe we should put it at $8 million just because some of the tracking services have it a little more. Let's change that. Let's go to $8 million. And then I'll take the under on $8. I'll be naive and I'll take the over and I'll say that the audience is going to be older and older people don't buy tickets in advance and that people are just going to show up over the weekend that are interested in this movie. I'm just surprised that the social network is so beloved. It's Aaron Sorkin again. Yeah, but he's directing. Don't forget. I know. Aaron Sorkin as a director is not David Fincher. But normal people don't know that. I know, I know. But you take one look at the movie and you know it immediately. It is an Aaron Sorkin directed movie. It is not David Fincher. I think. My issue with the movie is it doesn't feel necessary for right now. Like it doesn't feel like something big happened and the movie is talking about it. It feels like we are still in the middle of the social media nightmare and that this movie just feels like I already feel like I know how it's going to end, which is like we're in a worse place now. It's David versus Goliath, except we all know Goliath ends up winning because Facebook is still in our lives. They're trying to get me to download the Muse app right now and I'm not doing it. I refuse. Kudos to Sony for making this movie. But a $50 million adult drama, tough one these days. Liked it, but I'm taking the under. I'll take the over on eight. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guests, Rich Greenfield, producer Craig Horlbeck, our editors, Stefano Sanchez and Steve Allman. And I want to thank you. We will see you one more time this week. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Follow us here and Whole Foods Market has everything you need for cozy meals, seasonal treats and easy entertaining. Elevate your heart. Party dishes with tasty bone-in beef short ribs or New York strip steaks with no added growth hormones or antibiotics. And as the fall evenings draw in, why not get ahead of cold season with immunity shots, herbal teas, lasages and supplements. Make sure you look for sales throughout the month. Shop fall flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Market. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta. Three cases of pizza. 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