The Rest Is Entertainment - Has AI come for Hollywood?

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

With their latest video release, OpenAI has made Hollywood sit up and take notice, but "what" is coming and how soon? Both have signed multi-million pound creative deals but who is benefiting most from their new media empires, the Sussexs' or the Obamas'? Join Richard Marina for this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Marina - Strong Words (Magazine) Richard - The Blizzard (Magazine) 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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just that. In fact, Fidelity does the heavy lifting, including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions. Visit fidelity.ca slash all in one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... Good night, kids. Good night, Mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. How are you, Marina?

I'm very well, thank you, Richard. And how are you doing? I'm all right. I watched The Sound of Music for the first time ever yesterday. Did you now? Tell me. Yeah, it's all right, isn't it? It's more Nazis than I thought. But you even went to Salzburg on part of your honeymoon and you hadn't seen The Sound of Music. I hadn't seen The Sound of Music, but I've been made to finally. It's my wife's birthday, so she said, let's watch The Sound of Music. I always feel that his parenting methods were absolutely fine.

He had seven children. With the whistle. What's wrong with the whistle? He's got seven kids. No help from that Baroness. When I lined it up and I pressed pause just at the start and I saw it was

two hours, 55 minutes long. It's a joke, the length is. And I did say to Ingrid when she walked in, anything else you want to tell me about this film?

She didn't tell me it was three hours long. I really enjoyed it. Anyway, I hadn't watched Top Gun before I'd met her. What? I'm amazed you hadn't

watched Top Gun. Yeah. I could accept all those, but how would you not watch Top Gun? How would you manage to get through the 80s and not watched it? We've all got blind spots. I'm like an articulated lorry. You've got to be careful overtaking me. Okay, now what are we going to talk about today?

We are going to talk about the Saudi... No, we're going to talk about the Obamas versus the Sussexes, as in who's got the biggest media empire. Is that Barack and Michelle or Harry and Meghan? We're going to talk about Saudi money in Hollywood and Saudi Arabia's attempts to sort of position itself as a kind of new cultural centre and a great place to make movies. They've got a film festival. Anyway, we'll talk about that in a bit. So whether film washing is the new sports washing? Yes, I think, yes. but we're going to start with ai i feel like this it might have been a tipping point there was there was a video release called

sora and that's sora s-o-r-a sora which again one of those made-up words that suddenly sounds like it should exist why wasn't it a sort of citron in the 1990s but yeah citron sora you'd think it was what's the malt though saurine yeah sorry yes but anyway it's a sort of made up word that feels like it should exist which is appropriate. Which is released by OpenAI and if you haven't seen it you must take a look. They're the people who have created ChatGPT. Which even sort of 18 months ago was just, isn't

this fun? You can sort of ask it a question about your school and it'll tell you something. And now it's going to be a behemoth which takes over all of Hollywood and all of our culture. So this video came out and it's a text-to-video application where it says, saw a, you know, show me a kitten playing with a candle. Shall I tell you some of the prompts that they put in? Yes, please.

They're quite interesting. A gorgeously rendered papercraft world of a coral reef, rife with colourful fish and sea creatures. Unbelievable. The video that is created from that or the supposed video, you know, it's not, it's completely all AI, it's all CGI. There was another one, a movie trailer featuring the adventures of the 30-year-old spaceman wearing a red wool knitted motorcycle helmet, blue sky, salt desert, cinematic style, shot on 35mm film, vivid colours,

and it is extraordinary. It's one of those things, it's funny, it's only a sort of eight minute long video, but I think it's the week that Hollywood finally went, oh, okay, this is a tide that's not going to turn back. They said it out loud. I mean, the director actually, one of the directors of Slow Horses, which is obviously filmed over here, but was in front of MPs and said, I've seen this, I now think it will be producing feature films in three to five years it could probably do soap operas now tyler perry who's a big producer

said i'm not going to expand my studio lot which i was going to do because there's just no point having seen this thing it's going to take over everything well that's it he was tyler perry who's he's huge in the states has a huge media empire he was about to spend 800 million dollars expanding his studio he says he was in atlanta yeah okay uh all right he was about to spend 800 million dollars expanding his studio he says he was in Atlanta yeah okay uh all right he was about to spend yeah seven and a half grand yeah uh because he got a cheaper quote do slightly feel like AI anyway I was thinking but anyhow that in general it has sent a chill through the industry people are saying oh my god okay having seen that concept art just died stock video that just died well i think stock video definitely just died storyboarding just died pre-vis which is a way that um movie shots are conceived of um on

very very big and expensive movies so the artists create a pre-vis of what the scene will look like exactly and it takes a while to get there and then you're almost as the actor shown that scene particularly if it's an action scene or something that's going to be quite hard to explain. Previz, that's called. Yes, it's called Previz. And when you're going to spend a huge amount of money, particularly on these big franchise films, every single shot is done on Previz. And so you're essentially showing it to people on an iPad

and they are mirroring what is happening in the Previz. But someone has had to create that and it's had to create it over many, many iterations. You don't get the Previz right first time. What's interesting is that you can also feed video into this model and what will come out is you can say all right but take out this person out of this so you could say i'm really sorry this movie stars kevin spacey who i regard to be what my friend julie refers to as one of the league of semi-canceled men so can you now remove it and put somebody else in it and they can they can do that well actually can you replace them with someone that you've entirely invented well yes the other thing

that ai is going to be able to do very very quickly and very very easily this is obviously terrifying people because they think also the way you come up in industries the things often those crafts are something you might learn and then you might go on to different things all of this is sort of being blown out of the water and And you think, what's the most vulnerable? This director of Slow Horses, James Hall, said EastEnders is, he didn't say EastEnders, but he said a soap opera. He was talking about Doctors. Now, obviously, we talked about Doctors when it was cancelled by the BBC

on this podcast before, because what we said was, you know, that is something that so many actors got their first break in so many technicians so many behind the camera people get their first break in and it's a way for people to come up in the industry and learn and do kind of daily work and it's you know it's a great great training ground and now that's gone why wouldn't you be able to be just be able to produce that with ai you know it's bizarrely eastenders are in this strange position of having sort of just finished spending 89 million pounds on a new set, I think it was 89 million pounds. And now you're thinking, I'm not saying that they will do it with AI, but I would love to type in Muppets EastEnders into this thing and see what it produced.

I'd love to type in Muppets EastEnders, let's do that. Now OpenAI is saying they're not releasing this model in the way that they have to chat GPT because they want to take in conversation from stakeholders and policymakers and all the other people who aren't going to have a job soon either. It's fascinating. And the most fascinating thing, of course, is the absolute sort of exponential leap that this technology is making. So, you know, we're at the stage talking about the Sora now. In 50 years time, they can listen back to this and go, oh, that's cute. It's like we talk about, remember the first time they ever showed moving pictures in a french cinema and and people ran

out of the cinema because they thought a train was going to come through the screen yeah and they're going to be like they'll be talking about us like that because this is the very beginning of a very very very long journey now if there's any hope for the industry at all it is that it's quite hard to do the next generation of AI. Each time we sort of go up a generation, it's using more power, it's using more computers, and it's using more source material.

The source material, by the way, all of which has been created by humans. I know, which we will get to, I think, about what happens with those eventual lawsuits. I have a theory as to what might happen with that lawsuit, and it will not shock you to know that rich people will do well and poorer people will do less well. But I think by the time a chat GPT-7 is going to use, every single computer in the world will be needed to be used.

You'll need your own nuclear reactor to power it and it will require more source material than there is currently in the world. Now the thing thing that holds up all of that, of course, is you can't use all the computers in the world, so you've got to manufacture chips, and manufacturing chips is quite a slow process. The lithium wars, yeah. Wait, there's another thing you can look forward to. AI, make lithium wars.

Show me the lithium wars. So in theory, AI could now take quite a long time, and equally it might have that last mile problem that driverless cars have, which is easy to get to 90% brilliant. But actually, the last 10% is incredibly hard. But don't you think to some extent we live in a, I saw someone calling it the other day, just good enough culture. You know, a lot of the stuff that people will spend all day watching on stuff like TikTok, YouTube is lo-fi. It's not got high production values and they don't mind the kind of shonkiness of it to some extent. And so that worries me that the kind of artistry is something that people are already willing to forego in the things that they spend the most of their day doing anyway.

I think that's right. I think the industry will be hollowed out. I use that term very specifically, by which I mean at the top end, there's always going to be auteurs and artisans, and people will pay a premium for humanity just as people doing shops. But the people doing that, of course, will be rich people. There'll be two-track culture. And at the very top end, there will always be projects with gatekeepers

and done by people who are already in the industry and already have connections who will make that stuff. And at bottom end there will of course be loads of scrappy you know producers content creators who do what they always do which is have great ideas and just you know put them down it's the stuff in the middle that goes linear television um yeah just the background stuff we watch day to day i watch there's there's a rise in these things fast channels which are the free ad supported streaming services and there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them but there's one for pointless we can just watch pointless 24 hours a day which is what i watch yeah um i never ever move the dial and there's

absolutely no reason in two years time where a human being should be anywhere near that so you got whatever library of programs you've got whatever library of comedy shows stuff that was made in the 80s and 90s or noughties no reason at all for ai not to take control of the advertising because one of the things it does is hyper hyper targeted i mean ai will be unbelievably good at advertising you'll see this in commercials imminently i mean they will already be using this in commercials like immediately there's no reason if this is good enough easily for adverts easily 100% that I think the advertising industry is in a lot of trouble which of course means that linear television is in an awful lot of trouble because it's not suddenly going to be oh phew everyone started making really expensive adverts again and then just

throwing them into coronation street in the hope that some people watch it would be I'm going to get AI to make an advert for me it's going to have an AI voiceover and it's going to be targeted to exactly the people I want it to be targeted to and it's going to be insanely cheap and it's going to be just as useful as the advertising I do now so that all goes as well so I think AI is going to be hugely influential I think it's going to lose an awful lot of jobs the only thing that can happen is that it slows down at the moment it will slow down because it's hard to make chips. Can I just say something that I do think is quite interesting about all of this?

Obviously, one of the unions I'm a member of is the Writers Guild of America. And we were one of the unions that went on strike last summer that we just had. And it went on until October in our case and later with the Screen Actors Guild who also went on strike. and later with the Screen Actors Guild, who also went on strike. But there's something quite funny about how a big part of what we were on strike about is AI and the use of AI, in the writer's case, the use of AI either to replace you, all of which has been built, by the way, on work written by actual writers who had emotional breakdowns and went to fat camp and all the different things that happen in people's lives that make you you know writers and also to say you know i don't ever want to have to be made

to write a script that's been perhaps you know generated by an ai and then i work on it as a polish at the end you know um and the screen actors had their own um obviously same issues you know they didn't want to be um easily replaced all sorts of things like that and And both unions won, both guilds won on those kind of points, and they were happy with what they got. I felt at the time that, you know, the reasons that the studios is allowing them to win are because it's just not good enough yet. But you can be sure that the minute it is good enough, the technology, then we'll be having a whole nother conversation in three years when the deals are up again. Having said all that, it's quite unusual that kind of sort of airy-fairy industries,

the writers, the screenwriters and the actors have been, had the most high-profile labour disputes about this kind of across the world because these are about issues that are going to affect the complete wide labour market, like everybody. And it's funny that actors in a way and screenwriters have been at the forefront of that in quite a high-profile work because it's funny that actors in a way and screenwriters have been at the forefront of that in quite a high profile work because it's coming for everyone. What I will say about policymakers, one of the things we've seen over the past few years is how they're sort of always fighting the last war, if you're lucky, or the last war but won. You know, the Conservatives making a big deal about the sort of online harms bill, which, you know, I appreciate the matter to lots of them.

But you now look at things like this and think where are we on this I mean this is much much bigger this is bigger than everything and it's like they're still talking about someone waving a red flag in front of a steam train when yeah when full electrification has taken place yes yeah and I think that that's the difficulty is keeping up and I mean the US Labour Secretary is very interested in all of this stuff. And I don't know, I think she was at the Screen Actors Guild Awards this last weekend. You can be sure that there, and I think she would sort of relish the fact that actors and screenwriters were at the front of these fights. But they are labour market wide now, that this AI is going to replace so many jobs. I think so. And it's fascinating because there's two attacks as well, which is if you won one of the big studios, of course, you're going to try and use AI as much as you can, because we know that's what capitalism is. And it has to be rapacious and it has to keep growing. So they will find a way to do it. But also, if you're a new creator in the industry, if you're a new brain, and by the way, it's quite hard to get into the industry, and you have these tools at your disposal you would just be using them if you're a young filmmaker i remember i remember a very very young edgar wright when he was starting out and him and his friends

would just make these little home movies on videos because that was a new technology that they that they could suddenly use if you're a young person now a young writer young creator young director a young actor why would you not be using these ai tools to make incredible content and sharing it with people and of course if that's your way into the industry and suddenly people say oh no but if you want to join the Screen Actors Guild if you want to join Equity if you want to you know be a Hollywood director you have to sign up to these things which says you can't use all these technologies you go well then I then I won't join up yeah and also there's an irony which is a lot of creatives are very excited about what

they could do with AI. You know, you talk to writers and they know it's going to end their jobs, but they also go, God, that'd be a fascinating project I could do with AI. I wonder what it could do, or I could add pictures to the things that I'm doing. Perhaps I could cut the other people in this industry out of what I'm doing. Everybody is attracted to it, I think. I think Sam Altman from OpenAI says, I want $7 trillion to spend on making chips, by which he means I want to set up factories that make chips. And if I do that, then AI can advance at the pace it is now. If someone doesn't give him $7 trillion, then it will take a long time. AI will advance as quickly as the manufacturing output of chip companies can go.

I mean, that's essentially the maths of the thing. chip companies can go. I mean, that's essentially the maths of the thing. But if the next iteration of chat GPT, which you can just about do with the computing power that exists on planet Earth and the source material, if that is another huge step on, then of course people will give them $7 trillion. I mean, it will be literally nothing.

And then the next one of it, chat GPT-6, actually might be able to solve a lot of the problems about making chips and might be able to solve lots of the problems about how you power it and might be able to solve lots of the problems of there not being as much source material because it can start creating its own stuff.

So it's one of those things. If we just allow the market now to be what it is, then it could be five, six, seven, eight years before we get the most unbelievable the stuff that can make everything but if open ai and sam altman are able to intervene now and put seven trillion dollars into it then this is coming like super super quickly i think that politicians will become engaged with the issue purely because they will see how it will disrupt their i mean this year we will be seeing,

I mean, obviously James Cleverley's talked about it even this week, we're going to be seeing a lot of AI disruption in our election and in the US election and it will, I'm sure, certainly crystallise their thinking as to how to regulate this and how to deal with it. Because, of course, the entire way that ChatGPT works is it crawls the internet for available works television shows images textbooks and stuff like that and trains the ai on that so it's it's taken the ip the intellectual property of millions of creators

and it's essentially passing it off as its own in an enormously clever way but you know it didn't create any of that stuff it is not a real thing it is it is some lines of code on a chip and every single thing it does and will ever do throughout the whole rest of history of time has already been created by other people so those people i think will seek recourse and i suspect that 95 of them will get to no recourse i think 99.999 of them it's because it's every at all. I think 99.999% of them it's because it's every it's the sum of human everything really that it's drawing upon and the sum of human everything by Marina Hite. Yes I'm just doing the outline for that now. It's essentially the ultimate in plagiarism but hiding an absolute plain sight and makes cool

images so we don't mind so much but I don't know what you think about it i think that essentially like it like like music streaming really the big studios will settle for an enormous amount of money because the open ais of this world will be multi multi multi trillion dollar industries they can they can throw you like 100 billion without even thinking about it so the big studios will settle for huge amounts of money. They will make sure their big stars are taken care of out of that money. And they will then think we've reached a tipping point. We don't have to worry anymore. And anyone else who ever created anything is not going to get any money at all.

Because what you created belongs to the studios. And if so, if they've done a deal with the open ai companies then you don't really have a leg to stand on what would be your take on that that feels like that that that absolutely the other thing i would say is that expect to see huge amounts more really quite imminently of animations because the animation that this thing could produce it could produce some sort of cute little kind of monstery thing it could be vaguely pixarish it could be who knows it could be one of the sort of animation houses that already look like something that you would see out there in out there in the theaters but it's amazing i've seen worse let's put it that way i've sat through

worse with my children yeah as you say listen it's not gonna you know people say look yeah but you'll always have to have the human voice and the human emotion and you will but that would be really really top-end stuff because you know that's that's going to be the expensive stuff to make and no one likes making expensive stuff but there will always be those prestige projects as i say at the bottom there will always be people with people doing interesting thing because you can't keep the creative mind down but that entire middle of the industry which is where everyone i've you know worked with my whole life works you know it's going to be really really tough times i think absolutely and there's no safety net put in place but it's the middle of culture that will disappear and be replaced by ai i suspect and it's yeah and it's coming soon and

it'll come sooner as always the middle and everything is going in the way that mid-budget films have fallen away and again we'll talk a bit more about saudi arabia and that but at the moment i cannot see a pathway to it coming back. Well, my only optimistic take would be for anyone out there and anyone who's thinking about how to fight back would be this. Currently, the studios are so massive because you have to spend $100 million to make a movie and to market a movie,

and therefore everything has to go through that filter and through that funnel. And that's why a lot of the smaller movies don't happen now. If you are suddenly able to make a smaller movie for a tenth of the price and you are able to market it, more importantly, for a tenth of the price, then perhaps there might be a sort of United Artists-type fight back where we go, actually, we're going to use AI to make our product cheaper, but with a human hand and a human touch and to market it more easily

and to have a movement that says that says we'll use ai but we want to make human product but that doesn't help the service industry to um to films and movies and television that doesn't help as you say the kind of the cgi world and all of those things but in terms of the creativity that might be out there it might be that we swing back in the opposite direction and we we mount a fight back and And, you know, there's so many, I know lots of writers and producers and stuff listen to this. And it feels like there's something there that we could maybe do. But it's going to be a hell of a fight. It is.

And if you haven't had a look at these images, you can go and see them. It's OpenAI Sora and you can see them on Twitter X. And it's really worth taking a look at the quality of what was produced yeah and your constant reaction is is is a mix of wow and oh no so it's yeah one of those things isn't it listen the rest is entertainment in 20 years time it's going to be very very different firstly we won't be presenting it oh no podcast as I've said before these are podcasts are hugely vulnerable to AI I would have thought that they were more vulnerable than almost anything. Do you not think the very essence of podcasts is it is a human interaction?

Oh, I think it's quite possible to fake it. I'm sorry to say. I mean, I wish I could be more optimistic, but I think you'd be quite surprised. Having looked at those video images, I think you'd be quite surprised at what any of it can do. Why don't we try next week?

Yeah, okay. Why don't we just do, we okay why don't we take why don't we just do like what you know we'll each do one a fortnight and like just as long as there's one human uh i'll talk to the guiding hand yeah exactly just saying actually ai i think that's i'm not sure that's quite right um and then yeah one day i'll be a yeah i mean i think i think podcasts but again it's it's that sort of artisan culture, which is, you know, it's a two-track culture, you know, and you see it in journalism. You know, there is incredibly great in-depth journalism,

slow news and slow journalism and great, you know, news podcasts, but they're only being accessed by certain elements of society. A huge amount of journalism is already being produced by AI. It's being done by AI. And even in this country um i think um news uk they they have enough they said that they were already sort of looking into it and they in fact i think they are already producing a quite a lot of um ai content um and you know lots of people are it's these industries that have been sort of buffeted by all sorts of different kind of headwinds and essentially mostly by the tech sector yeah are all crazy thinking that they're gonna have to do things like this

to survive well rory stewart is ai a lot of people don't know that do they it's amazing completely generated yeah i mean literally he's he's never spoken a word on that podcast he's very happily living wherever he lives and he's uh yeah just alistair campbell talking to a robot it's you know yes and he sold a lot of books. Let's go to a break now. But after the break, we're going to talk about Harry and Meghan, Michelle and Barack and their media empires. And one of those four is AI as well.

And we'll exclusively reveal which. This episode is brought to you by Fidelity Investments Canada. Make investing simple. Fidelity's all-in-one ETFs are designed to do just that. In fact, Fidelity does the heavy lifting, including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions. Visit fidelity.ca slash all-in-one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and What day of the week do you look forward to most? Well, it should be Wednesday.

Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course. When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way. And you won't want to miss it so make every Wednesday a whopper Wednesday only at Burger King where you rule working at your local Tim's is more than serving coffee it's building connections with a team in

a great environment connecting with your guests in the community and participating in programs like Smile Cookie and Hockey Card Trade Nights. So join your local Tim's team today. Apply now at careers.timhortons.ca. Hello and welcome back to The Rest is Entertainment. Welcome back. I am no longer Richard Osman. I'm still Marina Hyde. And we are going to talk about the Sussexes and the Obamas who, to some extent, are people who obviously come from outside of the entertainment industry. They were given big, big deals, overall deals as we call them.

I'll talk about those in just a second. They both got them with Netflix and with Spotify. Obviously, they also have their own publishing deals. And the Obamas signed theirs in 2018. The Sussexes signed theirs in 2020. The Obamas have actually produced quite a lot. An overall deal, I'll tell you what one is. The Obamas, I can't remember what their, theirs was eight figures. The Sussexes was nine figures. It was more than 100 million. What you get for that, then Netflix says, we will cover all your production company. You know, we'll cover all your overheads, but anything you develop and produce is for us. It's not a first look deal. It can't, if we don't like it, go somewhere else. It lives and dies with us.

They don't give you a check for a hundred million dollars upfront. It is contingent, because they're not that stupid. Whether we think they've been slightly stupid is a matter of debate. But it's contingent on you kind of producing a certain amount of material. Now, the Obamas have produced quite a lot of stuff and Netflix have actually renewed with them. I think quite a lot of people were amazed

when Netflix renewed with the Obamas, but they still have produced quite a lot of stuff and it's obviously very prestigious to have. They've won Oscars as well.'ve they've there's a documentary there's one oscars and they've yeah and they've and they are clearly very engaged they are obviously deep thinkers they want to curate stuff um they employ good people they employ very very good people and um there is a prestige to having them and And when the streamers, and I'm talking about Spotify as well as someone like Netflix, were trying to build out, were trying to become, were trying to race for scale and to run these huge things, it is a big, big prestige thing to sign the Obamas. And you can see why Spotify paid the same for the Obamas as they did for Joe Rogan.

I can tell you 25 million was a sort of magic number in those days. And I can tell you they've obviously done all the better out of the Joe Rogan deal than they did out of the Obamas. But the Sussexes, I mean, three years on from that deal, more than three years on now, they have got an Invictus Games documentary. This is the Games for Wounded Servicemen and it's kind of recovered injured service personnel that Harry began, which is fine, but it's really niche. And then they had the one, but it is. I spoke on a TV show. Yeah, it is. It's niche.

And then they had a show for children called Pearl cancelled. It never aired. They bought some film rights, which nothing has happened with. It never aired. They've bought some film rights, which nothing has happened with. The only thing they have produced is their documentary about themselves, which I think was called Finding Freedom or something as far as I'm concerned, tell me what their brand is. I mean, they are a brand of grievance. I would really worry about what his therapist says to him, because I would say, you know, your moneymaker is this kind of discord with your family. And it seems to me it'd be quite good to be able to separate those two things in the interest of moving forward and personal growth and healing. But that is the only way they can make money, in my view. And I think Netflix have got into a whole world of pain.

What do you think? Well, yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? Because the Netflix deal seems to have sort of come to an end. Netflix are not really admitting that. They're not really admitting it. Certainly the Spotify deal has come to an end. Meghan Markle did a podcast. She did 12 episodes of a podcast.

Wow. I mean, that's like a Monday morning for you and I. Yeah. And they got sort of $20 million for that. And she did 12 episodes. It came to an end. My goodness. There was that.

Did you see that? Bill Simmons, who started the Ringer Network of podcasts, who is sort of very brilliant, which he eventually sold to Spotify. And he has a sort of executive position there he said on his own podcast I wish I had been involved in the Megan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation the fucking grifters that's the podcast we should have launched with them I've got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea it's one of my best stories fuck them the grifters

which is you know opaque it's not clear what he thinks about them but yeah i mean yeah but listen we're we're in an industry where that happens all the time as soon as someone gets a big name they can sign a big output deal the talented ones it pays off for everybody the untalented ones you've seen work out you think oh you were just flavor of the month for a little bit and i've massively overpaid for you which is why always in in tv strike when you're when when you know you're absolutely at the top of your game because you can get an enormous deal and then you know netflix and whatever can repent at leisure so it's it's not it's quite an old story they haven't got it

because you know because it's some miracle it's often when people are absolutely at the height of their powers someone else will overpay for them massively uh and i've always hated you. Because you go, what are you going to get for 100 million? I don't get what you think you're going to get. They've just got a production company. And what are they, coming and pitching new game shows? As you say, the only interesting thing is when they're on screen. It's the same as Simon Cowell. Simon Cowell only has hits when he's on screen.

Because people love to watch him. As soon as he goes oh actually i've got another i've got i've got a game show or i've got a reality show a game show no thanks yeah nobody watches because it's not it's you just think well there's no value there your value is your on-screen persona i'll say this about harry and megan so it's looks like it's being a bad time for them you know with with netflix and with spotify The book that Harry wrote... Oh, speaking of the Sussex Extended Universe, this is...

Yeah. But it's impossible to overestimate how much money that has made. I mean, it's been one of the most successful books. If you want to talk about figures they signed, wasn't that... Didn't they pay something like 20 million? Maybe they paid even less for that.

A 20 million advance for that book. For four books. Doesn't matter what any of the other three do. Yeah, for four. doesn't matter what any of the other three do yeah for four it doesn't matter what any of the other three do now by the way that book sold more than anything ever literally i mean the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time i've done some back of the envelope uh calculations because because i like to i know i know what you get paid per book got a 20 million advance thing with advances you get paid in advance uh 20 million in that case you do not make a penny until your publisher makes back their 20 million

and once they've made back their 20 million and there's all sorts of sliding scales about how how that works what they get what you get uh once you've made the 20 million then you get your royalties i think and his book has not come out in paperback yet so his book is purely hardback I reckon he's made 26 27 million dollars so he's earned out an advance of 20 million on the hardback of his first book alone forget rights to you know other things and audiobooks and what have you he has earned that out already when the paperback comes out that, that's it. It's just money rolling into the... That's Penguin Random House who did that deal, by the way. And they did an unbelievably good deal.

Three more books. Yeah. But that's the weird thing, isn't it? Netflix, Spotify, those are both bad deals. But the book, because that's the thing, because that's Harry. It's like the essence of Harry. That's the thing you're buying. And that's the thing that people want most of.

I know Moe Ringer wrote the book with Harry, and he's been handsomely paid for it as well. But sometimes when I tweet out the kind of book charts, people always go, oh, yeah, but it's not a hit because I've seen it in charity shops. It was half price. It is the biggest hit of the last 10, 20 years. It is enormous.

It has made everybody an enormous amount of money. I mean, people say, oh, but it's on half price. Yeah, books tend to, you know, if you're in Waterstones or the supermarkets, they get knocked down to half price. You want your book to be knocked down because if your book's one of the ones being knocked down at half price, then you're selling a lot. And also, by the way, Harry is not making less money if it's half price he makes exactly the same if you charge 28 and if you charge 14 also he sells a lot in america in america the royalties are absolutely insane because they pay a lot of money for books in america so he has made a huge amount of money out of that book so he's got money coming in

and megan the only thing we really know her from acting is suits and suits in the last year has become the biggest show in the world so as a couple they've essentially got the biggest book in the world and the biggest tv show in the world now I'm sure she's not making a huge amount from suits she's not but as a power couple you know forget Netflix and Spotify that's not bad isn't it I mean it's not you know Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce but it's it's not bad, isn't it? I mean, it's not, you know, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, but it's not bad having the biggest book in the world and being in the biggest TV show in the world. But the only way to move it forward is to go back to the grievance well. And it's a bit like being an ancient mariner, really.

You're sort of content to tell the same story to every single person. But I must say that the obverse of that, of course, is that it is in the media's interest who kind of stoke this flame the whole time. And the people who, you know, if you end up writing about Harry and Meghan a lot in a kind of negative way, you need them to behave in a certain way.

And this horrible sort of parasitic relationship. But that's really what it is. I know. And it must be tricky for them to sort of they must have worked out by now that that's the that's where their money is going to come from i don't think they did think that's actually at the start and i think what's interesting is that he has all hit for all the fact that i do think he's had a you know awful things have happened to him and it i can't imagine sort of growing up in that horrific way and in that sort of awful

fishbowl and what have you having said that within that people always told him he was very very to him and I can't imagine sort of growing up in that horrific way and in that sort of awful fish bowl and what have you having said that within that people always told him he was very very important and he was within that specific setup he's now in what am I supposed to believe he's in Hollywood don't do me a favor I mean this is an actual meritocracy or a form of meritocracy and all anybody cares about is your ratings and your numbers and if you can't get those it doesn't matter it honestly doesn't matter there's plenty of bigger names than him really in terms of stardom who have just stopped making people money and they not nobody is interested it's brutal i know yeah i said it's but that's that's yeah it's different between show

business and royalty yeah right yeah and i'm afraid that that is that's the difficulty and you know i saw people say i saw her saying people are connected with it saying that the reason they put so little out on netflix is because she's cautious but you know leading by her truth is always her north star it's like okay nobody cares about your north star they just care about your numbers yeah and they want to be entertained yeah okay we're not we're not interested in how hard you know in for anybody we are not interested in how hard it is to be you. We're interested in whether you've written Breaking Bad or not. That is a big return to the grievance world, because in order for it to be like that, they're going to have to just show them constantly reacting to news headlines, to stories, you know, when you just, it becomes a sort of self-reiterating enterprise. And I'm afraid that that's probably the only way to continue making money long term in the future

Meanwhile they're part of that lovely LA diaspora which is sort of people who are much more famous over here but you've got Harry, you've got Robbie Williams you've got David Beckham and Rishi Sunak of course will be heading out there I suspect you know he will, he'll be in LA right? Finally a gang of four

well there we go. But the Obamas meanwhile not only have done, you know, they did Rustin, the show that's nominated for an Oscar. They've done amazing things, but their books were insane. Harry's is the fastest selling in that, you know, it sold incredibly quickly. In terms of the best-selling non-fiction book ever, forgetting the Bible, et cetera, is Michelle Obama's Becoming,

which is 14 million barack obama's a promised land sold a huge amount as well so you know that whatever they do every single thing they do um turns to gold everything i do turns to sold as a little apprentice candidate once said and that's the case with the obamas but and also they have a hinterland so they can keep coming up with stuff and people trust them and will come to them. And creatives will come to them and they will listen to them and do interesting things with them. Yeah, even though it didn't particularly, they kind of left Spotify by sort of mutual agreement, I think, in the end. They just didn't really renew with them.

But they went to Amazon Audible. And so they have, you know, they're still continuing that. But they're much more engaged, you know. What's that, Leave the World Behind, is it? That's a disaster movie with Julia Robertson. The Julia Robertson, yeah. Obama was giving notes on that you're not getting notes on from obama that's a bleak film what yeah no it is great but getting notes from obama i mean i have to say i would listen to this i'm not sure i would like to get notes on my script from pince harry no thank you no thank you and also some other time we're going to talk about celebrities setting up production

companies it's the worst thing in the world we'll have a chat yes we'll have a deep dive into that rocket so things not as bad as people say for harriet and megan but yeah you'd rather be in business with the obamas i think no i think it's relatively bad for them but yes i would definitely rather be in business with the obamas we should go into business with the obamas i i once i think the first thursday murder club book it beat barack obama to christ Christmas number one and I always thought I wonder I don't know how much attention he pays to his sales I guess not a lot in the UK no I reckon a lot but if they said oh no you're number two uh in the UK and he asked why he was number two maybe he's heard of me wouldn't that oh can you imagine it's just once his my name has been mentioned in his room and he's like oh that guy that'd. That'd be great, wouldn't it? Well, I hope you have come across his radar, Richard.

I hope you have. I imagine he pays as much attention to his sales as you do, which is a lot. So I think he's careful. I know I think he's careful on things like that. He's careful. Listen. Come on, he's a politician. Like you.

It's all a numbers game. He's a very careful man. It's a numbers game. Now, there's an absolutely fascinating series of articles i know we've both read about saudi arabian money coming into hollywood i think we've because we talked about ai we've banged on too long for quite well i think ai is quite important so do i uh so may i think i'm being told yeah i'm being told in my ear that ai is quite important saudi arabia is also quite important but that we might have to have a look at it next week.

So let's do that. Should we do that? Yeah, we can give it the space. Exactly. The space it deserves. Genuinely. But I did want to talk about AI a lot because so many people in the industry,

it's quite an existential crisis, I think, that's going on. And I know we'll come back to it, but I think it deserves that. So Saudi Arabia next week, at least we've done Harry and Meghan as a little bit of light relief. Yes. AI royalty is something I think that will come up. Do you have any recommendations?

I do, actually. I have got, this is a magazine that is absolutely brilliant. It's called Strong Words. It's a fascinating thing. It's about books, but it's written in such a fun and lively and sort of jolly style it's about all the books popular books all types of books coming out it is conceived created and written by one person i thought you're gonna say a robot no i'm not he is not robot he's called ed needham he's edited lots of different magazines in a time including

rolling stone he is it's just an extraordinary undertaking. It's really jolly and a little bit like when you read the London Review of Books and you think, what a fascinating article. Now I no longer have to read that book. We haven't got time to read all the brilliant books that come out, but have a look for it online. It is so good. I really, really like it.

What's it called again? Strong Words. Strong Words. Strong Words magazine. And is it online only? No, it's a print copy comes to you. What, print? What? Yeah, and it's really only? No, it's a print copy comes to you. What, print? What?

Yeah, and it's really beautifully laid out and it's very, it's kind of, it's great. It's a great, it's a great thing and I really kind of urge supporting it. And as I say, it keeps you on track of all the books that are coming out that regrettably we don't all have time to read. Well, then I'll recommend a magazine as well,

which is as amazing, because there's so much football journalism online, but there's a magazine called The Blizzard, or might just be called Blizzard, which gives such deep dives into amazing sort of 1950s Hungarian football. Yeah, it's terrific, The Blizzard. And again, you can find that at WHSmithson, various places, but you can also find it online. Because again, it's that thing when we're talking about AI, there is a fight back sometimes, which is people go, do you know what i i just want to write this by hand and

then have it set by hand and then sell it in a shop to people who can just read it and take a little bit of time reading it uh and that's a fight we're gonna have over and over and over and over again in the next 10 or 20 years so let's let's let's start the fight back now yes i'm sorry just it steps over that because when you look at the subscription deals that you can get for so many of these magazines online they're incredible and you think you're paying so little a month and this thing comes through the post and it is really terrific so a thorough recommend to those sort of magazines and it's that lovely just five minutes where you're not looking at your phone yeah oh it made four minutes maybe so next week we're doing saudi arabia amongst many other things

um thank you that was uh illuminating it was most illuminating. We will obviously be back on Thursday for the questions edition. Oh, by the way, I have someone ask a question about do the people on Gogglebox get paid? And I have a good, a very strong answer to that now. I found out all about it.

And I have a self-administered apology issue, which apologies are the new day too, as we always used to say in newspapers. So there we go. We'll have a look at that. Lovely. See you Thursday. Bye-bye.