The Rest Is Entertainment - How The Odyssey Won The Culture War

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Did Elon Musk’s attack on The Odyssey backfire? Is Netflix in trouble with Wall Street? Why did the Mickey Mouse Club produce so many pop stars? Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has sailed to an enormous opening weekend and rave reviews. Has it made its MAGA critics look stupid? Despite rising viewing figures, Netflix’s stock has plummeted. Is this a problem for the streaming giant? Disney+ is rebooting the Mickey Mouse Club, which launched the careers of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera. Can it pull it off again? The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Lending is subject to status. You could lose your home if you don't keep up your mortgage repayments. Conditions apply. 1996 average first-time buyer deposit based on Office National Statistics House Price Index data. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, we're going to be talking about an expression which I hadn't heard till seven seconds ago, which is someone getting their flowers. Can you tell me what that means? Well, it means like you've been around a long time, but people suddenly think, hang on a second, you're amazing and you should be recognised. So you're finally getting your dew. You're getting your flowers.

And you're being garlanded. Now, I would say someone like this is someone like Gene Smart, who plays the lead in Hacks. She plays Deborah Vance. Okay, Jean Smart is extraordinary. she did a huge amount of TV and stage work. And there was a sense that she was sort of always brilliant. But then this one role came along, Deborah Vance and Hacks. They literally just give her the Emmy every year now.

She gets her flowers every year. She gets her Emmy every year. As we always talk about Octopus's customer service, your accounts run by about 10 or 12 people. You've got a small team. They know who you are. Yes. And they are permitted to send flowers every week to a customer

who might just be going through something, whatever it is. So they can recognise it's not an apology. It's just because someone was going through something and they get your flowers. Another example of they seem to do business in a very interesting and customer-focused way. Imagine if Gene Smart is an octopus customer. Might get her flowers twice. Yeah, every week. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus.

Starring Emmy Rossum, Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice and as their lives, start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting

brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard. Osmond, hello everybody. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm all right. How's your week been? You've been recording your audiobook, I think. I have on two of the days been recording my audio book and I would be recording it on some days this week and some days next week. It's quite a business, yes. Yes, but you have, because it's a book of your column, so you do have to do it.

So I've got Nicola Walker doing We Chase Shadows, so my audio book is easier. But you can't have someone else reading out your columns. You can have Alan Carr reading them. I would love it if Alan Carr read my columns, but in this case, it's me reading them. And I hope I've, you know, really sold it. Excellent. And, listen, we wake this morning after the greatest World Cup final of all time. Everyone's enjoyed that.

But we are here to talk about entertainment. and we've got a few big stories this week. We are obviously going to talk about The Odyssey, which has had a massive opening, and we can talk about everything around that. We're also going to talk about Netflix, and Netflix's earnings came out. We're going to explain why a company can grow its subscriber numbers,

grow its revenue, and lose 10% of its share price. On Friday alone. And we're also going to talk about a much beloved piece of IP, the Mickey Mouse Club, which is being rebooted. And there's a pilot is going to be made, rebooting the Mickey Mouse Club. I'm going to talk a bit about the Mickey Mouse Club at Disney. But also about all the careers that it launched and how occasionally you get a show where everyone involved becomes incredibly famous. I have another good example of it.

Oh, very good. Okay. Shall we start with The Odyssey? Let's start with The Odyssey. Which you have seen. I have absolute full disclosure. I have not seen it. I could not get an IMAX ticket for Love Not Money, which tells its own story. It does.

It's, I saw it, I absolutely and completely loved it. I told you I felt massively emotional throughout it. It's an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. Just beyond, I mean, I feel very sorry for anyone who's in the best director category, but, you know, don't bother with getting a special seat for Oscar's night. It's absolutely, Christopher Nolan makes films that no one else would make. No one else could or would make it. I mean, no one else could or would get this cast.

And the numbers are extraordinary. Remember, we weren't, you know, people weren't sure. They were like, will anyone really want to go and see a sort of swords and sandals thing? 124 million box office in North America, 264 million globally. 51 million of that globally came from IMAX alone, which is sort of amazing. So about 20% of both those numbers comes from IMAC. So absolutely destroyed Oppenheimer's opening. And Oppenheimer's opening was huge. It is, by a lot of metrics, the biggest opening of his career, although you could argue that the two Batman.

movies open sightly adjusting for inflation. But it was absolutely massive fourth, highest-grossing, R-rated movie of all time behind Deadpool, Deadpool, 2 and Deadpool, Wolverine. So, enormous, and as you say, for a 2-hourst-53 minutes retelling of a Greek myth. When you live in extraordinary times and when there's an extraordinary artist around, sometimes you sort of don't realize it, but what he is doing to cinema and what he's done to cinema, it's sort of unparalleled. It's completely extraordinary.

And funny enough, they have such good to audience data in America that we just don't have the same. But 51% of people said they went for the director, which is incredible. That really is amazing. You know, still you have certain people like Stephen Spielberg that people will say, oh, I'm going for the director. But this grossed more than disclosure day's entire run on its opening weekend. It's really interesting talking about what came in advance of this one, because you would think that going back to do The Odyssey, a classic Homeric story, just wouldn't be particularly controversial, but because everything is controversial, it became very controversial.

It's amazing to think of just how many controversies there were in the run-up to this. People wet their pants about everything, like, oh my God, it's being formatted for IMAX, therefore, you know, if you don't see it in IMA, don't worry about it. No one cared. There are no Greek actors in it. Don't worry, no one's going to care. All of this stuff actually just ends up as serving as kind of helpful. That I do think is interesting, but it did stay in the headlines for all.

all sorts of reasons, and we'll get to one of the biggest reasons in a minute, because that certainly didn't have the effect it would have liked. And it just sort of, I think in the end, it just serves as helpful noise in advance of sales. It's like SEO, it's always there in the SEO. But people want to see this film. There's all sorts of reasons why people might not have turned out, but they turned out in unbelievable numbers. I mean, you couldn't get tickets. And that's, you never see that. You can't get tickets for IMAX. You know, it's like 8 a.m. and you couldn't get tickets. I saw it at 9.30 on a Sunday morning with, you never see that. You never see that. You can't get tickets. I I saw it at 9. I saw it at 9. I saw it on a Sunday morning with. I

Not in an eye that's in a very, very big screen, and there were probably 150 people in there at 9.30 on a Sunday morning. You know, the next show in was at like 945. It's unbelievable. But I think one of the things that's interesting is the culture war stuff that preceded it, which was enormous. Because as you say, this is, you know, one of the oldest stories we have in our world culture. It's nearly 3,000 years old.

Yeah, it's the bedrock of so many other stories. It's just, you know, it's in some regards, certainly in our culture, the first story. So as you say, going back to it, like the Chinese, they often make movies about very, very, very ancient Chinese culture because that's where they are comfortable. That's where there is no politics. That's where there is no trouble. And the Odyssey should be that. But it should be that. Or at least if you just hear that that's what's being done, that should be enough. But all the culture wars confected rubbish could not ding it. Like, what do you think? Maybe it took a few 10,000 pounds off the box office. I mean, it certainly

tried. All this like go woke, grow broke. It's just like Barbie. Don't worry, it's going to be a massive film and everyone's going to go and see it. And it's made by an incredibly intelligent man who is going to make stuff that endures for many, many, many generations to come. And you take him on if you want,

but you're not going to beat him because it turns out there are people who are as good as you are at what you do at what they do. I'm talking about Elon Musk. We're talking about Elon Musk, but there's a whole army of professional right-wing culture warriors who piled in on this before. So boring. But also you're such a hostage to fortune. You're probably going to look stupid. You've bet against Christopher Nolan. I personally wouldn't. But it does remind you that things that happen on social media are just not real life. And it seemed if you were to look at X or to look at lots of different things that there was a real backlash against this film. But it was a little bit like there was people used to say, oh, you know, everyone hates Anne Hathaway. And at the time when everyone hated Anne Hathaway, there was a sort of viral thing about her on the internet that people did seem to hate her. During that,

time she made Interstellar Les Miserables, Oceans A, and the intern. It's like, don't worry. I mean, like, believe me, she's fine. People turn out to see her. You must be, I often think about the people, you know, people got their clicks before this movie came out. So job done, tick, you know, very well done, and, you know, they can go, actually really drove engagement for me. And I, you know, I really had to go at Odyssey. And actually, my numbers that week were up 17 percent. And you think there's going to come a time when you were in your 70s, when you look at what you did in this life and you compare that to what Christopher Nolan did in this life and you will weep yourself to sleep every night. What you're doing is giving nothing. It is adding nothing and there are

people in this world who are giving something and adding something and making the world a better place. And if you got 17% up on your clicks the previous week, congratulations. But honestly, you're not going to have a fun old age. I could not agree more. It's so, it's so pathetic. I feel so embarrassed for them. It's embarrassing. The madness of this and this era has totally gone to their heads. Have opinions. Have opinions by all means. But come on. But, you know, if you have ones this wrong,

just be prepared to have your ass handed to you on Monday morning box office. And also, be happy being a tech genius. Be happy being the richest man in the world. Or be happy with all these things. You cannot buy or have it all. These are people who tell people to stay in their lane more than anything. If anyone in sports

speaks out about politics, If anyone says anything, they get told by these people to stay in their lane. Well, what are you doing out of your lane? Like, you don't know anything. Like, Christopher Nolan doesn't sit there pontificating all day and saying the momentum's totally gone out of the SpaceX launch and, you know, the IPO. Traders are already betting against it. I don't know the colour of that rocket. Even though it's true.

He knows what he doesn't know. And just, I think it's so extraordinary that people feel everyone can be a critic. I get that. But there is a point with like the right where just, okay, make some of your own movies that are good, okay? Not like something about Hunter Biden starring Lawrence Fox, okay, which I haven't seen that would actually like to watch. Yes. I'm sure it's available on YouTube. But I just make something decent or just sit down.

But also, yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, you know, because of, you know, context collapse around the whole world is we get to see everyone all the time. We get to hear everyone's opinions all of the time. And for most of us, that's dealable. because we understand everyone's different to us. There are a group of people who have to try, they want the world to bend to their will because they can put a rocket in space or whatever it is

and lots of different examples of these people. Yeah, exactly. But they want the whole world to look like them. That's because they cannot handle the fact that almost everyone disagrees with almost everyone else. They can't handle it. It's too difficult for them. They want everyone to love them.

They want to be the king of the world. They want everyone to go, Oh, do you know what? Actually, he's right. Actually, that's what we'll do. Every time there's something even vaguely successful or popular that they don't understand and which they could not make in a million years. They have to try and bring it down. You think, just genuinely stay in your lane. Do the thing that you're good at and let us enjoy Christopher Nolan. Okay. To return to the film, let's return to the film. Because even though, like all of these things, it seems once it's happened to be this nailed on amazing success. And it is, is this huge pop cultural event. So I think it has various things that you need for it to become this kind of breakout thing that everyone's aware of. It has an incredible cast that appeals to, I think this is crucial, to all kinds of demographics. Some of them are overlapping, but lots of, and it's interesting, lots of these are actually stars of franchises. So we've got Matt Damon,

we've got Anne Hathaway, we've got Tom Holland. Think of the franchise stars. You've got Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize, LePietan, Yongo, Robert Pattinson. And all of those bring actually different franchises. They do lots of other things as well. Some of them overlap, but you want to get a whole sort of age range into this thing. You've got a beyond A-list director, as we say, who like everyone will work for and that people go to see his movies. It does once again remind me of just the disaster of Warner Brothers losing him during the pandemic

over theatrical release. I mean, that was one of the great mess-ups of recent Hollywood history. You've got a very simple to explain story. you don't have to say, oh, it's sort of about this. It's the Odyssey. As I said at the start of this year when I was predicting films, I said this is still on the, I think it's the middle school curriculum. Yes, but it sort of helps, you know, people sort of know what it is.

He should do an inspector calls next. Yeah. That is, yeah. And I would watch that. I would watch that. It's obviously got great reviews. But one crucial thing it has is the sense that you must see it in cinemas. and that is incredibly helpful.

You're not thinking, oh, wait, it's kind of like a small thing. I'll see it on streaming or whatever it is or I'll even see it in the pay window. You must see it in theatres. You want to see it with other people. And the bigger theatre the better. And the bigger the one, the better. The other thing I would say is that this year is turning out to be amazing for originals, which for me makes me very happy.

It's going to deliver something like 36% of the global box office this year. That went down to about 20% in 2019 where we were just like mired in endless franchise stuff. It's interesting the films that have got enormous. You know, Michael, you know my thoughts? Yeah. It's crossed a billion now. Obsession is now on about 430 million.

It's gone crazy. It's ridiculous. This cost $750,000. And the films that haven't done big, you know, the new Minions movie didn't do great. Yeah. The Moana Live Action didn't do great. Yeah.

All these things are. That's done really badly. Yeah. So, yeah, it's very interesting. that we got bigger original movies. Last year I want to see The Invite. So we talk about these huge kind of box office fillers and The Odyssey and it's great to get people back in the cinema, but where are the smaller films? Well, those are out as well. The invite is absolutely. It's great, isn't it? And it's so funny. It's Olivia Wilde in it and directed it as well.

Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and a brilliant Ed Norton who knew he could do comedy. And it's just, it's sort of like a one set movie. But it's just, you think, oh, that's, I mean, what a fun thing to go at the cinema. So you've got Odyssey, which costs, you know, $250 million and it is extraordinary and looks amazing. And then you just got this. And it's going to take a long time to, we'll get it all back. This beautifully written funny film, which is in cinemas as well, and you can get tickets for. And you don't need to see an IMAX.

Equally, I would say, and also the Odyssey, this is going to have really long legs and people will see it. People probably see it multiple times and people will see it across the summer. And there's nothing in the way next weekend at all. again yeah then they've got no releasing nothing Spider-Man the week after isn't it but next week Spider-Ban brand new day which I think is going to be massive but they've got nothing next week so it's got a really clear run

again that's slightly interesting to me that in the summer that you don't have another thing I mean I would have thought to be honest it's because they knew Odyssey was going to be huge and it's three hours long and that takes up a lot of screens and a lot of multiplexes so quite hard to launch something I think they thought that's going to dominate two weeks normally you think the film's going to dominate a week I think that Odyssey will dominate two weeks for sure

but I think you could have had something that's very female skewing, you could have had something sort of different, but they don't really have those movies. So it's kind of like they have these giant originals or else they have the small things, and there isn't something that... They can't rush out one of their clean heaters. I know that was a sort of unique cultural moment,

but it would be good if there was something like that as well that you'd think, oh, well, everybody's going to benefit from this. But again, it is brilliant for originals. It's not nailed on at all this stuff. Everyone thinks he can just do any... I mean, as I say, it is just a complete masterpiece, in my opinion, just complete, extraordinary someone at the peak of their powers. But it's really not nailed on that people would go and see a film

about someone coming back from a war that's based on a very old story. And to have delivered that is just a complete triumph for Universal, for syncope with their production company, Christopher Nolan's and his wife. And I think it's a sort of brilliant cultural moment. But you can bet against Christopher Nolan. You can bet against anybody. But all of these culture warriors, just at least wait to see it before you do it. It's such a complete nonsense not waiting to see it before you.

But also, you know, when you do something extraordinary, you do, you like it, you enjoy it when people bow down to you and give you your Jews. Just do that for other people. Show that respect to other people who are at the top of their game and you can do something that you definitely can't do. Just, you know, have some class. Bankroll movies this good that reflect exactly your own worldview and see if that many people are. want to come out and see them on a summer weekend, because I can tell you right now, they won't want to. They won't.

That's true. And it's interesting when you say that it's not baked in that people would go and see this. I always think this was someone like Christopher Nolan, who's been so extraordinarily brilliant for such a long time. It is not baked in that he makes a good movie. It is not baked in that he has the energy that his brain sort of fires in the right way at the right time. The amount of choices you have to get right year after year after year to have the sort of career

he has is absolutely extraordinary. I find I find myself tired even thinking about it, thinking about the attention to detail that he's had to have. When you're directing a movie this big, there are 500 big choices every day of production. And he gets so many of them right all the time

and listen, we are very, very lucky to have him. Absolutely. Shall we go for a break and then talk a little bit about Netflix? Let's do that. This episode is brought to you by the Lloyd's 5K House Deport Lloyds are offering a 5K house deposit, which was last seen in 1996. What are your entertainment memories of the 1990s?

I feel guilty talking about the 1990s, because you look back and it was such a golden era. We'd never had it so good, and we didn't even realise because we were young and we just thought we were entitled to it. We absolutely took it for granted. Yeah, Brit Pop was absolutely in its pomp oasis playing to a quarter of a million people. You had blur and sweat and pop. I'm so sorry. Squise Girls. Amazing movies at the cinema, train spotting.

I mean, it felt a time of absolute optimism, but at the time, you just assumed that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. Yeah. But part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyd's is dealing with right now. Yep. Last seen in 1996, Lloyds are now offering 5K deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5K, first-time buyer.

1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on O&S data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells? That's immunotherapy. One type is car T-cell therapy. T-cells are your body's watchmen, and doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer.

Car-t-t cells, they've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia. because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells, they float around separately, and that makes it easier for CAR-T cells to seek them out and destroy them. And now, Cancer Research UK-funded scientists are designing CAR-T cells that can tackle solid tumors, too, making them tougher so they can survive a more crowded and hostile cancer environment. Now, these approaches are experimental, but they do start to show where treatment might go next. And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK's pioneering work has helped two daughters. global cancer survival in the UK.

I mean, this shows you how far research can take us. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash rest is science. Summer heats up in FX's The Shards. Set in 80s, Los Angeles, the Shards follows a group of beautiful privileged prep school students who are preyed on by the trawler, a serial killer targeting teenagers across the city. This fever dream of youth, beauty, sex and mystery is a must see. FX's The Shards.

Streaming August 5th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Sign up now at Disneyplus.com. Welcome back, everybody. Now, is Netflix in trouble? Last week, they had an earnings score and their engagement reports. They do those four times a year, so it's a quarterly report. Well, yeah, the engagement's a bit different and we'll get to. how even that is changing.

Their revenue gains, they had 12.6 billion in revenue, 97 billion hours viewed, that's 2% growth. They had a 3.4 billion net profit in the last quarter. They got their debt down. But that call resulted in another dip in the stock price. Netflix is currently half the value. It was in October when they went in for Warner. As you know, they lost currently to Paramount Skydance.

And this is despite the fact the subscriber growth, is growing, revenue is growing, all of these things are growing. And so I thought it's an interesting story to talk about about why that is. Why does Wall Street hate them, Richard? Why does Wall Street, well, because it's, so they grow. So here's how ridiculous the world of money is. Okay. Now, their revenue in the last quarter, $12.56 billion, okay? 12.56 billion dollars. That's a lot of money. Yeah. That is a lot of money. Like, if that was in a suitcase, right, we need someone to help. us with it, right? 12.56 billion. The prediction for what they were going to make was 12.58 billion. So they got 12.56 billion, but Wall Street had said, I reckon they're going to make 12.58

billion. And so this was seen as a disaster in some way. And the reason this is, so Netflix is huge, it continues to be huge, it continues to grow. We'll talk about, you know, there are, you know, issues about how they continue to grow. But Wall Street needs you to grow exponentially all of the time. That's what it needs you to do. You can't just be profitable and keep adding numbers and make 12 billion. It has to be.

No, but how are you going to get this to 13 billion? How are you going to get it to 14 billion? You become the most successful company in the world and by any metric what Netflix has done in the world of streaming is extraordinary, almost unparalleled in the entertainment world. The business they built is insane. But then you get to the stage. We had this when I was at Endemol.

We built this company from really, really tiny to like massive. And so like 10 years later, you're like, wow, I mean, this is amazing what we did. We had this company. It was making a few programs and now it makes all these programs. You have to go into a meeting where they say, okay, we need 15% growth next year. And you're like, have we not done that already? Can we not just sit back and go, let's keep doing that. That's what's happened with Netflix.

They are so successful, but Wall Street needs them to grow and grow and grow. And we will talk about a number of reasons why that gets harder and harder. Yeah, because I saw a lot of people saying effectively, oh look you're a media company now. Before you're like a tech company and everyone's like, oh, they're so special. They have this magical growth. And it's like they've exhausted their kind of fumes and honeymoon period

and the idea that there's something different, they're somehow parts of Silicon Valley rather than the television landscape or, you know, to use the old-fashioned term of it. And now it's like, all right, you're a media company. You're subject to the same ups and downs and headwinds and you're not growing enough and we're going to do the same thing to you that we always did to media companies. Yeah, it's narrative in that world.

I mean, I think it's probably quite useful for them to have this narrative now when they've got plenty of cash flow and they are still doing well because you will come back from this, you will swing back from it. So why is it difficult for Netflix to grow? A couple of reasons. First of all, they are growing. Oh, they are growing, yeah. It's amazing.

The past two years, they've grown between 14 and 18% every quarter. Okay. Now, in Q2, they grew 13.2%. Disappointing. Disappointing. It's disappointing. So, yeah, they need to keep growing. Yeah, and it's hard.

In America, for example, the, again, this is Wall Street thinking. It wouldn't necessarily be, I mean, they're sort of right. They have almost saturated that market in America. And America, they make a lot of money. Each customer in America is worth a lot of money to them. A lot of people are on that premium tier rather than the ad tier. 65% of new subscribers, though, are on the ad tier. And that is one way they can grow by growing that tier.

Well, thereby, and I don't want to get complicated about this, but the premium tier is huge money for net. It's why it's got all this money and can spend all of this money. To grow, they have to offer this ad tier. They have to offer a cheaper way in because all of the people who want to and can afford $22 a month are pretty much already doing it. You can't eke out anything else. So you think, okay, how do we then bite into this other 40% of the market that is not with us? Well, the first way you do that is by offering the same thing but cheaper. And the way you do that.

Well, that's how they did it after. They had another dip in 2022. Remember, they went absolutely gangbusters during the pandemic. And there was a point where they were valued more than ExxonMobil. And if you, I looked yesterday and they're now about half of what ExxonMobil is less than half. Good for Exxon mobile. Good for Exxon. Well done.

But if you do that. But they turned a lot of it around with that ad tier. Yeah, yeah. But if you have that ad tier, there's two things that happen. First, you can call a number of those people back. You know, you can offer this at seven. instead of $22 and people go, oh, I actually will try Netflix and I'll put up with the adverts. But you also have a large number of the people paying $22 who go, actually, I don't

mind a few adverts if I'm saving $14 a month. So actually you lose the revenue at that top end as well for every single person you add. So actually you have to add an awful lot of people for your, certainly for your profit margins to go up. So that's the difficulty they've got. And also in other territories that aren't America, there is much less appetite for the premium service and much more appetite for ad-funded service. So they're making less money per person they put on. So in really simple terms, there are fewer people out there who they can sign up to their service, and those people will be bringing them less money. Now, that's a problem of a big, mature, massive company who's been incredibly successful. But if you're Wall Street, that's a huge

problem because Wall Street just needs growth. That's all it needs because Wall Street is about having a return on your investment. So you have to have a lot of upside. And at the moment, they don't see that in Netflix. And the other issue they have Netflix is they're really big competitors. And I mean, they have blown all the streamers out of the water, the apples, the Disney's. I mean, you know, they are absolutely the daddy of this whole sector. But what they haven't blown out of the water is YouTube, is Roku, Chuby, all of these free services. And we know now that so many people watch YouTube on their TV.

So it's a proper competitor to Netflix. It's free. if you don't want to subscribe to certain channels. And that's where the huge competition, if you're Wall Street, that's where the huge competition is coming from. Wall Street are not thinking, wow, you won the streaming wars. You're this big beast and you're making all these incredible TV programs and people want to work with you.

They're thinking, what are you going to do about YouTube? What are you going to do about Chibi? It's interesting because I do think that the engagement issue is big, and that is also big with investors. They have got this issue with engagement of, we've got the second season of lots of shows, maybe underperformed like Man on the Inside Night Manager, Beef, even the Four Seasons. What they've said as well, which I think is a little bit, that this is also not played

particularly well. They've said, we're no longer going to tell you every six months what people are watching. We're now just going to do it once a year. Now, what does that tell you? That the numbers don't look great and they need to show them to us in a slightly different way. And they already no longer released subscriber data. Remember, they've stopped doing that. and they're saying judge us on our financials, our revenue and our operating profit, and they say that engagement is healthy, but clearly they are obscuring more of it. And investors have not loved that. Well, they've been more transparent than the other streamers.

I have to say, sorry, big caveat. We know absolutely nothing about Apple, and we don't know a whole lot about Prime. But remember, those are not primarily content businesses. They are other businesses that have content-on-a-com. And in the case of something like Apple or Amazon, it really is a tiny percentage of what they do. But if you're a big media company, you have to try and control that narrative. If what you're trying to do is keep your share price high, which is one of the things that they have to do, you have to control the narrative.

It is in a room full of Wall Street people, you can control the narrative by talking about the numbers. The second you are showing how many people are watching stranger things or Bridgeton, that becomes a conversation, a completely different conversation with a completely different group of people and it gets out of their control. So if you say, well, look, Stranger Things and Bridgeton are ending, which they both are, and these are two of the biggest franchises they've ever had, then there is a very, very simple story, which is, oh, my God, there's no way they're going to be able to replace those two things.

This is an absolute disaster. Whereas that's not really shown in the figures is the truth. But that's the conversation, and Wall Street listens to that conversation. Now, Netflix are so massive because they've consistently produced hits, and they've had hits that have ended, and they've replaced those hits. but you can't prove that you can't say to Wall Street, oh, don't worry, we will have another huge show coming up. But when we talked about Channel 4 as well, we say it is a hits business.

All Netflix needs is two or three big hits in the next couple of years, like big returning shows. Premium hits, though. Premium hits. Premium hits. And it's difficult because their messaging is a bit odd. Ted Sarandos said last year, the co-ceo of Netflix, said, oh, you know, we're not competing with YouTube.

YouTube's a place where you waste time, you know, Netflix's place where you say spend time. He's changed his tune since then, isn't he? But you are, more and more, what have they done? They are competing with YouTube. Okay, first of all, they literally are bringing creators across, sometimes on non-exclusive deals. So some of the biggest people, like, you know,

we talked about them before, Ms. Rachel or whoever. And her numbers, by the way, are absolutely off the chance. For something that had already been made and is available on YouTube. It's absolutely huge, the engagement. But you can see what else they're doing. They're bringing lifestyle content. They're getting all these sort of food influences. They're getting lots of stuff that is,

and we know that they're getting podcast stuff over, lots and lots of podcast things. And part of the reason of that is that people think, they've realized that people see Netflix as an evening thing. You're not going to put it on in the day. You come home and then you watch Netflix. You don't have, that they need, in order for you to spend longer with the platform,

which is the primary goal of all these people, they need stuff that you might put on in the day you know, maybe it's a form of visual radio or whatever, sorry to use these kind of old words and try and show you. It's kind of a background thing. They need people to have that stuff. And it's interesting, the podcast stuff was interesting because they've obviously spent a lot of money on podcasts, but they lumped them all in together and didn't allow you to see how well or how not very well at all. I suspect in many cases. They did. They were not showing you those numbers. One thing they are pointing to is sports, anything sports that they do. Remember, they're famously

for a very long time, so they didn't do sports. And then it was sports adjacent. And now it's just like, okay, we do sports. They've got the Women's World Cup next year. That will be interesting. Yeah. But also they pointed to the fact that live events,

in the old style, in the old style, drive the biggest sign-up days. So if you've got something, then those are the days when people think, I've got to have it now for this thing. Well, that's the fascinating thing. So they spend, sorry for the numbers, they spend 5% of their content spend on these live events,

which is a lot when you spend a lot on content, whereas it only drives 1% of viewing. So it looks like they're overspending by five times there. But as you say, I think six of the biggest sign-up days in the history of Netflix have all come off the back of these live events. So they're an incredible driver to new subscribers. It just absolutely works for them. A live event, appointment to view, all these old-fashioned things

that people feel they have to have it. And by the way, it's only 1% of viewing because it's one and done. You watch live event and then it's done. And so it's never going to get more than that. But they're absolutely worth their weight in gold. And though, you know, rights to things and big events are absolutely going to be worth their weight in gold. But more and more they want to make their landing page. You can see lots of it all.

Despite having sort of gone against YouTube, they're trying to make it more and more like YouTube. I personally don't think they should. I think that they should exist as something that is more premium, more curated. You know, it's what they do best because you cannot compete with YouTube. But the trouble, but this is where. Wall Street. Wall Street doesn't shoot yourself on the foot because like Wall Street cares. But Wall Street is forcing them to do something which is not right for the business. It's forcing them to leave premium behind and do this and try and chase the eyeballs of YouTube,

try and chase the eyeballs of Chuby. And as you say, it works against the premium nature of Netflix's business. But they can't keep growing 15% a year just doing that premium thing. What they can do is have an incredibly successful and a hugely financed and massive revenue business. But that's not how the money markets work. So what about MNA? We talked about when they didn't get warners, we said, well, this is actually at the time, it seemed like a win

for them because they managed to look through the books of a legacy media company. It had become very overpriced by the end. Ellison obviously just wanted it so much. But everyone sort of had the view at the time that it was interesting that they'd gone in for it because they hadn't expected it. They were sort of going in, people thought it was,

they were going in for it in a sort of, it's a nice to have thing kind of way. Now is there a sense that they actually needed to buy something? Fox bought Roku, which I thought they could have bought. So Roku, by the way, is sort of like Chubi. It's free to air, you know, advertiser funded, but crucially, and you've talked about this before, it exists on the homepage of an awful lot of connected televisions.

So Fox and Chuby are the first thing you see on a huge amount of connected television. So that's a powerful empire they are building there and absolutely sort of parking their tanks on YouTube's lawn and taking a lot of the kind of the cheaper Netflix customers away. So that's, I think that I felt that was a sensationally clever thing to buy. Yes. In terms of M&A, so mergers and acquisitions, in terms of,

so talking of Endemort again, you get to the point, okay, you've got to keep growing 15%, 15%. I think, well, we've got Big Brother, we've got Dino, no deal, we're making all this money out of this stuff, but it's, you know, there comes a point where that dips. And so the thing that you always do, do. And genuinely, I always find it to be cheating is you buy another company. Because the money you spend on it, you spend $200 million, and that seems to be forgotten by everyone. It's the

revenue it brings in. It's the cash flow it brings in. And they're like, oh, no, it's amazing because you're absolutely growing your earnings by, you know, 17%. Because we just paid $150 million for something. I mean, that doesn't feel, I mean, that feels cheating to me. And you're not following the DNA of your company, the DNA of Enderball, was people sitting around a table, inventing television shows and selling them. You are now just kind of going, oh, let's just get some suits into, you know, work at who we can buy, who sort of, you know, who kind of fits what we do. And, you know, we don't have a company that does music videos or they buy a music video company. And so you grow. And then, you know, the analysts are happy. You know, the hedge funds,

who own 17% of you are happy because they can see growth. But it's cheating. It's not real growth. You know, you can buy whoever you want. It's not someone else's growth. You just bought it. And so, you know, I admire the fact that Netflix are not just going out and buying growth. They're not just going out and buying other companies. You know, they seem to be very strategic about what they want to do. It's not to say they won't because I'm sure they will at some point. There will be someone who fits them perfectly. But the fact they're not just going, oh, this is an easy way to go 17%.

We just buy a company that already makes, you know, $4 billion. And yeah, I always hated it so much. It genuinely, it felt like cheating. And also it makes the company too big. It makes the company too hard to manage. cuts the sort of the culture from the heart of a company. He says they're very careful investors around us. So we'll see.

But it's interesting. I definitely think there is something to what people have been saying, which is that that tech sorcery sheen has come off Netflix. And people now think, you're a media company now. Yeah, they are. But, you know, I hope that there's a different narrative which can now kind of take that place, which is you're a media company. Oh, my God, what an incredible media company you are and you've been.

And, you know, I've worked with Netflix a fair bit. I'm working with them at the moment. And as a creator, it's still a really amazing place to work. And that's the thing that will drive them. But that's what you want from a media company. Just go, let's keep doing the thing we do well and keep providing people with entertainment and keep making great things with great people.

We could talk about bricks and mortar. We could say they don't have a park. And many of the other kind of legacy companies have park. I personally don't think they have something that their USP is that they are sort of the world's television channel. And that I don't think they actually, I'm not quite sure what, I can't quite imagine what the park would look like. But maybe, I imagine we'd have said that if Disney had said, oh, you know that you really like Snow White and Fantasia, I am going to build roller coasters. You're like, ah, well, that doesn't sound like that's a very good old. No, I'm going to have an enormous castle.

There's going to be an enormous big castle. Well, I can't wait for Baby Randia World. but, well, for... That's actually a really, really good idea. So much fun. But yeah, listen, it's so hard because YouTube don't have to make anything. No. They don't have to do anything at all.

I mean, listen, you know, they're going to show the Oscars and things like that. And, you know, they have great relationships with their creators. But, you know... But they actually, they have declining relationships with lots of their creators, actually. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't seem to matter because those creators are using YouTube to... Where are you going in? Well, the creators make their money off, you know, selling things, but YouTube is an incredible shop window.

YouTube is like the greatest business plan that ever created. I don't really do anything. They've got enough money to do literally anything they want, buy anything they want. People are making their content for them day in day. They literally, it's like when MTV started, when we did our special bonus episodes about MTV, that someone else is providing you with all the programming. and yet you get to keep most of the advertising. I mean, it's absolutely insane. But YouTube made $60 billion last year. I mean, that's a hell of a business, isn't it? It's a very successful business.

And I just think if Netflix can keep making premium, really smart television in a world where there is that company as well, then we should probably try and support them as much as we possibly can. It also makes you think, my God, the BBC does a good job. Yeah. Talking of Disney, the Mickey Mouse Club is, coming back. I wanted to talk about it because of that incredible reboot they did, the people who came out of the 80s-90s reboot, but fit us in on the background a bit.

Fullwell, who made lots of really interesting things, are going to reboot the Mickey Mouse Club. And that's Ben Winston and James Corden and a big British success story. Yeah, it certainly is. And it's quite interesting, the history of the Mickey Mouse Club, because it's a sort of old thing. Walt Disney himself started it. And it was a daily, hour-long, variety show, this is in 1955, starring children, which was basically unprecedented. And it grew up out of sort of real clubs where people joined and they hung out and they watched cartoons. But it was obviously a brilliant marketing plot. They did sort of skits and musical numbers and they had guests and they pushed the cartoons and they had theme days. And actually the money from that, that original

contract was with ABC and the money that he got from that Walt Disney enabled him to complete Anaheim to a complete Disneyland, the first park. There go, which I just think it's a terrible idea. I can't see what a Disney theme park would look like. Okay, it then goes away this show until the 70s, the late 70s. And then it goes away again until the late 80s when the all-new Mickey Mouse Club comes out. This is where I get interesting. It's much more contemporary that one.

It's skewed a bit older. They had some sort of serials within it, and it's got a live studio audience. So please talk to me about the talent roster of the all-new Mickey Mouse Club. I was looking through all of it. I was looking through the various iterations just because, you know, I know that this version, the 80s, 90s one was huge. I wonder if the previous generations were huge. And they were not.

It's like, and so as I went on to be like the neighbour in this sitcom in the 1960s. You go, okay, that's interesting. So I thought that maybe it had a history of really, really launching careers. So in the late 80s, early 90s, huge amounts of auditions. Virtually everyone, I mean, there's lots of people here who you've heard of, but an awful lot of very famous people didn't get into the Mickey Mouse Club. But the Mickey Mouse Club, in that era, you have to say if you've heard of these people or not. Britney Spears.

Yes. You're going to make me play this game. No, no, I promise I won't. But play along at home if you want to. So Britney Spears goes on to one of the biggest selling pop artists in history. Christina Aguilera was one of the Mickey Mouse Club. Justin Timberlake. I mean, already, that's pretty good.

Kerry Russell. Yeah, I know. that's mad. From the Americans and the diplomat, just one of the greatest actors in the world. She started out on the Mickey Mouse Club. And just a young young gentleman called Ryan Gosling. I mean, there weren't many people in the Mickey Mouse Club. This is not like there were 500 and we cherry picked them.

There were not many people. All of these people went through those doors at the same time. And all of them went on to have these absolutely extraordinary careers. The only thing that had to happen was for their childhood to be erased. It's all you ever need. So, well, so many people failed their audition. Don't forget, like, some people, Matt Damon would have been a different odyssey, failed his audition, Jessica Simpson.

There's a lot of people who say, oh, I failed my audition to the Mickey Mouse Club. Courtney Love claims she read a Sylvia Plath poem. Yes, bullshit. But Fullwell are going to do, I think, something different. They're not going to do a daily show. By the way, that is in terms of, like, pastoral care and nightmare, doing a daily show involving kids. I can see why they're drawn to this

because there's a lot of people who are making TV who feel something we just talked about. Their children are watching this stuff on young children are watching YouTube. They're not watching anything that you would consider long form at all. And they're trying to think, like, can we... Again, I think they've done something quite similar

to that peak era Mickey Mouse, all new Mickey Mouse Club. they've got 11 kids, they're 13 to 15, and I think there's one 16 year old. And so they're getting older. It's not going to be that saccharine because nothing can be authentic these days if it's that saccharine. Remember, you're competing with sort of YouTube families and people. That's the kind of long-form content that young children will watch. They'll watch like YouTube families.

And we know, I mean, that is a pastoral nightmare as well, as we know from various exposites. but you want it, so they want it to still be a variety show, but with storylines. Yeah. So maybe they're putting on a weekly show, and so it's part reality show. For me, what's interesting about this is there were all sorts of these things, and we talk about this all the time, that these are old ideas. Yeah. And they can be remade very successfully, and I hope, you know, I wish them all the luck with this one.

Full World did another thing that I thought was very interesting. When Wicked for Good came out, they made a wicked TV special. Now, TV specials are just like such an old-fashioned idea. Yeah. The Friends Reunion was one of this as well. They did the Friends Reunion as well. And so instead of thinking, like, okay, it's a reunion. These things have sort of existed and hung around,

and they're actually just like really old-fashioned pieces of content. TV specials about a movie that's going to be not on TV are particularly one of these. But that wicked TV special did unbelievable numbers. And they worked out how to make, you know, the stars, the sort of center of it, and to bring people on and have guests and do all of it. and it felt new and it felt like a lot of things like, oh, this is really good. It's like, yeah, we've actually been making this stuff. The last time you might have seen one of these is in the 80s, but it's, they really work.

Well, it's like the return of the roasts to Netflix. You think, I mean, it's the oldest idea in the world, but it does huge numbers for them if you do them right. Yes, absolutely. So these kind of old-fashioned ideas and thinking, what's going to keep people, what's going to keep them watching? Obviously, they're incredibly clippable, which is helpful. But what's going to keep people watching? what's going to build, what isn't going to be YouTube, but it's going to build talent and stars.

And I think they're all going to be very, very, very talented these kids. And what can you keep people coming back? They should have a couple of untalented ones just for comparison. Yes. Honestly, it shows you how amazing Jerry is when you look at John. Well, you look at all this stuff. I mean, the eras when people did this, I mean, look at someone like S Club 7.

They're doing a big documentary about that, which I think will be amazing, because that's the sort of, again, that's the sort of thing where it's sort of real, but it's sort of not, and they sort of live together and they sort of don't, and they're sort of doing a show, and they're also sort of not. But it is compelling, and there are ways

where it can be authentic enough, I think, for young audiences. And if you're full world, you know, there's all sorts of, so this is a brand we've heard of, right? If they just said, oh, we're launching a new talent thing, we wouldn't be talking about it. We're talking about it because it's interesting because it's the Mickey Mouse Club, and we know what happens to the Mickey Mouse Club

in the 80s and 90s. So we know it was absolutely enormous. So it's a bit of IP that will get you through the door. It will get you kind of, you know, eyeballs for the first few days. You then just have to rely on making something brilliant. And if you make something brilliant, people will watch it, whereas without the title, the Mickey Mouse Club, you can make something brilliant and no one would ever see it. And what, you know, the world now is a world of, so, you know, full world will be paid to make it and that's all fine, but that's not really the business. The business is, do we have a relationship with people who are suddenly going have 200 million Instagram followers and we can make the next thing for them.

And this, for them, they've got 11 shots at building a massive star. Five of them will fall out with a production company because, you know, of egos. You know, three of them won't do anything, but there might be two. You go, okay, these two we've got for the next five years and, you know, we can make a huge amount of money out of them. That's what you have to do as a production company now. But it's like what you've been saying a lot about dancing with the stars or strictly. This is that for kids. Yeah.

This is the equivalent of doing Dance with the Stars, but for kids, there's a thing. They'll have lots of, you know, secondary content, lots of other things, but you will be able to tune in once a week and see it all and think, oh, I see, you know. And parents will be comfortable with you if you're nine years old turning that on. It might even point you in the direction of it. So you could be, you know, they put their ante into the table. So you're at the table, that's for sure. And now you just got to, I hope you get good cards. But, you know, that's the thing.

You do need the buy-in. and the Mickey Mouse Club is a buying, and the fact that they're a great production company means perhaps they'll make it brilliantly well, but, you know, they definitely have a chance. I was thinking about shows that, you know, launch a huge amount of stars. I was trying to think of there's a British equivalent of the Mickey Mouse Club. And I thought, well, our friends in the north,

because you've got Gina McKee and you've got Christopher Hickleston and you've got Mark Strong and you've got Daniel Craig. You know, you've literally got four of the biggest actors in the world. You've got a Doctor Who and you've got a James Bond there. But I think T4, I think you look back to T4. T4 was like a weekend morning show. You know, it's just where you would link in between things.

Bands would come on. There'd be VTs and things like that. But, you know, it just had these young, quite hip presenters. But from T4, you've got Vernon K, Rick Edwards, Dermitow Leary, Simon Amstall, Alexa Chung, Ben Shepard, Steve Jones, Jamila Jamil, Makita Oliver. I mean, that's a, that is a hit rate. it. I mean, and June Sarpong, who is now, I've messaged Rick Evers the other day and said, I lost my sweepstake on which T4 presenter would become the first to enter the House of Lords

because she's about to be a noble, because she's done amazing work for years behind the scenes, June Sarpong. But it's, I mean, that's incredible to do a show and the freedom they had on that show as well, to show who they were and what it is they could do, that launches everybody. Well, that was quite anarchic, which I think is probably better, the Mickey Mouse Club of that era, was I think relatively difficult and you just were forged in its fires or consumed by them. For sure. I mean, yeah, Fullwell, I think

either we have a hit here or we've got a documentary in 20 years' time. Well, it's very, very different doing one show a week to five shows a week. But maybe Fuller might like to look at rebooting T4 and finding the next generation of TV presenters. But it's, listen, we, again, it's a British successful story, isn't it?

I like it when British production companies go and make a bit of money in America because America's make enough money out of us, don't they? You know, fair play to them. I'm not complaining. Our recommendations this week, I think we've already done. You're going to recommend the honesty. I literally, I'm going to say it again. And I will recommend the invite. It's just very funny. I would say this. Don't go with your partner if your marriage is in trouble. That would be my only note. But if you're,

if you are very, very happy in your life, you will laugh your head off. It's really, really good. It's really good. Right. We will be back on Thursday with a Q&A and our bonus episode this week. Richard, special series. It is another World Cup of TV theme tunes. I'm joined by the brilliant Bella Hull, who I first worked with on, have I got news for you? And I immediately just thought, oh, you're going to be a huge star. She's great on this.

And Ivo Graham, who I love. And Ivo has a very similar brain to me in terms of if you want to put eight things up against each other. Ivo is very much in. He will fight to the death. Yeah. So we did a few together and TV things. themes is the first. And thanks everyone for your feedback on those shows. They were a lot of fun. Well, because it's, I know it's sort of a World Cup, but you just get to talk about all this.

It's just a vehicle for talking about interesting things and interesting people. So I hope you enjoy that, members. If you are not a member, you can join at the rest of entertainment.com. We'd love to have you, but you don't have to. You absolutely don't have to. But otherwise, see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. Hello, it's Marina Hyde from The Restors Entertainment. Now, Tom, it's fair to say there isn't normally a huge amount of crossover between our podcasts. Well, Marina, I know that we have both on our respective podcasts discussed Bin Diesel's ambition to play Hannibal. So I've always thought that perhaps there is potential here for the rest of history and the rest of his entertainment to combine and produce something beautiful.

Yes, in a crossover, nobody saw coming. The worlds of reality TV and historical high society collide live on the South Bank Center stage. Yeah, the real housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV reality show eye onto the women of the early 19th century. And when we say the women of the early 19th century, we are talking about some of the most extraordinary, most charismatic, most scandalous women in the whole of British history. Exactly. Think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen and my chaotic queen, Caroline Lamb. Yeah, so Marina and I are planning to pull out all the stops for a reality TV tour. of Regency London, complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting,

a special celebrity guest from the world of the real, real housewives. The Restis Fest is running from the 4th to 6th of September at London's South Bank Centre. Members of The Rest is History and the Rest is Entertainment can get tickets on the 28th of May. General Sale goes live on the 2nd of June at 10 a.m. visit Southbank Center.com.uk.uk to find out more. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen, ad-free?

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