The Rest Is Entertainment - How to make a billion in showbiz

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

The Sunday Times rich list has been revealed but which are the names from the world of entertainment, and how have they made their money? Cannes Film Festival is underway, and the world has seen for the first time Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. A film long talked about and self-financed by the man himself, why has he had to put his hand in his own pocket, like Kevin Coster with Horizon: An American Saga, is it all vanity? Plus, Have I Got News For You is soon to be on US screens. Does the history of UK formats trying to make it in American show it will be a success? Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations: Marina - Inside No.9 (iPlayer) Richard - Triangle Of Sadness (Netflix) / Secrets Of Spies (ITVX) 🌏 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

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Restors Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond. Good morning Marina. Hello, how are you? Yeah, I'm not bad. How are you? Very well, thank you. I never know whether to say good morning because sometimes people are listening to it in the afternoon or the evening. So good day to the good time of day to you. We have a lot to talk about. We do have a lot to talk about. We're going to talk about a very interesting story that people might not know quite so much about. Francis Ford Coppola self-financing his own new film to the tune of 150 million dollars. We can talk about that. Kevin Costner also part self-financing his own new film to the tune of many millions of dollars,

which we will also link in together. And talking of millions of dollars, the Sunday Times Rich List came out. We're going to try and give you the formula for becoming a billionaire in entertainment. Spoiler is quite difficult. Yeah, it's quite hard. And we are also going to talk, Have I Got News for You is going to America, and they're gonna make an American version

of Have I Got News for You to tie in with the forthcoming presidential election slash apocalypse. And we will talk about that too. Shall we start with Francis Ford Coppola? Let's, and Kevin Costner, because it's the Cannes Film Festival. Explain the Cannes Film Festival to me, because you read about it, it seems, it feels like the Met Gala for film.

Yes, I suppose it's the one that everyone's heard of. It happens every year and if you've made a film, you decide whether you're going to premiere it if it's quite a big film at one of the film festivals. And then it's heard of. It happens every year and if you've made a film you decide whether you're going to premiere it, if it's quite a big film, at one of the film festivals. And then it's in competition. Sometimes they don't always have to be in competition but the films that we're talking about today are in competition and they're in competition for various prices but the Palme d'Or is the most sort of famous one. There are also many many people from the industry trying to get distribution, trying to get funding for their films. It's a sort of a bit of a jamboree, a bit of a bonfire, a bit of a, you know, bake-off for people trying to get access to finance.

A bake-off for people trying to get access to finance. That's Dragon's Den. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a little bit like that, but more grammatical, everyone's in floor length. Coppola's new movie, Megalopolis, subtitled a fable. He's 85. It cost $120 million, entirely self-funded, which is sort of extraordinary. 40 years in the conception and the battle to get it made. And very briefly, I'll summarize the plot. I have not seen this because it's just premier, but it's an architect trying to rebuild New Rome, a sort of New York analog, very recognizable New Yorkogue, while corrupt

politicians get in his way and it's, that's Adam Driver, and it's sort of what it's like to be an artist at the end of Empire. Horizon, an American saga is the Kossner movie. Now this is not one but two movies, this is coming out this summer, he also has three and four planned, so they're going to release the two parts of Horizon, an American Saga I mean this is genuinely mad. And he's self-funded this as well. He's partially self-funded it he says his accountants furious, imagine he wasn't thrilled about the recent divorce either although she didn't get quite what she was going for. Anyway I think he's mortgaged some of his land he won't go hungry but he's contributed between 30 and 50 million they think. Again he has

tried to get this going for 30 years it's going to cross the civil war but at the moment it's a story about the expansion of the American West and this bit is pretty simple. It's about time Hollywood did a movie about the Wild West. Yeah, my bat son Kevin Costner did one. The two that have been made of those cost 100 million each. Sorry again the figures are important we don't like to filter all entertainment groups but they are really important in this particular case because these are very very expensive films. I almost want to say last of the big swings. Kevin Costner has left Yellowstone, the most successful

show on American television, and he left it to basically do this because he couldn't fit this in with it. Both of them are sort of passion slash vanity projects. That's a very thin line isn't it between a passion project and vanity project. Yeah, and you know if we've been here before, Kevin Costner, when he directed Dancers with Wolves, people like what, it's basically, there's hardly any talking. You know, he was a huge movie star at the time,

and his movies made many, many times what they cost to make. And he went and did this thing, and which ended up winning him Best Director and Best Picture over Goodfellas. Well done to the Academy, you have cocked it up again. And Martin Scorsese, but anyway. But are they going to be ginormous flops? I suppose is the first question because Kevin Colson has been in ginormous flops before Waterworld is the famous and people used to

call that Kevin's Gate, which is a play on Heaven's Gate, which was the Michael Cimino movie that sort of collapsed we're gonna link them all in in the end. The biggest flop of all time. The most famous flop of all time and it sort of collapsed not just a studio and a really old prestigious studio United Artists but it collapsed the genre of westerns for a long time and it collapsed really what was called the new Hollywood which were all the filmmakers like Scorsese, Coppola, Brian De Palma, all these people like this. And they were given suddenly free reign in the seventies is this extraordinary creative time. And you can read about it in that great book, Easy Riders Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind. But at the end, this

has become so bloated, these productions become so enormous. And Heaven's Gate is an enormous flop and I think his director's cut was something like four and a half hours, I mean absolutely crackers. Heaven's Gate is always the byword for that, it's a trope name as you might say and people used to say that about Water World because Kevin Costner has been in big flops before but actually Water World is a weird one, it was sort of marketed in the end as a flop because you could do that when that movie came out. You could say, oh my god, go and see this. And people would go and see theatrical releases that they might think would be a flop just to have a look. You cannot do that anymore.

Because in the old days, people, you would go to the cinema once a month and go, what are we watching? Oh, would it be a lot of fun to go and see Waterworld? Whereas now you have to have a particular reason to go to the cinema and it's quite rare for people to get excited enough to go and see a film. Completely and you've got to get them to come out and even though he's been on the most popular show in American television, it's very hard to get people to still come out. Also the other thing was with Waterworld, back then you could make your profits back on video sales.

This does not exist anymore. But there's something about these kind of older, and in Coppola's case, he's 85, he's really quite old, these last big creative swings. People have been saying, we need artists to do this and to take these massive swings in the name of art. And I mean, the Coppola movie does sound quite extraordinary. There was a moment where a person came onto the stage at Cannes and addressed the man in the movie. Oh yes, I saw that. Like a real-life actor comes onto the stage and has a... Yeah, that was one of the least nuts things to happen. I mean, it is genuine extraordinary. There were some boos, there was some cheers.

Very Eurovision. It is very... I mean, it's... but somewhat more expensive in terms of the staging. And I don't know... Coppola has obviously been a huge critic of things like superhero movies and franchise movie making maybe in general. And I do think those things have sort of killed cinema and they've almost been like overperforming hedge funds for so long that they squeezed out everything else. And now there's nothing to put there in their place. Here's the fascinating thing I think.

So someone like Francis Ford Coppola, one of the most iconic directors of all time, Godfather, that was his big one, and two and three sequels. Yeah, Apocalypse Now. So, you know, he's a genius. And he finds himself in a place in Hollywood. If you're a genius, by the way, and all of those people, the Spielbergs and the Coppolas who grew up in that system in the 70s, they are used to, there's a muscle memory of every time they have an idea, someone funds it. And they go and make it and it's a masterpiece and occasionally they have a flop, but then sometimes you'd have a huge hit. So he gets to a stage, he's 85 now, but he's been working

on this film for a really long time. I mean, at least sort of 20 years he's been sort of putting stuff together. So he'd got to the stage where he would have an idea, he would go into a studio and say, so I've got this idea, it's set in New Rome, which is like New York and it's the end of days and it's you know, the end of the Republic of America. And they would go, not for us, Francis. And he's like, sorry. They're going, no, just it's not, I just don't think because we're doing Iron Man seven. So it's just, I don't, I don't think it's going to work for us. So most directors then at that point just go, I'm going to retire and play golf and be bitter. And he just went, you know what, I'm just going to do point just go I'm gonna retire and play golf and be bitter and he just went

You know what? I'm just got I'm gonna do this myself. I'm gonna do it myself. I made so much money Over the years and he sold his vineyards. We sold it. We retired to their vineyard He thought he sold his vineyard and used it to make the film by the way If you want to know where the money is in Hollywood He didn't even sell all his vineyards and he made about half a billion dollars Yeah, selling his got an incredibly successful vine vineyard which I have actually been to. Yes, he hasn't just got a couple of acres and some cherry trees. He's got a proper business. I'm joking Sting, if you've got a bigger vineyard than that I don't want to denigrate your Tuscan estate.

I don't wish to denigrate your Tuscan estate is the first line of such a great lost poem. So he puts in 120, 150150 million as his own money, and it means he makes whatever film that he wants. And it's fascinating seeing the reactions to this film, because the reviews are all in. And I would suggest some of them, like the Times called it a head-wrecking abomination, folly of gargantuan proportions,

was another review, numbing excess. But then a lot of filmmakers are saying that it's sort of a work of the imagination, unlike anything we've ever seen before. It's essentially what you're doing. You're seeing a filmmaker's vision without any studio. So when people always say, oh, God, studios are awful. I mean, they're the worst and their notes are terrible and they make everything bad. Hopefully we're all going to get the chance to watch this film. This is what happens if there are

no notes and I think several things about it. I think it's a shame that Francis Ford Coppola can't be funded to do a movie. Of course that's a shame and we understand the reasons why. I think it's brilliant that he's done it anyway and he has said do you know what I sort of don't care there's things I want to do before I die and this is one of them. I love that. I want to live in a world of gold, ancho and follies. Exactly. I just, no one else, and so few people can afford to do them. Yeah. And if he's just decided it's his money,

you can't take it with you, can you, Richard? But exactly that. And you know, there's a few, very few people now can fund movies. We know that and the streamers can fund movies, but Francis Ford Coppola goes, well, look, I can fund a movie. So I'm going to, I'm going to fund this, my own movie. And the fact that everyone has gone to see it, it got a seven minute standing ovation, as you say, which is- And some booze. Yeah, but I definitely want to see it.

So do I. It looks amazing. And he's also said, I thought about this idea of the fall of empire and the fall of America, because it's all based on the fall of Rome. And he says, and actually now it's being released. He says, I really see it in our culture. I see culturally, we might be at the end of the American empire. There are things happening

now that happened in Rome. So he's doing it for a reason. His wife passed away in April, very, very recently, and the film is dedicated to her. He said, the most beautiful word in the world is Esperanza, which means hope. God bless the guy. You know people like Stephen Soderbergh the great filmmaker just said look I mean it's a work of incredible creative imagination. Hollywood owes this guy and culture owes him and entertainment owes him and he's put his money out there and it's listen who knows who knows what this film will eventually be like when we see it but wouldn't it be lovely if we were going to see it? It would be I mean I don't think people I don't think that will happen

but it doesn't really it doesn't sort of matter but the trouble is is that whilst I love that he's taken this enormous swing and I think it's brilliant and cool and sort of hilarious and follies are brilliant it's not scalable nobody else has got so you are still left with this problem where franchise moviemaking has sort of hollowed out Lots of Hollywood and lots of cinema and and they have they haven't worked out how to creatively fill that and to revive things See, that's the thing. So I absolutely get the USP of Coppola I get the mindset that whites made I get I get the whole thing The cost of thing is is harder him thinking I tell you what people would like me in a Western

Well, they have liked him in a Western before. Yeah, but if you're going to spend 40 million, it just feels a weird thing for him to go, this is the hit I'm going to die on. Well, he loves Westerns. Think of Darkest of the Worlds. He made that other, which is actually better, probably, that one called Open Range in 2003. That had sort of Robert Duvall in it. I'm not quite sure I'm feeling the same about Sienna Miller I mean you're not going out there for the stars you're going for Kevin Costner maybe and And do you think this is something that will happen more in the future people funding their own?

Movies because if you're Tom Cruise, you can fund your own movie Spielberg could fund his own movie I know neither those have particular problems getting movies funded But given it is now almost impossible to get a movie funded, I mean, it's so mind-numbingly difficult. If you are someone who's sitting on, you know, two, three, 400 million, all these people with their, you know, tequila companies, you know, it's nothing stopping, you know, George Clooney selling his cider press and, and funding his own movie. Yes. And when Kord Jefferson picked up his Oscar for the screenplay for American Fiction,

he said, instead of $200 million movies, please can we have some like 10, $20 million movies, or even $20, $10 million movies? It's doable. And then Bradley Walsh could fund those. Yes. Yeah. It's not a bad idea.

Like a new United Artists. Yes, of a type. And there are ways of doing it, but there has to be the recalibration. We were talking about this last week in terms of things like star salaries and what type of work you eventually want to be involved in. If you want to keep doing big franchise movies

in which I can't think it's particularly rewarding as an actor to do lots of those characters, or you want to work in interesting things, there's going to have to be a recalibration of what you accept, or you do one for them and one for me. Oh, we have another exclusive. Joyce in the Thursday Murder Club has just been cast. Because we've already got Pierce Brosnan and Sir Ben Kingsley and the one for Helen Mirren.

And Joyce is Celia Imrie, which I'm very excited about. That's terrific. Because she's so mischievous and impish. That's really terrific. Funny, yes, I was talking with Stephen Fray's about this the other day, and he was like, why doesn't he get Celia Emory? Well, I'll be happy to turn back and say he has got Celia Emory. And she is funding a lot of the movie as well. She's putting in 35 million dollars. Oh, she's so terrific. Okay, that's great. So that's

a bit of fun, isn't it? Yes, that's what I'm talking about. But that's fully funded. We don't have to worry about that movie. That is all that is all set up. Should we have some adverts? Let's please. Which this week are self-funded by you and I. Welcome back. And we are going to talk about Have I Got News for you, which is going to CNN, they're going to make an American version of it to sort of tie in with the presidential election, which is unusual because CNN is a news network and but they're going to put it in a double bill with Bill Ma's actual HBO show, which they're going to repeat on Saturday nights and make a sort of comedy hour looking at the news, which is a departure.

And it's an interesting one because historically and famously, and we'll talk about the reasons why British panel shows, which are huge in the UK, it's one of our biggest things, the stuff we love, do not work in America. They absolutely do not work in America in the same way that America has all of those late night TV chat shows and those hosts, and that doesn't work over here. They try panel shows every now and again, they always fail. We try late night daily chat shows and they always fail as well. So have I got news for you? Hopefully this time it might work. It's the fourth time they've tried

it in the US. They've done three pilots for this show. They did a pilot way back in 2004 for Bravo. They did one in 2009. I was talking to Jimmy Melville who runs Patrick and is the great genius behind all of their shows. And in 2009 they did it for NBC and Jeff Zucker who was the head of NBC now and now is head of everything. Jimmy said we made this pilot, he said it was genuinely, it was a good one. And you can tell when a producer and he said this is a good one. And he said we've talked before about Americans and their over excitement. Forget the language but Jimmy said Jeff Zucker's just standing next to me and goes,

that was fucking awesome. So Jimmy's like, great, well, listen, we're moving out here for the next 18 months, let's make this thing. He then said, that was when Conan O'Brien was just taken over from Jay Leno and there was lots of hoo-ha and it went badly. Jimmy said, the words fucking awesome were the last

two words Jeff Zucker ever said to me. He said, they did not get back in touch. They didn't kind of say, do you know what, because of this Conan stuff, you know, we're rethinking. They didn't kind of go, yeah, listen, maybe we'll try another time. He said there was not a single word said from that moment onwards. So that's a ghosted iteration. A long list.

Ghosted by Zaka, exactly. Now panel shows over here, the two sort of big behemoths of panel shows are Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You. Those are the two that are going to run like on the Mount Rushmore of panel shows. And America has not fallen in love with either. We've done these three pilots for Have I Got News. Would I Lie to You had a whole series out in the US as well and Americans have not fallen in love with them. They love the British versions when they watch them on YouTube, said before you go to the States and they just

adore Would I Lie to You? But Would I Lie to You? Have I Got News? Taskmaster. America is not interested. And I've talked to a few of the producers, talked to Richard Wilson, who's Have I Got News for You? exec producer.

He's the person that keeps that show a hit for so long and I talked to Peter Holmes who runs um would I lie to you and it's interesting because no one really has the answer one thing they both brought up was that have I got news for you and would I lie to you both have a lot to do with class and how obsessed we are in Britain yeah with class and you've got the Paul and Ian mechanic and you've got the Lee and David mechanic and in America they don't have that, that's not of interest to them. They also spoke about American comics being very much more obsessed with their own material because that's how you get big in America is you know you just you're on the road the

whole time you do your own stuff whereas in Britain because we've had those Radio 4 panel shows for years we're much more comfortable with bantering with each other. Well that's the thing I think is that so much of their satire is done via the monologue. It's interesting actually that a huge amount of their satire is done via late night television. Political satire because, you know, in my view their politics is quite right for satire, but there are so few people, for instance, writing political humour since even, I mean, obviously there's been people like PJ or Rourke in the past, but there are very few political satirists in the written word. There's someone great at

the Washington Post who I think is brilliant called Alexandra Petrie, she's fantastic, and it's such a waste. They don't have sketch writers. They don't have sketch writers. That's the thing that we have that they don't have at all. And sketch writers meaning like political sketches. The parliamentary sketch writers, but they don't have to be just writing about the thing that we have that they don't have at all. And sketch writers meaning like political sketches for news spenders. The parliamentary sketch writers who are like, but they don't have to be just writing about parliament, you know, and we have them in every paper and they're very popular and obviously there's been a huge amount of raw material in both our politics for the last, over the last few years and it always seemed to me like such a waste.

Yeah and it's, have I got news for you particularly because that is satire and it's politics and Jimmy and Richard have both said when you get left-wing comics and right-wing comics in the states They have a slightly different attitude towards it. They find it less comfortable being funny about politics because it sort of feels like it's a bit more Raw and you know, because you know They they could be about to see the collapse of their entire civilization And so it's harder for them to sort of sit back and relax and make jokes about it because they want to make a point a lot of the time. So this time round, as you say, CNN have commissioned it, which Mark Thompson, who used to be the head of the BBC, and weirdly was the features director at the BBC when Have I Got News for

You first started in the UK, which is 1990. So it's over 30 years ago that Mark Thompson has sort of been in charge of this show a lot, but it means of course he understands exactly what the show is. So Jimmy is able to say to him, look, you know what the show is, you know how we want to make it, you know the kind of show that we need to make, we know it can't be all that American, we have to be able to relax into it a bit, we have to have it a bit looser. And Mark Thompson understands that and gets it so they're doing 10 weekly episodes leading up to the election. It's not a pilot this time it's a real series that's the first time they'll have a real chance to run at it. The good news is UK TV and iPlayer have both bought the rights as well.

Well that'll be fun. So we'll get a lot more viewers. CNN averages 600,000 viewers in prime time. Yes, exactly. In the United States, which I'm given to believe is quite a big country. So it doesn't have to do amazing numbers, let's put it that way. It will probably do bigger numbers in the UK than in the US. I think so, but hopefully it's the sort of thing that if you do 10 episodes of it, the American viewing public will kind of go, actually, we like the vibe of this. We like this sort this chatting around a subject

rather than, you know, whenever you talk to, again, Peter Holmes and Richard Wilson and various producers, they say Americans, they cannot understand, there's a number of things they cannot understand, absolutely can't get their head around. Why is there no prize? Why do sometimes they give an answer they know to be incorrect? Oh, yeah, because they really care about the actual points. Yeah, exactly. So because like so much of the fun of going on those shows is someone asks you a question, and you have fun. You talk around it, you have a laugh before you then go onto it, but let's actually talk about the thing. So they absolutely don't understand that at all.

And so you have to sort of show that a bit, as I say, the UK version. So these shows are very successful. The one version of these shows that has ever worked in the States, the one big UK comedy, entertainment show that's really worked is Whose Line Is It Anyway. Yes, that's been a huge success. Yeah, it was an absolutely massive hit.

That came about sort of accidentally in that they were trying to do a pilot in the States and in the States, of course, they're like, everyone has to be young and incredibly good looking. And Whose Line in the UK had a lot of North American people in it, Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Americans and Canadians, who were not the demographic that the networks are looking for. But then Ryan Stiles was in a sitcom with an American comedy,

he's huge in the States, not so much over here, called Drew Carey. And Ryan shows Drew Carey, who's lying, and Drew Carey goes, well this is hilarious. I'll host this. And because he was a huge name, suddenly it gets off the ground. They host it, they can cast whoever they want because Drew Carey's allowed to have it. You know, very much the Francis Ford Coppola of this piece. He can do what he wants. And that was a huge, huge hit for almost no money. But you know why it was a huge hit? Because they have a massive improv tradition in that

country and so it is part of their tradition. Other types of political satire, it's not clear. Armando Iannucci, when they did a Thickavit pilot for the US and they did it with ABC and it was networked and it's never been aired, although I think you can now find it. It was an absolute nightmare. He said it was like, it was just endless executives, all of whom he thought were complete buffoons. He wanted the BBC to sell it to HBO, which is obviously

where lots of creators want to end up, but they didn't. They went with ABC because they paid more money. It had really good people in it. Oliver Platt was in it, Michael McKean was in it, Christopher Guest, I think, was directing, but it just did not work and he knew it wasn't working and he thought this was a, like, it was just, it just didn't work at all and it had to be so sort of stripped of so much of what makes the thick of it or a show like that its essence because it was networked. And so then when he came back and did Veep with HBO, they give you notes and their notes are always brilliant and helpful, but it's not, they do still say, it is your show.

And so he was able to do what he wanted. By the way, if there's anyone in the world who loves the thick of it, who has not watched Veep, then you've got such a treat in store. Probably, possibly my favorite television program ever. Yes, absolutely amazing. I absolutely love it. And the comedy is sort of identical. I mean, it goes in an American direction,

but it's the same thing that same season ABC had made pilots or British shows the thick of it Footballers wives and life on Mars and they passed on all of them So you can see at that point how many things the networks were making and just saying, you know We loved it in the UK version then they make it like yeah, this doesn't work This is interesting so many you case sitcoms get made in the States, it doesn't happen the other way around. No.

But you know, pretty much any big UK sitcom gets made. Ab Fab, they tried, Ab Fab was interesting. Peaches is now on its fifth attempt. Is it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think they're doing it again now. So Ab Fab, they were gonna make,

Roseanne was going to remake Ab Fab and Carrie Fisher was gonna star in it and it didn't get off the ground, but weirdly, if there's season nine of Roseanne, Roseanne brings in Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as their characters from Ab Fab. They become part of the Roseanne universe off the back of that pilot. In between us they've tried, yeah, they just put different bits of talent in it. The Office was obviously a brilliant success and that was incredible. But it became its own show. The first episode, if you, I went back and watched them again recently, it's quite interesting. The

first episode of the US one really tracks the first episode of the UK one and then it just spins off into this whole other world with these different characters. I mean that is an exceptional show. So that was huge and that was a really really good interview with Stephen Merchant in the papers this weekend talking about all sorts of things. Talking about cancellation, cancel culture, all sorts of things, but he's such a bright guy. But they were saying, well, Stephen Merchant is the richest comedian in Britain, but didn't at any point mention,

yeah, because the American Office is probably the most lucrative program in the history. I mean, at one point it was 12% of all of Netflix's viewing was the office and they're doing a spin-off of it. So The Office is absolutely enormous. The show that's recently broken through, and very, very few UK sitcoms do break through, and when they do, there's a lot of money in it. So The Office, the one that's just broken through, I think it's about to start its fourth season, maybe fifth season, is Ghosts. So Ghosts they remade and it's been a really, really big hit and it's going, it's running and running and running. So that's lovely because the people who make

ghosts much like Stephen are the loveliest people. So it's nice to know they're getting some network money now. Some are the political ones, I'm trying to think. of Cards but obviously that had a little issue eventually yes that House of Cards that worked and Shameless went on for quite a few seasons with William H. Macy in the travel world. In the former world there's like Undercover Boss which is a UK show that was huge Millionaire and Weakest Link of course were huge but in terms of the other way around American TV to UK TV, almost no scripted. Famously, we remember remaking Golden Girls as Brighton Bells, and that was a famous flop. In terms of formats, though, two of the biggest shows on British TV

now, which are Gladiators and Apprentice, are both remakes of American formats. But the real era for that was the 70s. There's lots of game shows that I think we think are quintessentially British, all of which are American. So Blockbusters is American, Catchphrase is American, University Challenge is American. That was College Bowl. Blind Date is American, Family Fortunes, Strike It Lucky, Blankety Blank is American. So we took all of those things over in the 70s. but now that world, the game show world, we're in charge of. But in the same way that Whose Line Is It Anyway sort of accidentally managed to get a summer slot years ago and became a huge hit, I'm hoping that the fact that they've

committed to 10 episodes of Have I Got News For You means the Americans might finally crack and embrace panel shows because they've got great comic talent. These things are cheaper than the stuff They're making oh, yeah You know you can make a whole load of them But you know that the idea that would I lie to you or taskmaster are not huge hits in America is crazy because because of course They should be people listening to this in America if you're well if your executives or Francis Ford Coppola Let's do what I like to you in the state shall we and good luck by the, by the way, to have I Got News for You, which has got an amazing team

behind it and exciting that we'll be able to see it as well. Yes, that's the good thing. We will be able to see it. Now, shall we finish talking about the Sunday Times Rich List, a sort of annual event that comes out? And by the way, people are obsessed with lists. People also love to be in them. I remember there's this guy who used to own Reading called called John Majjaseki and a friend of mine once went and interviewed him and even though it was months after the publication of the Rich List, casually laid on the coffee table outside his office was the Rich List in which he'd made his entry that year and it's like, oh gross. He was like a suitor of Silla Black?

Yes, they were both celebrity conservatives. And that's they met through their passion for celebrity conservative causes. I mean, the Sunday Times Rich List is essentially a list of celebrity conservatives. But the thing I thought was interesting to talk about, so it's an extraordinary list and towards the top of the list are the billionaires. But I thought it'd be interesting to talk about how difficult it is to become a billionaire through entertainment. Because a lot of the people who are billionaires either inherited it from

their parents or are in chemicals in some way or in property, but to actually become a billionaire through entertainment. It's so difficult that for the first time ever, Paul McCartney has just become a billionaire. Literally in The Beatles, you have to be in The Beatles to become an in, to be a talent, by the way, we should say. Yeah. And by the way, you have to be in The Beatles for 60 years to become a billionaire. You have to have sold records like your entire life the whole time.

And then Beyonce's got to do a cover version of one of your songs on her new album. Just to pump you over the billion. And even then you just get over a billion. Just under a billion, the most successful writer of the last 40 years, JK Rowling, she's not a billionaire despite the fact of the movies and the theatre and the books. Although she gives away a lot of money and she's constantly taking herself out of the billionaire category by donating a lot to charity, she's got her own foundation and what have you. Clever. Yeah. But either way they're the

only two sort of bits of talent that are anywhere close to becoming a billionaire. But to be a billionaire in the industry, we sort of talk about, there's quite a few, aren't there? There's quite a few of the publishing families that are there, the newspaper publishing families. Yes, this is essentially like inheriting property, actual London postcode from your parents. You're inheriting a big legacy media thing and that's why you become rich like that. What I think is quite interesting is that we don't have like executives, entertainment executives. In America, some of the big, big rich people would be, you know, you'd have Surround Us and they're Bob Iger, they have these huge pay packets and they quickly become on these lists. We don't

have entertainment executives, even record label owners on this. The methodology of the list is kind of so-so. There are people who never feature on this list who definitely have lots of money and not necessarily in entertainment, and they just stay under the radar. So we do have the legacy families, did you say? Yeah, so it's Viscount Rothermere who's behind the Daily Mail, so he's a billionaire. Yes. Elizabeth Murdoch is a billionaire, and it says she's a billionaire, she runs her own TV company, but that's not the biggest part of the billionaire. Having run a TV company, yeah, you'd have to sell an awful lot of episodes of Pointless to Holland

to get over a billion. I would say, yeah, the Thompson family. Bernie Ecclestone is a billionaire and almost all of that money is from Formula One and almost all of the Formula One money is from television. Yeah. So we can sort of count him as a TV billionaire. TV executive adjacent Bernie O'Courston. Exactly, but there's two theatre names in the billionaires actually. So Cameron McIntosh and who's very well known here and John Gore who's less well known who's a big theatre empire in the States. Now I was having a conversation with someone recently. Now they own theaters, they run theaters,

they produce plays, so if you have successes in either of those areas, you make an awful lot of money. But I was checking with someone the other day, and I think Macintosh and John Gore are both very, very much across this, which is the control of ticketing in theater. There's an enormous amount of money, and the moment as a producer or a theatre you can

take control of your own ticketing from the big agencies, that's when the real money starts rolling in. But you know, it's nice that with both of those, John Gore and Cameron Macintosh, at least they're giving joy and they provide an entertainment. Yes, and we should say that with the talent, when they have a big bump one year, it's almost always because they've toured. You get a huge amount of money from touring and touring unless your tour is very expensive to put on. So this is why Adele's doing brilliantly with her Vegas residency because

you don't have to move around. It's there all the time and that those are incredibly lucrative. Yeah, so Ed Sheeran world tour. So he's worth 340 million Ed Sheeran. So he's not even close to being a billionaire yet. If I'm going to have Harry Styles, he's got 175 million on this list. I mean, we take it with a pinch of salt, but he's got money. But one of his big investments I was not aware of until I read the list, he's one of the investors in the Co-op Live venue in Manchester that's famously... That's had a few teasing troubles.

Exactly. But now it's off the ground, I'm sure he'll be making more money, just under a billion, talking of sports entertainment, Barry and Eddie Hearn. Now Barry Hearn, like 20 years ago, he was doing great. It was the darts and the snooker, but to go, oh no, you're gonna be a billionaire pretty soon, but Eddie and the boxing and all that kind of stuff, the Hearn family have done very, very well

out of sports entertainment. The boxing is the key, the linchpin. Boxing is making more money for them than Snook Up I think, with Darts somewhere in the middle. But right at the top of the list is a name who is now very very closely involved in entertainment which is Len Blavatnik. Now Len Blavatnik owns most of Warner's music group, he has his company Access Entertainment which runs A, who are the people behind so many big movies, everything everywhere all at once and things like that.

He's in zone of interest. Big investor in that. He's got that big digital gallery up in Kings Cross that have like the David Hockley things. He owns the theatre Royal Haymarket. So he's worth £29 billion, which is a lot. But again, it's lovely that all the zone of interest stuff but most of his money is from aluminium and propylene as well so I don't know if we can claim him. I did notice lower down the list one of the reasons Emma Watson was doing particularly well was because they'd valued her gin brand of course she's got a gin brand we're going to have to do something bigger on this but the gin brand was a big part of the valuation again I you'll have

people I do know why people set up gym brands is because you can produce straightaway There's no it's not like whiskey or something like that. You can just you can get it out the next day They don't get out. Yeah, but yes, so I noticed that that was part of her valuation Which so yeah If you are if you are any sort of piece of talent then you then have to invest in something that then makes you a lot Of money is the truth. I think There's a lovely thing in here, though, which is for the first time in the history, and this ties into the rest is entertainment, for the first time in the history of the Sunday Times Rich List, there is an apprentice contestant

on the list, which is Suzy Ma, who didn't even win the apprentice. I think she came third about 15 years ago. But Anne Sugar, who is on the list, he's over a billion. He gave her 200,000 pounds and invested in her company, which is a skincare brand. She now owns the whole thing. She was incredibly relieved last year. I imagine to buy him out. Yeah.

So she's worth, she's worth 73 million, but that's, that's the first ever Apprentice contestant. Who knows? Maybe there'll be many, many more in the future. I mean, who can tell? But as a list, it's interesting that you have to be Paul McCartney and you've had to have been Paul McCartney for 60 years for someone who creates their own IP

and creates their own stuff to become a billionaire. And by the way, no one should be a billionaire. So we all take that as red. But given that some people are. It'd be nicer if more talent in the strict sense that got it exactly and yeah fewer petrochemicals and billionaires although listen we need petrochemicals yeah that's true honestly tomorrow if there was no more blankety blank it would be okay if there were no more petrochemicals actually we'd be in trouble as a society so actually maybe in

a militia or being killed by a militia. So maybe we have our priorities right now I think about it. That was a real there I really rolled back there. The post-oil world we'll discuss on a future episode. Yeah. Which celebrities would fare best in the post oil world. That's a good idea. Yeah that's actually yeah we can't get onto it now. Do you have any recommendations? Do I have any recommendations? A couple. Funnily enough, literally last night talking of not coping very well in a post-oil world, we watched Triangle of Sadness, which you've never seen. I mean, it's a mood, but it's extraordinary. If anything upsets you

at all, do not watch it. But I thought it's... It's like your trigger warning. If anything upsets you, don't watch this. I absolutely loved a three-part documentary on BBC Two this week called Secrets and Spies about defectors and about moles in the kind of 80s Cold War. And absolutely brilliant. It talks about Oleg Gordievsky and various people. So for fans of that sort of thing, I absolutely love that. I am going to recommend just one of the, I think it's a genre of one, the most, one of the most towering achievements in British television is Inside Number Nine,

which is on its final season. There are two episodes of it so far have dropped on iPlayer, both of which I watched at the weekend. They are exceptional. It's Steve Pemberton and Rie Scheersmith. What they've done with that show is so extraordinary. They have a half hour in which they play, they are different people every single week and they make us care to be able to only have a half hour and to tell very complex and layered, often quite philosophical, emotional, darkly comic stories.

And to make you care about new characters every single week, you can see why actors want to do it. I mean the cast in the first episode of the new one which is called Boo to a Goose included Mark Bonner, Siobhan Finner and Charlie Cooper from this country, Joel Fry from Philippa Dunn, Susan Wakoma, Matthew Kelly. I mean it's absolutely extraordinary and it is it's such a mood. I think they are genuine like TV geniuses. I think they're extraordinary. I agree and they don't repeat themselves and it's... How do they not? They've done about 50 of these, they've done nine seasons and they're now going to, which I'm very excited about, they're going to take it to

the West End and they've got a music which I've just bought tickets for last night after I was up there like I need to get in now on this, it's called Stage Fright. Yeah and I have to, it's I think it's one of the most towering achievements of 21st century television. It just is, it's extraordinary what they do. There's no one else doing it and they are extraordinary and amazing and I can't, yeah, so I can't recommend Inside Number Nine enough. Make sure you keep the word enough in there, in the edit. I'm afraid I can't recommend Inside Number Nine. And so sorry I think I interrupted when you said it's starting in

the West End. You can get tickets now for it and it starts in Wyndham Theatre January next year. We know you can make a billion in the theatre. Well I hope they do, if anyone deserves it. Well listen we're gonna do a question and answer episode on Thursday. Yes we are. Please send in your questions the rest is entertainment at gmail.com and we'll see you on Thursday. Bye bye everyone.