The Rest Is Entertainment - Is Taylor Swift Punching Down?

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Why is Taylor Swift gunning for fellow popstar Charli xcx? Is the era of big Broadway musicals over? Will Mel Gibson's sequel to Passion Of The Christ resurrect his reputation? Taylor Swift has released another blockbuster album, teaming up with Swedish hitmaker Max Martin again. But can the world's biggest popstar stay on-top forever? New York theatres are in big trouble, Richard Osman and Marina Hyde assess Broadway's failure to make musicals pay. More than 20 years later, Mel Gibson is directing a sequel to his 2004 biblical epic 'The Passion Of The Christ'. Marina charts Hollywood's continued obsession with Christ in cinemas. Recommendations: Marina: One Battle After Another Richard: Grand Designs (Channel 4) Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Charlie Rodwell Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Now, whether it's Scorsese and De Niro, Brits and a queue, or Glenn Powell and a slow-motion entrance into frame, some things are just better together. And Sky and Netflix do just that. Two heavyweight storytellers side by side on the Sky Essential TV package for just £15 a month, all in one place and on one bill. Call it the full ensemble. Sky Originals bringing gangs of London and the Day of the Jackal, Netflix delivering global obsessions like Squid Game and Wednesday. Sky Atlantic, Discovery Plus and more than 90 other channels to that list and you've got the kind of line-up that bends the week around it, turning ordinary evenings into events.

Sky and Netflix together for £15 a month. Premium shows, endless choice and a lineup that feels complete, all in one place. Visit sky.com to start requires relevant SkyTV and third-party subscriptions. Sky Essential TV includes a selection of Sky channels, 18 plus UK Channel Islands and Ireland of Man only. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osman. Hello Marina. Hello Richard. How are you? I'm all right. Yeah, I'm not too bad. How are you?

Very well. Now, the big news. Uh-oh, go on. Is the internet broken again? Because Taylor Swift just released a new album. Taylor Swift, who I've been Googling her. She's a singer. Our first item is going to be about two people who have dominated the internet. the strip who wanted to and Nicole Kidman who didn't want to. So we're talking about how to break it and how you can break it without wanting to. Yes, we are also going to talk about musicals are, some people think musicals are becoming

completely unviable on Broadway. That has a big blowback onto our West End. So we're going to look at trends in theatre land. Trends in theatre land. But we're also going to talk about live experiences, which are only on the up. And I've got lots of theories as to why, and I know you have too. Yeah, exactly. Theaties essentially made so much money from musicals over the last 50 years, but only three since the pandemic have made a profit on Broadway. And we're also going to talk about. Oh, this is a big fun. Well, you're going to talk about, I'm going to listen.

I'm going to, I've got a tight four days on Mel Gibson. He has started filming the resurrection of the Christ, the long-awaited follow-up to the passion of the Christ from two decades, more than two decades ago. Mel Gibson has started filming it. It's going to be bigger, more outlandish than the original, and we're going to do a deep dive on that. Superb. Now, shall we talk about Taylor Swift? Let's. So how do you become the person who everyone talks about in any given week? Taylor Swift and Nicole Kidman have managed it this week. Taylor Swift's new album came out on Friday, The Life of a Showgirl. I'm going to come off the fence and saying, I think it's amazing. And, you know, one of the secrets behind Taylor Swift's success is she keeps releasing really, really good music. and she releases quite a lot of it

but the way that she dominates the conversation is so extraordinary I mean it's almost impossible to think of somebody who everybody apart from maybe my mum has an opinion on it

even my mom if I went to say to my mum do you know Taylor Swift she'd go oh yeah I know Taylor Swift I'd say tell me about her and she'd say I just know I heard of her did a tour she's a singer I think she's a singer this album is

I think it's rather wonderful She's gone back to Max Martin. He's written the second most amount of U.S. number ones of anyone in history behind Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney, yeah. But listen, there's still time. And I'm sure I've recommended this before, but the song machine inside the hit factory is an amazing book which is all about Max Martin and Dennis Pop and that generation of Swedish writers and the who's discovered ace of bass and all that. It's just a really good kind of oral history of all of that stuff if you are interested. Now Max Martin is the great unsung.

song these days. The great unsung songwriter of the last 30 years like so many incredible songwriters, he's Swedish he can knock out, he did lots of backstreet boy stuff, he's done lots of Brittany, and he did three albums with her, he did, and Shelbeck

who was his younger collaborator. So together they did, rare they did in 1989 and they did reputation, which were her big pop albums. So she come from being a country star. She wants to be a pop star. Calls on Max Martin. They knock out those albums. since then she's done a few

slightly more tortured albums a bit more kind of introspective a bit more indie and now I think while she was on the tour last year so while everyone again this is the secret while everyone's saying God isn't it amazing the money she's making on this tour

and the publicity she's getting she's going yeah but by the way I'm also like going to Sweden to record this incredible album I've also written a load of songs and I'm now going to record them so the second this finishes I've got something else to come out and that's how you dominate I think but this album is absolutely wonderful. Have you spent any time listening to it?

I have listened to it. Yes. I don't think it's as good as those earlier ones, no. But I find it so fascinating. I mean, it's almost, I have to say that lyrically, she always delivers. Some of the music I'm not, I wasn't so crazy about. But I have to say that it's, I don't want to say it's bigger than music, because what should be bigger than music or art or anything.

But as a concept, the her of it all is so fascinating to me now. I think things can be bigger than music. Yeah. Things can be bigger than TV. Yes. I mean, she's such a phenomenon now. I think of her now as someone who's created their own universe where there are all these interconnecting piece of folklore

and Easter eggs and like a hyper-engaged fandom. And I realised, actually, when I was listening to it, that the things she reminded me most of, actually, the only other entertainment property she's remotely like is Harry Potter it's this but you know what I mean it's this huge thing

with hyper-engaged fans so lots of stuff where you're trying to read into things and see what might come next the idea of people making their own stuff and kind of fanning out for it and this huge kind of diaspora of fandom and I

think of her as something like that even though she is a single person which is quite difficult but well funny enough if you think about the singularity of this album and by the way lots of people don't like Ted as just music so listen

that's absolutely fine. I do like it, but it is definitely not for everyone, but I do think she's interesting to talk about. And one of the main things she's interesting to talk about is that album, really, it's like any album would have been in 1975 or 1981. It's 12 tracks. Yes. On the vinyl, it's six tracks on each side. So this is what we've been dealing with for almost the whole of music history. It's just all it is is 12 songs. Well, the last one was incredibly long. Yes. I mean, she did that. But to take that and to branch that out, into dominating culture.

The movie, which released in cinemas over the weekend and blew every single traditional Hollywood movie absolutely out of the park and people are paying to go and see that. As you say, she puts all sort of cryptic things into her songs. It's actually romantic about Charlie XX. I ask you, I think it is, but I could be wrong.

Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Is she someone who is so, who bestrides literally everything? Can she punch down? She's threaded that needle very carefully before. This is too crass to say she's sort of presented a victim narrative, but she has always felt really relatable and, like, bad things happen to her, even though she's the most famous person in the world, and the least relatable in lots of ways.

Having a go at Charlie X, X, X, X, X. Does it still feel like you're, I'm under, she can punch down in that way? So she's in a position there. She was, you know, she was with Travis Kelsey. She's doing that big era's tour, which was absolutely massive. And she, you know, she says, I was just in a great place and I wanted to make a big pop album. That's the thing that I wanted to do. She wants to make a representation of who she is at any given time,

which is why the Max Martin, thing is fascinating. So Max Martin, because he's Swedish, he always said, like, I grew up listening to American music, but I didn't know what the words were. So I just heard the sounds of the words, and that's always, you know, hit me baby one more time. That's Max Martin, because he didn't know that didn't mean, ring me up again. He just thought it sounded good. And Robin, who's one of the other great pop stars who he worked with, he said, the thing about Max Martin, he says it's all about cracking a code. It's all about being as efficient as possible. So if you're Taylor Swift, who, by the way, does write her own stuff, but is smart enough to then

collaborate with people who can make it different or make it better. and you are in a great mood and you are not particularly wanting to make something that is deeply introspective or is about the state of the world but it's just about who you are in any given time then that's whose door you knock on I think the first time they ever work together

there's a tale, I don't know if it's apocryphal but Max Martin is there just before Taylor gets there and a guy knocks on the door and says oh I'm an old friend of Taylor's kind of come in and wait and Max Martin's his first day goes yeah I guess I guess you can come in so he comes in

Anyway, Taylor comes in, and it's clear he's not an old friend. It's clear he's a friend of an ex-boyfriend of hers, and they have to get rid of him. Anyway, Max Martin is his first day he's working, so he's incredibly apologetic. And he's like, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have done that. I didn't, because it's not my first language, and I just got nervous. I'm sorry. She said, don't worry about it at all. And he says, tell me about this ex-boyfriend, so she's talking about him.

And then she says, but you know what, Max, we are never, ever, ever getting back together. And that was the start of their collaboration. I love that. I don't want it to be apocryphal. So I think, you know, if you want a great pop album, it is a great pop album. But the way that she is, A, always on, which we've talked about, as I say, she was doing this massive tour, which is already always on. And at the same time, she was really taking care of business. In between shows, she was flying over to Sweden.

She was flying over to Sweden to work with Shelbeck and Max Martin and write this stuff. She knew when it was coming out. It's only a year since tortured poets department. Pop stars way back when would have waited three or four years before they had to release the next scene. But she's aware she has to be ever present. She's aware she constantly has to feed the machine. She's aware that the fans will do all the marketing for her. She almost is the machine now.

Nobody can really keep pace with her. And she has adapted so kind of seamlessly to all the different platforms as they've come along, whether it be Insta or TikTok. What I find interesting about her is that for all of that, she's such a digital native. And so many of these things are actually people at home feeling connected to some wider hole. As music has always been, as people sitting at home listening in their bedrooms.

but she does also massively understand the communal experience that is live so at the same time as doing the tour to do the launch party in the cinemas if she's ever at risk of seeming someone who just knows how to break the internet and just fully understands how to manipulate the internet in her favour

then there are always these live things and these moments where people can come together she's quite unplayable yes she is she's absolutely unplayable which is why I wonder whether she can punch down anymore I, you know, there's certain people who, it seems fine to go back and do a drive-by on. I mean, I think Kim and Kanye can just have it forever as far as I'm concerned. I don't know, maybe Charlie X, X isn't very nice.

Who knows, who knows? Maybe something unpleasant happened there. We can't speculate. I have just, but. Yeah, exactly. I have just Richard. Yeah, and that's the thing with, you know, even with the live tour, so she's doing something which is a common experience, but she's making sure at every gig, there's a different acoustic song,

which means that that can be filmed and taped. and then that can be on TikTok and that can be on Instagram. Because it's a new thing. Yeah. But it just shows you how old-fashioned so much of the rest of the industry still is. She worked out 10 years ago that this was a thing and has just put her foot down and overtaken everybody and it's just just miles ahead of everyone. And the generation coming up, understand it. And that she'd sell directly into movie theatre trains.

All of that. Not go to a studio and say to Disney, would you mind putting out my concert film or anything like that? All of that. She's eliminated lots of people from the supply chain. But talking of old school, Nicole Kidman has also been in the papers this week. So she's divorced from her partner, Keith Urban, which is a very sad story. But it seems to have been on the front page of everything if we still have front pages anymore. It's really interesting.

I'm interested as to White, because it hasn't imploded in some kind of dramatic way. Like he's been pictured with, you know, someone completely different. Yeah. And there's some great big, you know, dramatic gotcha. There's no cheating. There's none of the who knows. But there's not. some sort of gotcha moment. And it's really interesting. If you look how obsessed people are,

I think people, I think what she represents in the sort of culture, she's, there is something very mysterious about her, even though she's, she is very much always on. I mean, she works more than, she works unbelievably hard. She does things back to back all the time, which is driven in quite an odd way. But she's had in many ways a really sad time of it, because she's estranged from those two children that she adopted with Tom Cruise, which is desperately sad and that relationship will always echo down the years for her because I think people feel that something odd happened there. Well, clearly it did. I mean, he is, Tom Cruise is estranged from his other child who went with Katie Holmes. And so I suppose people

thought that she had had her happy ending with Keith Herban. But what I will say about all of this, never mind speculating it, is that it's so interesting. Yet again, we're talking about like how people report this and the way it's covered. I mean, the sheer number of like body language experts and whatever. I've seen crawl out of the woodwork this week to discuss it all. You know, Ocent, open source intelligence. I do not know Ossent. You know what, Ossent is open source intelligence.

So there are people like Bellingat who look at things and think, now how can we prove that the Russians brought down that Malaysian airline's plane? And there are people who will go through all these publicly available things and they manage to prove extraordinary things and they're really kind of pioneering. And they find war criminals because they're. They did like one public photo and there's a bit of graffiti in the back and they discover exactly where that was. Like, yeah, like an army of investigative journalists. But half the people who now obsessively follow showbiz.

And I'm talking about people who follow Taylor Swift, people follow these stories. Basically work in Ocent, okay, instead of saying, now, you know, how can we prove the Russians down that plane? They're like, now, how can we discover when Keith stopped wearing his wedding ring? Let's go back into all these. I believe that MI6 should recruit this wine time army, this. There's only people. If only they could be harnessed in the national interest. Or the other way around, I would say, what if we actually get some of the gang at MI6 to properly look into this stuff? Because they'd have access to stuff that we don't have access to.

I feel like they are quite busy. Yeah, I know, but listen, we're all busy. Yeah, we're all, okay. But good, good for PR. If they go, we've finally found the moment that Keith unfollowed Nicole's hairdresser on Instagram. Because someone's sitting with a box of rosé at home in front of a computer at 5.30 on a front of. either evening, we'll do it for you. You've got an army. They don't even have to be paid. It's amazing it's like spare capacity. Yeah. And, you know, whenever you find that in a market.

Well, it's the only part of the British state in which we actually have capacity left. Yeah. We need capacity. We've got this army of your, and they're global actually. It's a real shame that Labor's Conference just finished because this feels to me like it could have been a big announcement. Why don't they talk to us? But you know what I mean? Why is Starrman not constantly on the phone to us saying, what can I announce? What have we got? I did what we've got. We got a surfeit of people with time on. their hands. She's afraid my ideas are too good. Yeah.

That's gotta be that. He'd be terrified. You know what? You just spend half an hour with Starmer. He'd go, I am actually going to quit. Why don't you take over? Because otherwise, it's just going to be you telling me to do stuff just for the next four years. No, but stay with me because the army of people who will study tiny open source things,

not about the downing of Russian planes or the war criminals or whatever, but about things that happen in the world of showbiz. It's now vast, absolutely vast. I mean, think of every day. Swift out of them comes out. Within hours, people have unpicked every reference. They've got like timelines. They've got everything. It's extraordinary. Actually, that's something I noticed on the morning that it come out. These incredibly detailed timelines of the feud or where they think the genesis of a feud between Taylor and Charlie XX's has already been unraveled by people,

by fans, I should say, and in Reddit threads and things like that. God, it's enormously impressive, isn't it? But it is it like supporting a, I mean, anyone who supports a football team will be very, very aware of how this all works, you know, whoever your third choice striker is, and he's on loan at Macclesfield, but the Macclesfield manager won't play him for some reason. So it's all, oh, I know why that will be. And but yeah, it's like, it's like that, but for, we should get a few of them on staff, don't you think? Yeah. So open source intelligence. Yeah. Open source gossip. Yeah. Oskos. Oskos. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Open source gossip. Lovely. I'm going to set up on the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Oskos office. Nobody is going out.

and doing journalism in the same way that they used to by trying to sort of, I don't know, talk to Dorman or people, make up people and try and get them on the payroll and try and get stories funneled out that way. They're just watching what happens in people's digital footprints and trying to make sense of it that way. Well, funny enough, yeah, they used to go through your bins,

but now we display the contents of our bins online at almost all times. Quite right. These people are phenomenal. The investigators, people are phenomenal investigators. They are working in Ocent. aren't they realize it. It's just that they're doing it with... They're working in Oskos. And also, if we don't weaponise them, I should I tell you who will? Is it Russia? Yeah. But of course he will. You know, that's probably what they're up to at the moment.

You know, he's probably on a Taylor Swift message board recruiting people. So we probably should. Absolutely. We should recruit all these people. At Oskos, I'm going to, I want people in the office three days a week because I think it just, I think it fosters like an environment where people collaborate. You know, so you have an open plan and people are chatting and people can talk through their methods and things like that. Two days a week, you're at home and absolutely just head down. And we'll have like a bar on the top floor, like, you know, Spotify and Netflix and all those people. Just have a nice bar. A bit of rosé.

Anyone who fancies it, let us know, Southol Putin. As so often in our culture, it is either Gollhanger productions or Vladimir Putin. He takes your pick. But they were in love, Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. But in conclusion, I'm sorry, Nicole, but I just think... I don't think she's listening. You don't think Nicole has listened to this? Oh my goodness, you're very wrong.

But in a world of trouble and AI and bad news, I just think for the time being at the very least, Taylor Swift does good things and does them well. And her new album, if you like that sort of thing, you're really, really going to like it. And how nice to talk about something like that. Life of a show is out right now. It's weird, that thing, isn't it?

You can't go to the shops and beep. I mean, some people go to the shops and bar. But you just listen to it somewhere. But it's terrific. I'd strongly recommend it. Should we go to some adverts? And after that, we can talk about Mel Gibson. Let's do that now. This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch our missable shows, including the brand new original thriller, The Iris Affair. The Iris Affair is a sun-drenched chase thriller from Neil Cross, who is the creator of Luther.

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An exciting bonus episode news. We have a free bonus episode this week. We had to make it free. So it's for members but also for non-members as well. If I tell you when it's coming out, you might guess what it's about. It will be coming out on Wednesday evening. And it will be coming out one minute after the end of the first episode of the new Celebrity Traitors. We will be live reacting to Celebrity Traitors, that first episode.

I am so excited. It looks so great. This is huge, Richard. It's huge. It's huge. I don't even need to put a cherry on this. This is enormous. That will be coming, as we say, I think about 12 minutes past 10 on that Wednesday night.

Yeah. We will dive straight into that opening show. Yeah. So it'll be spoilers of plenty. So do not listen to it until you've watched that first episode. But if you have watched that first episode, then please join us on Wednesday for that special bonus. Mel Gibson Mel Gibson

Talk us through Oh you know I will Because filming is now underway On the resurrection of the Christ Which is going to be the long-awaited Follow-up to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ Christ.

Christ too, the resurrection of Christ Yeah Currently shooting it at Chinichita Studios in Rome And they're going to shoot the locations in southern Italy You get some pretty great tax credits Let's go back to the OG The Passion of the Christ Which came out in 2004

Now that was self-financed by Mel Gibson for $30 million, which was massive, a massive amount of money at the time. Quite a lot of money now. It's nothing on what they're spending on this. Everybody thought he'd lost his mind. Okay, jury's still out. Everyone that he lost his mind

because he was doing it in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin, and they just thought Mel has completely lost in mind and his self-financing. It became the highest-grossing indie film of all time. It took 600 million worldwide in cinema. which is 20 years ago is absolutely enormous. For a long time it was the highest-highest-grossing R-rated film. And R-rated is sort of our equivalent of a 15.

A lot of people thought it was anti-Semitic. And Frank Rich, who was at the time, the sort of big, you know, New York Times critics, bought up the fact that Mel Gibson's father was a Holocaust denier. Mel Gibson's quote about that was, I want to kill him, I want his intestines on a stick, I want to kill his dog. Rich or his dad?

Frank Rich. No, Harton Gibson, I think Mel always revered. Well, so far, so Jesus. So he wanted his intestinal stick. So when you hear that quote, you're probably thinking to yourself how to put this, Is Mel quite well? And the answer, Richard, as we discovered alongside the Pacific Coast Highway two years later, was, I don't know.

I mean, not to clinicalize it, because he said some stuff, and I don't know if it is a medical condition. Bear in mind to his wife, he always said, really cheerfully in interviews. It's so sad. I was so wonderful, but no, I do believe she's going to hell because she's an Episcopalian. Wow. So, yeah, anyway. The day after that incident, they separated.

And I mean, I think he felt very sort of judged, even in his own church, because he's got his own church. Has he? He's got his own church up in the hills in Malibu, which, although he lost his house in the recent house, he didn't lose the church. The last time they looked, this church had $42 million worth of assets. I wouldn't say he immediately got himself back on an even kill. You know what? Eventually, Mel Gibson did enough to redeem himself in that night. I don't know quite what. Yeah, what did he do?

So unclear. He got sober. He did some light sozzing. I don't think he was very sorry. I think people tried to get him back into work. Jodie Foster, who is within a Maverick with, she put him in a film where he played a depressed alcoholic. Too much of elite for audiences didn't do well. He directed Haxall Ridge. He got a best director Oscar nomination for that. Oh, so, sorry, everyone can do everything now. Yeah. Yeah, he's settled with his wife. I think that was the biggest divorce in Hollywood history at the time. Oh, no. No, I think that was regarded as...

He'd settled with his wife. Yeah, I think that was fractured beyond repair. So what do we know about this film? Because, I mean, it's slightly nuts. It's not really nuts because the first one made a lot of money. Can I say my absolute favorite thing about this new film, which genuinely, I think, is amazing. So he split it into two parts.

Oh, yeah, of course. Right. And that's a resurrection of the crisis. It split him into two parts. and the first part is being released on Good Friday. This is 2027. Then the next part is being released 40 days later on Ascension Day. Well, he knows the story. That feels like good marketing, right?

He's writing it with his brother and someone called Randall, Randall Wallace. He revealed the title on Joe Rogan. Jim Caviesel, who played Jesus' back. Now, during the original one, he was scourged twice. Scurging is whipping, which I didn't ever, yeah. He was accidentally scurged. twice. He still got the scars. Oh, like really? No, no, he really was. He was also struck by lightning. Read nothing into it, Richard.

Wow. He was struck by lightning. How on earth did Mel Gibson's church not catch fire? It's incredible, isn't it? Because it's the resurrection. He said, there's a lot of supernatural stuff. It's a non-linear narrative. He said it's like an acid trip. Wow. There's some sort of rumours that he might be going into the, like, the Dante's Inferno and doing all that sort of stuff. He says, well, you have to go to hell. You have to go

down to hell. You have to have to have the fall of the angels. and then you have to go right to the death of the last apostle. As I said, he is a very specific type of Catholic, and it's not clear what parts of the Bible will end up in this, whether you get apocrypha or whatever. He's a very specific type of Catholic. He rejects the authority of all popes since the Second Vatican Council. Does he?

Yeah. Does he? Which was 1965. So everyone pre-1965 is okay with afterwards? Yeah. He's not having it. Afterwards. So he currently believes that the Holy See is vacant.

recently, there was some letter leaked recently or to somebody else and he'd written to this person saying, I see you've been excommunicated, well, I'd like to be ex-communicated. I'd be quite happy to be ex-communicated because, you know, I don't even recognise these people. But it's not even the only Big Jesus movie coming out next March. And both are being distributed by Lionsgate, so luckily they haven't got a really bad cash.

Because our old friends at The Chosen are releasing the last episode of season 6, which is The Crucifixion, and the first episode of season seven which is going to deal with a resurrection and releasing them as a double bill so it will be movie lengths and they're releasing it now as the bigger

kind of resurrection fish I guess so we've got a resurrection off yeah we've got a we've got a barbenheimer we've got a resurrection I don't think you can quote that I just don't think they will but listen they're not going to call it that is there a reason they both come at the same time

it's not like an anniversary or something it is quite a popular it's quite an important date in the calendar so they want it near that you know, Good Friday. No, no, but why in the same year? Let's get onto it, because the market for this, for what we call faith-based, I don't know what we call it faith-based, because what we mean is Christian, don't we?

We don't mean any of the other face. Faith-based filming, Richard. Faith-based films, the market is so much better than when Mel released that original films. And organising and the marketing for these things has become so much bigger. There are about 12 of these kind of faith-based films which get big releases each year. And so there's been a huge increase. over the past decade in that kind of stuff.

And they've widened out, so you have things like Sound of Freedom, that's sort of inspirational and that are clearly faith-based in some ways, but they're not necessarily specific Bible stories or whatever. This is the big one. This is the big one. Jesus was, yeah, maybe he was the first influencer. Let's just clip, but can we literally just clip that? Yeah. And take it out of context and just put it all over our socials,

just Marina saying perhaps Jesus was the first influencer. Okay, but listen, he's selling a lifestyle. Yes. It's aspirational. Yeah. But he gets cancelled. You know, you're right. And then he did a deal with the college and lit people.

That's too facetious. Don't put that bit on. Churches are much more involved at a grassroots level. We're saying to people watch The Chosen. Go out and watch the city. Pay up for ticket schemes where you can buy tickets for people to see it. But that might be harder for Mel, right, if you are in one of those churches. Because you do now have the chosen is slightly more the approved version of this.

And I guess when... Oh, no way. People will go for this. But when the Passion of the Christ came out, that was sort of the only thing that you could go and see in the theatre. if you wanted to see some representation. Whereas now you are going to have a choice. Yeah, but there's a market for it.

You'll have a choice, but you'll do both. He will do a publicity tour, which will be of interest. And any chance of him imploding between now and then he's sort of pre-enploded. There's always a chance. But he's kind of already, it's like, it's built in. Actually, somebody told me, who's actually listened to this podcast, so I'm so sorry, but somebody, a well-known figure in L.A. was having sort of, a British person was having sort of thinking they were going to have a relapse,

thinking they're going to have a relapse and then said, I've just got to call my sponsor and this tiny little electric car tutled up to this mansion and who should emerge from the electric car but Mel Gibson, he was this person and sober sponsor. I mean, to dial Mel as your calm me down person

but, you know, this is the world we live in. You know, I have to stop eventually with that. At some point, I mean, look, we'll come back to him. Oh yeah, we will. We'll return. Now, can we talk about musicals and live events Andrew Lloyd Webber says Broadway isn't a business anymore.

Yeah, literally everyone is saying you can't make any money, making musicals on Broadway. And musicals have traditionally been the way that theatres have made, you know, they've made billions. And if you have a hit musical, I mean, you're, you never have to work again. All you've got to do is look at Tim Rice's house. And you know what musicals can do. I keep trying to, but I'm being moved on all the time. Yeah, I can't. I look like it's peaking over the wall.

since the pandemic been 46 new musicals have opened on Broadway three of them have made a profit 43 out of 46 have failed okay but some of those are taking a million a week now and they will eventually recoup but that's how

how much money is going across the tills and the fact that they still haven't broken even at all is extraordinary they cost so much more than they used to cost I was looking at something about 10 years ago something rotten which was a big musical on Broadway. That costs $14 million, which, I mean, that sounds like a lot of money and a very similar musical in terms of your cast members and so on, Death Becomes her, which opened last year,

$31.5 million in terms of cast, in terms of materials and all of these things, I mean, they are incredibly expensive. If you want to put on a play, and by the way, plays are doing okay on Broadway, sometimes you've got three or four actors. It might have already been written. You want put on a musical, usually you'll have a big cast, a big ensemble cast, a big chorus, you will have an orchestra. It's enormously costly. The sets are enormously costly. The materials are very expensive, but the unionisation, some would say prohibitive costs. We don't have that same unionisation. It's very odd American showbus as we always discuss. It's incredibly unionised and it makes it very, very expensive, which is why, to a large extent, people have gone to make things

elsewhere, which is part of the reason why Trump's talking about is tariffs or whatever, it becomes very, very expensive under their labour rules. Yeah, but mainly what's happening is people are still going to musicals, but they're going to musicals that they've already seen, and they're going to legacy musicals, because Hamilton is rammed every night. Wicked is rammed every night. So is Mamma Mia. Hamilton, they just put the price of their most expensive ticket.

used to be $1,200 for one ticket. It is now going up to $1,500 for one ticket. So if you can crack it, I mean, it's worth it. And it's really interesting. When you read the American articles, because they so accept this, they say prices have remained flat. It's like, I don't know, I mean, I guess it's since the pandemic.

It's like, it's sort of flat, isn't it? And so the reason this is an issue for British musicals is you can run a British music order a slight loss or a break-even, knowing that if you do have a hit on your hands, that can go to Broadway and 10, 20 years ago, it was really going to start raking in the money because you've done all your costs, you know, it's all up and running, and suddenly you're getting this huge money from Broadway. And now that's not going to happen. So you need to make your money in the UK, which is an awful lot harder, if not fairly impossible. Even more people are trying to test over here because it's becoming so difficult to start over there. So

it can crowd out original things, different things, plays, because they have come with quite a lot of funding. And as I say, lots of UK theatres have lost Arts Council funding. And so it's a marriage that is disrupting the ecosystem a bit. I did a book event the other day up in Derbyshire. And the guy who is the tech guy from it, who was great, him and his husband were literally just flying off to New York the day after. because they are the guys behind the Gwyneth Paltrow Skiing Trial Musical, which had done really well at Edinburgh.

Did it like Edinburgh Ski Mascar Trial? Yeah, exactly that. And they were literally flying out to Broadway the next day to go and do that. So I hope that's gone unbelievably well for them. They were two lovely fellas. I do think live things, like things that take place in theatres.

Yeah, theatres have a very, very, very healthy future. The other week I was at the South Bank at the Royal Festival Hall, launch. Goldhanger are taking over the Royal Festival Hall for a whole weekend and there's going to be, we're all going to do events, there's going to be crossover events. I was talking to someone there who they programmed lots and lots of live

things and they have authors and all sorts of sorts of that and I have noticed myself doing live things. I believe that live stages are the last places you can say anything like outrageous and interesting. I've said things that I can possibly doing live events recently. I've said things I can possibly say

on this podcast. Certainly in any kind of interview. Stuff about me. Yeah. It's like you're in a club and it's like a place where celebrities can't say things in interviews for fear of them being clipped.

I mean, you really can't anymore. You talk to anyone. You talk to radio times. You talk to anyone. You know, people think interviews are boring because you just can't say. There's no point saying anything. I mean, you could say stuff

but then you've got like a week of people saying, yeah, didn't you say this? Didn't you say that? He said, well, no. I sort of said someone said something. I kind of nodded. I'm not even going to say where this was because otherwise, like,

reporters will be sent to sit in this live event. But Tony, who runs Goalhanger, told me something quite extraordinary that was revealed on the stage recently. That would have been a Sunday time splash for two weeks. It did not get up. There were thousands of people there, and it didn't get out. It's so interesting. The communal experience is incredibly important.

It's only going to get more and more and more important. And people crave it. People really, really crave it. People crave laughing with each other, being interested with each other. One of the fascinating things in theatres now is the amount of the amount of. of shows which are just somebody, it's like a professor or someone from the television, just talking or doing an interview. I've got a big old list. All these people, all these people are out on tour. So these are not stand-ups. Okay, so these are not plays. There's not

anything like that. This is a whole new industry. We talk a bit about podcasts doing live shows, but this is people just going out there and doing interviews often to promote a book or whatever it is, but theatres up and down the country. Selling out 1,500, 2,000 seat of venues. Michael Portillo, Stuart Broad, Harry Rednatt, Davina McCall, Sandy Toxfig, Tony Robinson, Jonathan Agnew, Richard Coles, Rory Bremner, Dawn French, Harry Enfield, Jacinda Ardenne, Fair enough. Garris Southgate, Mary Beard, Nigella Larson, Miriam Margulies, Nigel Plainer, Freddie Flintoff, Mark Ronson, Francis Rossi, Grayson, doing 22 nights. So everywhere you go now. Kerry Coton and Georgina are doing one as well.

Are they? That's watchable. It's absolutely chaos. I've been following that. All of these places up and down the country, and this is a fairly new industry. There's always been the odd thing, like Question of Sport, go out on tour, you know, you'd have the odd interview thing but this is the industrialized version of that people going on these big tours and they are incredibly popular they sell out wherever they go the fascinating thing about them is there's a really interesting this is a complete sidebar and i don't have an answer to this

i just i just i just mention it that you talk to if a stand-up plays a two thousand seat of venue a stand-up knows exactly what you get paid they know those numbers if you are an author or a television academic or something like that you have always done events but you've done them literary festivals or you've done them to launch books and you don't get paid anything. I was talking to a stand-up yesterday. You're like a child with no frame of reference. Yeah. Yeah. Because you do an event because you want to talk to readers or, you know, and it's nice. It's symbiotic. You'll get an independent bookstore at the bookshop out the front selling books and so, you know, everyone's a winner. But I was talking to a stand-up the other day. He was at a theatre talking to someone, you know,

like a TV person. And the TV person said, no, it's amazing because they're giving me X pounds to do this. It's great because normally I would do it for free. And the stand-up said the number that they said was a tenth of what they should be getting paid for selling out that theatre. Okay, literally a tenth. And because they used to not being paid at all, so they don't understand. Well, publishing doesn't run this, does it? Because other people have inserted themselves into that particular, I suppose, promoter role or organiser.

And, yeah, I mean, I can't do a full sidebar on the way publishing has been run over decades but it's interesting that they have allowed that to happen and they've allowed it to happen to their authors when as you say the book buying streams are not drying up but they're certainly depleting there's a weird wild west out there because i don't think theatres i always say somebody is making fun money and if it isn't talent as it were but i would say that's intriguing uh recommendations this is obvious but i loved one battle after another. Oh, did you?

Yeah, which is 100% a film to see in cinemas. The sound was so important, but also the way it's shot in VistaVision. It's so beautiful. It's very funny. It's about lots of big ideas, but it is also about a sort of big film about things that are happening now in America.

And it's obviously only become more current since Paul Thomas Sanders and the director came up with it. It's quite unusual in some ways to see films that are about things that are happening now in some ways. Isn't it? I finally managed to see Spine or Tattoo, which seems to be on a very, very small amount of cinemas. And I was just say this,

over the closing credits, I think might be my favourite joke in cinema history. It's just a one-liner from Davis and Hubbins, which we were both sitting there and just absolutely go forward. Just an amazingly stupid joke. So I recommend that. But also just because,

We mustn't forget things just because they're old. There's a new series of Grand Designs, and it remains absolutely peerless television, and Kevin McLeod remains an absolutely peerless presenter, and that production team are peerless in what they do as well. So Grand Designs is back and strongly recommended. Don't forget, we got that Celebrity Traders bonus episode coming up directly after the first episode on Wednesday.

We'll be chatting about our reactions to that episode. Q&A episode on Thursday as well. So we'll see everyone either on Wednesday or Thursday. I'll see all the Thursday. Bye-bye. This episode was brought to you by Sky. Skyglass is the new television from Sky, the kind that makes your old Teddy feel like a dress rehearsal. This is the big screen premiere right there in your living room.

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