The Rest Is Entertainment - Is Tom Cruise In Hollywood’s Biggest Ever Flop?

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Has Tom Cruise just starred in the biggest Hollywood bomb of all time? Can Taylor Swift continue making great pop music? Why did Richard once get offered a glass of milk by TV's king of trash? Tom Cruise & Alejandro Iñárritu's new movie Digger took a pitiful $8m domestically on its opening weekend - making it one of Hollywood's biggest failures. What went wrong? Who is to blame? And can anything be salvaged? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde have the answers. Taylor Swift won't go quietly. In a critically divisive move, the pop superstar has released four more songs to her 'Life Of A Showgirl' project. Is it tough to continue making hit after hit when you've penned over 300 songs? Richard has been busy filming a new game show in Belgium. What are the economics of batch producing in Europe — and why are the Dutch so good at telly? The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Looking for extra value from your spending? You can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. 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 For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton & Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Social Producer: Emma Jackson Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Resters Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy, whose generation business backs, builds and manages renewable energy projects. On screen, though, the practicalities of sourcing power are slightly more negotiable. Certainly in script. I mean, my favourite energy source story, back to the future, of course, they're supposed to have plutonium. They don't have plutonium. So they were light. Back in when they go back in time.

When they go back, yeah. So they need to get 1.21 gigawatts. Which they get from the lightning strike, which they know is going to happen at, at 1004, very clever. Monsters Inc. Now, you know where the power source is on Monsters Inc? Everything in Monstropolis is powered by children's screams, which is why they need to

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Enough to power all the homes and businesses of Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester combined. A slightly more conventional approach to generating power. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range, infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins,

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I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore. On October 14th, the Vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family.

together quite like mortal jeopardy. Streaming October 14th. Only on Disney Plus. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina. Hi. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello everyone. Hi, Marina.

Hi, Richard. How are you? I'm all right. Yeah, just got back from filming Golden Elevators in Belgium. Got back yesterday, which means I've been able to catch up on traitors as well. So I was finally able to listen to your amazing reaction podcast with Charlotte. one of my favourite ever Traitors contestants. If you haven't listened to it, it's fantastic.

Watch the episodes first. But yeah, got back from Golden Elevators. I think this is one of the things we're going to talk about this week, by the way, just about those big shows, how they're put together, why they're filmed in Belgium, etc, etc. So that's going to be one of our items today. But what else are we talking about? The Taylor Swift Backlash, she released four new songs and various other things. But I think we're going to start with Digger.

Yeah. Anatomy of a flop. Yeah. Is it the biggest box office failure of all time? And why? And why? Yes. Now, this is the Alejandro Inarito film that opened this weekend, starring Tom Cruise.

It cost, I think it cost about $180 million. They're saying maybe $160, but I do not believe it. Without marketing. Without marketing. I know. Also, I love it when you've had a flop. It didn't cost $180 million. It was like, I mean, top.

It was 160 million. Yeah. Topps. It was actually pretty cheap. It was, anyway, it has opened to 8 million North American box office, which regular viewers and listeners to this podcast will know officially categorizes it as a bomb. It is a bomb. It's not great.

This is bombed real hard. I mean, it could be the biggest bomb of all time. I'll go into some numbers later. I sort of think it might be the biggest bomb of all time. And it's interesting. It's going to, well, yes, it's going to lose a ton of money. it's coming at a very difficult time in a way because those two film chiefs

that we've talked about before at Warner's who green lit this, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi, they are out as part of, remember they had that great 2025, well they actually had two great quarters in 2025 with all sorts of things like weapons and sinners, and one back after another,

the Minecraft movie, various things like that. And we thought, okay, we've understood how to reinvent Hollywood now. As part of David Ellison, remember this is the Kendall Royal. who's now got Warner, who we used to run something called Skydance about 15 minutes ago, and now has both Paramount and Warner Brothers. And they are out those two film chiefs.

It's not totally because of this at all, but it's not great timing. I saw this film on Saturday morning. We are going to talk about what happened. And there are many mysteries that we don't know the answer to. But will you give us, I know because I've been looking forward to it very much, will you give us an Insta Marina review of the film? It's so beautiful to look at, but it's like a university play that somebody spent $180 million without marketing on. It's what is it in terms of, okay, it is, that is a question in itself.

Obviously it stars Tom Cruise. It is a sort of apocalyptic, satirical eco farce, a black comedy. Above all, Richard, it is an art film. It is an art film that cost $180 million without marketing. It's high risk, it's big swing. and obviously it has not in any way paid off. It had bad buzz. Tom Cruise went as all in as you're going to see him in this day and age since 20 years ago. We just had definitive proof that he is insane.

So he can be as much outward as possible. There were all sorts of kind of weird fan theories. I think people understood immediately that what they were seeing in the trailer, which sort of suggests that there's an oil man whose own actions cause a disaster. and he must kind of get his shovel in the ground to fix it. It is not that. I don't want to go heavily detailed. But unfortunately...

There are huge twists which we will not give away. What I will say is that I think that the story itself or the message itself is so sort of crass and on the nose that they constantly had to metarise it. And in one very significant way, they completely metatize it. Anyhow. So it had a sort of, there was a sort of mystery to it. I think, you know, I suppose what people might compare it to is something like Francis Ford Coppola's megalopolis. Yeah, I've seen exactly that.

Yeah, so the audience reaction, it's a bomb, the critical reaction as well. I just paraphrase a few people here. David Ehrlich called it a mega-budget Dr. Strangelove riff so detached from reality that its most believable character is an animatronic one-eyed cat. In the globe, they said they found it loud, ugly and blind to its own floors. Stephanie Zacharack in Time said, It spends its runtime setting the audience on its own genius. And there's another website which is likened to Cruze's look to Colonel Sanders. Fair to say, it's not been a good weekend for Digger.

So this is probably most comparable to another Warner's release, Joker Folli Adder, which Joker, the original Joker, you know, gross a billion. I would say its audience, I'm not saying they're all in cells, but it was very popular with young men. If you then want to make the sequel, a musical starring Lady Gaga, okay, so interested in your models for that. Anyway, that did very badly. I don't think anyone thought in Hollywood that this film was going to be the

savior of the town or the savior of o'terrorism or whatever it is. There wasn't, I mean, there could have been a year ago when, you know, in production, when people had gone, you know what, those guys are doing something really special here. Like something big is happening in Pinewood with this movie. It's actually. Yeah, it's all shot here. I think they all worked out that this probably wasn't going to work. So no one was going, is it going to work?

I want to talk about that a bit later when we get into it. But I have to say that Alejandro and Uritu is not one of those big but butts in seats, Oter people like Greta Gerwig or Christopher Nolan or Ryan Coogler or any of those people. So probably a Birdman and the Revenant are probably the two big things where he absolutely hit with audiences. So he can make a big... Birdman costs $17 million. Yeah. Okay.

And actually has thematically or structurally there are elements that are very similar to this. Okay, but it's well over 10 times the cost. They, you know, as you say, they shot it in Pinewood, entirely in VistaVision. To me, having seen it, it is an insanely non-commercial film. You are aware, even if the trailer is misleading, which it deliberately is, that you are watching some kind of eco-satir. Now, I'm so sorry, but neither eco-sat-ar is going to get you to where you need to be at the box office. And obviously it has something in common with Don't Look Up or Doctor Strange of,

but Don't Look Up, you know, go straight onto Netflix. By the way, Inuiti's last film, Bardo, that was a flop, really, for Netflix. So I think there were warning signs here. To counterbalance all this, those two film chiefs, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi, did have that run of success, basically in Q2 and Q3 of 2025, with those, with a lot of doesn't fit in a box films. Yes. Sinners does not fit in a box.

Weapons does not particularly fit in a box, or they launch a new person in Zach Greger. One battle after another, which, by the way, does not make money at the box office, but does do quite pretty well. And it's a massive awards play. Exactly. Which this would be as well.

And prestige is quite important. Prestige actually has a monetary value in Hollywood. When you've had some big grossing other things, when your conjuring last right has got half a billion and it costs nothing really. So you counterweight those things. and it would have made money by the time it got to the second window or whatever. So it wasn't that big of a sort of disaster at all, theatrically at all, one bad after another.

They were waiting for their big disaster. Yeah. I mean, when I was watching this, I was thinking, Jesus, I wonder how much oil it took to make this movie. Because when you see a big production and they shot for something like six months, this is an eco-disaster as well as a cinematic disaster. Well, that's the satire upon the satire. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he is an event director in Uitu So in terms of how it got made Mike and Pam They were known for big swing originals They kind of said it They have an incredible cast I do believe that I was saying to my husband

We got out like They must have gone home every night and said What a hell are we making Do you think they did? What do you think Tom Cruise and Iniritu did No no no no The rest of the cast are like Oh there yeah

He's a genius It's Tom Cruise they're going to get a with it, aren't they? Maybe this is amazing. Maybe this is amazing. Maybe this is actually what, we've all done things where we've been in studio and thought it was brilliant and all done things where we've been in the studio, thought it was terrible. And neither of those things ever have any impact at all on what it actually is. So you can definitely go back to your hotel in the evening and go, like this is like one of the actors just phoning home, talking to the husband, just going, yeah. I am enjoying it. I think it's quite hard to see, let's,

Clearly he's got a vision. He's a genius. He's a genius. He's a genius. He's a genius. He's a genius. So what it's going to be. So for me, some of it is going over my head slightly and some of the shots and

the script. I find slightly opaque. But you know what? I'm going with it. Yeah. We all are. We're all going in it because Tom is very intense at the center of it. Tom thinks this is going to be huge.

And who knows cinema like Mr. Tom Cruise? And he's smarter than us. So listen, I'm just going to. get some rim service, get my head down, and pop out there again next week. I want to say, Richard, that I would read a full oral history on every aspect about how this got made, what it was like during the making of it. Can I say about how it got made, by the way, that I think is a positive thing. So this will definitely, if it's not the biggest flop of all time, it goes on the list, right?

Alongside, you know, the Eddie Murphy thing, Adventures of Pluto, Nash, cutthroat Island, John Carter, all these big, big movies that did nothing. this one is an attempt to make, as you say, Dr. Strangelove or Cissorne or something like that. At least they're not attempting just to make a feel-good movie and it fails and they lose $150 million. At least they're going, why don't we make a stand-out piece of cinema that's going to last forever and we'll lose $150 million on that and said, I'd almost rather this was the flop. Like this is a better flop than the Marvel's. you know, it's better for the world that this is the fault.

I like... I disagree. I wonder whether when the Marvels fails, people are like, why do we just make some movies that cost $60 million and are really interesting? Whereas when this happens, everyone's like, I'll tell you what, why don't we just make some really commercial... Like, why do we just make Days of Thunder 2, which we're going to get to? Oh, I definitely think that the impact of this is worse,

because it makes it harder to make these movies. But I think what happened, you know, I think that the impetus for it was better. I think, as you say, that Mike and Pam had this series of... movies that came out of nowhere. They liked working with O'Tours. Hollywood is kind of going, perhaps we can make one last great movie, a movie that is just Hollywood royalty, where we throw all the money at it, we film it in the most beautiful way possible, we do everything. We've always loved about cinema. We do all of that stuff at the same time with the very, very best director, we get the best film star. The other cast is amazing. John Goodman,

Brze Ahmed, Byrne Gorman, there's all these brilliant actors. Sandra Huller. So they're thinking, okay, we are absolutely going to go for it. And yeah, it absolutely failed. But that's a better failure, I think. As you say, though, I think the impact is worse. We'll get on to what now happens in Hollywood. And if you are, there'll be people O-Tur sitting on kind of passion projects now

who are like, oh, great. Thank you so much. I'll go to wait another five years. Yeah. In terms of what happens with the film, they're trying to repurpose a line in the film where Tom Cruise says, you know what, fuck those people. And they're using that as a sort of, to say,

we all hate the critics right, in the advertising. We all knew this was going to happen. We expected this to happen. Yeah. Make your mind up for yourself. Look, I mean, the Odyssey is a big swing, right? And the Odyssey is a big swing, and it's got a great cast, and it's a story that, to some degree you might say,

hang on, how commercial is that? And look at what it's done, okay? I'd say it's less of a big swing than digger. Yeah. Yeah. It is less of a big swing. If you're around both of those tables, you'd be like... And in America, you've got to understand that the E.com message is not probably going to get you enough seats filled in the cinemas.

I would say that Tom Cruise said at the LA premiere to Mike and Pan, you didn't even take a breath when we brought you this film. I don't think you even turn the page on it. You're just like, you're in. Okay, so they haven't gone because of this, but obviously this is a sort of great miss. The other thing I'm interested to know is how the meta structure of this film evolved. In a way, you kept saying they'd be thinking about it for 10 years and it kept being overtaken by reality, presumably the sort of eco-message. I wonder whether that structure evolves relatively late in the day.

There are so many credited writers and story consultants on this film. It's usually a good sign. Usually a really great sign. There's a lot here. I would love to know what happened at internal screenings when everyone presumably sat there going, okay, right. I think we're going to get away with this.

But again, the first internal screening there must have been, some of the people must have gone, do you know what? And what if this is just like the best thing we've ever seen? What if we are blown away? What if this is just going to transform everything? What if they write books about us in the future because of the swing we took here?

I mean, they will write books about it. Yeah. It's interesting that people are trying to sort of rewrite the rewrite, Because remember what happened with Mike Deluca and Pam Abdi. Everyone was like, oh, they're really bad at their jobs. And then they're really, really bad. And then suddenly those second two quarters in the middle of 2025 happened. And everyone was like, oh, hang on a second.

They're amazing. And now people are always saying, now people, I can see after this, people, because it's such a town of vultures, saying, oh, hang on, all of those things were actually in development before they turned up except for sinners. But anyway, they had to kind of return the copyright of that to Ryan Kudler after a certain amount of years. So that wasn't a great deal.

it's interesting what else has come out this weekend and has done very, very well. That a Colleen Hoover adaptation, Verity, is top of the box office by a million miles. This is, by the way, it's like number five in the US box office. It's unbelievable. I mean, like below stuff that's been out for three weeks. Yeah, something my President Evil is way above it. And Verity, this is. That's got Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway.

I mean, she's having an amazing year. Yeah. Josh Hartnett. it's an original. It's not, by the way, it's not a slam dunk every time with Colleen Hoover. It ends with us is miles away the most successful. People don't love, the audience, I don't think, love Verity. I think it's a very demanding audience, Colleen Hoover's audience.

Yes, it got a very low cinema score, which is the thing of everyone who comes out, gives it like ABC or something. I think it's in the seas. By the way, I think it's got the same cinema score as Digger. Yeah. To put a Prezéic number on it, it took 34 million versus eight for Digger, and it cost way less. So if you get Colleen Hoover right, as they did with it ends with us, although that obviously has had other issues, then it's audience bait. And it's a movie that people want to see. I mean, I'll be honest with you, the next Tom Cruise movie that we're probably going to see out of this now combined studio is going to be Days of Thunder 2 with Anne Hathaway and Tom Cruise. People are going to want to see that. And it was, you know, we talked more about when I did an interview with Sylvester Stallone last week. No, I haven't talked to you about it.

I'm excited to listen to that. Well, when that comes out, you'll hear him talk about Taylor Sheridan's audience and whether movies serve that at all. But I would say that Days of Thunder, too, a film about NASCAR, is more likely to get different butts in those seats, as it were. But also if your crews, I mean, listen, this did badly, but a lot of his non-franchised things have not done well for a long time. So his franchise things, top gun, Mission Impossible,

or hopefully Days of Thunder, they've done well. But his, you know, otherwise you've got Digger before that American made, which didn't do amazingly. The Mummy, which again was critically panned and seen as a huge flop, but made twice as much money as Digger, the Jack Reacher movies. I mean, it's been a while since he's had a non-franchised film that's done well. So you can see. But people want them to do well.

You know, we all, how many times have I sat here saying, oh, you know, I loved him in Magnolia. He's not the leader, Magnolia. But, you know, we want him to go back. and he's an amazing cinema actor and you just don't want him to go back at this price point in this type of a thing. It's just completely wrong.

By the way, sidebar, Magnolia had a cinema score of C-minus that goes to show sometimes what audiences are. Yeah, exactly. It's interesting to just, you know, as of Tuesday, as of when this sort of podcast comes out, Paramount and Warner Brothers are both going to have been folded into Skydance, this kind of like, yeah, this minnow that has... That's laiden nonsense.

And the new film leads for that company are going to be Paramount's existing ones, who are called Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg. And they do not have a reputation for making films like this at all. Yeah. So we're in an industry where people constantly say, we must take more risk. The key thing we have to take risk, we have to do it. Now, this is sort of an example of you should take a risk and you shouldn't take a risk,

as in I'm glad they went for it. I wish they said, you know, this is a risk that don't spend $180 million on it. If we say that in the final analysis, and this is back of the envelope maths, that this loses $200 million, say, you know, which is a, and that's on a balance sheet somewhere in Hollywood. Now, look at some, you know, obsession, which came out at the start of the summer, cost $750,000, made over half a billion. We say, okay, with that $200 million, we can make $226.

um, obsessions, right? Let's say one in 50 of them are smash hits. That would make you, that $200 million would turn into $7.5 billion. So if you want to make one of these movies, or if you want to just make a load of movies like obsession, which by the way is a risk, because it's a young director and it's a, you know, it's a genre movie and all that stuff, that's $7.5 billion return on your risk. But the way that Hollywood works, the way the TV works, the way that everything works, There seem to be different pots of money. Like, you know, you've got your main course stomach and your dessert stomach in that you can be absolutely full of main course. And you can have your pudding because it goes into a different place.

Companies like this treat huge amounts of money in a very different way to they treat other amounts of money. It's like the money is different. It's like it's different currency. Oh, no, this is $200 million. No, but this is a Tom Cruise $200 million. You know, that definitely isn't like $200 lots of $1 million. It's not it's just one lot of $200 million. And so they would find it impossible to shout out that on 200 things over here.

They just wouldn't be able to do it. And it's always been the case in everything. It's much, much, much easier to get a TV company or a movie company to write a really big check than it is to get them to write a small check. So mad, isn't it? And you know what, it has actually destroyed, I don't want to say destroyed, but it is like hobbled the market completely. I was reading last week that there are actually people are now saying, oh, we must have things like obsession. but because they have spent so long not spending money on stuff like that, there isn't actually any product, call it by some sort of terrible name.

There aren't the scripts out there because people have just stopped trying to do all this. They're working on TV shows. I mean, you remember when Oasis got big, you remember the 10 years of Brit Pop also ran, who had number seven hits. That's what we got for the next five years. Well, people are scrambling to write this stuff because they haven't been writing, they haven't even bothered doing it at spec scripts like that

because there was no market for them. And now there is this sudden, like, okay, we've got to have these things. But you saw when American Fiction won at the Oscars, Paul Jefferson stood up and said, why don't we make lots of movies for $20 million? And now it's why don't we make 200 movies at $1 million. But we keep not doing that. I don't think, Days of Thunder 2 is probably going to be a banker,

but we can say that about a lot of things. But they will spend a lot of money on that. Yeah. Final word on Digger, because I said this huge flop and that's the narrative around it, is there a world in which it gets reappraised in the future and is seen as one of the great works of cinema? Yeah, but it's beautiful. I mean, you know, people go and say, I love Heaven's Gate and things like that. Heaven's Gate, famously the movie that collapsed a studio and I think also a genre, the Western, and also an entire era, New Hollywood, which is all those guys coming through. So that was a real blast radius, that movie.

Michael Chimino directed it. But yes, some people have gone back and said, I absolutely love Heaven's Gate. You can think it's sort of, to me, I think the message is so on the nose and so crass. As I say, I think it's like a university play. It looks beautiful, but it's like a university play that someone has sort of blown a fortune on. And I think it's difficult with something where the message is that. I mean, the message of Dr. Strangelove is. is quite

on the nose and crass and funny but it's so funny and the performances are so brilliant and it's so kind of surreal that they get you know they completely get away

with it also like yeah corset does and by the way that was the originator so once you see something that comes a long time after and sort of owes bits to it but I know because the reviews

have been almost you know have been consistently bad across the board but I did I read a very good review as in a review that said it was very good and the review I thought was very good by Nicholas Barber on the BBC, who loved it and said,

do you know what? That's the thing about Tom Cruise. If he does something, if he does Mission Impossible, then my God, he's doing his own stunts and hanging off the bottom of a helicopter. If he's going to do a mental,

big swing for the fences, absurd satire, he will do it at 100 miles an hour and he really has done it here. And so, you know... You can't for him. I mean, I think the script is a fiasco, however many people are involved in it.

Yeah. It really is. I mean, I'll say this. Anyone who's listening to this who hasn't seen it, will be sitting here now going, it sort of feels like I should probably go and see this. What would you say to them? Well, I always go and see things that are a big part.

As you know, I'd like to go and see things that are a big part of the culture. However, sort of, you know, stupid or whatever, that's why I'm there at 9.30 in the morning watching the Minecraft movie. It's certainly not because I thought that was a sort of autistic triumph. But I want to see what's big, what flops. Just anything. I mean, and it's interesting to see. And, you know, to look at it is incredibly beautiful.

And there's a signpost to what's next. Yeah, always. For sure. Yeah. Right. Shall we go to a break? I would love that. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Lloyds.

Now, let's talk about movie con artists. Who are your absolute favourites? Movies, TV and book, my answer is the same. And it's Tom Ripley. I was going to say him. It's one of the greatest characters of all time. So from The Talented Mr. Ripley Books by Patricia Highsmith, There's five of them.

So if you like talented Mr. Ripley, you are in luck. He's like one of the worst men in the world, but you absolutely root for him at all times. Now, of course, deception makes for excellent entertainment on screen. In real life, when it's your bank account being targeted, the charm somewhat disappears. Yep, Lloyds have invested £100 million in Dark Horse Anti-Fraud Technology, which combines intelligent monitoring and real-time alerts to keep you safe from fraud.

Click on their app or visit Lloydsbank.com to find out more about how Lloyds protects you from fraud. AI-powered scam checks, voice biometrics and real-time alerts are just some of the ways Lloyds are protecting you. Based on Lloyd's Banking Group data, 2023 to 2025. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range, infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee plus B2, to help support immune function, and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving.

Or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight. Our new double espresso with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on espresso.com. From the studio that brought you WandaVision, I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore. On October 14th, the vision returns for the final chapter

of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? What am I losing? Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest.

Nothing bonds a family together quite like Mortal Jeopardy. Streaming October 14th, only on Disney Plus. Welcome back, everybody. Now, in a minute we're going to be talking about the backlash against Taylor Swift, not her first backlash. You know what? I think she'll be all right.

I feel like she'll be okay. But first, please can you talk to me about Golden Elevators because you have been in Antwerp Yes, well I didn't talk about it because I think it's interesting about how TV is made now This is not going to be an advert for golden elevators I promise because it's not on for ages anyway

So it would be a terrible, terrible advert All adverts must be one second before someone has a call to action So I just wanted, when I was there I just thought my God television has changed so much So it was my last week ever on House of Games this week We watched it all It was actually moving. You are brilliant.

I filmed that a long time ago. It was just weirdly coincidental timing. And I decided I'm not going to do any more quizzes. Because of the writing, I just don't have time to do it. And people pitch me a quiz show. Then when other people have got quiz shows to sell, they think, oh, who could host this? They go, well, that guy hosts a quiz show.

So things come to you. And the stuff have been pitched to me. Because with my producer's head, I would always go, I've sort of seen this or this won't work because X, Y, Z. Or more usually, I like it, but I don't think I would make it any better, if that makes sense. I could immediately, if I was you as a producer, there would be 10 names above my name on the list for this show. Anyway, Golden Elevators comes in from Studio Lambert, who are the makers that race across the world, traitors, celebrity traitors, Gogglebox, I mean, Squid Game, The Challenge, just huge shows.

And, you know, I'm a huge fan of theirs. But even so, I open the deck thinking, I'm not going to like this. I read it. I thought, yeah, this is for me. I love it. It's super simple. It's more complicated than this. But 10 players, two elevators, A and B.

And the 10 players are given a question with an A and B an answer. Right. And if you get in the right elevator, if the right answer, you go up. If you get in the wrong elevator, you go down and off the show. If you go up 10 times, you win 100,000 pound. Right? That's the simple, simple. version of it. The thing I liked most about it was the 10 of you can chat about the answer.

You can chat about the question, talk it through, but then you lock in your answers in private. So you can say what you want during the chat, but actually what you actually think is down to you. Anyway, that's the basis of the show, and that need to attain us no longer. Because what was interesting was the economics of the show, I felt. So I said yes to it that I would love to do it because, A, I liked it and B, I could see how I could present it. And see, I've always, always wanted to do a show where I could give away like a big prize to a member of the public. That's the thing that I like. I know.

I like members of the public. I like Jeopardy. You want to give them lots of money. And I want to do the thing to say, Marina, you have said B. Florence. If it is B Florence, you're about to win 100,000 pounds. That's all I've ever wanted to do. I didn't breathe in that. And by the way, no spoilers, but I did get to do that a few times this week.

So I thought, yeah, okay, let's do it. That would be lovely. Then I discover where it comes from. So it's created by Jasper Hugendorn. Yeah. Now, the Dutch are insanely good at television and always has been. What is it in their national character? Why have they, they've just got this heritage, this sort of,

and particularly in game shows and quizzes and things like that? Yeah. Jasper is the last show he came up with was The Traitors, right? So Jasper's the guy behind the traitors and he works for a company called Talpa. Yeah. And Talpa is big Dutch conglomerate, which is owned and run by John Demol. And John Demol was the guy who set up Endemol. Yeah.

So John Demol came up with Big Brother, you know, under his stewardship deal on a deal happened. So yeah, there's this incredible sort of Dutch DNA that goes through our popular culture. John Demol, by the way, when, because he was still running Endermol when I was there with Tim Hinks, he's doing your brilliant big brother special episodes. And I just remember the first time we met him. He chained smoke to John all the time. We sat down opposite him and goes, guys, you've flown over from England.

I'm guessing you'd like a glass of milk. And Tim and I like, yeah, I would like a glass. John, do you know what? That would really hit the spot. He smoked so much, John DeMoll, that when they banned smoking on aeroplanes, He bought his own 737 to fly.

It never went on a private jet. He had his own 737 which flew him around the world, so he could smoke. He once at something, every time you go and see it, he would like have this, like some new idea. He once bought a submarine. He said, I saw a submarine must have sale. He said, and I couldn't think of a show, but there'll be a show on a submarine, guys. So can you think of a submarine show? So John is amazing.

His dad was also John DeMoll, and he was the Dutch Frank Sinatra, essentially, John D'Ombal. essentially John DeMole's dead. So he's from like a proper big kind of showbiz, dynasty. More of a dynasty. The very first version of Deal and No Deal was presented by his sister, Linda Deval. There's another big show at the moment called The Quiz With Bulls and that's hosted by his son,

Johnny DeMoll. That's John Demol and that's Taupor. But as a Yesper, Hugendor, came up with a show. It's being made by Studio Lambert who make all these amazing big shows. And it's made in Antwerp or just outside Antwerp is a place called AED Studios and this is what's interesting about television now is it's made in Antwerp because the set for this show is so insane it's so massive as you know it's got real elevators and they're going up between floors and there's all sorts of different such huge it's enormous this set and it's all working and it it looks like a sort of very high-end hotel slash you know residential block

where, you know, people buy properties and never live in them. So that is so expensive that set that what they do, they build it once. So they build it in the studio in Antwerp, and then all the countries of the world come and make the show together. And does the same crew do it each time? Yeah. Right, okay, so the same crew. With a few.

So the crew is mainly Dutch. Even though we're in Belgium, yeah. Everyone is Dutch. Everyone. Right. Which I never quite got to the bottom of. I said to a cut them, why is everyone Dutch? She'd go, well, just, you know, we know how to do these things.

I said, is there anyone Belgian here? And they said, you know what, like a last year, like the catering was Belgian, but then actually we got rid of them and now we got Dutch catering. So, okay, that's the Dutch for you. I love them. Dutch catering really sounds like an euphemism. I don't know what for. I don't know what for.

But yeah. Yeah. Don't look up Dutch catering.com. Yeah. Yeah. So you build this one set. And again, we're in the territory of, weirdly, of Digger, which is you take these big swings now. There are very few smaller shows being made.

If you make a show, the economics only really work if you can make it at scale immediately. And those economics only work if you can set it into lots of different territories at once, which is quite hard to do. And there's certain people who can do it. Taupor can do it. But it means fewer shows are being made and they're bigger. So this studio, the last thing that was in it was the floor. Oh, yeah.

Which obviously they're made for the States. Rob Bryden does it over here. So it's used to having these enormous sets that cost a huge. amount of money. Obviously a crew who understand how to operate a set like that, understand how to light a set like that, understand how to run an operation like that. So you suddenly get this centre of excellence next to a train track 30 minutes outside Antwerp and everyone goes there to make the show, which I think is an interesting thing. The day before we got there for our first rehearsal, the Dutch had been doing their series. And the day after we left, the Americans went in with a

really, really interesting host, I'm not allowed to say, but it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, it's going to be good. So that's how the TV industry works now is we all go to this place, we all make this show, because Tauper had been able to fund it by selling it everywhere. It's not like the old days

where the BBC could just fund a game show and you'd go and shoot that somewhere. And, you know, so that's the kind of international production side of it, which I do think is interesting. And it's nice to know that John DeMoll, as a billionaire, is still working, although actually I was told by someone

not smoking anymore. Right. So you've done the requisite advert for that. The other interesting thing, I always think to talk about when you've made a show like that is, do you know if something's going to be successful or not? Okay, you know, when you leave a studio, like we were talking about Digger, so do you know if you have a hit on your hands?

Well, the one thing I can say for definite is that we loved it on the set. I loved presenting it. I was saying to Jasper, the guy who came up with it, the traitors guy. I said, I feel like this format is so solid, I can do anything with it. I can go anywhere with it. I know I can go off on any tangent I want because I've always got somewhere to come back. You know, the format will always look after me, exactly.

I will say this, though, about golden elevators. But because I was away filming, and Ingrid was away as well, we couldn't watch Celebrity Traitors until we got back into England on Sunday. So I had to avoid... Don't look at me like I don't know. I've had to not talk to you about celebrity traitors 48 hours.

That should be covered by the Geneva Convention. But I was avoiding spoilers. And listen, we know it's difficult to avoid them. I was avoiding spoilers when in a room with all the people who produced celebrity traitors and the man who invented celebrity traitors. All of whom, yeah, all of whom were having to have little chats about. And he did not catch a spoiler. I did not catch a single spoiler.

Wow, you are nimble. I am nimble. Yeah, that was hard going. Every boy on the floor knew, even before the health and safety briefings in the morning. Like it would be, please, no celebrity traitor spoilers. And God bless them. You have no rider other than don't talk to me about this. If you are going to talk about celebrity traitors, talk about it in Dutch, please.

Yeah. Yeah. So perhaps they were. Press they were talking about it nonstop. But, you know, I didn't catch people's names. By the way, my predictions in our previous episode, no spoilers. But yeah, for anyone else, I genuinely guessed. You don't get to turn up 48 hours later and say I was right.

No, but I'm just saying that please don't think that I knew and that we do give away spoilers because we don't. also on our Royal Festival Hall, life Royal Festival Hall, we predicted who'd be the first out as well. By the way, as a sidebar, studio Lambert, their casting is unbelievable. We always talk about that, right?

The casting on traitors is amazing. They're casting on race across the world. And on this, because I sort of might worry at the start was, are you going to get characters? Because I'm Chris says quite often these days, they all cast characters. And I know when you're watching at home,

that is not what you want to see. Or you don't want to see performative characters. And on this, as I said, 10 contestants at a time and we went through a lot of groups of contestants and just a couple of people who go, oh, no, are you going to be a character? And then by floor three, you're like, oh, okay, okay, I see exactly here you are.

I see why you're on the show. So the casting was amazing. So my job as presenter was made so easy by brilliant producers, two quiz show producers, Tom Plakson and Stephen Lovelock I've worked with for years and years on tiny shows,

on pointless, even things like that. And now they're doing this enormous show. So I know I'm in safe hands there. The questions team are amazing. Nick Shearing runs that. Tony Island, she's so brilliant, who runs lots of studio in Ambers shows and is across everything.

I just every voice in my ear, I was like, oh, this is great. So I can concentrate on trying to be a good television host, whether I did it or not. Who knows? But everything else was done for me. Do you know if it's going to be a hit? I loved it.

The crew were all sort of huddling around. around monitors every time there's a moment of jeopardy. And the whole crew loved it. But here's the thing, as always. That is utterly meaningless. I've been on so many sets where the crew have just gone, oh my God, we're going to be working on this for 20 years. This is incredible.

And the public take one look at it and just go, sorry, why is it green? No, this is not for us at all. It's one of those things that when you expose it to air, sometimes things just go, the second it goes on television. Who knows? Absolutely.

And genuinely, who knows? Because the public would just go, oh, no, because X and Y, that doesn't work for us. And actually, even as program makers, you'll watch it on TV and go, oh, of course. But all you can do is, you know, buy a seat at the table. You know, all you can do is make the show that you're proud of, work incredibly hard and everyone, oh my God, everyone worked their socks off. Honestly, I absolutely loved it.

And my favourite thing about TV always is just, you know, I love my writings. It's just me. but again, just working in a big team, every one of whom was really, really, really good at their job. Formatted entertainment television is your first love. Well, listen, it's certainly something I will always return to. But yeah, it was really, really, really good fun. Moving on from Golden Elevators to Taylor Swift,

and is it over? Spoiler, no, it's not, but it's been an interesting week. Yeah, she released an EP of sort of four songs, basically bolted onto the back of Life of a Showgirl, last album. And one of them's called Patient Zero and during the VMAs a week or so ago, she sort of debuted the video of that which stars Dakota Johnson. One of the songs, Cleveland, it sort of seems like it's about Travis Kelsey, but maybe it's a drive-by on her haters. The internet has sort of lost its mind about these four

songs and I don't know, there's people thinking she's moved into her Paul McCartney Wings era or whatever it is. Gosh, she should be so like that. Yeah. She's in a lot of places. She also, And I'll talk a bit about why. She also showed up. Dakota Johnson did SNL this past Saturday, and Taylor Swift turned up in that. The reason she's doing this is because Grammy voting is happening now. They kind of get to the nominees in October.

So, as we know, you have to be visible. She'll probably get an album of the year nomination, but there's enough of an upgrade or new material. So you have to sort of, as we know now, being, everyone has to be always on. This is why Charlie XX and Madonna did sort of a dance interior after house, that single, which I actually really like. Yeah. That everyone has to sort of do things.

It's so tiring. All the time to be back in the conversation. She's also, for sure, running, and very much not for the first time, because they never nominate her. She's running an Oscar campaign for that Toy Story 5 song. Oh, I love that song. I knew you. Yeah. She has tried many times in multiple different categories.

The Academy's Music Dance, by the way, are really. kind of snooty and difficult, and they've never even nominated her. The Patient Zero video feels like it's part of this play. I mean, the thing about her is that this is part of the backlash, is that people feel, although they're being played and economically or kind of politically in terms of what she strategically wants to achieve, manipulated. And the Patient Zero video is sort of quite Hollywoody because it's got Colin Farrell and Dakota Johnson in it. Martin Scorsese's DOP shot in. it. She directed it. Taylor directed it. It got her the first, the inaugural, every time an award is

inaugural, I'm always like, what the hell happened here? Okay, so it got her the first at the VMA is the first ever artist director award. That's for when an artist is also a director. Okay. I imagine that will run for years. Yeah. Like the FIFA Peace Prize. Yeah, like the FIFA Peace Prize. Oh my God, it's just part of the calendar now, right? Yeah, exactly. What are you wearing for this year's FIFA Peace Prize? Yeah, so she's sort of saying, actually, I'm a Hollywood person. I'm always wary of things where people just take, as we talked about with the Strictly thing, last week what you see, the Strictly ratings were right up just as a, yeah, even though it was against, partially against England again.

And by the way, it was a great show. Yeah. And anyone who watched the Sunday show is where you go, wait, that's where they got three hosts. And that's where they got those three hosts. Anyway, that's by the way. But this continues to be written about as though it's something to be different. But I am wary as a result of things like that, of taking fan comments and saying, having said that, there is a sort of significant element of her fandom.

them voicing distaste. It's really interesting. When we were writing the franchise, I can't remember people were talking to us about Kevin Feigy, who runs Marvel. And at the time, his power seemed to be waning, although I think they're going to come back, huge with Avengers.

Because the re-release of that, by the way, got three times what they got in the opening weekend. Kevin Feigey, some people kept saying to us, oh, Kevin Feigey knows just how much the fans will swallow, you know, before they gag or before it's just too much. And there is an element of Taylor Swift that knows just how much the fans will swallow and knows that even though a lot of people

won't like it when she announces a new album while she's accepting a Grammy and everyone's like, how the hell is she had time to do that? She knows just how much her fans will swallow. There is an element of the fandom just thinking, okay, I don't love this. I will say that I have thought that it is going to be difficult for her

now she has achieved her kind of marital, happy ending as it were, For someone who minds her personal life so brilliantly and relatably and captivatingly, there just feels less with I am happily married. And you saw that with Adele, that she sort of went away. But Taylor Swift is not someone who goes away. She is, you know, a jurorselbone. It's like Coca-Cola doesn't go away.

Yeah. I saw someone say last week, oh, it's really hard when your muse is a podcaster. But, oh, okay, I mean, you know, it is difficult. That's so true. That would be a great name for her next album. My muse is a podcaster. And there is a sort of sense that I also really bristle against, in the same way that I bristle against people saying about Madonna,

why are you still doing it? Because she wants to do. There's a sort of sense that she would go away and have a baby. That she's done a big tour. Now she got married. She'll just take some time out of the spotlight, give everybody else a chance and have a baby. And there's an element, I think, in the culture

that's like, why haven't you done that immediately? I know, but I do think that it's there. But to put it into perspective, I would say that although there, is clearly some partially significant backlash here. She's written nearly 300 songs in her career. This is not our first backlash. If you look at what happened, you know, when you look at reputation and all those sorts of things. I do think it says something interesting that all artists are, to some or successful ones nowadays, and many of them are female singers, are addicted

to or dictated to the necessity for constant visibility. And so you just have to, people, feel you have to do these days? Well, it's fascinating. We hear a lot about parasycial relationship from the side of the fans, which is, you know, they think they actually know somebody and, oh my God, isn't that sad? But the parasycial relationship really, really, really has affected big stars because they feel something about their fans. There's something in the energy that the fans now have towards them that actually makes them feel compelled and makes them feel beholden and makes them go, oh, no, actually, I do have to keep going. I do have to keep running because they're all going to go away. go somewhere else. And you can sort of see, because there's no need for Taylor to keep doing

these four songs. I mean, it's literally just part two of the showgirl album, really. So it's not new music, it's stuff they record in in those sessions anyway, really. So this is quite a low-impact way of staying visible. But in terms of the way she's spoken about, in terms of the narrative around her, the discourse around her, that, oh, my God, how is she going to do this, how she's she going to keep these fans? She's Taylor Swift. She is an amazing songwriter. She teams up with other incredible songwriters really understands who to collaborate with. I imagine we've just got 40 more years of great albums from every couple of years. We're in this weird bit of culture now where she can't move without people telling who she is and what she is and how terrible these new songs are.

And by the way, they're perfectly fine, a couple of them. I can live without the lyrics of some of them. But, I mean, I haven't written better songs. And, you know, if you've written the amount of great songs Taylor has, they're not all going to be Betty. So I think she just finds herself in a position now. She's having married, which is great. I don't like the financial implications of re-releasing this album with extra tracks. I don't think that's great in a world.

No, it's not fan service, and that people can feel it. Yeah, that I don't like. But yeah, she finds herself in a very unusual position and culture and a time in culture. But we've got Taylor Swift for a really, really, really long time. I sort of think that after a few years of the mill that she's currently being put through and the parisocial thing, I think she'll find a different place. In the same way that Madonna a few times fell off the perch

and sort of slightly couldn't work out who she was supposed to be at any given time, went away because she's smart like Taylor is, worked out who she was supposed to be, how she could be herself in the culture she found herself in. And that's what Taylor would do. I think people can go away. Harry Stars went away, but they feel they can't. They feel they can.

And Harry Stars did it and obviously Adel did it. And I absolutely believe they can And it would be healthier for everybody. The golden rule is this, if you're brilliant, you can. Yeah. You know, and she is. Yeah. Any recommendations this week?

I will recommend East of Eden on Netflix. It's obviously it's an adaptation of the Steinbeck novel, therefore it is a limited series if you want something to get into for a bit, but not forever. And just the performance of Florence Pugh is brilliant. She is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. It's just a really. mastercast.

Yes, it's one of those ones that's made me read the books. I'm reading the book before I finish it. Everyone says it's one of the best books of all time. And it's one of those ones when people say it's one of the best and it actually is one of the best. So I'm going to recommend because I was away, I wanted to listen to something English. So I listen to a podcast called London Revisited. It's from the London Review of Books in their close readings series.

And it's literally the entire history of London. So the first episode, for example, is when is there like the first ever? that anybody was in London at all. And, you know, they have archaeologists and all sorts of people on this. Just talking about how a city that major can develop, what it develops from, just from the very, very tiniest, tiniest, you know, speck of a military camp, you know, up to it. It's sort of getting bigger and bigger and bigger and how it gets bigger, why it gets bigger. It's really, really, really cool. I absolutely loved it. London Revisited. It's a London review of books, Close Readings series. How cool. We've basically got an episode every single day this week,

We'll be back tomorrow with the next episode. I like Taylor Swift. Yeah, exactly. We are truly. If you're brilliant, you don't have to. Yeah. We are back tomorrow with the next episode in the Big Brother series behind the scenes, which is brilliant for members.

For members. With Tim Hinks and Kate Lawlo. It's absolutely terrific. So they're so interesting. It's really good. I don't have to contribute at all really. And then on Thursday with a Q&A, but also we are, I think we should just go to an extra reaction episode for each. Traitors. Celebrity Traitors episode.

People weren't crazy for the first one. Mainly because I wasn't on it. Well, this time you are going to be on it. Are you definitely sure you want me? Yeah, I want you so much. You know, I do. I got to keep referring to you was my Richard so that it was clear which Richard I was talking about.

So there's Richard he behaves in a certain way, and then there was my Richard, who is controlled and strategic. So yes, we're going to do a reaction episode to both Thursday's episode and Friday's episode to Celebrity Traitors. So they'll be released right after the end of the year. transmission. Yes. Very good.

Okay. On that note. That's exciting though, isn't it? It's fun, right? We've got to do it. Listen, those celebrity traitors' reactions episodes, I adore them. It combines all of my favorite things, all in one. Me too.

All right. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. I was an Avenger. I was an hero anymore. On October 14th, the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that?

How to bother cold vision? How is this possible? Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like Mortal Jeopardy. Streaming October 14th. Only on Disney Plus.