The Rest Is Entertainment - Netflix, Disney and Terrible Ads

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

There is a battle happening at the heart of Disney, who are the major players and when will it end? Do the top 3 shows currently on Netflix in the UK signpost a new direction for the streaming giant? And why terrible political adverts are actually extremely effective. Settle in for the latest dose of The Rest Is Entertainment with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Richard - The Apprentice (BBC) / Night Coppers (Channel 4) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, it's Tom Holland here from the Goldhanger sister show, The Rest Is History, and I'm here to tell you about a very exciting episode. It's out today. It's all about the men who walked on the moon, the Apollo missions, the space race, and it features a very exciting special guest, none other than Tom Hanks. So that is out today. And here is a little teaser. The interesting personalities of all of these crews I think comes out in Apollo 11 because I don't think you could have two individuals that are more different than Neil Armstrong was from Buzz Aldrin and you chucked Michael Collins in there and you have honestly. I'm not sure those guys would have volunteered to you know drive to the beach to get, had they not been assigned to it. Yeah. Search The Rest Is History wherever you get your podcasts to listen now.

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest Is Entertainment. Me, Marina, hi. And me, Richard, Oswina. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm all right. I'm not bad.. Now, hi Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm all right, I'm not bad. You're working very hard at the moment, aren't you? I'm trying to, Richard, I'm trying to. I don't mean this exact second. Oh my God, you're really, wow, this looks like an effort.

No, I'm just settling in for a good old chat with you. But no, in general, I have been slightly around the clock, but it will ease down soon-ish. Exactly, but lots of filming at the moment. Yes, there's a lot of filming at the moment. But also lots of stories that currently are embargoed about things that are happening while you're filming, but we will be able to just sort of eke out into the podcast over the next 12 months or so. You really want me to tell you the things that happen at Leavesden.

Yes, I will get there in due course, I'm sure. What are we going to talk about today? First we're going to talk about Netflix and how there's a certain image and actually the reality of it has become slightly different, which I think it's quite interesting. And look at the top three Netflix shows of last week and what they tell us about the future of the streamers. We're going to talk about the Disney board battle, which was won by the chief executive and now we start the succession battle for the chief executive of the Disney corporation,

which is huge and quite fun. So that's Netflix and Disney. Can you have an amuse-bouche in the middle? Yes. A finger bowl in the middle. I think we need a finger bowl between those two. A little sorbet. We're going to talk about that conservative advert about Britain being the second most powerful country in the world with all the different kind of images and what have you, and what that means about political advertising and whether it's deliberate or

not. So lots and lots of discussion around that. Should we start with Netflix? I think there's an image with Netflix. Here's a company with very, very deep pockets, and they're going to make their money by getting creative people, giving them freedom, giving them money, letting them make what they want. And, you know, that worked incredibly well for them. Lots and lots of people went to work at Netflix.

They produced some amazing work along the way. But the top three this week I think tells a story about where Netflix is going next. And by the way not necessarily a worst place just I think an interesting place. Okay hit me up on the top three of last week. So number one is The Gentleman. I've got a huge number of views none of of them positive. Really? Just a horror show. Oh you think? He has nothing to say, Guy Ritchie, about absolutely anything and I thought it was appalling. Well, he's got stuff to say about what would happen if you had a cannabis farm at your stately home.

God. And he's even said that before in a film that was bad. Anyway, people love it, but you can't trust people, Kenny Ritchie. Well, listen, that's where you and I differ. Yeah Because because I do and you don't I mean if you look at many of the worst parts of the 20th century I think you can't trust people is a perfectly reasonable assumption Oh, I thought you're about to blame Guy Ritchie for all the worst parts of the 20th century If he could go back in a time machine

I'm sure he would make them worse only the later bit of the 20th century now It's hard to overestimate what a huge hit that is for Netflix. Massive. It's been number one for four weeks and it's been absolutely huge. Huge in the UK, huge worldwide. It's obviously got a brand behind it, Guy Ritchie. It's very broad. Let no one say it's the work of one of the great auteurs of our time. At number three in the Netflix charts is The Three-Body Problem, which is this huge show by the makers of Game of Thrones based on a Chinese novel. Netflix has spent a lot of money.

This is absolutely classic old school. This is what we think Netflix do, is they make these big sort of showpiece series that's complicated, interesting, difficult, don't necessarily have to have big stars in them it should have ticked well I mean it obviously is doing well for them But it should have takes a lot of boxes because it has got that global feel so what they really want is people in all territories yes subscribers in all territories to be watching this and I mean it does certainly cover a lot of territory it does but the interesting thing is it's not doing that well For the money they spent on it being number three. It's also not very good.

Sorry, another one, but honestly, I can't, once I hear people saying science is broken I feel like this is even worse than when Denise Richards played a nuclear physicist in, which was that one, the Bond one, The World Was Not Enough. Yeah, but then she became a nuclear physicist in real life, didn't she, because it piqued her interest. Yeah, piqued her interest. Yeah, science is broken. Is that not the trailer? It actually is broken though, if you think about it. So, three body problem, 200 million, great. And it's, you know, whatever one thinks about it. I think that's the most expensive thing they've ever made. I think it's 20 million an episode, and that is a lot for them.

And it is not really conquering the world. It's doing perfectly well, lots of publicity. We're talking about it, lots of people talking about it, but it's not top of the charts. Number two in the Netflix charts is Cleaning Up. Do you know Cleaning Up? No. Exactly. So Cleaning Up is a six-year-old ITV drama

starring Sheridan Smith about a cleaner at an office in the city. Oh yeah. And very good good by the way produced by Jane Featherstone who only does brilliant work. It would have cost Netflix 40 grand to buy it. You know ITV already made it, a few people watched it but you know it was well reviewed but then disappears. Now Netflix buy it and it's the second biggest show in the country. It is a bigger show than Three Body Problem.

That's extraordinary. So much of their stuff now is people licensing their old content back. Normally though, they want there to be a lot of it. They want there to be a certain amount of seasons of it because people really want volume on Netflix. Well, that's what happens. So in America, the suits phenomenon, that they started showing suits and it became the biggest. Well, Sex and the City is about to come. It's really weird. They've got more publicity for Sex and the City, an old show that we know all about, everyone knows all about it.

The amount of sort of think pieces of people saying, oh, will this new generation be ready for this show? Will they find it, you know, its attitudes dated? Or will they be shocked by it? Or all of these things. It's amazing that you can sort of, rather as Suits did, suddenly start, almost nearly dominate the cultural conversation with a not very good show, I'm talking about Suits in my view,

but with a not very good show that you think everyone had already seen because it was old. That's the fascinating thing. All creatives and writers and directors like to imagine that they are sort of in the vanguard of culture and they're the sort of people everyone's waiting on. And the truth is Netflix, and from the beginning 15% of Netflix US's viewing was the American Office. 15%. It is a terrific show. It is, see that is a terrific show. Finally we found one.

Yeah, there's lots of good shows. I just thought the ones we were talking about. But can I just pick up on something you said earlier? They have got plenty of money. In fact, they're going to spend 17 billion on content this year, one way or another making stuff or buying it in or whatever it is. But the reason that it seemed as though they were doing more stuff before was because this was the streaming wars, which as we've discussed on the podcast before, Netflix won.

But that's what they were going for. They were paying for scale. They are the first global TV channel. This has never been really tried before. They're like a sort of universal adapter for things. The chief content officer is this woman, she is some kind of monster, but I'm slightly fascinated by her. She's called Bella Bajaria. And she sort of travels between all the territories. She's one of these absolute energiser bunny people who don't really seem to sleep. And she coined this sort of really pretty dreadful phrase, which was the, well, this, I know lots of creatives I know are like, oh, that's a real shudder.

She said it should be the gourmet cheeseburger at a Netflix show, which means that it's very commercial and it's kind of mainstream, but it has sort of premium elements to it. And so that's what she did. But she now says that when people say to her, as they used to always say to the old network executives or companies like HBO,

what makes a Netflix show? She feels they're making a category mistake. Because the whole point to her is you do not want to have a definitive type of show because you need to cater. First of all, you're in all these territories. You need to cater to every different kind of mood and time of the day and all of these type of things. So instead of having a really sort of definitive house style, they want all this stuff because in the streaming era the measure of how well your platform is doing is how regularly do people come onto the platform and how long do they stay, how engaged are they and it seems quite simple but it's amazing how many people will say, oh no but this was very deeply watched, it's like none of this matters

okay. What really matters is how often they come and how long they stay and how engaged they are. So she needs to have absolutely every type of programming. So the idea of a Netflix show is a category mistake that belongs in an era which Netflix has kind of blown out of the water with their model. So this is my thesis about what's happened. So they had to get as many eyeballs as possible. And the way to do that is to try and get everyone to come and work for them and make their shows for them. And so they're throwing enormous amounts of money at these creators. And so everyone in the industry adored them. Now, because there's venture capital involved and they've won that land grab, that battle for viewers. And now venture capital wants its

money back. It wants to start seeing profits. And of course, we've got interest rates for high around the world. So again, Wall Street needs its money back. So I think it's turned from the creators channel into the viewers channel. And that's a sounds like everything should be a viewers channel. But I think there's an interesting shift, which is it through so much money to try and get creatives to make things for it, put lots of people on exclusive deals, lots and lots of people at absurdly high rates. And now it's a channel that says, no, we want ratings, we want as many people to watch that.

And they are understanding that spending £40,000 buying, cleaning up with Sheridan Smith. Is that honestly how much you think they spent on that? Yeah. Jane Featherstone may say it was £,000, but certainly it wasn't 200 million. And so they are viewer first now rather than creative first. And creatives don't really love that, is the truth, because they loved it when they could go to Netflix and just say, oh, can we do this? Can we do it? I've got this passion project. And Netflix would go, oh, here's $40 million. Of course you can do that, which is now not happening. So going to Netflix now, and I'm working with Netflix at the moment and enjoying it very,

very much. But going to Netflix now is like going to any other channel, which is they are not going to throw their money around. They are incredibly careful about what they're commissioning. So, you know, the Guy Ritchie stuff is very mainstream. The Harlan Coban, which is huge, very, very mainstream, buying things off the shelf, you know, the Guy Ritchie stuff is very mainstream, the Harlan Coban, which is a huge hit for them, very, very mainstream, buying things off the shelf, you know, a cheaper way of going mainstream as well. So they've become like any other channel used to be. Now the interesting thing is they've hollowed out a bit of the industry because they offered so much money to so many creatives for so many years that there's a class of creative

who are now, what do we do? So if you're Netflix, of course you're making these great shows, big mainstream things, not as many of them as you used to, but you're also going to be relying on back cataloging, you're going to be relying on the likes of the BBC and Channel 4 and ITV to provide you with those shows, but that ecosystem has been damaged by Netflix and therefore there's going to be fewer and fewer of those shows anyway. To buy in, yeah. So you sort of wonder in five years time, well where are we, because you're not going to be fewer and fewer of those shows anyway. To buy in. To buy in. So you sort of wonder in five years time, well where are we? Because you're not going to be still making these huge premium shows.

We would have run out of those shows on those other channels because you priced everyone out of the market. So where does that wheel turn next? I just think it's fascinating that interest rates and Wall Street have such a big impact on our culture in a way We don't really think about and how Netflix and by the way This is not having a go at Netflix in any way whatsoever It's that they're in the right business and I genuinely think they've incredibly Viewer facing and they've come to the conclusion that to be viewer facing is no longer

Let's just get 20 premium bits of talent and give them as much money as possible. It's let's just get some great big mainstream shows of stars that people recognise in them and do 20, 30, 40 of them. Standard procedurals, comedies, thrillers, all the things that were the bread and butter of the channels they sort of replaced. But it is a phenomenal company and in the true sense of that word because it is so strange to think that barely any time ago in the great scheme of things it was let me mail to you DVDs in the post. And to go and do what they've done is quite an extraordinary story and it's a true phenomenon and we've never really seen

a global TV channel before so it's almost all virgin territory. And it's still a fun place to work and full of good people and interesting people. It's just it used to be a complete open door. Well, that's what everybody, you know, everybody thought that those times, the good times, the amazing times of the seven fat cows coming out of the Nile and television. Yeah. But as we've said before, scripted content is going to come down by about half. You say about the overall deals, the strikes provided a really good moment for people to say, yeah, no, we're not going to renew your overall deal.

We suspended your overall deal because you're on strike to writers and in some cases other types of creatives and we will now not renew. And you might like they'll renew with Shonda Rhimes, who's kind of enormous. But other than that. But my goodness, there's certain people who look back over the last five years and go, wow, I mean, essentially they were taking money. You really never had it so good. They were taking money from venture capitalists.

Yeah. You know, it was just going directly into their pockets. Yeah, the next five years, I'm sort of rather looking forward to it because I love big mainstream telly and I'm excited about, you know, what Netflix does with big mainstream telly. There'll still be lots of prestige things, but there'll be fewer kind of people doing

a $30 dollar development on a passion project. And is that a bad thing? I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. It's how the rest of the market survives. And that's really interesting. It's whether, you know, there'll obviously have to be acquisitions because people are

just too small to compete with them. And how the rest of it shakes down will also determine creatively how they have to compete. But it's also fascinating, by the way, just as an end piece to this, that as so often happens in the new world we live in, that billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars have been thrown at Netflix to say the old model of how we make television is broken. You know, we need to disrupt, you know, we're in a whole new world now. And of course, five or six years down the line when they've got market dominance, they're like,

Oh, actually what we want, we're going to start scheduling live sports and we're going to buy, you know, dramas and put them out once a week. And we're building an ad tier, which is our biggest growing thing. The free ad, you know, the free ad support to television, which is like, oh yeah, okay. Listen, it's capitalism. And of course, Netflix is a pure television player. It's not like Apple or Amazon, where actually they're big technology companies for whom the TV bit is just a shop window. They want to sell you stuff. They are in the TV business, both of those companies, Apple and Amazon, because they want to sell you stuff.

Apple, technology and other forms of bundled services, and Amazon the same. And so I think that is very different. And a lot of people think that someone like Apple haven't figured out their TV business, it's not clear really why they want to be in it. They could make that work. Yes, absolutely. But I think it's fair to say they haven't yet. But we do love slow horses.

We love slow horses. We absolutely love slow horses. They must be so bored of hearing that, Apple. Yeah, I mean it never gets old though, so let's say it again, slow horses is brilliant. It is. Shall we go to an advert? I think we should do. OK, returning from adverts to talk about bad political ads, but maybe ones that are deliberately meant to be bad.

The Conservative Party have a new online ad. They've had a couple of online ads recently. We'll come back to the first one in this series, I would call it. But they had a really low-fi ad about what's great about this country. There were some England players, a fairly white England team that I haven't seen looking quite so white for some time. All men.

All men, yeah. Spitfires, The King, strangely Christopher Nolan looking into an IMAX camera and an Aston Martin. I mean it really honestly did look like it'd been done in sort of 10 minutes by someone who was not potentially human. Okay, I'm looking at this ad now because it's so, in some ways it's so forgettable. I see it does actually have some form of slogan. It says Britain is the second most powerful country in the world. In the world for some reason has been written in massive letters, whereas the actual message is the second most powerful country is very, very small. Also second most. Second most actual message, it's the second most powerful company, is very, very small. Also second most. Second most. Don't advertise second most on a theory.

I mean if it were true it would be impressive. But even then you never say second most on anything. And it's amateurishly put together. The sort of white cutout looks very much like our, anyone on YouTube, a bit like our logo. Yeah, it does. You're right. And we're very much the fourth best podcast in the Goldhanger stable. In the Goldhanger stable. Like in just in massive letters. They've done one that had gone viral about two weeks before, which was sort of voiced by an American and was saying that you know London is a sort of hellhole and that Labour are gonna turn London into a... Labour run London, Sadiq Khan runs London and this is what's going to happen when they run the

country and they even included some footage of people running away from what they thought was gone far. That was actually in Penn Station in New York. So they then took that little bit of footage out and re-released it. It's starting to have the feel of a deliberate strategy isn't it Richard? Well I think they've been quite open that it's deliberate. It's fascinating. So they, in the 2019 election, they got an Australian PR company to come and do that, their kind of social media strategy. And they had just won the Australian election with Scott Morrison. So you know, they were, which was a surprising win, by the way. And one of the fascinating things, so you remember there was a time they did an advert which was, let's get Brexit done.

And it was just in black type on white, but in Comic Sans font. And as they always do, the left were sharing this left, right and centre just saying, oh my god, this is the most hilariously bad thing I've ever seen. And of course, that's exactly what they wanted to happen. They weren't really sitting there going, but let's do, what font should we use? What's this one? Oh, well, this is a fun one, Comic Sans, let's do that. What they were doing is they're going, if we do this in Comic Sans, this is going to

be catnip to absolutely everyone. It's going to be shared far and wide. Everyone's going to have an opinion on it. Everyone's going to quote tweet it. So it's going to be everywhere. And they did a Comic Sans one. They did one in sort of Mr. Blobby covers. They did about 10 in one day.

One day. There was one absolutely mad day where they were just firing these things out. Because they knew one of them would be the one. Because let's consider the alternative. The alternative is that you share a good political advert. Please tell me if that has ever happened in the history of humanity. Well, here's the interesting thing. So the Brexit one back in 2019, there was a very clear message in that election, which was, let's get Brexit done, right? And that was a very powerful message. They knew that people like them, the people they needed to vote for them, which is the 10% of people in the middle, they knew

that was resonating with people. So their job is to get that message out. And putting that in Comic Sans and the various other ways actually did exactly that. Now, Twitter is meaningless. No one ever got a single vote on Twitter. Where you win elections is Facebook. And that image was seen again and again and again and again and again and again on Facebook. Stripped of any of the irony, stripped of the comments, stripped of anyone caring about, you know, is it deliberately bad or not. Just the words, let's get Brexit done with the Conservative Party branding. Now that to me is effective advertising. That's using your opponent's weight against them. That's knowing that somebody is going to think you are more stupid than them. They're going to point out that you're more stupid than

them and you've won because they've done your job for you. Now this new one this week, there is no message in there. The message in it is with a second biggest economy. The message is that Britain's great, don't talk it down. The most recent ad was them talking it down. I think that's the interesting thing because people are cottoning on now to that strategy and I think probably they've got less good at it. If you had a single thing that was working for you, a single strapline that was working for you about this country, put that on the top of that advert.

That goes viral everywhere and people are seeing that. But they didn't. The strapline is second biggest economy. Don't let the doomsdayers and naysayers, there's nothing. And so that can be shared till kingdom come. If it's too obvious, it becomes a form of contempt for the voters and I would say that that has now tipped into it. I agree 100%.

You've got the king on there, it's illegal to have the king there. You've got a Euro fighter there. You've got a ship which is made in South Korea and owned by The Italians you've got to the England men's football team in a thing about Britain and a team is one less than the women because but they know that's That's gonna upset people annoy people They've got Christopher Nolan who lives in LA. And this one is not

effective because they don't have a message. The whole point of advertising is get your message across. Let's get Brexit done. That's the message that was resonating and they got it across. In this one, they haven't. So all they're doing is cheapening our culture. All they're doing is showing they don't have a message. And I do think that that's depressing. I think that you just think if you're going to do bad adverts, do them well. Yeah, like the old cinema adverts for your local curry house, which I love, anything like that. Just do something super lo-fi.

You know, that's the thing we've learned with click through culture, is just tell people what the thing is, and if they like it, they'll click on it. You know, this idea that you can kind of control the narrative, it's so... And you know, there'll be people out there listening to this who were involved in it. And you know what the vibe is, you know what the deal is, they know. They were kind of going, this is going to own the lives. But you know that it's not great. Yeah. But I guess they've been contracted and they will produce a number of adverts this year,

and then they'll just get out with their money, and they will not be on the winning side according to literally, there's a 99% chance currently. Yeah. See, the London one sort of has some effectiveness. I mean, it was awful, and it was, again, embarrassing, but at least it kind of played into a message that seems to work for them a little bit, which is scaring people in London that London's a scary place to be. I think, well, the trouble is that most people you're trying to get to there actually live in London and they know it's not. No, no it isn't. But actually it's a very, it is quite an effective message that London's terrible to the rest

of the country and a lot of people sort of believe it. But someone broadcasting from London now I can say that. We seem fine. It's mostly fine. It seems okay. I mean, listen, we're besieged by drug dealers outside the studio, but you know, it's fine. It's mostly fine. It seems okay. I mean, listen, we're besieged by drug dealers outside the studio, but you know, it's fine. We've got an armoured car to take us home, as always. They're doing it deliberately. They've been doing it deliberately for a few years now.

They seem to have got an awful lot less good at it, but I think that might be because they've certainly run out of things to say. They've got no more road. So if you are behind it, just say, look, if you've got nothing to say, let's at least do something positive and stop trying to... stop Nolan to do your next advert get guy Richie to do it He is a celebrity conservative actually so he was yeah Yeah, you can presumably summarize it from the output. Okay. Well listen is I'm less culturally Oh, no, you always know he always was always right back in the sort of days of William Hague even oh Really? I think they would they used to fight each other in a judo club in in Chelsea

I mean of the Budokai Center it was called and I think yeah, they were they were mat mates Really rich rich in Hague. Yeah, well rich in Hague is a good cop duo. Yeah Would Netflix make it sit Ross Kemp in it. A body movie but there's three of them. I'd watch it. No, no. Ross Kemp as Hague. Yeah, he's an actor, don't forget. Ross Kemp. Oh yes. I know these days we think of him as a quiz show host. Yeah. But yeah, he would be a great Hague. Benny Jones as Guy Ritchie. I'm not kidding now. Ritchie and Hague. On that note. Now we talked a little before about the boardroom shenanigans at Disney, which is fun because firstly it's an entertainment business story, but also there's lots of Trumps involved,

Beckhams involved, all sorts of things. So it's catnip to us. It is. Now, what has happened at Disney is that the chief executive is a guy called Bob Iger who has recently been facing a proxy battle by an activist investor. Activist investor, I always think sounds like someone with a placard outside a big corporation complaining about mining conditions. But I don't think that's Nelson Pelz. No, that isn't Nelson Pelz. He's got an investment vehicle and he wants to have seats on the board because he wants

to have... He disclosed that he'd acquired, via hook or by crook, a large amount of Disney stock and he wants to get a seat on the board. In fact, he wanted to have more than one seat on the board. Yeah, they call them activist investors. Essentially, they think a company is not bringing enough value to the shareholders. And so they go in. That's the kind of activism that they're interested in is returning more money.

It sounds such a sort of romantic thing, like, you know, someone who's just scraped together a few pennies, managed to get some shares and is going to stand up at the board meeting and demand better conditions to the workers. But in fact, obviously, he lives in some sort of sprawling, hideous estate, you know, one of those old American estates that dates back all the way to 1987 in Palm Beach in Florida. And he wants more say over where the company is going. And he really does have honestly no ideas. They had released huge amounts of information, which seemed to contain absolutely nothing on what they would actually do. But the fact that this happened at all to Bob Iger is not great. Disney is the sort of biggest

company, but I do feel that sort of Bob Iger's for a long time been able to look in his magic mirror and say, who's the most powerful of them all? And it would show back a picture of Bob Iger to go along the Disney analogy. But recently... Oh, I got it. Recently... I'll let you go, oh, I don't think Rich has understood. This is a reference to who's it, yeah. I go, no, yeah, I got it. Do a Toy Story one now. But recently, I think, staring back at him from that, the magic mirror has been saying,

is Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-? Is he perhaps the first one? And I think there's a strong argument for, obviously he has absolutely leapfrogged in any sort of power list, Ted Sarandos. But it's amazing this proxy battle. I mean, tens of millions have been spent just trying to persuade the individual shareholders, which by the way, are some institutional,

but a third are kind of retail, ordinary shareholders who are sort of dreamers and love the Disney brand and then members of the public. So it's quite unusual in that way. Now tens of millions honestly more has been spent on this particular battle than all the political parties in the UK will spend on the whole of the general election whenever it happens. Right, I would have got the people behind the advert with the with the container ship and the England football team to do it. Thank God they didn't anyway but because Nelson Peltz really has absolutely no ideas

of what to do with Disney at all. He's just a sort of troublemaker, but he may well come back. Now what that now immediately kicks off is the succession battle because Iger has said, I'm going to leave in 2026, by the way, Bob Iger has tried to leave this company quite a few times before and not tried that hard. It's hard to quit. Hard to quit. Well, you know, this is a company that's got such an abiding sense of itself. It's placed in the American and the global imagination.

You know, remember that even the servers in the restaurant, the cleaners, are all known as cast members. You know, this is a company that is very sort of unique in lots of different ways, which is why that third of the shareholders are sort of interesting body of people. Anyhow, the succession, you know, it's not called it's really putting the kingdom in the magic kingdom. They have said that he's going in 2026. He has said that as we say, he said it a few times he's going before and it's going to be one of four internal candidates.

I like this already. It's interesting. Yeah, I'll tell you who they are. They're Alan Bergman, who is the co-chair of Disney Entertainment. He deals with the films. His co-chair of Disney Entertainment is a woman called Dana Walden. Now, she does all the TV stuff. So she, again, none of these candidates, I should say, it's not totally clean. No one's the full package. So this is why it's quite interesting. Anyway, she's had lots of hits. She's had The Bear, The Dropout, Abbbot Elementary, Bluey, Only Murders in the

Building, which is huge. There's two other guys. One's from ESPN, a guy called Jimmy Pitaro. And again, we don't really know. ESPN's about to become much more digital, and we'll have to see how that works in this dream age. And then there's Josh DiMaro, who runs Parks and Cruises. Now Parks and Cruises is by far the most successful part of Disney at the moment.

It's massive. It's outperforming everything else. But none of these four, they're all internal. They will all try and lobby, you know, work against each other, but be very, very nice in public. None of them is the full package. Iger has been an incredible executive and the CEO before Bob Iger was a guy called Michael Eisner. And he was a 3D crocodile. Have I got that right? Yeah, that's right. Now you go back to Michael Eisner, who is a monster. I mean, they're you know, they're massive entertainment executives at all monsters. Monsters Inc. Monsters Inc. Eisner is a fascinating person because he was impossibly difficult in lots of ways. But he was all over the kind of geopolitical expansion of Disney and all those types of deal.

But he would also have an incredible amount of notes on like verse two of one song in Aladdin. Yeah. So I suppose the notional idea of anyone's view of a great Disney executive is someone who's sort of really good with the talent and the creative, but also this kind of head of state in another way and can do all these deals. It's brilliant with the investors. And that's what in anyone's mind's eye, they will always have, you have to step up and become that. In my mind's eye, it would be a cartoon.

And Disney would be run by like a friendly cat. Which would be, I mean, they slightly always want to tell you that it's run by a mouse, but it's not. But with like an unusual hat, like maybe a golf club. And just every now and again, just go four. That could happen with AI right you could have a you could have an animated Disney anyway listen an animated chief executive yes it may well be the future because it's just I digress well but AI may run the company and then

in the end you just need someone for front of house so perhaps that's where we're all that's in a way well those people who think of Silicon Valley and the real sort of evangelists for it people like Rishi Sunat, Sajid Javid they love all those Silicon Valley people because they really see a future where heads of state are sort of front of house people. And then everything is run so-called seamlessly by the machines behind. I do not share that vision of what would be a successful world. But I think we should throw our hat into the ring at Disney as the next heads of Disney, but with an avatar representing us, We just get the technology sorted. We make the decision to get a few other, Jesse Armstrong, someone like that. Someone who

understands big business and then he wrote Succession. But we have a cartoon cat. A driverless company with a cartoon cat in charge. Hello. Hello. I mean, sorry. Stop giving your ideas away for free, Richard. What's that I'm spending? Profit. No, but we should do it. So that's going to play out over the next 18 months or so. I think they're about to have a very good year in movies. Deadpool, Wolverine. Movies is, I mean a big year in

movies is not what a big year movies were seven years ago. Exactly, but that's great news for the, remind me of the gentleman in charge of movies. Alan Bergman. Yeah, great news for Bergman. That's where my money is. Well yeah, he could really use it here as I say because they have not, all of those franchises are massively underperforming at the moment. But Deadpool I think will do well because people still love Deadpool. Moana 2. That will be one of the biggest movies of the year. Moana 2 I think is going to be huge.

Yeah but Moana 2 is interesting. Moana 2 is a kind of bit of charm that Iger threw out on the earnings call to sort of say here's all these exciting news are coming, we're doing a big investment in gaming, we're at Epic Games. But as we discussed at the time, Moana 2, like Moana is one of the most downloaded things ever. When it was on, I think it is the most downloaded thing, when it was on Netflix, before they had Disney Plus, and they licensed their stuff to Netflix,

it was just poured out money all day long. But actually, Moana was supposed to be an animated TV series. They're repurposing that as a movie. Now that is something that they did, as I say, a piece of chum he threw out in that earnings call. It went down very well, particularly with that third of investors. But you're saying it's just a rebedge.

It'll be interesting to see it because to me a long TV series remade into a movie is quite an odd pivot, but we'll have to see. But it did the business in people thinking, okay, there's lots of exciting things coming up we're going to see. What is did the business in people thinking, okay, there's lots of exciting things coming up, we just need to see. What is absolutely crucial for Disney more than anything else? They have to find a way to make their streaming work, because if they don't, then they haven't found a way

to be a modern media company. I look forward to hearing those names more as this year goes by. Yeah, we'll follow it, we'll follow it because it's sort of quite fun, and obviously they retain a very special place in the kind of creative imagination as a company. And as an interesting addendum, a lot of the Nelson Pelts, which by the way is a fun name to say, Nelson Pelts, a lot of his agenda, activist investor, was he felt Disney was becoming too woke.

I think he was upset that Halle Berry was cast as a princess. The irony is, of course, he's actually made a fortune from his shares because Disney shares keep going up and up. So that thing of go woke, go broke has literally disproved it himself by Disney going woke and him making a fortune out of it. Yes, I mean, he's a man of contradictions, so I imagine he's quite easy with that one. He's a man of contradictions and he's at the Beckham's Christmas table. So, you know, it's interesting that it was defeated and really roundly and soundly defeated as well. Yeah, but equally he hasn't totally gone away. And of course if there's a Trump presidency at the end of the year then things get harder for Disney as well.

Oh yeah, these guys, him and this other guy, Ike Perlmutter, who is a genuine monster and used to run Marvel and was sort of ousted and therefore was very bitter about it all. They are real regulars at the Mar-a-Lago buffet with Donald Trump. They're all sort of Floridians of a certain type and they hang around the club and the table and whatever and so they've had it from both sides. They mishandled internally with their own workforce the don't say gay law that came in in Florida about people's right to have their children not taught about the existence of homosexuality in schools. And then they've sort of been at war with Ron DeSantis, I think even though Ron DeSantis, the governor, I think he actually liked many people.

He's one of the many people who've had a rite of passage. I think he got married at the Grand Floridian Hotel in Disney World, Florida. Really? There were always quite a few golfers who were sort of christened in the swimming pool at the Polynesian Resorts and things like that. The born again, like all American golfers on the tour at the time who were sort of born again Christians.

But yeah, there's a lot of people have a right. It's a big, it's hard to imagine because we just don't have it in this country. But you know, getting married at Disney World, I guess being christened in a swimming pool at Disney World, this is, it's a bigger thing than you think. It's quite hard to, we have no cultural equivalence. I got married at Legoland. No, I didn't, but if I'd thought of it... Yeah, if you had thought of it, it would have been perfect. So, yeah, lots of genuine monsters, and the best person to take on a genuine monster? Cartoon Cat.

That's what's going to happen. Okay. You've finally lost patience with me, Maruna. I have been. It was always going to happen. I love the idea of driverless Disney. I really like it. If anyone at home or any listener can design us a cat you think would make a really, really appealing CEO of Disney, let's start working with it. Just some off-brand cat that doesn't

infringe on any of their original copyright. Exactly, but they could then own. So they could then own their CEO as a franchise that could run for years and years and years. You're trying to sell animation to Disney. I really admire your chutzpah. In the same way that Netflix is trying to sell scheduled television to Britain. To a country where it killed it. How about a cartoon Disney? What do we think about that? That was great fun. That was great fun indeed. I feel like I've really learnt a lot. And also we've launched this big campaign to be CEO of Disney.

Yeah. Which I think… Sort of logical next step. But also, I presume lucrative. Yeah, I presume lucrative. I assume it washes its face. You must be able to monetise being in charge of the biggest entertainment company in the world.

A couple of recommendations this week. The Apprentice, which someone said to me the other day, do people still watch The Apprentice? The answer being yes, it's absolutely massive and this series has been a good one. But this week it's the single greatest episode in any reality show franchise, which is the interviews. Which even if you've not watched the rest of The Apprentice, you just dive in and see Claude Littner look at someone's business plan. And it's always brilliant. Just watch someone else's anxiety dream. Yeah, exactly that.

And also Nightcoppers on Channel 4, absolutely loving. It sort of follows the night shift down in Brighton and it's a sort of mix of them stopping fights but also you know lots of mental health issues and concentrates on the personalities made by BlastFilms and it's brilliant. Channel 4 very good at crime things I think. I think 24 Hours in Police custody and Nightcoppers are brilliant but that's that's just started and it's terrific. So The Apprentice and Nightcoppers. And with that we're going to see you on Thursday for our questions edition. Questions and answers edition.

Do keep sending them in. The email address is therestisentertainmentatgmail.com. Thanks, Marina. Thank you very much. I'll see you on Thursday. Thanks, everyone. The End