The Rest Is Entertainment - The Best Paid Actor In The World.

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

What can we expect of Meghan Markle's latest venture? The Telegraph is up for sale... but who is the front runner to be the new owner, and will its many titles survive in tact? Finally - can you name the best paid actor in the world? Richard reveals who sits at the top of the list. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Richard - Bridge of Lies and Interior Design Masters (watch) 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Fidelity Investments Canada. Make investing simple. Fidelity's all-in-one ETFs are designed to do

just that. In fact, Fidelity does the heavy lifting, including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions. Visit fidelity.ca slash all in one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. What day of the week do you look forward to most? Well, it should be Wednesday. Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course.

When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way. And you won't want to miss it. So make every Wednesday a Whopper Wednesday. Only at Burger King, where you rule. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osborne. Hey, Marina. How are you, Richard?

I'm alright. We're in another new studio today. Yes, we're doing a tour of many studios. Aren't we? I think we'll be back on our normal one next week. It's quite bijou, except the seats are very high, so your feet do not reach the floor. Your feet always reach the floor. Mine are swinging like a little five-year-old girl. Which is appropriate, because we're going to be talking about a brand new celebrity lifestyle brand,

because Meghan has launched one. It's about time a celebrity launched a lifestyle brand. Yeah, I know. My God, there's so few of them out there, a matter we'll discuss. What else are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about the fact that people from the UAE are no longer allowed to buy the Daily Telegraph. And so it might be bought by the man behind GB News, Paul Marshall. So we're going to talk about him a little bit. How have we not covered him on the Showbiz podcast before?

And then we're going to talk about... The 10 highest paid actors in the world. And I'm going to turn it into a little bit of a game, which is your absolute nightmare. But who are the 10 best paid actors in the world from last year? Number one will surprise you. You see how this is done? Yeah, I see how it's done. I see how it's done.

You're teaching me all the time. Yeah, you see how I don't really work so much in TV anymore? Let us begin with megan's new kind of lifestyle brand we're not quite sure what it is although we do know a bit by the trademark applications it is called american riviera orchard which i love because it sounds like three random words yes or three kids of chris martin or jamie oliver and so american riviera orchard it's a bit like a what three words that's the so garage out on the ring kids of Chris Martin or Jamie Oliver. So, American Riviera Orchard. It's a bit like a What3Words.

That's the Esso garage out on the Ring Road. It's past Darmel. But if you get to QuickTie, you've gone too far. Yeah, honestly, if you put the postcode in, you won't find it. So, yeah. American Riviera Orchard. Honestly, it takes you to our front door. Yeah, right there in Montecito,

which is where she is operating out of, as I believe they say in these things because as you know this is the sort of expensive celebrity enclave she lives in in california now we've seen an instagram video of her arranging some flowers doing some cooking and the sort of logo yeah i know you're scintillated a logo and so it's quite clear it's going to sell you products because what we do know is that via the trademark application, it's going to sell things like jellies, pans, decanters, kitchen linens, luxury... Kitchen linens. Linens.

Oh, kitchen linens. Luxury pet accessories. What I would call all the sort of branded homespunnery of late stage capitalism. They will... All of that will be sold. Just all the important stuff that our grandparents spent all of their money on. Yes. But she's not the only celebrity with a brand there's quite a few people who have gone into i i think they're used to be calls of lifestyle portals

um and we've talked about ghost written celebrity books before as a sort of extension of the brand but i know that your wife ingrid is very keen on one particular celebrity brand which i didn't even actually know existed. Ava Mendes? Ava Mendes, who, you know, one of the most glamorous women in the world, incredibly talented actor, married to Ryan Gosling. And she has her own range of sponges. Kitchen sponges.

Kitchen sponge. You're probably thinking some really expensive, like, natural dead sea sponge. No, this is a kitchen sponge. Yeah, a kitchen sponge just for sponge you're probably thinking some really expensive like natural dead sea sponge no this is a kitchen sponge yeah a kitchen sponge just for you know the sort of stuff that our grandparents did actually used to use i'll tell you what it's four dollars though per sponge and that is four dollars a sponge you see it's always a luxury brand even if it's a kitchen sponge um why is it how are they justifying four dollars a sponge is it is it antibacterial i have genuinely ordered some over the weekend. No, have you? Of course.

I mean, as a committed ironist, I now want to have the product. Yeah, I'm not a marble statue. No, I'm not. Presumably postage is not massive because they're very light. They're light as air, Richard, and they're coming from the United States of America. I will tell you what the Ava Mendes sponges are like. So Ava Mendes said she was shocked when she discovered uh her sponge was the dirtiest thing in her house what

about ryan gosling that's uh yeah ryan gosling aside he's a clean living clean guy he's a clean he's a clean living guy but yeah so she's done sponges i mean essentially they're all desperately trying to walk in the shadow of the great goddess herself, Paltrow. Her Majesty. Her Majesty Gwyneth Paltrow with her website, Goop. Which, again, a bit like Meghan. Meghan used to have a blog called The Tig, which was a bit sort of like all of these things. It recommended you how to lay your table, but also as a place for discussion about global issues.

I mean, when aren't they? And Gwyneth Paltrow used to also have, a group started out as an email, a bit like that, a blog, whatever, and has now become something that's valued at, I think, $250 million the last time. Yeah, I know it's a lot. I pronounce it go-op, like co-op. Yeah, go-op.

But a lot of the celebrity brands are wellness, which I find slightly interesting. First of all, celebrities are a bit of the celebrity brands are wellness, which I find slightly interesting. First of all, celebrities are a bit of a religion. I do think wellness is one of those words that only really awful people know what it actually means. A bit like neoliberalism or something like that. You know, like L. Ron Hubbard said, the guy who founded Scientology, if you want to get rich, start a religion.

And there's something about religion having gone out of societies and this kind of weird idea of self-care coming in. But it's so individualised and it's so sort of atomised and it's so consumerist. The answer to all of our problems are apparently buying another thing. And I suppose to some extent, you know, Megan, for all her woo-woo talk about this and that, is essentially going to be in retail. She's going to try and sell you some stuff because she's going to say that the answer is buying some more stuff. She's like WH Smith. Yeah. But operating out of Montecito.

And I do think there's something quite odd about sort of celebrities trying, they're sort of icons in the old religious sense. And I don't know, in the sort of late Middle Ages, the Catholic Church sold indulgences. This is part of the reason why they went ahead with the Reformation. There's something about that word, indulgences. Finally, finally we're back to the Reformation. Yeah, but they, well, I wonder if this sort of wellness culture needs a bit of a reformation. They're also selling what we might call indulgences. And certainly the word indulgent is used in all the marketing all the time. And you're sort of being, this idea of self-care, but it's, you're on a

journey where you never quite arrive because you fix one thing and then there's another thing and there's another thing. But it is a totally atomized journey. And so when Megan is saying, as Gwyneth Paltrow does to some extent, you know, I'm going to become a talking shop for ideas. You're not really, you're in retail. And I think that that's what a lot of these celebrity brands are. Yes. And it makes them feel better about themselves well that well that's the thing i always think with celebrities say you're an actor and you're very very well paid and suddenly you're on 10 million dollars a movie right and so for the rest of us we'd be like well that's insane you never have to work again you never have to do anything again uh and they're saying well i i do get paid 10 million dollars

for a movie but then i then i actually have to make the movie you know and i have to i have to turn up and i'm like there for six weeks and there's some cgi stuff and it gets sometimes i'm in my in my trailer and i find that boring and i get 10 million and the next movie they do is just 10 million again and suddenly they're looking at a house in montecito that's like 112 million. And they're thinking, I've got to do 12 movies to get this. So the only other thing to do, the way to, instead of making 10 million, to make 100 million, is to set up a business. You know, that's the way to do it.

Ryan Reynolds did it twice. Ryan Reynolds sold his stake in Mint Mobile for kind of half a billion. He's got a gin brand. He's got all sorts of things. And then Aviation Gin. Because if you're used to being paid 10 million, any job you do, you want to be paid a bit more. And if you're an actor in films,

it is impossible to be paid a bit more. There isn't another job in the world, unless you're going to be like a LeBron James, that pays more. So essentially, you then have to have found and own a company and then sell that company. Dr. Dre, there's no way he could have made more money until he put his name to some headphones. And suddenly they set it for $3 billion. You're gonna have to set a lot of

records to make $3 billion. I agree with that. But isn't that also something which we talked about a bit when we were talking about the Beckham documentary and things like that, that they only properly feel they have arrived because they think at some level there's something quite silly about stardom or celebrity or whatever. And that actually the only really thing that really matters is business because then you have power. And even if you treat yourself as a business and talk about sort of money a lot in a very sort of aggressive way, then it sounds like you really know what you're talking about. But I do think there's a thing with celebrities where they feel unless they have a business, they're not taken seriously in the world, that they're regarded as sort of ornamental something or other that we don't really quite understand whereas business saying i've got

a boardroom i've this we might you know we might go to ipo really makes them feel like they have arrived in the thing that our culture values the absolute most which is business but then there's also that thing that they they do still come from that creative world and so they there's a bit of them that still thinks business is dirty which is why they have to go actually it's not really sort of a business it's more it is a talking shop yeah what i actually want to do is uh raise awareness and enlightenment around the world and stop bullying to do that i am going to set up a multi-billion pound business selling dishcloths kitchen linen kitchen linen is hard to say.

And so they're sort of having their cake and eating it and then selling that cake. That's the sticking plaster that says, I'm not actually going into this for the billions. I'm going into it because I just think there's a lot of disagreement in the world and I would like to put that right. I mean, it's a beautiful gig if you can... But they make you feel worse about yourself. There's a brilliant profile of Gwyneth Paltrow

by someone I've talked about before on this podcast. She's absolutely sensational, called Taffy Brodus at Acne. And she does the profiles in the New York Times. She also is an author and she's had a TV show. She wrote the book, Fleischman is in Trouble. Does she make sponges though? She doesn't make any sponges, but her profile of Gwyneth Paltrow is absolutely amazing.

I strongly suggest you seek it out. And she really manages to distill that way that Gwyneth actually sort of makes you feel sort of shit about yourself and that wellness as an industry does it makes you feel that you're sick in ways that you only sort of dimly grasp and that the cure is consumerism well it's exactly yeah I'm in in middle it's like middlemarch where you know they've got all sorts of potions and powders for you know whenever you've got you know whatever ague you have you go oh I need you know Dr Robertson's tablets and Dr. Robertson's pills.

And you don't really know if they work. Because if you're buying one Gwyneth Paltrow product, you're probably taking about eight different products. And also your body is healing itself at various times anyway. So one day you will, it's like when people go to chiropractors and that, you know, their back just gets better automatically. And they go, you have to go to my chiropractor. And it's the same thing.

I took, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow's, I don't really know what any of her products are. There was a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina. There's some jade eggs you put up your family. There's a lot of... Honestly, there's not a lot there. Her work is strongly vaginal. There is not a lot there for me, I'm going to say. Yeah, no, there's not a lot there.

There's a whole other load of stuff for you. But what is very interesting, I read there's a really interesting article out there, which is that a lot of the stuff, do you know Alex Jones from Infowars, a kind of horrific person? He's a sort of alt-right kind of fringe wingnut who had a TV show that he was sued in the end successfully

by the parents of the Sandy Hook Massacre children because he said that that was a fake sort of event and that all the dead children were crisis actors. I mean, but you know what he sells the same stuff he's got one e.g called brain force she's got the same supplement that is called why am i so effing tired and of course it's in her different packaging but so much of the stuff that they sell are the same things and you know as you say it like middlemarch, a cure for what ails you or maybe doesn't. But it's also,

it's like Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Yeah. So Alex Jones has sent, it's the same stuff. Yeah. But, you know, Coke Zero is in a black can with black writing.

Yeah, that's for the extreme sport person in all I'll say for loving life. I, for example, would never, ever buy Diet Coke. No, of course you wouldn't. But Coke Zero, of course I would. Of course you wouldn't.

It's for people who think they might one day do a triathlon but haven't done it yet. Oh oh i would never do a triathlon no that's good you know but you know yourself because i'm allergic to being sponsored yeah it's always a listen there'll be some triathletes out there but by and large it's a cry for help isn't it this will be incredibly controversial there'll be a lot of emails listen some people love triathlons i absolutely get it some people are triathletes but yeah by and large

if someone in the office is saying I'm doing a triathlon you just go you just got divorced didn't you listen don't at me it's just a bit

don't at him and I've obviously never done a triathlon either so I can't oh god neither listen anyone who can do it I am yeah we take our hats off

collectively we take our hats off collective podcast in the transition area yeah yeah yeah very good after the cycle um so there's lots of other brands as well i was looking through my favorite sort of um slightly mental one sylvester stallone has got two very different brands he's got some high protein puddings in a can but he makes a lot of money from but but also you can buy a Sylvester Stallone pen for $48,000. Wow. Yeah, interested?

Does he sell a lot? We don't need to, does he? No, he doesn't. He sells two. Yeah, exactly. It's not like sponges. That's it. Yeah.

But it is, you know, so George Foreman, he's made 150 million odd. That is a good product, though. From the grill, exactly. But again, that is, I was talking to someone recently about this, a lot of celebrities with wines, you know, if you know what I mean, wines without an H. A lot of people have sort of launched their own brand. So the biggest selling wine in the UK is Kylie's. It's Kylie's Rose. It's the biggest selling brand in the country.

Yeah. You know, she sells 7 million bottles a year in the UK. So it does incredibly well. She seems to be involved somehow in the making of that wine. Graham Norton sells 15 million bottles a year around the world. Shut the front door. Yeah, how about that? Does he? Yeah, he does. Hold on, Graham.

I didn't know this. And again, he's very closely involved in it. But this idea someone introduced to me of brand slap, which is just someone else has already made something and you can put your name on it, which is what George Foreman did. I think Hulk Hogan was originally asked. I imagine he was there with the circuitry trying to work out how to do the grill you never know no i no disrespect to him but yeah but he made a huge amount of money

ian botham's wine i don't know how involved he is but he's uh he's he's got australian wines that you can uh including the botham all-round. When you are in a career in show business, and I've always been behind the scenes, so I've always had an actual job. But when you get someone who's just a presenter or something like that, eventually they get so bored. So if somebody from a sort of wine brand in France says, you know, can we meet Ben Shepard? Ben goes, yeah, sure, I've got nothing else to do on Wednesday.

And then they say, well, why don't we give you £250,000 to put your name on a bottle of wine? We go, yeah, okay, I suppose so. By the way, Ben Shepard is not doing that. No, no, he's working very hard on the new idea just this morning, so for us. And if he is doing that, now he's not able to because we preempted it. So yeah, this brand thing is a combination of how do I make an unimaginable amount of money and I'm quite bored on a Thursday. Should I take a meeting? Hanson have got a beer called... Hanson how?

Hanson, the band, and it's called M'Hops. Oh, that's incredible. I'm about 59 now. What's the age of Hanson now? Or are they in Aspen? They're probably like 24. Still a 10-year-old. So it's...

I have any... Are you issuing a Come and Get Me, Please at any brand to come and give your... Richard would do brands. The only brand I would like to do, here's something I would like to do. I would like to launch an alternative to Celebrations of Miniature Heroes

on Quality Street at Christmas. I think there's room for a new chocolate box at Christmas. Oh, yeah. And a crowdsourced one where the rest is entertainment. Listeners choose what's going to be in the tin. Oh, my gosh. Choose the full makeup. Yes.

Oh, I really like that. I do think, you know, with Meghan, to bring it back to her and American Riviera Orchard. Yes, those are the words. And you've got them in the right order. Yes. But they are so interchangeable. But it's sort of a no-brainer. Yeah.

In a funny kind of way. Yes, I don't think it's a strictly intellectual enterprise. Because she's got enough people who love her and as you say, people do need sponges and kitchen linen. And why wouldn't you put your name to something? And Harry's only got one autobiography in him. One's assuming. But also next week, will you tell us about your sponges?

If the sponges have made landfall, will you tell us about your sponges when they arrive? If sponges have made landfall, I will be talking about them, believe me. Yes, if sponges have arrived from the United States of America, we'll be talking about my sponges. That's a proper cliffhanger. Yeah. Now, talking of celebrities doing anything to sell their soul. Yes.

Shall we go to an advert break? Yes, please. Let's do that now, Richard. This episode is brought to you by Fidelity Investments Canada. Make investing simple. Fidelity's all-in-one ETFs are designed to do just that. In fact, Fidelity does the heavy lifting, including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions. Visit fidelity.ca slash all-in-one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed.

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Good night mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. We are back. During that ad break, I discovered that one of Hanson is still in his 30s. That's not bad, but they were a lot older than, I mean, I was joking when I thought they were like 49, but... Yeah, but it feels like that was 40. Anyway, listen. Right. Let's continue. Let's continue. Tell us about the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph, which Telegraph newspapers comprises three titles, really. Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator magazine.

And they were about to be bought by something called Redbird AMI, who were essentially an investment arm of the UAE. And they've been trying to take it over. But at the sort of last minute, which tells you quite how much those titles, even though we think of newspapers as kind of denuded of a lot of their political clout that they used to have, I don't think in some ways that's the case with the Telegraph, because Rishi Sunak has stepped in, and the Conservatives are bringing forth an amendment which say that you can't be a foreign state power and own newspapers in our country, which we have obviously sold half the rest of

the country off to foreign state powers, particularly in the Middle East. But it's good that there is going to be a ban on foreign ownership of newspapers. Why is that good, do we think? Well, first of all, it's a sort of monarchical dictatorship, the UAE. And I don't think that people who have obviously zero commitment to free speech and democracy should really have any of those things. And I wish that they hadn't been allowed many of those repressive autocracies in the Middle East to buy lots and lots of other parts of our country from football clubs to, I don't know, even shops, I suppose, and lots of other things. I think it would have been better

if they hadn't. Anyway, we've gone down the river with that. People at The Telegraph are very happy about this because they have not wanted the newspapers and they've mounted a real campaign involving their sort of old grandees, former editors, things like that, saying we don't want it to fall in the hands of a foreign state. And so they'll be happy about this. But they had a six,

the Barclay brothers who used to own it had a sort of 600 million pound debt, which was going to be covered by Redbird AMI. So you can see that maybe they make some profit. They do make some profit. What they are, they are outsized. And the amount we talk about them is because of their influence. And they retain a lot of influence. So it's vanity publishing, essentially. It is in a way. However, it has always had this

big, big stranglehold on the debate within the Conservative Party, the Telegraph titles. It's where people would launch their leadership bids. It's where candidates for the next leadership, which obviously we have a Tory leadership election every 15 minutes these days, where they would think that they would be reaching out to grassroots, all sorts of things like that. So it does say something about how influential those titles still remain that Sunak has stepped in and done something about it. So we're thinking now, who will buy it? Who will buy my newspaper? God, who will buy my newspaper? A real sort of rogues gallery of people are coming in.

I mean, they're all rogues. Paul Marshall, who's the guy who owns GB News and the Unheard website, he's a hedge funder. People have often thought he would like to get into newspapers because obviously, again, GB News, he keeps bankrolling their losses. he keeps bankrolling their losses. And if you were able to put it together with print titles and digital business, just that alone, even as it is now, would make him far, far more influential. He was recently described as

unfit to own a newspaper. I mean, God, is that the lowest bar in the world? I mean, God, Richard Desmond's had a few of them. I mean, you know, Murdoch's got loads of them. He's obviously, Murdoch's in for it as well. Is he? Yes. I think Murdoch, he can't let it go.

The rumours are that he's considering a bid for the Spectator part of it. He can't own the newspapers on competition grounds. So Spectator is like a magazine that's, I don't think I've ever seen it in a shop. Haven't you? No, it's in the shop. It's in the shop and it's got a very successful print subscription. So yeah, it does well, the Spectator. very and it's got very successful um print subscription um so yeah it's it does well the spectator and then there's people like david montgomery as i say i mean these

are some of the just some of the worst people in this country in other countries and then paul marshall he's also bringing in a guy called ken griffin who's a sort of mega donor to the republican party and i think there is a sense that the Telegraph and those titles are unexploited online. And the Anglophone world for subscription-based news sites is massive. I talked to the New York Times about going there. And the reason that they were sort of talking to me is because, you know, they need to get subscribers. And if you work in an English-speaking country, then you can get, don't just think of America. They think you can think of around the world, the Anglophone world.

And that is where a lot of these people are making more money. You can see how well the Mail Online has done in the US. The Guardian has obviously invested massively in the US and it's done very well. New York Times is a huge brand now around, I mean, it's very, very profitable. Around the world, yeah. Obviously the FT.

So you take it out of the country's borders where it might have originally been sort of domiciled and you can make a lot of money out of that. So I guess the question is, what would Paul Marshall or someone like that, or anyone really, I suppose, want to do with the telegraph brand in the US? And some people are saying,

oh, there's a real gap in the market for the kind of sensible conservatism that sort of telegraph readers might like to think themselves part of. And you think, but is there? I mean, i'm looking at american politics and i'm thinking yeah i mean it's not great you know to break through as a new a new brand in that country i don't think there is such a big and paul marshall says that oh that's the sort of conservative i'm interested in not necessarily he was recently found to have liked all sorts of quite extreme tweets.

He bankrolled a sort of big conference in London where it was sort of about conservatism, but there were a lot of real wingnuts speaking there. And so I think people think, yeah, your actual politics is not the old Argers and Heartland telegraph conservatism that you would have seen in previous years. Maybe if he goes that way, then maybe there is a way to break in and monetize America more, because I'm not so sure about this gap in the market. So your view would be if somebody like him wanted to buy it, it would be because there's a market in America for something which is a prestige brand, but was then pushing this slightly more extreme version of right-wing politics we currently see it would

it would essentially sort of be wearing a uh a sober suit but uh a very garish tie yeah i think that's a good way of putting it but look at this the news outlets that have done well with those kind of international anglophone subscription things they are legacy outlets they have managed to build a digital business one way or another. But a lot of those startups that came and said, no, no, we're not a legacy, have actually in the difficult years of the last few years have fallen away. And so a lot of those big brands are all legacy media things. And it's perfectly possible to say that the Telegraph could do something with that. That's the thing about Paul Marshall. So he's a very successful guy, hedge fund manager,

and he's become incredibly successful as a hedge fund manager because he understands value and he understands where something is undervalued and he understands how to make a lot of money out of it. I think that if there is money to be made, it's buying the Telegraph and turning it into a clarion of the culture war in the US where the name still has some cachet. It makes it feel like it has a... I don't know that... I don't actually think that the name does have cachet in the united states i think it's a nothing to people in the united states but you could sell it as something and you could say it's a legacy thing and you could sell it but if you see how well mail online did which also was a nothing name exactly and the guardian was a nothing name but it had cost a lot of money and there were fewer competitors doing it and it

was if you if you decided early as the guardian did to invest in this you were able to kind of go for share quite early now you need to spend more to compete with established players in a world where they say go woke go broke which doesn't seem to have been the case it seems to cost an enormous amount of money to be on that side of the culture war yes i mean if you want to if you want to put that message out there there's not a receptive audience who are going to pay you for it and i absolutely get it just i think the interesting thing is and also by the way you're allowed to do it i just think it's worth in the next few years remembering you know when you're watching certain tv channels on on both

sides of the debate and you know you're reading newspapers who's funding them why are they funding them how much money are they losing and then why it is worth them losing that money. That's where we are. And so as soon as somebody says, no, we're a scrappy underdog, you think you are not. No one who's been bankrolled for 80 million pounds in the last two years is a scrappy underdog. And if it is a scrappy underdog, it would be like Scrappy-Doo, which is like a very- Ruin the franchise. Ruin the franchise. Destroy the franchise killer. Oh, can we be like Scrappy-Doo. Ruin the franchise. Ruin the franchise. Destroy the franchise killer. Can we do a Scrappy-Doo thing at one point?

Yeah, we'll do a deep dive, three-part Scrappy-Doo special, because... Don't toy with me, because I would. Oh, I would? Yeah. Oh, I would. You know I would. You have to really work hard to cut it down from four parts, but I think it would be tighter. Yeah, but you know what?

We should do Scrappy-Doo before the rest is history, do it. Yeah. Don't you think? They'll get in there, those guys, if I know them. Right. What have we got next, Richard? We'll end with a little bit of a palate cleanser, shall we? Not a Meghan Markle $39 palate cleanser.

A marketer jelly. An actual... So you said that she's trademarked jellies. Yeah, but not jellies as we would understand them. I think it means some sort of jam slash preserve another dreadful word a bit like wellness and neoliberalism do you not think it's like maybe that's it's edibles or something i no i don't think i would love it if it was but i think you'll pr i think you'll have to leave those to gwenna yeah she'll do anything i mean it doesn't

matter how fringe it is she'll do it all um we're going to talk about the 10 highest paid actors in the world last year which is quite an interesting list i think um at the bottom end of it you've got denzel washington is number 10 he made 28 million dollars do you have to make 28 million dollars to be 10th i love by the way that denzel is still making huge amounts of money we're going to come back to that because i've got some things to say on that. Not on Denzel. No, it's not about Denzel, but it's about the principal.

It better not be. Affleck and Damon both made a good amount of money from air and from various things like that. Statham, nearly $50 million last year, which to me makes me feel proud that we've got one of our boys up there making films that people actually want to go see. I think he made most of his money from...

He's become frightfully difficult. Really? And pleased with himself, yeah. Yeah, you know what? I'd be pleased with myself if I made $50 million last year. Would you be an absolute nightmare to work with? Me? Yeah. Oh my God, what with that money?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd bring up my own range of sponges. But his big movie, Fast X, Meg 2 and Expendables, all in one year. It's not bad, is it? No. But the top end of the list is interesting. There's only two women in that top 10,

which is interesting, which is Jennifer Aniston. And we'll talk about where she made her money because I think that's where the interest lies in this list. And Margot Robbie is right up there. Not at number one, but at number two. We'll get on to who number one is at the end. But she's number two acting fees for Barbie, but also producing fees for Barbie.

And she also produced Saltburn. She is becoming quite significant as a producer, her production company. And she's a Fulham fan. Is she? She is a Fulham fan. So, you know, again, another come and get me plea. Yeah.

If she wants to join the board of Fulham, she would be enormously welcome. What can't she do? So there's some interesting names on there. There's Ryan Gosling, who we talked about, you know, he made somewhere around $60 million. And, you know, you add the sponge money to that, and that is a pretty rich household. Cruise is up there. When hasn't he been up there? One of the few people to ever get $100 million for a movie, Tom Cruise.

Well, I'll tell you why because he still has something that nobody, you can't get this anymore and this used to be a sort of feature of Hollywood. He has what's called first dollar gross,

which means that he takes a percentage of the box office and other revenue streams the minute the movie opens. He doesn't have to wait for his movies to make a profit, which is the way that everyone says, and you're getting a percentage of the back end

and you've got these points on the back end, all this sort of stuff. He has something that is basically unheard. I think he's the only person who still gets first dollar gross. And so he starts making money immediately. And the reason that's important is some movies which seem to make a huge amount of money never, never, ever declare a profit.

So you can be on part of the back end of, you know, the Matrix, and it's made a billion dollars worldwide. But in accounting terms, it's never even broken even. There's a find a way that you won't get paid that, yeah. But number one on this list, DiCaprio's on the list as well. But number one on the list, I think, is very interesting. Because as far as I know, didn't have a theatrical movie in the cinemas at all. No, none of these are theatrical.

Last year, but made roughly $100 million. And it is Adam Sandler. What do we make of that? Well, he has a massive deal with Netflix. And I think we've mentioned, if memory serves, on the podcast before, what they did with Adam Sandler, Ted Sarandos, who runs Netflix, they looked at what was doing well. And people who once would have gone out and seen Adam Sander comedies in the movie theatres now were at home. They were parents, they had kids. And Adam Sander's stuff was doing unbelievably on the platform.

Again, it's a bit like that thing, Billy Bean, Moneyball, The Oakland A's. They didn't care about who was a big movie star. They thought, we'll do a deal with this guy because this guy, everybody is watching and he may not look like a movie star to anyone anymore, but to us, he is. And I think there's something like 500 million...

You know that Netflix dated dump that they did on the viewership figures? In the first six months of whatever, last year, I think 500 million hours were spent watching Adam Sandler. They just felt like it. Movies. By the way, I'm a fan. Yeah, he's hugely, hugely profitable for him.

They've already renewed, they renewed on that deal. They said you can never have too much Sandler, I think Ted Sarandos said. He makes a massive amount of money for them and yet they don't put it on theatrical release. That is something that tells you how power has shifted because the idea that you'd be the number one movie star in the world and you're not even in movie movie theaters is quite extraordinary another thing i think is quite

odd that with probably two exceptions this list would have looked much the same 20 years ago maybe you get julia roberts in there and maybe actually next year you will get julia roberts it's that says to me movie stardom has never been so old. Can I just tell you, Sandler, 57. Cruise is 61. Matt Damon is 53. Jennifer Aniston is 55. Leonardo DiCaprio is 49. Jason Statham's 56.

Is he? Affleck's 51. Denzel's 69. Those are the people who are making the most amount of money. When has Hollywood... The answer is never. It has never, ever been this old. That is extraordinary.

You've got all these new stars, you've got people who are stars and can open a movie, people like Timothee Chalamet, Michael B. Jordan,

Margot Robbie, obviously, becoming Paul Mescal. But that idea, but there are people even who are movie stars in my view, someone like Jennifer Lawrence,

but when she's not in her franchises she you first of all tell me what a jennifer lawrence movie is and second you know what's her persona as it were and second of all that is very hit and miss she might have a big flop or something that's effectively a flop if you're in a franchise the franchise is the star hollywood's got a problem i think if you think that those properties are going to return for you always the franchises which as you can see in the case of superheroes, there is a law of diminishing returns beginning to be applied. But not having stars, or the stars being this ancient, really.

I'm sorry to say, you know, I'm 49, so no shade on them. But I don't think movie stardom should be that old. There's something about the young and the beautiful that why aren't they on this list? Yeah, they should be young like the presidential candidates. I mean, to be fair, you know, Hollywood stars have usually been about 25 to 30 years younger than the president. And, you know, it remains the case.

It's interesting as well, Jennifer Aniston being on there because, you know, that's essentially Netflix money as well. That's murder mystery, murder mystery too. I mean, she's still making an awful lot of money from Friends as well. But, you know, a lot of her $56 million is from streaming. And I quite like the idea, that kind of moneyball idea, that Adam Sandler's the best paid actor in Hollywood because the most people watch him.

And for years and years, you get people getting paid kind of $60, $70 million for a movie. Like Keanu Reeves, I think this is the biggest deal ever. I think they shot the two Matrix sequels back to back and he was on $156 million for that. I don't begrudge him it. I love him.

I love him, but it feels to me like you could have got him for $120 million. Yeah. And suddenly you got $36 million. Well, that was the old way of making deals, which, as we said, just doesn't really exist anymore.

And they have so much more, such specific data now that they're able to really push for but all of these have got franchises or they've got a piece of ip in the case of barbie that is a kind of monster piece with damon and affleck they again there's there's a lot of producing money producer work yes that's the thing if you do have something which does open theatrically and very little does now there's an extra massive payday when it goes to Apple or goes to Netflix or goes to other people. Quite often a Netflix or an Apple will have invested in a movie anyway,

and it will go out, and so they then have first window on showing it. And they're not very interested in theatrical release. Sometimes they just put it in. If they think it might be up for an award, they'll try and give you a week or two of theatrical release, and then they'll get it straight onto the platform. Well, that's interesting. I'll talk probably later in the year about the Thursday Murder Club movie and the negotiations that we're talking about at the moment on very

similar fascinating territory but it is really really interesting what what you're doing for vanity and what you're doing for for actual kind of people watching and all of all of that stuff the era of the being paid 100 million dollars for a movie is sort of over the only people ever to do that were qr no for the matrix and that was two films so really he's only getting 78 million a movie which is nothing cruise i think has done it three times bruce willis for the six cents and will smith and they're the only actors ever to get 100 million for a movie and none of those was particularly recently. So I suspect the terrible, isn't it? Those poor actors. Yeah.

The 100 million a movie era is over. But it seems to me that you could pay actors, the big name marquee actors, an awful lot less than you do. Well, I think it's become more business minded because they have the data, as I say. And I don't think you get those massive fees in the same way any longer. Also, there is relatively little choice. They are quite stuck.

They have to work. If they want to do interesting films, as it were, I'm not saying that, you know, Marvel films aren't interesting, but I am in a way. So if you're not in a franchise, there's very little that is getting theatrical release. There's very little that you would regard as potentially sort of, I don't know, movies in the sense that we used to understand them, mid-budget movies, that sort of $60 to $100 million mark. There's very little out there. So you're going to have to take a paycheck cut

if you want to work in that kind of stuff, because otherwise, and this is why you see them turning up in all these franchises, even if they're telling themselves it's a cameo, you're in a franchise movie, And then there's everything else. And that's why the economics of TV drama really worked because you're getting the same amount of eyeballs, really, more so than you would have done with a theatrical release. But historically, you're not getting paid 100 million

to do an episode of Succession. There's a limit to what you get paid. So actually the TV business has become much more profitable. But yeah, if I was running a movie studio and I think, well, I could do a 10-part TV series with Sandra Bullock where I paid her 10 million, or I could do a one, two-hour film where I'm having

to pay her 40 million, you know, you'd do the TV one. Yeah. But yeah, if you want to win a bet this week, ask anyone who the highest paid actor in the world was last year. Should I finish with a couple of recommendations? Please do. A couple of BBC shows I like have come back in the last week. One is Bridge of Lies, which is a daytime quiz with Ross Kemp.

He's very, very good at being a game show host, and the format is great. I really love the format of it. The contestants need to be 10% smarter. It's slightly frustrating at times, but it's a really fun play-along thing, unless the contestants are really bad, where it becomes less fun.

But it's a really good show. And our favourite show of all interior design masters is back uh alan carr hosts it's eight people all of whom want to be interior designers and they have different challenges each week there's just something about it that's rather wonderful it's a great show alan is a brilliant host of it and you know you just you cannot help but have an opinion on what's going on at all times. So Bridge of Lies and Interior Design Masters, I would recommend both of those. All right, then. We'll see you on Thursday. See you Thursday. © BF-WATCH TV 2021