The Rest Is Entertainment - The Biggest Flop Of All Time?

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Potentially the biggest flop of all time isn't from Hollywood, in publishing, or on the small screen. Richard & Marina discuss the failing of Sony's Concord, an online shooter game taken offline just two weeks after release. From huge flop to huge success, The Chosen is perhaps the most popular TV show in the world you've never heard of. How has this American Christian drama telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth, risen to achieve a Rotten Tomatoes rating on parity with Breaking Bad, The Wire and others? On Rotten Tomatoes people are making (and losing) money betting on film popularity ratings. Is review bombing gaming this system? Recommendations: Richard: Agatha All Along (Disney+) Newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 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

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It's a new day. How can you make the most of it with your membership rewards points? Earn points on everyday purchases. Use them for that long-awaited vacation. Points never expire, so use them how you want. That's the powerful backing of American Express. On eligible me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello everybody. Hello Marina. How are you? I'm all right. Last week we went to the RTS conference, didn't we? They asked us to do a little session at the end of the day and I think we upset pretty much everybody.

It was quite a sort of reverential convention that had been sponsored by Netflix. Yeah. And I think, and so did you, understood our role at the end to be some sort of roasting? Yeah, just a bit of a laugh with people. Yeah. I mean we got out of there quickly at the end, I will say, at the end of the day. We did. We had the... Straight to public front. Ted Sarandos, we had a go at Channel 4, David Beckham. Yeah. But there was, it was just jokes. Yeah, it was just

jokes. Just jokes at the end of a long day that in no way could have been an email. The people there seem to enjoy themselves. Now, what are we talking about this week? We've got some fun coming up this week, some, some unusual items. We're going to talk about the biggest TV show you've probably never heard of. And you have been talking to me about this for the last couple of weeks and I said we have got to do this as a night in the more I heard about it the more I wanted everybody to hear about it. It's very interesting. We're also going to talk about the biggest flop in entertainment this year and a whole

world of entertainment we haven't really covered before. That'd be a third item I think. We're also going to talk about review bombing as a practice you know when you people sort of pile on and make things have really bad Rotten Tomatoes scores and IMDB scores and the new practice of being able to bet on Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah I mean that's feels like a top of a very slippery slope to me. If it exists you can bet on it. Shall we start though with the biggest show that you never heard of?

That you probably never heard of, right? It's pretty hard on IMDb to get a 9.2 rating if you're a drama overall. And there are a few shows that are on 9.2 and they are The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and another show that you probably never heard of, but it's got 200 million viewers worldwide. Season five is in production right now. It's

even had theatrical releases. They've done like episode by episode in theatres and it's pulled in like 63 million for the last one of those. It's got its own dedicated fan convention every year. It's got very high production values. It's character driven. People binge it. It is called The Chosen and it is about the life of Jesus Christ. Paul Anthony Based on the book? Emma Watson Based on the book, based on part of the book. Paul Anthony Was it adapted by the author or did they bring

in Will Smith to do it? Emma Watson Now listen, it's created by this guy called Dallas Jenkins. Now Dallas Jenkins, his dad wrote a series of books which were again religious, but they were kind of blockbuster series of novels based on kind of the book of Revelation and they were called Left Behind. But he did grow up in an evangelical community whose main engagement with Hollywood was to boycott the occasional thing it did and that was it. Okay but he loved movies and loved TV and loved all those things. I kept thinking oh I can you know maybe I can kind of break through and do it in some way. The Sun this is. This is the sun.

This is Dallas Jenkins. By the way, he has directed every single episode of this thing. The scale of it is quite extraordinary. Anyway, but he gets a deal with Jason Blum, who's a producer about him. We will have to talk on another occasion on this podcast. He's a guy who does a lot of like low budget horror things. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyhow, Dallas Jenkins does a Christian rom-com with him, but it bombs and he's thinking, oh my God, that was my last big show. Nothing's going to happen to me now. He's on the treadmill binge watching The Wire and he thinks, oh my God, you know what would be amazing because there's loads of great characters, something like this, but about the life of Christ. So whoever does that is going to do really, really well. Anyway, then he suddenly thinks, well, actually, maybe I should have a go. He gets distribution and funding from this company called Angel actually, maybe I should have a go. And he gets distribution and funding from this company called Angel Studios, which I might talk a bit more late. Angel Studios.

Angel Studios. Yeah. They're now in dispute, these two entities. Yeah. This much success in, inevitably in Hollywood or... They need a third party to come and sort it out. They need a Deus Ex Machina. Yes. They need a Deus Ex Machina or a Holy Ghost. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Angel will say, why don't we do crowdfunding? He's like, crowdfunding what? But that's stupid and it never would work. Anyway, the first time of asking they get $11 million.

And he's like, all right, okay, that's quite good. No wonder Russell Brand has turned to Jesus. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, if you want money, start a religion. But the first season they say it's low budget, but it doesn't look it. You can watch it now. By the way, if you want to see this in the UK, you can see it on Prime. There are pops up on all sorts of different services. As I say, it's had four seasons out now and the fifth is in production. Season four, like the budget was 40 million. So it's much bigger. They've got their own backlog now, but they

still crowdfund. And originally it was distributed through the Angel Studios, kind of like a desktop app. The season premiere of their season in 2021 was watched live on this app by something like 770,000 people and something like Mare of East Town, which by the way ended up winning the Emmy, was watched by like about 900,000. So by the way, you never read any mainstream media coverage of the show. It's the first, well the first I heard of it was about two weeks ago when you started telling me about it. Okay. In a way, it's like the crown, I think. Yes, crown of thorns. The crown, because you all know where we're going with it, but they're playing out over seven seasons, right?

Yes, we know how it's going to end. So season five is going to be all of Holy Week, apart from the day of crucifixion. Season six is the entire season is the one day of the crucifixion. Season seven is the aftermath. They are really eking it out. Well, you know, like you've got to have seven seasons or something Richard, as you know. So anyway, the characters are great. Okay, so I was going to say you are genuinely a fan of this show.

I just think it's really, I'm sort of fine because it's a curiosity, but it's really good and it's well done and there's lots of funny little bits in it. It's just odd because when people think of these stories, they do honestly think of these kind of characters as a sort of stained glass window and things like that, which is what he said. And he was trying to make this real. And he's very funny about things. Dallas Jenkins is the producer, like about the character of Jesus. He says he couldn't really make him the main character. He doesn't learn anything, he doesn't grow, and he doesn't struggle. I feel like he's going to struggle in season six. But the point is, I get it, okay? But he's so heavily influenced by other shows, like in episode one, you know,

the pilot of the first season, you don't see- Genesis. Yeah. No, it's with all the gospels. He's, you know, he's like in his thirties or whatever, early thirties or whatever, when you meet him. He's like in his 30s or whatever, early 30s or whatever, when you meet him. But you don't meet him till the very, very end of the episode. And deliberately they did it with President Bartlett in the start of the wasp. Because you're trying to build the ensemble, so you're trying to say, right, Simon, he's a street fighter, he's got such a massive arc, like he's definitely the James Kirk of the piece. What about Noah? He's got a massive arc.

He's got the biggest arc of all. We're going Noah? He's got a massive heart. Well, he's got a massive heart. He's got the biggest heart of all. We're going to talk about the potential chosen verse in a minute, actually. Okay. But part of the evangelical modern Christian movement in America is, like, you have to believe these stories actually were real and happened. And there are lots of contradictions clearly in the Gospels. He's kind of built this world where you're like, oh, yeah, but that's why one Gospel tells you this and that's another. I see it's the two narrators. And it's really, he's tried to make it really, really real. And you know,

it's probably never going to get an Emmy, but he's very funny when he talks about it. But what he's trying to do is something really quite unusual. And he doesn't mind now, he thinks, oh, I always thought about getting an Oscar and an Emmy and I don't care anymore, but all the good things are happening. But there's something about sort of faith-based entertainment, which we don't, you know, I say we because I am not a consumer of it particularly at all. I have consumed this, but I'm not in general. But what we kind of forget is that like faith-based artists have been selling out arenas in the US for forever in every genre, not just like, you know, evangelical

music in country and all sorts of, in rock and all sorts of things. But there is also the sense that kind of Hollywood has fallen and that any entertainment that comes from that is degenerate. And he has managed to thread this needle and it's sort of amazing what he's done. And he's now trying to build it all out and create, I don't want to call it the chosen of us, but I think we're all thinking that. He's looking at someone like Taylor Sheridan and thinks, hey, you are out of the system in a way, you're out there in the Midwest, you have one show and you've suddenly made it into loads and loads and loads of shows. So he's saying, okay, Moses was like a reluctant Tony Soprano. He was the head of the largest family and he didn't want to be Noah's Ark.

The story of Noah is basically parenthood on a boat, says Dallas Jenkins. Hard to film Noah's Ark. I think that has to be an animation. He wants to do an animation based on The Chosen as well. He wants to have this whole massive mega empire. And the dispute with Angel Studios. Angel Studios are quite interesting because they are one of those people who operate in the Christian entertainment space and every now and then they get a massive hit. Another thing that Dallas Jenkins does, which is quite funny, is one of the ways he crowd funds is people pay $1,000 to be an extra. That's a great idea.

Oh yeah, they pay to be in it. But you can't tell, it doesn't look like there's loads of people just staring right into the camera and causing him lots of trouble. They seem to be very biddable. But I think I sense from the way you talk about it, you do have an admiration for the way that Dallas Jenkins has gone about this. He has actually done it with a slight twinkle in his eye, so it absolutely appeals to the marketplace he's trying to appeal to but you can watch it as a punter as well. Yes he's got to compete with all that stuff and

also people are used to seeing things like that and people are used to seeing these very textured things with lots of great supporting characters and these kind of sprawling stories and you know the IP is free as we've previously said. Well it is absolutely and also there's sort of no shortage of stories as well. No. You can go in any different direction with. Is it the sort of thing that you think might be a fun ironic watch for a group of students? I think it's too good for that. No I don't think. No no no no it is it's even the first season which people say oh it's not nearly as good as how it gets. You know you can see obviously like anyone writing and as I say he's

directed every episode and everybody becomes much better when you've made that much TV. And it's dark, you know, it's dark. It's lots of dark stuff in it. Everyone, myself included, sitting at home now going, ah, just at the start of this, I didn't think I was gonna watch it. And even five minutes in, I thought,

well, maybe I'll just sort of watch two minutes of it. Now I feel like I'm gonna have to just watch five seasons of this thing. Well, yeah, or just watch episode one and then watch episode one of season three and episode one of season four or something like that. But if you really don't think you're gonna watch it, which I can totally totally understand, there is just simply too much television, but it is interesting. And presumably huge around the world. It's very very big around the world. Certain markets probably more resistant than others.

Yes, absolutely. Certain markets more resistant than others. I don't think it's massive in the Middle East. As I say, I'm not a religious person, but it's a very interesting story and it's very well told. But that is genuinely worth having a little look at. It's the first thing I'm going to do when I get back. Again, it's so fascinating when a story comes along that you think you know and you think, oh, okay, someone needs to put their Bible stories in a TV program and I bet that's X, Y, Z. And someone says, do you know what, it's really worth watching. And someone who's done it has done it with skill and heart and care. And yeah, I will definitely be watching. And it's a monster hit.

Monster hit. Listen, even better. I mean, the Bible. But no one talks about it. You never, and I've sensed that we might talk about the mainstream media in another item we're going to do today, but you don't get any coverage of it, even though it has huge amounts of viewers and it's a really big thing. And it's just one of those things that you think when things get a hold on the discourse, and as we've said before, you know, people write millions of articles about succession or the final episode of, I don't know, whatever it may be, but they don't write anything about something that is also a huge hit.

It's also the biggest selling book of all time, isn't it? If you think about how many Agatha Christie adaptations are and she's the second biggest selling author of all time. Even you've not sold that many books. Less than the Bible. Although we do have a thing where it's in the bedside drawer of every single hotel in America now, which is nice. I'd love that.

That would be quite welcome. Shall we after that go for a lovely ad break? Please let's. Welcome back everyone from a huge unexpected hit. We've still got a huge flop to come, but we're going to talk about Rotten Tomatoes, Review Bombing etc now. Yes, Review Bombing, this is the practice of, I don't know, is it trolling, is it clicktivism, is it campaigning?

Clicktivism. I mean, some people do not think that review bombing exists and fan communities will say, no, this is just in the old days, entertainment or whatever was passed down to us like stone tablets, you know, you could either not buy us or not show up for it in whatever way you could reject it. And now, obviously, because of these online movements, we can do a lot more. I mean, we do traditionally see it, if you look at the top review-bombed products, in a male-dominated fan space where a woman has been given some lines. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but Brie

Larson as Captain Marvel, she has to talk about the haters in every interview now. When Mary Magdalene turned up in The Chosen. There is actually a whole plot line about people will hang up because she has a relapse in one of the seasons after she's been saved. Spoiler. Well, sorry. Yeah, so anyway, sorry, we're going to get off The Chosen now. But yeah, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, The Last Jedi, Ghostbusters, the one with the women.

Yes, that's funny, isn't it? Yeah, so as I say, I'm noticing a trend in the review bomb things. Any form of sort of social issue that the fandom feels has been pushed down their throat in the parlance of these things? Because star ratings are incredibly important, especially fan star ratings. So you have, you know, Rotten Tomatoes is the thing we're going to talk about mainly, and that's this website. It was started in 1998. It's originally started purely as a website for rating Jackie Chan films. Did you know that? That's what it started as these three guys set it up and they just were obsessed with Jackie Chan so they set up this site.

That's so much better than rating women like Facebook. Well done guys. Well done guys. Thank you. It was just Jackie Chan related. I'm sorry that some people have used your site for ill now but... But then 10 years later they sold it for an undisclosed sum which I imagine was quite a lot. But it's a huge deal in the industry, it's a huge deal for publicists in the industry, it's a huge deal for the studios. You know and if you can get verified fresh, which is you have to be 75% of 80 reviews have to be positive ones. And that essentially, it's a big deal.

A lot of people use Rotten Tomatoes, a lot of people decide what movies to go. 30% of people check it before they go out. And this whole thing of, you know, speaking of gatekeepers, of movie critics being the gatekeepers to all these sort of things, there's big time critics died or they retired and they haven't really been replaced. And this site has become more and more and more and more important. And alongside the critics is also the public are allowed to rate things and you have to have proof that you've seen a film. For the public 90% is the threshold to be certified fresh because the public like things more than critics like them.

So if you're above 90% you're certified fresh, below you're not and if you're below I think 60% you are rotten and you can see how that can very easily be gained. So it's a very common thing to bomb these things as it is by the way in Amazon book ratings which we will get to but you have now started to be able to bet on a movie's rotten tomatoes score and a lot of people are making a lot of money from it. Who started this thing, someone called Kalshi has done it. Kalshi is the site where you can gamble on pretty much everything, crypto, all sorts of stuff,

but you can now also bet on Box Office, and you can bet on Rotten Tomatoes scores. There are various places you can bet on lots of different entertainment things. Obviously, if it moves, you can bet on it, like people bet on any old thing. So I was interested, it's a real kind of, I don't know. It's like, it's like a form of tracking, isn't it? Really?

Because I looked on and I thought Joker Folly Edder. Now that comes out on, I think October the 4th. 54% chance that it will get an above 60 rating. That's not going to be making Todd Phillips very happy. Gladiator, there was a 63% chance it would be above 79. I was interested to go on the site and see all the other things, but apparently it's taking in like 300,000, maybe more a week. It takes in a lot. And here's the interesting thing, the thing it tells us about entertainment

is the people who can really game it, the people, you know, you get professional gamblers in any sphere who are the people who understand how to gamble and then get banned from all the sites. Don't forget the bookies always win. So we're going to talk about gambling a lot. We are not recommending gambling. But I was reading about some of the people who are making quite a lot of money on it and they say, well, here are some of the things that we look at. We look at how many test screenings there are because you can really tell whether a

movie is doing well if you keep testing it in different markets because they're building some momentum for a film. We look at who has reviewed it early. And there are some very tame reviewers, and they get named in a couple of articles. They said they've spent two years and they have not given a bad review to anything. And they're saying that this is in two years

where Borderlands and Madame Webb has come out. So if we see the early reviews coming in and we see they're from pet reviewers, we know that this is a bad movie. So however, if we see suddenly, you know, they're giving it to one of the big dogs, then you think, okay, this one's going to be good. So these are the things that they are looking at. They're looking at the tactics of the PR industry and the tactics of the industry and the tactics of the studios. And so that's how you kind of work out if a movie is going to do well with the critics and do well with the public as well. It's speculation on entertainment but I do think it's slightly speculation

as entertainment. I would honestly much rather spend a really long time thinking what exactly I think Joker, Folia, D'Eur will get than I will actually want to watch it you know but I would enjoy that a lot more. I think there's a certain sort of I mean I gamble very rarely and only on things that I think I know something about. So there's there are lots of these things when anyone who's just willing to whatever it is, filter out the noise and listen to the signal. I think that's really interesting. Going back to Rotten Tomatoes for a moment, it's fascinating. The one thing I said just then that the public tend to rate things higher than critics, which I think we sort of intrinsically understand. There are two areas where the critics score things higher than the general public.

So two areas that critics prefer to the general public, and they are documentaries, all documentaries, and dark comedies. And that's why Hollywood is terrified and dark comedies and that's why Hollywood is terrified of dark comedies because they always do it, it's like TV, they do brilliantly, they get written about everywhere and the viewing public just goes, no, no thank you. I guess it's admirable there's stuff in the in the broadsheets but the the general public are going yeah I dunno it's a comedy I just wondered if it could be like really funny, why don't we why don't we just make that much much funnier? This obsession with people putting jokes in comedy Richard. I know. Where is it gonna get you?

It will not last. I was looking do you mind if I put you through a top three? Yes, please. I know I know often we do these on the question and answer I'm gonna do top three here the top three rated films of all time on Rotten Tomatoes and that is mixing up Critic scores with the public scores. I'll give you three and two and we'll see if you can guess what number one is. Okay. So the third best movie of all time according to Rotten Tomatoes critics and punters is Casablanca. Number two is The Godfather. Number one, any idea? Any idea at home? I wonder if it's like something like an

Adam Sandler film or something ridiculous. No, I know what you mean. It is like this LA confidential. Oh, which I absolutely love. You and literally everybody else in the entire world. How interesting. Isn't that crazy? I absolutely love it.

If you haven't seen that, please watch it. It's so good. Curtis Hansen, who I think wrote it as well, has got great people in it. And Kevin Spacey, I don't know if we're allowed toerdinand was great anymore but anyway he's very good in it. That's amazing, it's still the most popular film of all time. That's extraordinary. So that's Rotten Tomatoes, as I say it's a very interesting place, it's sort of part owned by some of the studios, in the same way that everything is owned by everyone.

They were bought by I think ING, who were then bought by someone else, who were then bought by someone else, so Warner's now owns. I think some tickets firms got some staking. Yes, Fandango. And that's that you have to buy your tickets through Fandango to be able to put your thing out there. Oh yeah, this one, I get it. Everyone's making a buck.

But it is a fascinating site to look at and you can go trawling on that for hours and hours and hours. So a brilliant thing this week. By the end of the show, I shall find this out, but it was statistically proving who the worst actor of all time is via Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office and their pay. By the medium of science. Yeah, exactly. And you have to have starred in at least six movies and looked at what their budget was and how little they made and all that kind of stuff and it was Madonna was top of that list.

I think it's fair. Yeah. I've seen all the work. Yeah. Sometimes more than once, sometimes sober. The guy did it he said I set out doing this knowing for a fact that number one would be Steven Seagal and I was gutted to see he was only eighth. Who I can hardly hear a word against even though his I'm a Seagal completist. Oh really? Yeah, I've got his novel. He wrote a novel? Stephen Seagal? Yeah, I've got it. I'll bring it in next week. It's called something like The Way of the Shadow Wolves. I've got his appearance on VHS on The Celebrity Guide to Wine. I've got

a huge amount. What's his tipple? One of the wines. Maybe the red one or the white one. I can't remember which one. One of the ones they do. I have a full trove of Segal stuff. Our lovely producer Neil has just sent me, it is statsignificant.com is where I got that statsignificant.com which is so brilliant for all sorts of things. It absolutely goes into far too much detail about stuff we all care about and there's loads of brilliant things on that but you can read, listen it's a deep dive, I will give him that, but I love a deep dive, you'll see the top 10 worst actors of all time according to statsignificant.com. Oh can we talk about them one week? I would love to

fully, you know, I mean I've confessed quite a lot of stuff about Zidane Seagal who I now think, I mean he's many times an ennoble by Putin now. What is the novel about? It's about the deep state. It's about the deep state basically. About time someone wrote about that. Yeah, I mean, wake up. I'll bring it in next week. I actually found it the other day and thought, oh my God, I'm so glad I haven't lost it. He should do a follow-up called Wake Up Sheeple.

That'd be absolutely huge, wouldn't it? Maybe it's called like Wave the Shadow Wind or something. There's that slightly kind of on deadly ground element of Seagal. I don't know if you remember the on deadly ground. I can't believe I've gone down. Have you seen under siege too? Of course dark territory. Yes.

I've seen it so many times. Do you think it's better than under siege? No, it's not really because it's not the first one, is it? But it is very good. Um, yeah. And it's best Steven Seagal film in so many ways. I want to say, on deadly ground. First of all, he was Michael Ovitz's karate instructor, or Aikido instructor.

Was he? So Michael Ovitz, he had to go and see him at like four in the morning while the head of creative artists, the biggest hard-ass in Hollywood at the time, the biggest deal-maker, he had to go and see him at four in the morning. Because Michael Ovitz couldn't even not be making a deal at four in the morning, he actually thought, I'll make this guy a star. So he does all those early films like Out for Justice and whatever. But then he has this massive hit with Under Siege, which I recently watched actually

with our children again the other weekend. We were laughing quite a lot. When you say our children, by the way, that's we are in different relationships. Sorry, Garen and my children. And everyone thought it was an absolute riot and wanted to watch Under Sie the seats too. But he cashes in all his chips to make on Deadly Ground, which is basically an environmental film and involves like saying to Michael Caine, he does these ridiculous speeches. What does it take to make the essence of a man? And like four minute speeches in bars with like innuits and stuff.

And you're like, I can't actually believe you could have done anything. You could have been the next action hero. And you've done this. Amazing. Very interesting. It's about a pipeline or something. But he's, I think he's a big fan of pipelines now because he works for Putin. But anyway, Yeah, he used to be very anti pipelines. He's very, very pro them. Huge pipeline right now. Listen, he's always been interested in pipelines. He's just, he's looked at them from different angles.

Well, I mean, I could go on for about a cigar for quite a long time I think we're gonna have to go on something else We'll have to do our own mini series where we where we look at under siege I'm good. I've got so much we could do on cigar and it's so funny Okay, all the improvised weapons he uses. Oh, you've used a microwave as an improvised weapon. You've used a bar towel How's he done that? Oh, he put something in it's he's an under siege too, he uses a makeshift bomb. He's a chef. Bar towel I know how to use.

He's got weapons. Because I read Reacher. Yeah, yes, of course. I know how to kill someone with a bar towel. Oh yeah, okay, sorry. Don't underestimate me Marina. I know, I know. You hide a gun in it.

Okay, and you will if we don't move straight. Yes, sorry, what were we talking about? We were talking about betting. Anyway, you can do it now on Kelsie, but don't because we don't encourage betting. And also, oh yeah, I was gonna say, your Amazon and Goodreads ratings as well are a really, really huge deal.

And in the sort of first ones, verse 10, the first 20, there's always two or three which are like one star, and you're like, oh no, you got a one star. You sort of like through your fingers, you look at it and always goes, um, uh, the postman delivered it next door and I still haven't received it. And you think, don't give me a one star for that. Give me a postman a one star.

I haven't opened it yet, but the packaging was chipped. Or you know, the packaging was torn. Exactly. But someone had obviously ordered the, uh, the large type one and said, the type is so large. I didn't order the large type one, but this one is anything. I think you have ordered the large type one is what you've done there. Anyway, that's what happens on Amazon. But Amazon reviews incredibly important for new authors, especially if someone's got a debut out of something like that. If you've read a book and you like a book, do leave

a review and a rating because it's all good for the algorithm. And if it does well there, then you know, bookshops take risks on it. Also, if you can leave reviews on bookshop.org or on Amazon or anywhere you can leave reviews on bookshop.org or on Amazon or anywhere you can leave reviews, Waterstones, then do so. It's incredibly, incredibly helpful for the writer, only if you've enjoyed something. And if you haven't enjoyed something, shh. And if your postman has forgotten your book, really that is on the Royal Mail. I would say. There are other portals for your distress.

Exactly. Talk your portals of distress. We move on to our final thing. Oh my gosh. So a couple of things happened last week. Firstly, we were talking about The Lion King, the musical being the single most profitable artistic endeavor of all time. Someone said that to me and even at the time I thought, I'm not absolutely certain that's right.

And then I was talking to my son, he's a huge video gamer and he said, oh, you should do something about Concord. I hadn't heard of Concord and Concord is a live service game. So we're going to talk about live service games. And it's been one of the biggest flops of all time. Concord is one of these things they spent eight years bringing it out. It's a Sony game. It's a Sony game and it had about 600 people. So a live service game is one of those games. When we were youngsters, you would have a console, you'd buy a cartridge for that console, you'd buy Sonic the Hedgehog, you'd buy FIFA or Tiger Woods Golf, Colin McRae Rally. You would play it and if you were lucky and liked it the next year, there'd be Colin

McRae Rally 1997 would come out and you would then play that again. And that was the economics of the video game industry for a long time. They would sell you a console slightly under cost as a loss leader they would then sell you a series of games at 40 pound each and try and make you you know update them once a year and then this concept of live service games came in or games as a service which are essentially games that you play online against a load of other people at the same time so Fortnite Battle Royale would be a perfect example of that. And crucially, they have constant updates.

They're constantly world building and more pieces of content are being released. They would love you to be sort of hooked to them, to that. It's a whole commitment. It's like an entire shop. So if you've got Grand Theft Auto, the online version of that, they are constantly updating things. They're constantly building new parts of the map. There's constant new characters, new storylines, there's new vehicles, new

weapons, all sorts of things. And you either subscribe to a lot of these games or you subscribe to the to the console, or you are using micropayments to buy things to make that game better. And this is one of the most ludicrously lucrative things in the entire history of entertainment. This is why I don't think Lion King the Musical is the most profitable thing. I think Fortnite Battle Royale is the single most profitable thing in the entire history of entertainment. They reckon it's made about $27 billion now for Epic Games.

Also, we should say that almost all of the Chinese gaming market are these games. You're constantly paying within game and all this sort of thing. And so there are things that we've done probably very, very well there that we don't necessarily know about. In fact, there was one random thing that I was reading about when we were thinking about that game Black Myth Week on, which we'll come back to in a minute. I was reading that some Chinese Politburo official had looked askance at the idea of live service games and

maybe they were too addictive and it knocked billions and billions off the share prices of Tencent and Netis and those big kind of companies and so they removed the official. He's never been heard of again. There it is. So these things are now genuinely a huge phenomenon and those of us who got into gaming in the 80s or 90s who perhaps have lagged behind, this is what gaming is now. Firstly, you really, really, really want to have a live service hit, so Candy Crush would be a live service game. Grand Theft Auto Online is of course, that's made $10 billion. I mean, it's a huge, huge market, but as you say, the whole thing about these games is

their whole worlds and they're incredibly addictive. And actually the thing that is really constricting new entrants into the market is people are running out of time. These things can take up an awful lot of your time. There's a small amount of games, Fortnite would be one, Battle Royale, Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft, League of Legends, Roblox. There's research that said they take up 25% of all gaming time. These games, they're all over six years old. So they're all, you know, it's beginning to sound a lot like TV and films. The older stuff, the legacy stuff is just lasting and lasting.

You know, have these incredible updates all the time. They've got people hooked in, people are spending their money on this stuff. And so it's very, very hard to enter the market. Now, some people are entering the market. There's been big games this year year Helldivers 2 was big this year but the one that came out very recently which is Concord, eight years it's taken I mean tens of millions of pounds. They think 200 million dollars. Here's just an example of what you would get for a normal live service game. So 9.30 this morning, Counter-Strike had 634,000 consecutive players.

So 634,000. Yeah. On Steam. Just playing Counter-Strike this morning. The most who played Concord concurrently was 697. The most who were playing those first days of Black Myth Wukong were 2.5 million concurrent, right?

And you also had to pay $40 or whatever it costs in the UK for this, for Concord, which a lot of the games in this space are free and there might be things you buy within game, but I think that is absolutely extraordinary. To put this into perspective, they have withdrawn it from the market within a week. It will not come back and people are being refunded. So you'll get your £40 back, anything you spent on it. I had a chat with George Osborne, not that George Osborne, the brilliant video games journalist. And if you are interested in video games at all, or if your kids are and you want to know about the industry,

here's a video games industry memo. It's really, really, really well worth signing up for because it tells you every single behind the scenes story. It's real risk and reward stuff, life service games, because you're bringing out Concord. You've already spent a huge amount of money and eight years doing this. You've also had to bring on an entire staff because the whole point of life service games

is you are constantly updating, you're constantly maintaining them. You are constantly having to be across them. So you've got a whole team in an office who are looking forward to this sort of going crazy and having kind of three, five, ten years of looking after this game and they're out of work after about three days. So all of that industry has gone as well. They thought that the biggest entertainment flop this year was going to be Suicide Squad, also bought out a live service game. And that absolutely crashed and burned as well. They reckon that lost 200 million.

So this whole world of video games, when we talk about the film industry and we talk about the TV industry and the numbers that are involved, the video game industry, the upper numbers are just bigger than anything that films could dream of. But we don't, if you try and look at the coverage of this story, there's lots of stuff in specialist publications and there is something in Metro, one story I could see in Metro. I would argue, and this is a big swing, but this could be the biggest entertainment flop of all time, okay? Because it has got no money. You would say, we're like, oh, you know, it was Heaven's Gate or one of these, some big flop movie. This is Sony, okay? Because it has got no money. You would say, we're like, oh, you know, heaven's

gate or what are these some big flop movie. This is Sony, right? So they spent 200 million on this from Spider-Man, No Way Home, also Sony with Marvel, it's their property. They would spend 200 million on that. That's like only 697 people going to see that movie. That would have been like on the front pages of newspapers, like this enormous swing by this company and it's completely failed. If it did fail, you'd still think, okay, but it's going to make some money back on streaming. There's always other ways in other branches of entertainment.

This has been completely withdrawn from the market. There are clearly no plans to bring it back. That is a write-off. And they are refunding. So I think that there is an argument that this is maybe the biggest flop of all time and it's interesting, but people don't cover it. Again, it's just not covered. But in the same way that, you know, the absolute other end of the scale.

So Fortnite Battle Royale. So Fortnite was a collaborative game. So Epic Games, which again, like a lot of these things started out in someone's garage and had an incredible sort of games engine that I had but built lots of games. So it was doing well Epic Games. I don't want anyone to worry about Epic Games. They call themselves Epic Games by the way. Originally they were called Epic Mega Games because it was just one guy in his garage and he said, I thought it made me sound like a

bigger deal. It was called Epic Mega Games. And then ironically, when he did get pretty massive, he thought I just dropped the mega because I thought we were already pretty big, so epic games would do us. And it was as late as I think 2018, 2017, 2018. So lots of people were playing Fortnite already, lots of people's kids would have played Fortnite, that they came up with the battle royale version of it,

which is your drops into an environment, 100 people, you can team up with two or three people if you need to and the map gets smaller and smaller and smaller and all you have to do is survive and be the last person alive and you can collaborate, you can build things. So it's an incredibly smart, interesting game. And that's the thing that went absolutely crazy and did become, I think, probably the biggest entertainment proposition of the century. For sure, this thing, Fortnite Battle Royale. And we don't hear an awful lot about it. And you can play Battle Royale tournaments with a $3 million prize.

I mean, it's absolutely crazy. There's huge celeb tournaments and stuff like that as well. So if you want to make $26 billion, then I would say that a live service game would be the way to go. If you want to lose $200 million, it turns out that that live service game would be the way to go if you want to lose 200 million dollars It turns out that that looks to be pretty much the same thing Imagine if we could have the hack of these executives like there wasn't you know in 2014 when the Sony Pictures executives were hacked and we got to read all their emails, you know

Not their personal stuff But I would love to read the internal discussions right now on what they are saying about this because this is a genuine calamity discussions right now on what they are saying about this, because this is a genuine calamity. Exactly, but weirdly other than as you say in the trade press, they're slightly getting away with it. But I think the bigger picture here is we talk a lot on this show about the battle for eyeballs and the battle certainly for a younger generation and how you get people to go back to the cinema and how you get people to watch linear TV, all of these things. And there is this industry which no one ever really talks about, which is taking up 10s of hours a week. And I listen, I'm underestimating

of a huge proportion of a younger audience and that audience, by the way, getting older with these games as well and continuing to play them. Every single hour played one of these games and these games, although they are brilliant, and there's plenty of parents, I know you think their kids play too many video games and then they start watching and go, oh, oh, now I see, now I see why you're doing it. You know, some incredible stuff out there. The creativity is through the roof. You know, some of the storytelling is incredible.

Oh my God, my son's doing one at the moment called Ghost of Tsushima and it's like, I mean, it's like an amazing movie. It's insane but you have to kind of go well why do you think they would go and see your film? Why is it that you think they're going to watch your game show? Why is it that you think they're going to turn onto a linear television channel? They're not because this stuff is out there and this stuff is being funded, it's being made by an incredible generation of creatives and listen there's a question around its addictiveness because it definitely is addictive.

Well I think it is and that's the trouble when you're trying to get them to switch to your live service game you're trying to persuade a sort of crack addict to become a coke addict. Yes you really are. Hey this is much more expansive and you know but it's like no I already have this other thing that is that quote we said before you, when the guy from Coca Cola said, my competition isn't Pepsi, it's water. And then when whoever it was at Netflix, he said, well, our competition isn't with other streamers, it's with sleep. And there's always those sort of things. And in a sense, you reach capacity, and you obviously have a lot invested in the world. As you say, those legacy ones do,

do well simply because the world building is enormous and you have put a lot into it. Yeah exactly and they're looked after very very well and you know it's like you don't have to wait 18 months for a sequel the sequel is constant it's like constantly evolving you know my my sun watch is almost no television I would say plays a huge amount of video games and I just I genuinely find it fascinating because he talks about video games in the same way that I used to talk about television and he's interested in them in the same way that I'm interested in television and he understands all the new things in the same way.

And you know, as I say, he was the one who said, why are you not talking about Concord? And I was like, oh no, why aren't we talking about Concord? And of course you have to because as you say, it's an absolutely massive story. It's just, you know, the way we talk about entertainment these days, this stuff tends to be relegated and I think and as I say George Osborne's memo is such a brilliant again not not that one is is such a great way if you if you really want to catch up and catch up quickly on that world and the extraordinary stuff going on I'd really recommend that. Is that about us for today? I think it is

yeah can I give a recommendation? Please do. I don't know if you were a fan of WandaVision yes not One Direction, WandaVision, W-A-N-D-A, Vision. The follow-up, Agatha All Along, has just come out. Showrun by Jack Schafer again, he's done an amazing job. That's on Disney and it is wonderful. You know, it's smart, it's knowing, it's got an incredible lead. So I would really, really recommend Agatha All Along. That's us done, I think.

Please join us on Thursday for the questions and answers edition. I should look forward to that ever so much. The rest is entertainment at gmail.com. We have to give the address. We're really coming out of this show badly at the end aren't we? Yeah, this is kind of the drawback. We're competing against Fortnite Battle Royale and this is what we got. See you on Thursday everyone. Bye bye, See you Thursday.