The Rest Is Entertainment - The Traitors & Our 2025 Predictions

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

One the BBC’s programming jewels, The Traitors has returned. What has changed? Who is playing the game well? What is in store for us? Marina has looked into her crystal ball and shares her movie predictions for 2025. What is going to boom and what might flop at the box office? Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. How are you, Marina? The first week in January is never the most uplifting time. Except the telly is incredible. So I actually particularly enjoy it. I've still got some Christmas food left over and I've got a lot of New Year television to catch. Have you got any Quality Street left over and I've got a lot of new year television to catch. Have you got any quality street left over? I'll tell you what, why don't we have a clean slate? Why don't we go into this year with a clean slate? Let's not ruin 2025 in the same way we ruined 2024. You know how quickly it will descend into sweets or big face related bickering, but

for now let us just, let's talk about the important things because let me tell you something Richard, Traitors is back. I mean, and it's so lovely to have it back. We're going to be talking, we'll talk about it, I think we'll only talk about the first episode just in case people haven't, I think most people would have watched the first one but we won't go any further than that I don't think but we would. But we'll talk about it more widely as the format, the flaws, the tricks, all of that stuff. Yes, how to win, how to lose, celebrity traitors, all Yeah, exactly. Celebrity Traitors, all of that malarkey.

With reference only to the first episode, but you could get to the ad break if you have not yet watched that. But by the way, what are you doing? Watch it. I do on almost all podcasts, I skip to the ad break, listen to the ads and then I skip the second half as well. I'm like that with the Army Hammers podcast. Army Hammer time. We're also going to be talking about your movie predictions for 2025. We're going to be talking about all the big movies coming out and also some of the more like smaller ones that I'm quite excited about. The big ones and whether they're going to hit or flop or just be put in my generally

dicey pile. Because movies had a great last couple of months of 2024. So can they continue that into 2025? Shall we talk about Traitors? It's back. It is brilliant. I should say that into 2025. Shall we talk about Traitors? It's back. It is brilliant. I should say that right away. This is obviously on the BBC hosted by Queer Audio and Command. I don't feel like I need to say any of this. It is now, Richard, it's the third generation of this show because it's the third time we've seen it out. I think it's quite interesting, with any of these formats, anything, once people get sort of

wise to the format in different ways And also it becomes sort of iconic So when they're running into the castle you see all these kind of squeals of recognition because they recognize the set And so with any format the sum of the innocence is gone Everyone now and people understand much more about the gameplay and they so everyone now wants to be a traitor much more about the gameplay and they so everyone now wants to be a traitor. Actually, as we have discussed before, the actual strongest position is to be a faithful who is recruited towards the end game. Obviously, in that case, with your producer, you have got to disrupt it a bit.

And so you constantly have to make things that one doesn't expect happen. And they do that in the first episode with this business on the train. Yeah, so there's a thing on the train where there's 25 of them and they have to get rid of three and watching it, I was, I can't help but think those three people are going to come back because there was some pretty good casting in the people that were there. There's a guy who's a diplomat. And he says, well, the only way to do it really is, you know, to toss a coin. And someone said, no, that's completely unfair. And he goes, well, it's, it's actually the only fair way of doing it. And then they

all go, well, it sounds, sounds like, you know, you know, what you're talking about. Why don't you leave? And he just goes, okay, I mean, I guess. But he sort of volunteers. I was really surprised at this. What I would, maybe I'm just very selfish here, but I thought it was mad human behaviour. I understand the nature of sacrificing yourself, like if you're fighting the Nazis or something, but this is just like, hang on, I'm on the train, all my luggage is on the train and I'm going on traitors. By the way, it's not the only instance of deranged human behaviour in the first episode, there's several of them. You've got someone who's pretending to be Welsh. I mean, that is, I mean, come on. You've got

to do a Welsh accent, and there's someone else Welsh on the show who actually speaks Welsh, Welsh is her first language on. You've got to do a Welsh accent. And there's someone else Welsh on the show who actually speaks Welsh. Welsh is her first language. But you've got to do a Welsh accent for the entire duration of your time. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis has stayed in sort of method acting roles for less time than that. It's like giving yourself... Why would you hand your cat, handicat yourself in that way? She's doing it because she said people trust the Welsh accent. What, because of someone like Amanda in series one? Yeah. I mean, whatever small piece of research she's seen that says that on the internet,

I strongly advise you not to make things difficult for yourself. I'll tell you another terrible tactic. Don't make your character, I am very intelligent. Yes. So that when you get in the car, what about that one, but she wouldn't stop going on about how she was a behavioural expert. Honestly, almost the last thing she said to a bunch of the contestants before of the group was I'm not going to sleep tonight because I haven't built up enough social capital.

Bye bye Yen. And duly she was eliminated because she had made her sole character note, I'm extremely clever and I'm very good at understanding and manipulating human behaviour. We lost a lot of good people in that first episode, I think, which is one of the problems of the show for the producers. So we get rid of the three people right at the very beginning and you get rid of people who've actually got some strength of personality there because they're willing to lay down their life for the rest of the gang.

For people they're never going to see again. Or the good game players exactly. And they're thinking there is no way that you would bring me all the way up here, make this happen and not bring me back into that house at some point. I agree with that and that's the only possible explanation for their behavior because as I say they're not fighting the Nazis. And then you lost Yin, who was talking about you know behavior and talking about body language and all this and you think oh you're gonna be like one of those psychics who they put on every

few series and who are a nightmare. In the end, when she's voted off, actually, she's incredibly sweet. The big issue with this show, if you're a producer, is you do tend to lose your best personalities very, very early on because those are the people that you vote out. You never think, I tell you who will vote out, really sort of boring guy in his early 40s hasn't done anything or said anything and doesn't seem to have any insight into human nature or any insight. Well, they didn't get voted out of anywhere.

Everyone's got 15 of them in their office. The lovely thing about the traitors is this huge hit, but the format doesn't really work because there is absolutely no reason why you would vote off the stupid people. And so season after season after season, Australia season two was the worst example of this. You end up with the people with no insight at all. And often people with no insight, also people with not the greatest personalities either. So that happens time after time after time.

That's a big flaw. Another big flaw, of course, is there's three traitors, then what if they get voted out immediately? Well, if they get voted out, you just put new traitors in. And so actually the early weeks of it, like the early games and a set of tennis are meaningless because they're just going to get replaced. If you get a traitor on week one, you might as well not because they're immediately going to get replaced. You might as well for the first three weeks just get rid of people who annoy you. Despite those flaws, I still find it an incredibly compelling television show.

Completely. I totally agree. There are other ways I think in which it's flawed that they're still doing that thing where the last three people into breakfast are the people who have been in the mix to be murdered. And so they're still doing that. And you would think that the contestants had slightly cottoned on to that. What happened in the second series of the US one, where the faithful sort of become sentient in some way. And there was this one competitor, if you haven't seen it, I won't say who it is, but who sort of publicly built an alliance, very publicly, and then declined to be recruited as a traitor, which as we said is the strongest position in the game. And then I think that what happened there, and I've actually loads of viewers think what

happened is that the producers became scared because it seemed like it was going to break the game. The producers would have to choose new traitors because the people who were being asked wouldn't join. So it looked then that there was supposed to be a banishment in which this guy would have likely gone but there was a twist which saved him and so lots and lots of people think, oh they interfered with the gameplay there. I'm sure they perhaps didn't but people think they did. Oh they definitely did. But that's the beauty. As a viewer, I love watching it. But as a TV producer, I love watching it because I keep seeing the situations they put themselves

in and the difficulties they have given themselves and see the ways in which they try and work their way out of that. Last series, for example, they kept recruiting men just, you know, time after time after time. And so this time we're going, no, we we are starting with three women that's absolutely what we're doing but then of course one of the contestants goes oh don't forget last series it was all men. You become much more self-conscious because you've seen you've watched the show a lot if you're a competitor so they start editorializing and they start saying things like well this is what life's like. People have got that residual memory of like alpha male traitors like, say, Paul last year. Oh, you're the same type as that.

I've seen a type like you before on this show. And so they have a sort of view. I think it's really, and they know so well not to try and take it personally, and they all go up with the best of intentions. But it is a game about becoming institutionalized. There was, you know, Harry, when he was doing his, maybe one of his interviews at the end last year said, I felt like we've been here for months. It is like there's kind of lots of experiments in the West Coast universities in the 1960s

and 70s. The Stanford Tracers experiment, they can't help themselves. They're going to behave in certain ways whether or not they want to. There are moves that can help you. It's great if you don't explain that you're very, very clever at the start. You don't want to be a sort of savant too early either, just saying, I get this vibe, I get this vibe all the time. Just stay in the slipstream of others. Don't understand that thing of if you have just accused an actual traitor of being a traitor, they are not going to vote you off if you do that. It is unlike almost any other format in that it

is a real movable feast. We talked in one of our bonus episodes about how to come up with game shows and one of the key things is your rules must be absolutely the same each time and it must be completely unbreakable. The Traitors is not that. It is eminently breakable. Definitely lose all three Traitors in the first three weeks, for example. Would you be really scared if your people saw it? No, I would love it because people watching it buy in, they know that and they understand that there has to be some jiggery-pokery and they understand that the format is flawed and they understand that they will have to bring in new traitors and what have you and

actually it gives it a soap opera element and you'll kind of forget who the first three traitors were by the end of the series because we know where it's headed and where it's headed is so exciting. They've had to tweet that end bit haven't they? They've had to say when we get to that final sort of end game, if someone is banished they're not going to say at that point whether they were or were not a traitor so that's going to make that end bit hard. I think what they keep doing, they obviously had huge success with Diane and Ross last year. This year they've got those two sisters, Maya and Armani. Oh dear, I mean, one of them's been made a traitor and the little sisters really suspects it.

I didn't love that. I didn't love it. No, because that would be, to me, it would be obvious that that's what you would do if there's two people who are sisters. I like the fact that on the train up they're going, we absolutely have to tell people we're sisters because we talk exactly the same as each other, we look pretty much like each other and we've got all the same mannerisms. I think people will work out we're sisters, so people know they're sisters and therefore I think the obvious thing to do as a producer would be to make one of them a traitor. But I think you know that then you might get that just incredible moment of sisterly confrontation and betrayal, which would be the huge marmalade dropper.

And in my view, it's sort of worth it, the stabbing in the front or the, I don't know, having to betray them. Now in the UK and the US, funnily enough, the traitor has been absolutely huge hit. It was a huge hit over here, a huge hit in the States as well. So it's been recommissioned and recommissioned and recommissioned. In lots of other territories, it hasn't done all that well. Normally, if a format is a hit in one territory, it will be a hit everywhere. The format is very, very, very flawed. Over here, we don't mind so much because we sort of, we can see it's a battle

between the producers and the contestants as well as the contestants and each other. And it's also, they are exceptional at casting things. Yeah. We've learned to say, do you know what? I get that the producers are having to work quite hard here, but while you've got these contestants who we love and while you've got this format that we love and while you've got Claudia and while you've got people being murdered and while you've got these amazing round tables, which is some of the most compelling bits of television, especially in the entertainment world, we will go along for that ride. There's a new show out this year, which everywhere around the world has said is the new Traders. It's called Destination

X. The BBC have bought it and NBC have got it and it's sold in sort of 50 territories. It's a sort of traveling around in a blacked out van and no one really knows where they are and you have to work out where you are. That's the basic principle of it. It would be very, very interesting to see if Destination X does what the traitors has done. Because you know, traitors at some point, a regular series and a celebrity series each year, how long do viewers buy into it? How long do viewers kind of allow the sticking plasters to stay where they are? Celebrity Traters, I do think is gonna be a phenomenon. The caliber of the names linked with that,

it's so extraordinary that it's such a level of prestige that the people who want to do it, and I know some of the names, but they're sort of extraordinary, the level of people who want to do it. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's gonna be, it's one of those celebrity shows where people just go,

this is like a once in a lifetime experience. It's very interesting that they are like that actually. I almost feel like, I know you think it's really classy and that it's just a game and almost though those celebrities signing up don't realise in many ways how exposing it is and how they will become institutionalised, but that's what it is. It's so compelling the format that it's sucking people in and people think, I would love to be involved in that Skullduggery. I don't think they realise how exposing it can be. But this series, as you say, a great cast. I think it's going to be a huge hit again.

The traitors that we see at the moment, they're probably not all going to last to the end and they'll be completely different people who are traitors. But we bought into that. It's a very, very unusual example of a television program that you can absolutely see the flaws, but everyone goes, we are having such a good time, let's just all overlook them. So they're showing it Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and they stack up on the iPlayer as well. Okay then Richard, shall we go to a break? Yes, let's. Hi everyone, it's Cathy here from the Rest is Politics US.

Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about our new series that looks at one of the darkest days in modern American history, the Capitol riots of January the 6th. You know, four years have passed since Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and tried to overturn the 2020 election results. And Kadhi and I are going to explore the tensions and the personalities at the heart of that storm. Yeah, we're going to look at the whole story, starting off with, of course, the 2020 election result itself, Joe Biden's victory, Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up until January the 6th and those horrifying scenes that all of us

watched on television back then. So don't miss it. Go and search The Rest Is Politics U.S. wherever you get your podcast to hear just how Donald Trump tried to defy American democracy. And we've included a clip from the series for you to listen to at the end of this episode. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Resses Entertainment. Marina, you are now going to take us through your movie predictions for 2025. What's going to hit? What's going to miss? New things? Unexpected things? Remakes? I'm going to start with the tent poles of the year. These are the really big movies that the studios are putting out and they provide the sort of structural shelter for

the rest of the schedule, hence tent pole. I suppose the first thing to say is that there are many fewer tent poles than there were in 2024 and more originals, which in my view is great, but that does count as quite a big risk for the studios. And it means that the ones that are big that are coming out really need to be hit. So I'm going to go through the things that need to be hit. I'll tell you what I think they will be. The family genre. That is doing better than anything at the moment, and it's thriving. And this is where you're likely to see the biggest hits and the returns, I guess.

A lot of these you're going to think, oh hits and the returns I guess a lot of these you're Gonna think oh my god this is everything a sequel or whatever well as we know sequels make money now Zootopia 2 and you're going to think what on earth is even that Zootopia was a real sort of surprise animation hit it really rates on streaming and Zootopia 2 bear in mind, then you just get whole sort of I don't say generations But like little micro generations of children you know then the two-year-olds start watching, then the four-year and they're all growing and then they're ready. Well, by the time a sequel comes out, you've got a load of people who want to go and see it. Like Moana. Yes, exactly like that. So, you know, that has the

potential to be a billion dollar title. How to Train Your Dragon, I think, let me tell you, dragons do well. People love a dragon. Spoken like the commissioning editor. Yeah, but people love a dragon spoken that spoke commission the editor yeah yeah but people love a dragon and that's that's the live-action version of something that people already like it's a live-action version like with real dragons yeah well yes they look very well yes but okay still in the family genre Pixar did really well remember Pixar had this amazing hit with inside out too and so they've had a bit of relations because they were on dicey ground before they were something dicey ground before.

They've got something called Elio coming out, you know, a little boy becomes intergalactic ambassador for Earth. Dicey. I think it's dicey. Really? But we could be looking at another sort of elemental, like one of those ones that doesn't do anything. I don't think that's going to be, it's definitely not going to be anything like Inside Out 2.

Why was Inside Out 2 such a big hit? Because Inside Out 1 wasn't enormous. No, Inside Out was and it was critically adored. It was, Inside Out was very, very big. And what they did was they grew with the fans inside out too. So she's becoming a teenager. So streaming is really the thing with these, you know, Disney and Pixar sequels is that there's a generation who just watch and rewatch and rewatch these films. I must disappoint it because the Minecraft movie It's got Jack Black and kids do like Jack Black by the way and Jason Momoa I personally think that if they'd had Chris Pratt and maybe made

Mr. Beast the villain this would be like the biggest movie of next which is ridiculous I it's a shame because Minecraft could be an amazing because it's a shame because Minecraft could be an amazing movie. So there's a Minecraft movie you're telling me? This is the first I've heard of it. I know, and we're still in the family genre because as I was saying this is where you're going to get a lot of your tent poles from. Sonic and Mario are both enormous hits. Yes, and Minecraft by the way was a sort of joke and it was for nerds. If you look at something with someone like Mr Beast who plays Minecraft all the time on the gaming channel and people watch him, people do like Jack Black but I don't think he's aging out a bit. I wouldn't

have had Jason Momoa, no kids are going to go and see that. I would have tried to do something completely different but maybe it would be a huge hit. Lilo and Stitch, I want to say that's not going to do well at all. That's the live action version but that is tracking very well and people are really aware of it. It's a property that I basically don't understand. Do you ever have those things that you just think, yeah, someone's going to explain to me why Lilo is so... Well, I remember that from when my kids were little, like a long time ago. My kids are

in their mid-20s now. I just, I don't think it's all there. This is dodgy for Disney, I think, definitely. Snow White, the live action. Right, I don't mean to be a bitch, but I think Snow White is like the most boring, she's the most boring princess. I mean, maybe, okay, maybe Aurora as well. Who's the best princess? Tiana. Okay. Tiana's from The Princess and the Frog. Why is she my best princess? Okay, because she

works hard, right? She wants to own a restaurant. Yeah, she works hard. Okay, Tiana, I love, and it's all down in the bayou and it's quite cool. It's quite a cool vibe. She's my best princess. They've got a lot of problems with Snow White in lots of ways. People hate the trailer. As I say, I think she's boring and they've also got a problematic star in it. They've got Rachel Zegler, who has got a number of political views and she's expressed those views. Disney is massively retrenching from having any form of view about politics at all and that includes its stars. Yeah, I think that's probably on the iffy list, I must say. It needs to be a big hit, it's a live action thing and it needs to be a big hit.

Obviously, the biggest movie in that genre is going to be Wicked, part two. Okay, this is an absolute gimme. By the time anyone who hasn't seen this in theatres will have caught up with it on streaming and it will come out exactly exactly the same time around sort of Thanksgiving that the one came out in 2024 part one and that will be absolutely massive So that that is nailed on that could be the only thing holding the tent up Actually, it's not because there's something even bigger coming after that, but I'll tell you that in a minute, right? Jurassic World rebirth. I'll be honest with you Richard. It, like dragons dinosaurs lay big money eggs.

They do. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, in my view they are too old. They're in their 40s. Mahershala Ali is probably 50. I mean dinosaurs are really old. Yeah dinosaurs are really old but that's why it's really nice to put them up with some young stars. Okay. But they don't do that anymore because we have to have very middle-aged people doing all these things.

However, I love the director Gareth Edwards, and I think that might do well. Oh, is he doing it? That's amazing. So he's done some very interesting movies. There's an argument that says the kids are there for the dinosaurs, and the Mahershala Ali's and Scarlett Johansson's are there for the parents, so there's something for everyone. As I say, I think it will do well.

Right, now we must come to the superhero genre. Superhero genre still accounts for like a third of the whole box office. 2025, there are four new or rebooted titles for Marvel. Now this is such a make or break year for Marvel. Blade has been completely pulled. I don't even know if that's happening anymore. They've got the X-Men back, but they're not going to be in the MCU till 2027. We've got Captain America Brave New World. It's no longer Chris Evans and it's Anthony Mackie. I'm sounding that

noise. I don't think that's going to do that well. Putting someone else into the suit, no, no, I don't think this is going to work. Of more interesting, like it really needs to work, is Thunderbolts with an asterisk. I know that's ridiculous. Kevin Feige is going to tell, who's the sort of supremo of the whole of Marvel, is going to tell everyone what the asterisks means at some point. Now this is a sort of team of anti-heroes. Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stanzen, again, it's kind of vaguely doing okay on the tracking. What's it called? Thunderbolts? Thunderbolts with an asterisk. And is it Thunderbolts with an S or with a Z? With an S. Count me out. Here's a big one. This will be big.

Fantastic Four First Steps. They've got the Fantastic Four back, Marvel, and they've got Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Musk, Backwack. That is going to be really big. They're going to put so much behind that. In their back pocket, they do have the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is coming back, as you know, to the MCU, and he's going to be in Avengers Doomsday and Avengers Secret Wars. That's not this year.

That's not next year. But what they can do is they can put him in an end credit sequence. So if they decide to put him, I mean, they might not need it. They might be a bit crowded for Fantastic Four and they might not need it. If they put him in one of those other ones, but they've got this thing, Marvel, where if they feel like something's not going to hit, they don't want to almost contaminate the brand of the other one by putting them in the end credit sequence. It's absolutely weird the way they fit it all together. People will literally go to, because they know that someone's in

the end credit sequence. Anyway, they also have Beyond the Spide of Us, which will be terrific. And that will do really, really well. The most interesting in many ways is DC because James Gunn, who is the director of Guardians of the Galaxy and we're still in the superhero genre here obviously, came in to reboot the whole of the DC universe and I keep thinking of that line from the first episode I think of The Sopranos where Tony Soprano says, you know, lately I've been thinking I just sort of got in at the end of something and I really feel like who wants to be rebooting a superhero universe When the genre in 2025 with the genres faltering and you know people talk about superhero fatigue, which is not great

Yeah, more than anything that we've discussed so far His Superman is out right in 2025 that needs to be a massive hit. Okay I feel like there's a new Superman movie, like every six months or so. I agree. And I'm not interested in any of them. I agree. And I actually think it's really interesting because DC has great, had great heroes in many ways. They had Superman, they had Batman, and the stuff that Marvel had to work with when they first started putting together

that extraordinary run and comes out with Iron Man in 2008. I mean, no one really knew who Iron Man was. These are like real second string, third string people. But in a way, they made them work better. And there's something about Superman is the sort of, you know, he was the primo superhero character. And in the 80s, that really works. It's like Christopher Reeve, America's Ruling the World. There's something about the character that, you know, he has, it's almost, it's almost a Snow White thing. It's quite boring. And obviously you can make it darker and grittier like everyone always does, but in a weird atomized world, those kind of lesser characters, teams of anti-heroes, they make more sense in a way. Teams that are greater than some of their parts, the kind

of one-man thing, I don't know, it's difficult. It's much more fun as a writer to have a team of kind of misfits. 100%. Mission Impossible, which they're now calling Not Dead Reckoning 2, since Dead Reckoning 1 didn't do very well, they're calling it the final reckoning. Now, that will do well because come on, it's Tom Cruise's last outing as this Ethan Hunt character, you've all got, everyone's got to turn up. I'm so bored of Tom Cruise in this and whatever people think about Tom Cruise, and obviously he's a complete weirdo, he is an amazing screen actor. I just, I really want this boring Mission Impossible phase of his career to be over. I want him to return to original stories

and a different type of acting, you know? He's done these amazing roles. Many times in his career, he's played obviously the greatest actors of their age. You know, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, whatever, done so well in roles where he plays really interesting parts. But I'm so bored of this. So I, you know, I want this to be a hit. But if it's a hit, you can be sure he'll find some other way to come back.

Yeah, because, you know, he is someone who could open up just a story movie, just an interesting, old fashioned story. But aren't you bored of seeing Tom Cruise? Yes, I get it. He does his own stunts. I want to see him be the lead in a movie and doing something extraordinary. We all want him to go back and do like another Magnolia or something like that. Even though we know he's weird, lots of actors are weird and it kind of makes him more interesting. He is an amazing screen actor. He's almost the last movie star in so many ways or he was and I really want to see him do something interesting again. Here's the biggest one of the year. I know.

No, I know. It's coming out at Christmas and it's called Avatar Fire and Ash. Yeah. I don't get Avatar at all. I know. You have to say to people, because this thing is still going.

It's very possible that you and your friends never speak about it or watch it, and it still makes money than almost everything else combined. More, you know, it makes huge. The last one did something like 2.4 billion. It's ridiculous. This will be huge. What's that about though? Has that been watched by a group of people who don't normally go

to the cinema? Has it got a fandom? Globally it's very big. It keeps getting China releases, which don't mean the same as they used to mean, but it's very popular in China so here are some ones that I think are ones to watch these you can't really call these tent poles surprise hits whatever or bits or things that might catch catch fire the f1 thing with Brad Pitt now I think audiences are generally cool on Brad Pitt I'm it's the IP isn't it he's not a driver though right he is as you would imagine in this particular thing he's a former driver who's pulled back in to train a younger driver.

Like the new Top Gun? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like all movies where you have to get the original star many, many years later back into it. I am interested to see what happens with Michael, the Jackson biography. And you might say, tell me honestly that you don't think people are going to go and see this clearly very sanitized version of his life. I reckon that could be very, it will be interesting to see how that performs.

That has the potential to perform in a way that makes you go, oh, okay. Guess people really still really think he's great. Interesting films, really interesting films that are coming. I'm looking forward to Boon Joon, who's got one Mickey 17, which got Robert Pattinson in. I think that will be brilliant. And he's the director of Parasite. Yeah, Parasite, yeah. The Brutalist, which is, I mean, I was recently in a cinema and there's an advert of Adrian Brody saying, I hope you will watch The Brutalist in the way it is meant. And what that means is it's a long, long film and there's a mandatory intermission in it.

No, no, unacceptable. The A24 have bought that and it's going to be for all the awards. That's going to be a big award. You should, if you got an interval then you should be banned from all awards. Choose one or the other. Win an award or have an interval. Also The Brutalist sounds like a Jason Statham movie. I know it does, doesn't it? 28 years later, that will do really well. Is that Danny Boyle again? They're all coming back for you, Dallyn Boyle, Killian Murphy. That will be great. The Running

Man, Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. The biggest film of the year will be Avatar. And the one that I think needs to be the biggest that I think is not going to do well is James Gunn's Superman. I'm sure I'm wrong. Wow. That's a year of movies. It's interesting that Hollywood seems to be buying more original scripts now. That dam appears to have been breached slightly. And the last sort of 10 years where it's almost impossible to get a script, a spec script looked at by anyone, let alone bought by someone. It seems now in Hollywood that people are looking for original stories and original movies and dramas and you know.

I really hope so. You know, I really hope so. And if they're done on the right budgets, it could be great. I think we're done. I think we are. Yeah. Thank you. That was, but we will revisit all of those predictions this time next year. Come and see how wrong I got it all. Oh, I'd love to. See you for a Q&A on Thursday. Yes, please. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. As promised, here's a clip from the Rest is Politics US miniseries. Trump is naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory, because he's always

seen himself as an outsider. And he wants to foment the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So he's developing these ideas that he eventually uses in January, on the 6th of January. And the ideas are there's misinformation out there, there's lies out there, let's use these lies as fodder to attack the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID. I think hydroxychloroquine works. You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine? Yeah, yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginnings. This is the

kernels of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID. And it leads up to this insurrection, or as the president says, a very peaceful group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building. If you want to hear the rest of the show, go and search The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.