The Rest Is Entertainment - Will Wicked 2 Help Hollywood Defy Gravity?

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

How has Wicked 2 performed box office magic in such a difficult year for Hollywood's blockbusters? Who won the war for the greatest Christmas ad on British telly? Has Rosalía just penned the best pop album of the decade? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde ask if Wicked: For Good has finally managed to release the curse placed on 2025 box office figures. Drugs, data and dating Joe Wilkinson - who has released the best Christmas advert this year, and do audiences care if they're created with AI? Recommendations: Marina: Anatomy Of A Cancellation: BBC Sounds (Podcast) Richard: What We Can Know - Ian McEwan (Book) Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Joey McCarthy + Charlie Rodwell Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Every December we return to our favourite festive routine revisiting beloved Christmas films as tradition demands and with the Skyglass TV it almost feels like you've stepped into one. From love actually to the holiday and elf, it's the one time of year we all agree that re-watching feels like coming home. It's comfort cinema, snow, sparkle and the annual reminder that Colin Firth once learned Portuguese for love.

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Requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions. Content may vary. Broadband recommended minimum speed, 30 megabits per second. 18 plus, UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes.

Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. Hello and welcome to this episode of Verrestes Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osman. A good day to thee. Good day listeners. Good day, Richard. Good day to you again. How are you?

I'm all right. Ingrid is away filming something rather exciting. So it means I've been watching an awful lot of the UK Snoca Championship qualifies. More than I would ordinarily in a normal week. I know you'd withhold it otherwise. You'd deny it. yourself, but it's so great to just be able to give in to it all. Exactly that. How has your week been, more importantly? It's been a busy one. It's somehow become Christmas and pre-Christmas.

Not yet, because it's not my birthday yet. It's Christmas after my birthday. Why won't anyone else respect this calendar? So weird, isn't it? It is very weird. We will actually end up during the course of the show talking about Christmas ads. Very much against my will. Yeah, because it's before your birthday.

I'm so sorry, Richard, but they have all been out. Quite some time. We're going to talk about Rosalia, who is this, the Spanish pop star who has just released, this album, Lux, which everyone in the whole world seems to have gone absolutely crazy for.

So if you've had 1,800 people tell you, you have to listen to the Rosalia album, we're going to tell you all about it. She's very, very interesting as a phenomenon. I think she might be the absolute archetypal 21st century cultural phenomena. And we will also begin, though, by talking about Wicked for Good.

The second part of the Wicked movies, which were originally filmed as one movie, and then they cannily divided them into two. That opened this weekend to $150 million. It's a huge smash. It has lifted what feels like a curse on the box office that has been going on for quite some time now. And we'll talk a lot about why it's been such a big hit,

the nature of having a big hit like that these days, and what it actually means for Hollywood, you know, whether it's all totally fine now this movie has come out. Feels like it. It feels like they're just at least five or six of these each year. Yeah. During this conversation, we will end up using quite a lot of the kind of US box office metrics. And I'll say why we do that.

It's because they are so good. They are amazing on the data. The way they break down audiences, the way they break down everything from whether people are attending individually or in groups. We sadly don't do this. There is a lot of read across to global audiences, slightly less on this property, which is quite interesting because it's such a North American thing. But the reason we use those things as kind of ways of talking about it in terms of data points is because they drill down into it so much and we simply don't do the same. Wicked for Good opened with $150 million at the box office.

The first one was $112 million. Slight caveat in that they did a couple of previews of days on Wednesdays and Mondays last week. But it is the biggest ever second episode of a fantasy series. So bigger than Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets, bigger than Lord of the Rings, two towers. That's amazing. Yeah, and to put it in a different context, Barbie was, which everyone knows was an amazing phenomenon, was 162 million. Lilo and Stitch earlier this year, 146 million.

So it's sort of between those. Yeah. One thing I do want to do, I can't remember whether it was at the very end of last year or the start of this year where I did a box office predictions of what was going to be a hit and what... Did you predict the Wicked 2 was going to be a hit? Yeah, this was one of the easiest ones because we knew that it had already been, the first one had already been a hit.

And also, if it's their only releasing a hit, year apart because obviously they filmed them together. Anyone who didn't see that in theatres, a lot of people, by the way, paid for it over Christmas because it came out at the same time last year. This is their big sort of, this is a holiday movie essentially. It comes out just before Thanksgiving. A lot of people will have watched that in the pay window over Christmas where you can actually pay to watch it. And then if they haven't watched it then, they will have caught up in streaming over the year. So it's open bigger and that is not a surprise, I think. Other things that it has going for it. At the moment, IMAX really

matters and way in terms of box office receipts and how it when did that happen because i was iMacs to me would always be like a very niche thing so niche every time you see any box office records now iMacs is a is a huge deal you know in london we would talk about the iMacs and it was near waterloo you can have there are many more iMac cinemas now those screens really matter they're much more people will pay more money and if you get a clear run at the iMac screens as this movie had next week it will have to share some of that with zootopia which i'll end up talking about Zootopia 2. If you can get a clear run, there are lots of movies that haven't really had a clear run with it, and therefore it doesn't form such a big part of receipts, but it's a big

deal if it's only you. And we'll talk about the absolute desert that has been the last quarter of the box office in a bit. But a reminder, it's like the most successful thing that Universal have ever made, and it comes from a stage show that was used off their original property. So it's very, very, very solid IP. The two stars, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Revo, who promoted it remorselessly last year. I mean, but that became a cultural moment. It was a crossover thing. So that's something you need in the modern era.

It became a sort of crossover moment. They promoted it so much. Let me ask you this question because it's been absolutely ubiquitous and the two of them have a very charming relationship and they're on everything. Is that just a question of throwing an awful lot more money at this than other bits of IP? because it's not like 5,000 different editors of different TV programs and podcasts and magazines are all saying at the same time

this is the thing I want. Presumably, there is a campaign behind this which has an awful lot of money behind it. Because no one was crying out. They're like the Olympics or something. Generally, that's the sort of comparison I'm making. It's like the World Cup. They've got the headline sponsors.

We were starting at a bus stop the other day and my daughter said, oh my God, you can even get wicked electric toothbrushes. You know, there's a pink one and a green one. I would say, wicked toothbrush, defying cavity. Oh my God, it's so good. Thanks. Why wasn't that the ad?

Was it not? No. Oh my God, they'll be kicking themselves. You would love to go into a studio and just record 400 partner lines. I would, yeah. Yeah, I know you were. Genuinely, that would be an afternoon well spent. Okay, well, sadly, they didn't go with that one, but it is brilliant.

Well done. I love that. No, but they got stars who, like, promoted it relentlessly. They went on and on and on about it last time round. In a way, they didn't need to do it quite so much. Probably like you in the second Thursday. them had a club book. Once it's a thing, it's a thing.

And they couldn't really repeat that kind of mad, emotional press store where they cried in every interview last time. But it was pretty great when Cynthia Reva had to kind of throw herself across a red carpet to protect Tarra in the Grande from some kind of annoying TikTok or whatever. And they did like, you know, dancing with a star special and they had a strictly special. So they can, they can, and those things are sort of unpaid things as well. So when something is that massive, you've got all your paid media, which last year there was a lot of. And this year actually, because it was so huge, everyone is throwing media at you.

Everyone is throwing promo at you. And you're not having it. That stuff is all free. They did something really old-fashioned in the US, which is that they had something that's so like from different decades, like pre-millennial. They did, like, it's called like a Wicked and Evening with the Stars or something. They did like a TV special. Oh, I love that. And it made, that was huge.

Dancing with the Stars is absolutely massive there. And as you said previously, bizarrely, that is now a brilliant. deliverer of the 18 to 34 year old audience. So it's done very well for that. And also the other thing about it, which I think is kind of necessary, is that they were in the awards conversation last year. People thought, you know, best supporting and best actress. Nominated for 10 Oscars, wasn't it?

It had nominated for a lot of Oscars. So it's basically the full spectrum property. It's got all of it. Right. Let's talk about the context of the year, because the biggest movie of the year is a Minecraft movie. Yeah, rightly so. Then Wicked for Good.

Then the Lilo and Stitch remake remake. How this year has happened in Hollywood, remember they have to get to $9 billion in box office or else it just, they can't really survive in their current lifestyle as a town. Otherwise their pumpkin remains a pumpkin that does not turn into a golden coach. It's quite right. You had a terrible first quarter and then that sort of curse was lifted by a Minecraft movie. You had a kind of, you know, okay, good summer and then an absolutely terrible third quarter and the curse is lifted. by this, but that can't really... Well, this curse has been lifted by fewer and fewer, bigger and bigger movies,

and that is unsustainable. It's also not fun for our culture. It's not fun for moviegoers. It's not fun for cinemas. You know, if you're relying to get to that $9 billion, you're relying on four or five big movies to give you, you know, 50, 60% of that, then that's not fun for filmmakers. That's not fun for filmgoers, I think.

You just, it's like... There's nothing to see. I find it's extraordinary. I mean, I know we're all like, you know, Monday morning experts, but really, this is why I want to go back and look at that and audit myself as to what I said last year as what would be here. You could have to. Yeah, you have to.

And I'll look at it to next year's and say whether, yes, because I definitely missed like a Minecraft movie and that was stupid of me because I knew that that was big IP and that people would like it. But there have been no blockbusters for absolutely months, okay, and it's extraordinary. And if you look at the individual studios, I want to say September the 23rd, near the end of September, but not the very end, Warner's released one battle after another. That is their last movie for the year. Okay?

What is wrong with you? Why have you not got some sort of children's related holiday play out? Why have you not got something there? You know kids run movie theatres. You know that the family genre is the thing that most consistently has got people turning out. Why is there nothing? Why do you not even have a movie? But is that not because they're saving because we now have such joggernaughts like Wicked that

everyone just tries to avoid it? And they think, you know what? We'll come out in January. because there's been nothing to watch. There's been nothing to watch if you have children since, like, July. That's obviously ridiculous. Now you're going to have Wicked One Weekend, Then's Utopia 2, you know, Avatar, whatever. There's a fine run in, whatever.

But it's obviously ridiculous to say, I'm going to go and see Gabby's Doll's House. Okay, this is just like a Netflix show that is a nothing movie. And other than that, there has been nothing since the summer at all. That's obviously ridiculous. You're sort of failing as a town if you're not putting out, you know, movies that people will see. There's nothing to go to. And the movies that have come out, you know, I really sort of despair of...

Yeah, but I do. Sorry, there's a movie where Sydney Sweeney is not hot. I've already seen it in Not Hot. Christy, which is a sort of boxing and domestic violence movie. Oh my God, yes, please. Sorry, she's put on £30 and she's in a boxing and domestic violence movie. Great. I'm sure that her agent thought, let's get her now in awards conversation.

so she has to get messed up and ugly looking and all of this sort of stuff. Yeah. This is way too early in her career for that. Okay, maybe this happened with Charlie Seron or whatever, monster. But that's more than 20 years ago. I don't know the exact date of the film, but it's really the start of the 2000s. This is not what in any way Sydney-Sweeney should be doing.

What a surprise that literally no one wants to see the Sydney-Sweeney boxing and domestic violence movie, okay? Also, do you want to see The Rock in a 50 million, sorry, I'm watching a $50 million dollar MMA movie? I don't want to see him in that. I'm sorry, I know he wants an award badly, and he's still hoping he's going to get that last, maybe best actor spot.

At the other end of the scale, he's got something like one battle after another, which, you know, I understand what that film is doing for Warner's. It's a big prestige play. It's got the most prestige maybe actor. It's got Leonardo DiCaprio, Paul Thomas Anderson, of course. And they have actually had a good year,

Warner's as well. Yes, but they're allowed one of those. This makes up, you know, and I understand that that film does something different, and it's going to have to be massively nominated. You know, it's one of those library things, and it's a prestige thing and it will sit there for it and it will make eventually its money back.

It certainly doesn't make its money back in the movie theatre, believe me. And it's sort of extraordinary that you've got all these prestige plays that even when you're thinking about The Rock for that movie, that should never have cost $50 million. People don't want to see these films. They may not even get them nominated for awards and they don't want to see them. Can I say something about the same?

Sydney Sweeney and The Rock and Glenn Powell in Running Man, which also didn't do big numbers. at the box office. I'll come to that. And 10 years ago, that's a shoe-in, by the way. It's a remake of a cult piece of IP that was also a mainstream piece of IP, starring the hottest young actor. I disagree with both those things, but anyway, but I'll come to that. We'll come to that. Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Arevo. Take me through their big box office successes before that movie. There are none. And don't need to be. They've both done brilliant things in their areas, but neither of them is a movie star. No one, by the way, is also next year kind of going, I want to see what Cynthia Arivo's next movie is. she's in an amazing movie, everyone will go and see it, but no one is going to go and see a Cynthia Irrivo movie, an Arella Grande movie, a Sydney Sweeney movie,

a Glenn Powell movie. And that we've talked about a while, but that really has crept up on us a little bit. That IP is absolutely the king. And yet movies, you know, The Smashing Machine is costing 50 million presumably because The Rock is taking quite a lot of money

there. It took quite a lot, yeah. They unfortunately filmed in masses of locations. I mean, someone should have just said, No, no, no, no. You don't need to take this movie to all these different places. But yes, they made it much more expensive than they should have done. It feels like some sort of adjustment of the star system is completely necessary. And we've talked about this before. Something like The Running Man, which I have to say, you know, as I keep saying, like, Glenn Powell is like a mid-level star.

He works really, really hard and he does lots of things. Is he a movie star? He wants to be a movie star desperately. I think he's coming at the end of something. But can you be a movie star? Can you be a movie star? Well, wait, I'm going to talk about that in just a movie star. a second, but I will say about that property.

Explain to me why the running man is a great piece of IP, okay? It's not The Terminator. It's like a real second tier, maybe even third tier, Schwarzenegger movie. And it's not one of the big ones. And if it was The Terminator, then that would be a whole different thing. And I don't think Glenn Power would be in it, by the way. But it's, sorry, that's a reality. And I don't think.

But who would be in it? If they would be Terminator now, who would be Terminator? Someone older, probably. Statham. They should put the rock in it. The rock is the Terminator. The rock is a multiplayer. And the rock will get people to go and watch it.

If they did terminated with the rock, that's what he should be in. I couldn't care less about him being in a drama about an MMA's battle with prescription medication. No. The thing you're saying about movie stars, something that I do think is the case is there's no particular reason why public service broadcasting needs to be delivered in

one hour shows or 30 minute shows as we were talking when we talked with Kate Phillips last week. That feeling of movie stardom that we love stars and we want to see them, is there any particular reason it has to be delivered via the means of a major motion picture? because people might like to see them on an interview show. They see lots and lots of clips.

They have kind of direct parasocial relationships with them via their Instagrams. Do I need to see Two Houses, Sydney, Sweetie? Maybe I'm just happy with clips. I understand for family things, and that's a completely different thing. And again, that genre and the family genre is very, very strong when they get it right. All of these movies that are going to be nominated for great performances for awards. I mean, the biggest one's going to be one battle after another. Otherwise, they're very, very small things.

likes to do this when it has like just in the same way that everyone's like oh everyone is back now don't work because it's wicked it's fine it's like that it's no no no it's not fine nothing nothing is fine here and i mean wicked is almost not cinema it's a phenomenal it's a it's a cultural thing that exists across lots and lots of mediums it's not the fact that that's opened in movie theatres that's made it so big it's a it's a it's a multi platform of salt on art yeah and that press tour like you said was a sort of wick cultural moment and maybe these people saw last week timothy shallamee who's got marty supreme the Safti Brother movie that you do want to see, not The Smashing Machine.

And that's coming out, I think, on Christmas Day or something. What movie is that? Marty Supreme. A bad or what? A ping pong star. A ping pong star? Yeah. Okay.

Why do we want to see that? It doesn't feel like I'd want to see it. I think it's quite, people want to see Timothy Shalameh. I think people, it won't have cost a complete fortune, and people want to see it. Now, he did a sort of thing where he was talking about doing his press tour, and he did a video that, like a sort of jokey video where he was coming up with really stupid ideas for how he could promote the movie, which A-24 then immediately sort of uploaded

because they wanted a show that, you know, he's an ironist. He is good at a form of press tour that is not quite like everybody else's. But other people are saying, oh, what do I actually really, you know, now I've seen all these press tours, now I've seen... Can I say something controversial?

Yeah. Which is, I always, for years and years on panel shows, I always said, why are we paying comedians? Because literally, they're just selling tour tickets off the back of this panel show. This comedian is getting more from being on this show we're getting from the comedian being on it. It seems to me now that actors are getting more from being in movies

than the movie companies are getting from the actors being in their film. So Glenn Powell gets more from being in Running Man than the movie company gets from Glenn Powell being in it because he suddenly has three months' worth of, you know, publicity everywhere he wants to go, being interviewed by everyone who wants to do, doing every single podcast. And we all know that you can monetise your own personal brand far more than you used to be able to do.

It feels to me now that actors should pay to play. It feels like whoever you are, unless, you know, maybe you're, Shanamee, Glenn Powell's manager should say, I'll give you a million dollars to put him in running man because it keeps him in the conversation. It keeps him in the public eye for another three months, four months, in a way that something he just does himself wouldn't do. It's saying this guy has a significance, this guy has a role to play in our culture. And then he just monetizes that monetize it. You get your money, you get your money from endorsements or whatever else it is. Yeah, because Glenn Powell has not failed in running man. Glenn Powell, his face has been everywhere on huge bills.

boards on, you know, being incredibly charming on everything he wants to. And the person who's making money from that is Glenn Powell and Glenn Powell's manager and Glenn Powell's hot sauce. What do you think about that? I definitely think that stars are becoming, we've talked about how they're so diversified and they've got fragrance lines and fashion campaigns and those are the things that in some ways make really big bucks. And those personal brands are incredibly monetisable.

And actually, fashion houses, as I say, and fragrance. houses can make money out of it. But you've got to be in movies in order to keep your face out there. But the movie itself is a sort of loss leader to some extent. Suddenly, I think it will eventually become problematic that he just can't make that leap into the kind of megawatt territory. And I think that eventually people will think, well, I could just put someone else in. So you'll always have to remain competitively priced if you're him.

This is definitely something that people are saying, which is that the movies is just kind of a small thing and it's a form of job visibility. but actually the big money comes from all of these subsidiary businesses that they have. I think that is obviously a really big problem for Hollywood. But if you don't make any movies and you don't give things a try, I think that it just all needs such a big rethink. I do think it's just genuinely extraordinary that, like, Warner's has nothing for the last quarter of the year. There has not been a family movie.

The one genre that you can actually bank on to keep the lights on, no one has bothered putting one out really since July. But thought experiment, if I'm a movie executive, in Hollywood. That must be a hard job. Well, not hard, but you know what I mean, depressing. And I've got a big movie coming out. I just, I get actors and managers to come in and pitch me some of money as to how much their talent would like to be in this film. I say, look, this is what we're spending on marketing. We've got a $100 million dollar marketing budget. So, you know, we'll be on this thing, we'll be on that thing. We'll be teaming up with Coke. There'll be

billboards everywhere. What is that worth to your actor? How much would you like to pay? And people will pitch in, you know, two million, three million, four million dollars. And suddenly, you know, you're being paid $10 million to get your cast because they're aware they're getting six months worth of free publicity. And they're going to get a Gucci campaign now. And they're going to get a Gucci campaign out of it. I love this idea. This is a brilliant. Yeah. I think that is a good idea because it's very difficult to see how otherwise they can continue explaining to stars that they can't have theatrical release. They can't have these huge salaries because it's them who's benefiting.

I mean, listen, you get paid to be on Taskmaster, but if you're a comedian, it is the one thing that will move the dial in terms of absolutely knocking you up to the next level in terms of ticket sales and in terms of notoriety. Feels like if I was a big agent, that'd be worth some money to me. And Hollywood is like 10 times that. Imagine if you were someone else's agent who wasn't sent through Arivo and you managed to get your talent in Wicked, if you think of the money that Cynthia Arivo is made out of Wicked, and quite rightly because she's brilliant in it and, you know, she's absolutely. always, she's sort of an extraordinary star that we haven't seen before. But if someone else had done it and was able to monetise that to, you know, 30, 40, 50 million over the next five years, then it's worth paying five million dollars up front. I think you're right.

I think the press tours in general are becoming just this huge saturation thing. And unless people think of different ways of doing them, then they're all kind of the same. And a lot of people, I've seen a lot of people, right, given that it's been such a terrible quarter in Hollywood. A lot of people say the only people who have benefited from these is just like the stars for exposure, but certainly the movies haven't made any money. Yeah, but the stars have. The stars have, yeah.

And they've laid down potential future income streams as well. Exactly. And so, listen, just very basic economics tells you that something could change there. I'm not saying it well, because it definitely won't, but it could do. I love this take. But how can they be that bad that there isn't anything to see for families? Yeah, it's like the BBC just going, oh, no, we don't, we, sorry, we didn't do anything for Christmas. Yeah, it's just, it's really, it's six months of the year.

It's so late November when Zootopia comes out, that's so ridiculous that there were basically a dropped five months. Do you know what, genuinely, I'm so sorry you have to spend time with your kids. Because we all know that the greatest thing about the cinema is it's two hours apiece. You can kind of shut your eyes. It's one of the few places that you can have just a little nap during the day. Yeah. You know, the amount of movies I saw with my kids when they were growing up, Pixar and all sorts of things, where I saw the first 20 minutes and probably the last 20 minutes.

And I must have had a snooze in the middle. But they were so happy. Yeah, I don't know what happens in most of the middle of the Pixar movies. Shall we do some converts? Let's. This episode is brought to you by Sky Cinema, the go-to destination for 30. Film lovers this Christmas, and this year there's a new Sky original to unwrap a tinsel town arriving on the 5th of December. Now, it follows Brad, a Hollywood action hero, who ends up in an English village panto.

Somewhere between the fairy lights and the footlights, he starts to rediscover what really matters, with help from the locals and a fair share of glitter. Kiefer Sutherland and Rebel Wilson lead the cast with Danny Dyer, Catherine Ryan, Lucy and Lava Scout and Derek Jacoby, a line-up that feels like Christmas lunch at the Bafters. Sky Cinema is also bringing big-screen blockbusters home with Mission Possible, The Final Reckoning, a Minecraft movie and festive favourites like Elf, Love Actually and the Polar Express. Plus you get two view cinema tickets every month and Paramount Plus included at no extra cost, perfect for those nights where the sofa becomes a cinema and the carpet pretends to be a red one.

Upgrade to Sky Cinema this Christmas to enjoy festive favourites, more of the latest blockbusters and the new Sky Original Christmas film, Tinsletown. Welcome back, everybody. Now, after those adverts, let us talk about Christmas adverts, which... That's good. They are all... That's a good link. They're pretty much all out now.

Some of them have, like, refreshes in the last month. But you either see them because they go viral and people are made into a moment. Or if you watch live sport, then you will have seen adverts in the course. And apart from that, you are not seeing. You're not really, because you're not. necessarily watching TV in that way. But it's such a huge spend. Last year, people spent UK brands spent 10.5 billion. And this year they think it will be 12 billion. I was so fascinated by that number on Christmas ads. Okay. So I was so fascinated by the number. Do you know what else

is 12 billion billion? The value of the defence industries to the UK economy. So that is how much they produce the UK economy. That's what they're worth, the GBA. That same amount of money, not from the same source is put back into making us buy some stuff at Christmas. I just find that an interesting comparison of just how much money is spent. I literally, but don't tell England, I bought it a ground to air surface missile for Christmas. Those adverts, they're normally on, they used to be on traditional TV and those are the ones we're going to talk about because they're the ones that kind of get the most cultural purchase. We should say that most adverts now, it's like online search, display, social, all of that stuff. Those are the increasing focus. Nonetheless, these big set pieces still

happen and they've kind of all dropped now and they're not really just an ad they're like some sort of seasonal entertainment event which you want them to go viral so people talk about them more obviously the biggest one normally is the john lewis advert it's always in the vanguard isn't it we spoke to to rosy hanley who runs the advertising side of john lewis so she's on the john lewis side of it because as you say they spend a huge amount of money on these things so I was trying to get to the idea of, is there a return on investment from it? And what is that return on investment? You know, if they're all spending a lot of money, are they all making that much money back?

You know, she's saying on the morning of release of that, they had 1.1 million video views. So, by the way, no one's... This is the raved dad. Raved dad meets adolescence. So no one's looking at rave dad meets adolescence. So no one's worrying about how many people have seen it on TV. It's a tree, oh, we got 1.1 million views on the first morning of the ad, which is up like 176% from the previous year. So her take is, look, the metrics are difficult.

So it's obviously it's a big deal for John Lewis to have that many people looking at something, liking it, and it gives you a warm feeling about John Lewis. She says in about six months' time, we'll see how good, really how good our Christmas was and how well that's gone into the new year. But it's difficult to measure exactly how these things are. making money for brands other than, if you're John Lewis, you have to be a big brand, the whole, you know, forever and ever and ever. And this is one of the big times where you can absolutely re-engage with the public and remind people about John Lewis, remind it, you know. But feelings are very powerful in terms of creating loyalty to brands.

It's really interesting. So if it's giving you emotion. Well, she said, you know, they do huge amounts of research. So, you know, Rave Dad, you know, a thing about not being able to speak, not being able to say the thing that you mean. And she said, well, we did lots of research with our customers. And that was one of the main things that came out of it is people feel that they can't talk in the way they want to to people they love. So you imagine the research they're doing.

It's not just, you know, do you like socks? And so this is one of the things they sent out to Sarchi and Sarchi. Like a year before, these things had done sort of a year in advance. And they said this is one of the things that's one of the territories that we found from our data. And Sarchi and Sarchi came up with this ad which everyone loved the raved ad thing. And it is a question of going into the data of who your customers are, what it is that they want, what they are feeling rather than what they want to buy. And so it's 100% that it really absolutely comes from that. What are you feeling at the moment?

What is it that's at the front of your mind? What is it in the world that sort of is giving you pause for thought? But fascinating how no one is sitting there. The accountants are not going, the return on investment we want is this. What they're actually thinking is, this is what our customers are feeling. how do we show them that we are feeling it soon? It's sad middle-aged men like one of the, like the Waitrose one with Joe Wilkinson.

Yes, amazing. I mean, the message of the John Lewis is that having kids is better than being on a pill. Maybe the message of the Waitrose one, but you can make it with Kiran Knightley, you can. Yeah, if you're Joe Wilkinson. By the way, can I just say, having spoken earlier before the break

about what's supposed to be the most sophisticated storytelling in the world that no one actually wants to go out and see films, I mean, the waitress one's very long. It's like three and a half minutes or something. But I have sat through movies which have less clarity of story that are three and a half hours long. And less sexual chemistry. Ironically, Joe Wilkinson must think it's Christmas.

I love Joe Wilkinson. So he's the nicest man in the whole world. But what an amazing thing for him to be in the effort with Kira Knightley and because of celebrity traitors, for there to be an absolute equivalence between the two of them. You know what? Last year I think I talked about this company called System 1 that has this very sort of sophisticated way of kind of a star system,

multiple different stars for these ads and measures kind of audience satisfaction and audience happiness and all these sort of things. The one that has actually come out, which I think is quite interesting on top this year, is the Coca-Cola one. It's AI. First of all, don't forget, they did an AI one

that's almost identical to this last year. This time it's the same, but instead of humans, it's animals. And it's almost the same. Obviously, the AI is better. Instead of, there has been some sort of, Some people have talked negatively about it. I think campaign magazine

we're trying to, the advertising Bible, we're trying to work out how much negative mention they'd been on it. But actually, what System 1 found was that it's the highest possible score you can get, really. Spike rating when people see it and brand fluency, and that's how quickly people recognize the brand.

Brand fluency. Brand fluency. Brand fluency. How quickly you recognize the brand. And bizarrely, the moment they're most satisfied and this, listen, I don't think this is particularly, I think this is quite dystopian, is when they see the red trucks, because the red trucks is like some sort of Pavlovian thing,

the reminder of all the times I've seen red trucks in the previous Christmas adverts, and that's when the audience is most happy, and they do not care that it is AI. We're a simple species, aren't me? They know what it is. It's creative consistency. You know you're going to get the red trucks,

and they like that. They like to see that. In the same way that some people say, oh, I watch strictly because it's a countdown to Christmas. You know you could use a calendar. I don't think that's particularly, optimistic in terms of where we're going, if people don't mind

that it's AI. Yeah, well, everything I read about the Coca-Cola campaigns of the last two years, it seems to me they've had more people working on that than, you know, virtually any other advert. They've got a lot of people working on their AI stuff. Also, they're aware they've got a visual image, which they're not going to change. So it's not like

they were going to bring in a team of 100 people to revamp Coca-Cola's advertising. It's going to be the red trucks. They seem to be spending a lot of money and a lot of manpower, more to the point, to use AI to make these things, which is why I think there's been less pushback than they might ordinarily have been. It feels like they're doing, it's quite a cheeky use of...

I don't think people know anything about that. No one normal, watching that advert, knows anything about that and that's not why there's been no pushback. They just don't care. That's not been why there's been no pushback. That's not why there's been no pushback. They just don't care. Yes, no, that's definitely true. But we're doing a podcast about entertainment, so do we care? Yes, I

slightly do care because it makes me think that people won't care. They don't really care when things are made by AI, and they don't And you can say, oh, like, there have been humans doing that really fun prompt writing thing in the background. Which to me is not the same as, sadly, being an animator. And even though... That's exactly my point, is I think that in the industry, people have given it a slightly free pass because they're aware that a lot of people have worked on it, and they're taking a slightly kind of detached view of what AI is.

I think the lesson we learn, and this system, one thing is fascinating, is that an audience, you know, when people say, oh, it's ridiculous. you know, they change the number of wheels on the truck at one point. Nobody notices. Nobody notices. You know, sometimes you spend ages. They just feel happy when they see the red trucks, the end. But, you know, in an edit sometimes, people say, oh, no, we've got to change that because the water is here and then it's there. No one notices any of those things.

People feel television. They feel adverts. They feel movies. They just do. And this idea that the downfall of AI is going to be that it is not going to be technically proficient enough for people. that is definitely not the case because no one, most people don't care about technical proficiency. It feels

like this Coca-Codo thing. I just think you have to keep a watching brief on it because I think it definitely opened the door to the fact that people do not mind a lack of technical mastery in what it is they are watching. But as you say, I would rather there were animators working on that

than, you know, people putting in prompts. But what one does about that, I don't know other than maybe not wave it through. Whereas the John Lewis sad. No AI at all. They shot it in the fridge in Brixton. Yeah, I know. The one thing about that advert, I've been reading about the kid in it who didn't tell his mum he was in it until she, you know, so she sort of saw it live. The dad in that advert, who, you know, does a great job, I think, conveys an awful lot. I cannot find out who he is. There is, there seems to be

no record. Anyway, so I'm always fascinated with who's in things and what they've been in before and there is no record as to who he is. So if anyone listening to this can tell us who that John Lewis actor is. Well, one assumes not. He's a clean skin. They had to just find a generic dad. Wow. Maybe.

Maybe they did. But it was fascinating talking to Rose Hanley about the John Lewis advert. And what a big deal it is to John Lewis. And it just is that thing. As human beings every year, there is a reset and there is a, we take stock of who we are as people. And brands do want to own that. That's a very, very big deal to own something like that, to have that kind of relationship with customers that when they think about the world and think about who we are as a country, they think about our brand. So the return on investment question, which I put to Rosie, is fascinating because it is utterly intangible and it is just about weaving John Lewis into the fabric of British life.

The other thing I asked her as said, how often do people pitch you songs for, as you said, my entire year? is people pitching me songs and saying, oh, you should think about that. She said, by the way, I've never used one that someone's pitched me. She said, but my entire year is people saying, oh, I'll tell you why, I just listen to this. This would be amazing. But where love lives, Alison Limerick, I think,

is a cracking choice. But has it troubled the charts? Because sometimes the music... No, not particularly. I was going to do a thing, and there's just no point about Christmas number one. Christmas number one is dead now. Yeah.

So Alison Limerick is, you know, fourth favourite for Christmas number one, but it's not going to happen because we know what Christmas number one it's going to be now. We knew for a few years it was going to be X Factor. Then we knew it's going to be lad baby. And now we know it's wham. Every year it's going to be wham. You know, you can still get kind of evens on it being wham this year, which is sort of free money. But that lovely race for Christmas number one we used to have is, you know, it's 13 years ago,

kidding in the name was probably the last funny race for Christmas number one we had. And now it just isn't anything. I would love to talk about it. But we now have the adverts race, which we didn't, which is itself a relatively new bolt on. And we have to just take things where we can we just got time i think i just wanted to talk you know like when an album comes out that everyone gets into at the same time and at the moment is that it's the rosalia album lucks that everyone's gone crazy for and rightly so if you if you listen to it it's very very very unusual it's unlike anything else probably you've quite listened to it's got touches of flamenco it's got you know latin urban music in there it has a classical music raw phonemonicre on it

burek is on it it's really really very very beautiful and extraordinary album it's sort of basically She's based around stories of female Christian saints. She's got an incredible voice, and everyone has just discovered it. She's been around for a long time. Firstly, listen to the album, if people have not listened to it. I think you'd love it. But secondly, she is an amazing character because she has come up with this, what is essentially a very avant-garde album that people adore.

But, you know, she also happens to be a brand ambassador for skims. Yeah. And she's got a makeup line. And she's made a transformation-flavored coke for Coca-Cola. So she's absolutely in the heart of the world of Kardashians and this, that or the other, and she's made one of the great avant-garde pop albums of the 21st century. That is religious. Yeah.

Sorry. I mean, that to me is, the one of the things I found most interesting was that just I think of the weekend, the Vatican came out that a cardinal from the sort of basically the Vatican Culture Department came out and praised her. For me, that's quite interesting because I grew up in an era where, first of all, where Spain was. was not quite a theocracy, but it was very, very religious, Spain, where she's from, she's Catalan, has become much more secular, but also where the Vatican condemned things. And everyone, obviously in the old days, Elizabeth Taylor, John Lennon, but then Madonna, anyone involved in the last temptation of Christ, the Vatican condemning people used to get headlines.

Now the Vatican praising people, because everything has become much more secular in lots of different ways. and I find the religion of this album really sort of fascinating. It's like sort of brat, brat religion. Well, it's, I mean, it plays a religion. It's a very 20s, 20s. In the same way that Madonna used to play with religion, I guess, but for... Well, Madonna's really praised it, because she obviously sees a sort of bloodline between it all. But it's very weird because, I mean, on the last album, on Motamami, the biggest ruminations on God were on a song called Hente.

So I find it sort of... Anyway, this cardinal said that when she talks about spirituality, it means she captures a profound need in contemporary culture to approach spirituality to cultivate an inner life. I do think there is something in that. You know, I definitely do. People are still religious in lots of spiritual, but not institutionally so. Yeah.

The church is thinking, we should get in on this spirituality thing. Yeah. That seems big. Well, rather than just say you haven't done it by the book, which is what they used to say, they're now like, hey, anyone's talking about it at all. That's good. It's, to me, it's fascinating that you can make something, I mean, really so idiosyncratic and, I mean, a lot of pop right now. And also, I saw her say in an interview, you know, I'm quite bored of celebrities, like celebrity beef in pop songs.

And instead, she's gone with saints. Yeah, it's clever, isn't it? It's quite, yeah. But it's different. But it can be really commercial. And one of the reasons it can be really commercial that I am definitely very interested in is the idea of being global now. It's really hard to break into the, you know, you know, you can. The UK charts are all US dominated.

The idea of this global chart, if you look at the Spotify global chart, there's a point, since Lux has come out, she's had lots and lots of songs in the Spotify global top 50. She may not have troubled the charts in your individual country, but she's so global. Because of the way that people consume and discover music, you can be someone making a lot of money and being very, very successful and not really troubling top tens, even top 20s locally at all. I mean, I'm not saying in Spain, but. Yeah, she's a 13 number one's in Spain But yes, she's definitively, you know, crossed over in the UK now In the way I think she crossed over in the States Which has always been slightly more amenable to Spanish language, music

But she is now clearly going to be an absolutely enormous star in the UK as well We will hear an awful lot about her. Like her, you know, one of her previous albums, Elmer Guerreire was about some That was about a 13th century Ossetan novel Flamenca You know, she's and yet met with universal acclaim and full of, you know, R&B bangers and she's an extraordinary figure. But it was also, was it not also her degree thesis?

Yeah, her first two albums were her degree like Ben and Sebastian for indie kids out there. Yeah. Yeah, she was, because she studied flamenco, she's, you know, she's music theory and all that stuff. But what an extraordinary... I'm going to do my thesis in the form of an amazing album. But someone who will whacked lyrical about Almodavar and Tarkovsky and also be a Skims brand ambassador,

that feels like what the 21st century. century was really, really looking for. Someone who's happy to do it all, to take it all and to understand where we are as a century and to be... Liberation theology to say, I'm still a feminist, but this is, I can still, I believe in this higher path. It's... None of which, by the way, works if you don't make a great album. So that is Rosalia. I just wanted to mention it because lots of people have started talking about her and I just think she's an incredibly interesting person. So if you've heard some of the music but didn't know so much

about her, I just think she's a very interesting figure. And I think she's going to continue to be incredibly interesting as the years go by. So I just think she's someone just to absolutely say she should be on your cultural radar. If you don't like the album, that's okay. But if you listen to it, it might be one of your new favourites. Any recommendations, Marina? Yes, I would like to recommend anatomy of a cancellation, which is a BBC series, a BBC sound series, which explores, I mean, from every angle,

the sort of cancellation of the author Kate Clanchie who wrote a book, who was accused of racism in a book she wrote about teaching children and it's absolutely for Katie, it's done by Katie Razol who I just absolutely love. I think she's brilliant at the BBC and she's talked to so many different people in every different angle of this story

and it's really gripping about our age and it's very well done. I mean, I found it incredibly depressing in lots of other ways, but it's so interesting and I mean it's just a full it's the 360 degree look at at this which I think is just you can do that over the course of seven episodes and I think it's wonderful. Excellent.

I want to recommend a book on our bonus episode this week. We're going to do Christmas gift guys, but I think this would be a good Christmas gift for people. I just finished the Ian McEwen book, which is called What We Can Know, which is the worst title of any book ever. I've been reading it and I love it and I can see the front cover, but I can literally I'm having to drag what.

we can know out of somewhere because it's almost impossible to remember. It's such a brilliant book. It's written 100 years in the future. A literature professor is looking back on a poem that disappeared that he's trying to find and he looks into the life of this poet and his wife and the people around them. But it's amazing because you're 100 years in the future. So you sort of see what that is like. He's looking back as an historian to our era now. But because it's the McEwen, it's also beautifully written, and there's some very, very funny bits and great characters. So it's what we can know. I mean, good luck with that.

Ian McEwen will be easy for you to remember, but what we can know. And I thought it was an absolute banger, if you can call it an Ian McEwen novel, a banger. I think you can. So you have a Christmas gift guy for our members on Friday, but on Thursday we have a special episode, which is I'm really looking forward to because I've got some really, really good ones for you. the greatest comebacks of all time in showbiz history. So across all the different genres. Not disses, but career combats. Career, yes.

Rather than just wrap our team. Yes, not a comedian having to go at someone in the front row. Yeah, the greatest career comebacks in showbiz. We're doing that on Thursday. I'm looking forward to it very, very much indeed. But otherwise, we'll see on Thursday. See you on Thursday. This episode was brought to you by our good friends at Sky.

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