00:00Give us a little review of kind of what we saw in terms of ticket sales for the industry in 25, and what's the expectation for next year?
00:06Well, we had some highs and lows this year.
00:08I think the highs, obviously, the best-performing Memorial Day weekend of all time.
00:12That's right. I forgot about that.
00:13Yeah, movies like Lilo and Stitch.
00:15You had the latest Mission Impossible.
00:17And then we also had the worst October in a generation, excluding 2020.
00:21I think it's the worst one in 30 years, something like that.
00:23So highs and lows very much there, and that's completely correlated, directly connected to the film slate.
00:29If you don't have enough releases from studios, there's less opportunities to go up to the plate and do well.
00:34I didn't think there were that many good movies.
00:37I go to the movies a lot.
00:39I'm at the Alamo, usually on a weekly, at least once every two weeks.
00:46And other than one battle after another, I really wasn't impressed by almost anything this year.
00:54It's been highs and lows there as well.
00:56And now I know, by the way, who it is that I'm reporting with the cards when I go to the Alamo.
01:00That's where I recognize the voice from.
01:02They don't throw people out enough.
01:04They even throw more people out at the Alamo.
01:07But no, I think there's been some great movies.
01:09You mentioned one battle after another from Warner Brothers, a great film.
01:13There were a lot of divisive movies.
01:14I think there's a fantastic movie from A24 called Eddington from the director Ari Aster.
01:20Okay, I have not seen that yet.
01:21It's about the 2020 pandemic and all the grifting from that period, right?
01:25That's not going to be an audience-friendly movie.
01:27You're going to have to wait a couple of years to revisit that one.
01:30Well, they'll play it in the Alamo in a couple of years because they bring back the old picks there.
01:35What's the outlook for 2026?
01:37What are the studios slated?
01:39You know, I think the data point that you pulled up a second ago, $9.2 billion, makes sense according to what we're looking at here internally at the box office company.
01:49Getting to $9 might be the baseline, honestly.
01:53It's a box office that really hasn't hit that mark consistently.
01:57And if we look at the schedule, Q1 is going to be a slow.
02:00It's going to be a slog time going through a very, let's say, inconsistent calendar during that period.
02:06I'm thinking around $1.6 billion in the first quarter, which isn't great.
02:122025 was $1.45, I think, around there.
02:15But in July, things really take off.
02:17You have a lot of tentpoles in July.
02:19July is really going to make or break the 2026 in general.
02:23I mean, we had, I think it was the CFO of Disney on, and he was telling us about his film slate.
02:30And I noticed every single thing that he mentioned was a sequel, or the fifth Toy Story, right?
02:37He's like, oh, we have Zootopia 2.
02:39By the way, not nearly as good as Zootopia 1.
02:43Toy Story 5, you know, Avatar 3.
02:46Like, is there anything new coming out of these studios?
02:49There's new things coming out.
02:50You just mentioned one battle after another from Warner Brothers.
02:53They had a couple of other great original hits this year.
02:55Dude, I can't overstate how good that movie was, and especially for a car lover.
03:00Like, for a car guy, it was far better for me than F1.
03:04I was hugely disappointed by F1.
03:06But one battle after another, with its homage to Bullet, was just an amazingly well-shot, well-written movie.
03:15And an original, right?
03:16And you had, from the same studio, Sinners, Weapons.
03:18You have originals out there that audiences are clamoring for.
03:21Sinners and Weapons were also great movies.
03:23Now, these movies aren't built to be billion-dollar movies.
03:25Originals aren't.
03:26So they're not going to be part of this conversation, but they play a crucial role in the marketplace.
03:30What did you think of F1?
03:31Because this is what I was talking with Joe about.
03:33You know, I'm a car lover, a race fan.
03:37So to me, F1 was too much bigger.
03:39You're too inside baseball, though.
03:41It was like big tent, you know, big box office movie, and not enough actual racing.
03:46Joe loves baseball.
03:47Joe loves wrestling.
03:48So he didn't like Moneyball.
03:49He didn't like Iron Claw.
03:50Right.
03:51And I guess if you're really into ping pong, then you're not going to like Marty Supreme,
03:55right?
03:55Well, the good thing about Marty Supreme is it's much more a New York City movie than a
03:59ping pong movie.
03:59Great movie about living in the city and kind of faking it until you make rent.
04:04That's what it feels like living in New York, especially in your 20s, early 30s.
04:07It's a movie about that.
04:08I highly recommend that.
04:09Doing great in the marketplace so far.
04:11And Timothee, Tim, is it Timothee?
04:13I don't know.
04:14Is he Chalamet, does he win an Oscar for that?
04:16Well, I don't know if the Oscar's coming or not, but he's had like a Christmas movie
04:20the last three years.
04:21That's another one next year with the next Dune movie.
04:23It's a Chalamet-smus is what we're calling it.
04:25Yeah, yeah.
04:26My daughter wants to name our next kid, Timothee Chalamet Miller.
04:29Oh, there you go.
04:30That just flies off the tongue.
04:32Talk to us about China.
04:33For the longest time, that was the growth driver for global Hollywood.
04:36Then they kind of shut down here with the pandemic and other issues.
04:40I understand it's opening back up now.
04:42Well, it depends on the sort of movie that plays in the Chinese market.
04:45The Chinese market doesn't need Hollywood to be a behemoth.
04:49It had the only $2 billion movie this year, a movie that only made 1% of its global gross
04:55in the United States, Nezha 2, and a movie really that just needed China to succeed on
05:00its own.
05:01But we also saw it play a crucial role for Disney this year in releases like Avatar, Fire
05:06and Ash currently in release over there, and a fantastic run from Zootopia 2.
05:10Disney being the only studio that has had a billion-dollar global earner in 2025 outside
05:16of China's Nezha 2.
05:18By the way, Warner Brothers, the battle there, I think, is very fascinating in that David Ellison
05:27paints himself and his sister as a duo that want to make movies for the creative community
05:34and put them in theaters on the big screen, which I laud, right, as a fan.
05:40Whereas Netflix, you know, they typically want to stream stuff.
05:44If it goes in the theater, maybe a week or two, but they really don't care at all about
05:48the movie theater.
05:49What's your take on this?
05:51We need movies.
05:51That's my number one priority here.
05:54We need more movies coming out in theaters in order to grow the box office back to pre-pandemic
05:59levels.
05:59Whoever gets us there, that's fine.
06:01But the reality is...
06:03But is Netflix going to get us there?
06:04And I'm not sure Paramount will either, to be completely honest.
06:07The way I compare this, and I apologize for this comparison, it's like eating a poop sandwich
06:11and arguing over the bread.
06:13It's not going to make any much of a difference, is it?
06:15You and Elizabeth Warren are on the same page here on the poop sandwich reference.
06:19How are the theater operators doing?
06:22I think they're concerned.
06:23More on the film availability, on which billionaire group ends up tackling Warner Brothers, right?
06:29Is it going to be much of a difference if Warner Brothers still exists and only puts out seven
06:33to eight movies a year?
06:34No.
06:35Can I get an independent movie made today?
06:37Can I go out to Sundance and shop it?
06:40I don't want to use the Miramax, but that's the only company I can think of at the moment,
06:43in the early days.
06:44The Weinstein Company is what you pick?
06:46Exactly.
06:47Well, we don't have to go that back far in time to the last Academy Awards, where an
06:52independent filmmaker like Sean Baker put out a movie like Enora through Neon.
06:56Great movie.
06:57Won Best Picture.
06:58Great movie.
06:59Did it go to streaming two weeks into its run?
07:01No.
07:02It stayed there for a full theatrical exclusivity window, full theatrical run.
07:06It basically won most of the Oscars, if not all of them, honestly, that it was nominated
07:10for.
07:11That's a great example of a filmmaker who believes in the filmmaking experience, who will shoot
07:16a movie on an iPhone if he has to, and make a movie on his own terms.
07:19He's not going to go into the Sundance to Marvel pipeline, like we've seen so many other
07:23filmmakers do.
07:24He's going to stick to his guns and release movies, no matter if they're big tentpoles,
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