David Zazlav's Disturbing Success Story; Parsing "Project Hail Mary" Box Office; New Releases Reactions

0:00Ryan Lattanzio:K-pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really. Stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. And participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

0:35Welcome to Screen Talk, NDYR's weekly podcast, bringing you up to speed on the latest goings on in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson, and I'm at the Sonoma International Film Festival.

0:45Ryan Lattanzio:And I'm Ryan LaTonzio in New York. This week, we're going to look at some of the movies that we hope and hear might be turning up at the Cannes Film Festival, with that lineup being announced on April 9th. We're also going to look at recent Warner CEO David Zaslov's disturbing success story and exit from the company as Warner's heads toward Paramount. And we will parse the extraordinary box office of Project Hail Mary, which I think is great, by the way. I'm very pleased. I mean, anything that goes as well as that is a good thing. And what it might presage for the future. I love being able to use the word presage.

1:22It always makes me feel erudite and smart. And we both got screenings of Neon's The Christophers, the new Steven Soderbergh, and Exit 8, as well as A24's The Drama.

1:35Ryan Lattanzio:Which we can't say very much about because the embargo is on March 30th, which is a few days after this episode airs. But if you do some internet sleuthing, you will find all the spoilers you need to know recently on TMZ, actually. Yeah, that's what I gather. But first, Anne, why don't you tell us what's happening in Sonoma, where you just saw a movie called Poetic License, which was at TIFF. It's Maude Apatow's directorial debut. And this was going to be distributed by Roque, who we spoke to on the podcast before Sundance, that is now a company in crisis. It is definitely a company in crisis, given that most of its lead executives have split and left.

2:17And so they went out and bought like four movies, five movies, and Poetic License was one of them. Dead Man's Wire was the one they chose to open first. And they got some good people. I mean, Megan Colligan is a very respected and experienced executive. And as you said, we had her on the podcast. And they were very excited about their new venture. But the money behind it didn't come through. and after the first movie tanked. And it's also a situation where you look at the reality of what it takes to open a movie in today's marketplace, and a movie with no stars in it is sort of a problem. A movie that is good but not great is sort of a problem.

3:00I like Dead Man's Wire, actually. But they talked themselves into something that wasn't going to bear fruit. And so this other movie, Poetic License, is looking for a home. And it is actually an interesting case of another movie that is good, not great. They did deliver it to the Sonoma Film Festival. It played. It played really well. The audience seemed to enjoy it. It's a very funny movie. That's the thing that it has going for it. And it has a great cast. So you've got Maude Apatow's debut, obviously daughter of Judd. You've got, and he was involved. I listened to the Q &A with the writer. Rafi Donatich, her debut also.

3:48And the star, it's interesting because it's Maude Apatow's mother. Leslie Mann is the star, Judd Apatow's wife, who's a very capable comedic actress. And she's really the star of the movie. And then Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barr. So she's a disaffected, lonely wife. They've just moved. She's the wife of a professor. They've moved to a new college. And she befriends in her poetry class these two boys who are adorable and good friends and really fun to watch together. So Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barth Feldman, they're great. So the cast really elevates this to a degree. But is it, you know, it's a little scruffy.

4:34It's a little bare bones, low budget kind of thing. And but the script is great. This young woman is going to have a future. And she and I spoke and she said, basically, there was a bidding war for the movie at TIFF. And it's going to go to one of those bidders. Presumably they'll make a deal and on onward with the arts.

4:55Ryan Lattanzio:Most likely here, Roque offered a figure that would allow the producers, the financiers to pay everyone back on their investment on this movie. And so one of these bidders that we're talking about probably was not the case. You know, this is actually something that I just heard about Josephine as well. And the fact that there was a kind of a bidding war at Sundance, but Sumerian Pictures was the one that offered the most money. Yeah. And now everybody's wondering if Sumerian Pictures is solid, too. Look, the long list of casualties, the graveyard, if you will, of independent distributors, you know, they saw an opportunity in the marketplace.

5:37They were able to talk people into investing in something where there might be an opportunity to to fill some holes. But the truth of the matter is that Neon and A24 struggle to get some of these movies across the finish line. It is not an easy time to release movies in any way, shape, or form.

5:56Ryan Lattanzio:This Roque situation reminds me of another cautionary tale. Remember Broad Green Pictures? Which actually ran for a couple of years, but it didn't have any successes. It's funny, I was spoken to about a job there, and the perks promised included a private chef and access to a private plane. So there's your problem right there. So, Ryan, were you surprised that Project Hail Mary did so well? You know, I had talked about feeling like the length of the movie was a barrier to entry, but honestly, that didn't really matter. I'm not surprised that it I'm surprised that it basically is on Oppenheimer levels with Oppenheimer almost three years ago opening at 82 million and Project Hail Mary at 80.5 million, making this Amazon's biggest success for a theatrical release.

6:46Probably biggest success really for any film they've put their dollars behind at this point.

6:52Ryan Lattanzio:But also, you know, this project was originally a baby of Michael DeLuca and Pam Abdi, right, who brought it to Amazon during their brief stint. They optioned the material when it was just in galley form before it actually became a big, the Andy Weir novel before it became a big hit. Yeah, that's just another reminder of the imprimatur of taste that those two bring to any project they're shepherding. And it's great to see it trickling down. You know, Amazon has stumbled a little bit already this year with things like Mercy, Crime 101, and obviously the Melania documentary. I think with Project Hail Mary, it's really a rebuke of the sort of doomer generation of viewers that I count myself in.

7:32Ryan Lattanzio:And that this movie is consistently hopeful, despite very kind of weighty material about an impending apocalypse. and it's very family-friendly despite the complicated science, which through Ryan Gosling's video diaries, the movie does give you a couple of chances to absorb. And finally, as you said in an article that you wrote, this is about a competent person who is fixing things and that's reassuring for people to see right now. You're right. The scale and scope of it is extraordinary, but it's a crowd pleaser. And with a star performance from Gosling, who, by the way, has not always performed, Fall Guy was not a hit.

8:07Ryan Lattanzio:Or First Man, go back to that one. And First Man, the last time he was in space, and also the Blade Runner sequel. You know, these are not, the original Blade Runner wasn't a hit either, by the way. But we can argue that the filmmakers and Lord and Miller were willing to make it smart. That's what I love about it, and trust the audience to follow the two main characters, the reluctant astronaut and his alien collaborator, Rocky, as they try to communicate and save the world. They were willing to be emotional, to let the film, as you said, offer hope and the idea that competent people can figure things out, which is the same thing that drives the hit series The Pit.

8:46Doctors take people who are broken and fix them. Ryland, Grace and Rocky will fix the universe.

8:53Ryan Lattanzio:Like we said, Ryan Gosling's marquee abilities have been hampered in some recent examples. But the next big tentpole that he's going to be starring in and leading is Star Wars Starfighter with Sean Levy, which obviously the success of that movie is sort of faded in the stars at this point. But it's certainly going to basically secure his status as somebody who can really open a movie along with this one. People forget that Sean Levy was the producer of Arrival. You know, he's actually somebody who is very, very clever. He knows he has a good team behind him and he knows how to make commercial movies.

9:29I'm a big fan of Sean Levy's. He makes really mainstream. He's also the guy who backed Ryan Reynolds in the Deadpool movies. So he's a smart guy. I feel like that. But remember that Kathleen Kennedy booted Lord and Miller off of Star Wars. I would have loved to have seen what they would have done with that. She kicked him off and replaced them with who? Ron Howard. Okay, enough said.

10:00Ryan Lattanzio:Well, and look, she's not around anymore. So that answers a lot. I have a lot of respect for Kathleen Kennedy, but somehow the Star Wars match was not a match made in heaven. The other thing about this blockbuster is the marketing. Gosling and the team are doing a lot of video, and Amazon, MGM, and Lord Miller are sharing it on social media, along with the behind-the-scenes footage, to a degree that I have never seen before. They've already got a whole diagram of Rocky and how he was designed and every little bit of his anatomy and where his inner organs are. It's amazing. And I love it. I eat it up.

10:41I want it. But our craft team, sometimes they don't get access. Other studios don't give them access to visual effects, behind the scenes stuff until way after the movie opens. And people are responding. It's all over social media. So it's a very effective marketing campaign, I would say. And they're using Gosling to good effect as well.

11:03Ryan Lattanzio:Totally. Normally, all this behind-the-scenes material about visual effects is embargoed to even weeks after some of these movies open. And I think a lot of that in the past has had to do with studios wanting to keep a lid on elements of practical versus digital effects and maybe leave that as somewhat of a mystery for audiences. But in this movie, not only is it good marketing, but I think it also could encourage studios to rely less on digital effects and green screens. Oh, I think it's going to change the world. Yeah, lean into more classical modes of filmmaking that can still surprise audiences while also tapping into nostalgia.

11:36Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. And also they like to boast about the practical sets and puppeteering that they used. They, you know, I actually think, so they have less to hide, if you like. Less pixels is more. That's another lesson from this. Let the audience find, you know, their level of intelligence. You know, they don't have to understand everything. Gosling is very smart because he gets on there and says, I didn't understand everything. I had Andy Weir explain, you know, write out all the things. They had an earwig in his ear and told him what to put on the board, you know, that kind of thing. He isn't pretending to be to be that smart.

12:12So the thing to look for this weekend is what is the hold and what is the fall off? And given what the numbers are during the week, it's going to be a very good hold. It's going to be like 30%, 35%, something, 40 maybe. That would all be good numbers. Anything under 50 is a good number. But I think it could even go up. It could be amazing.

12:35Ryan Lattanzio:People in my life who have not gone to a movie in six months to a year, they're going to see this. Yeah, I have a friend who never goes to the movies. She's an Academy member, and she actually went to the theater. She gets to see them at the Academy screenings, which aren't happening right now. So she had to see this. It's a conversation movie. All right. So our colleague, Chris O 'Fall, wrote a terrific essay about how David Zasloff's Warner Brothers represents the absolutely the wrong way to run a studio. And I've argued this in the past, that the studios are aiming their short term goals at Wall Street.

13:12You know, it's all about what the numbers are and how you can improve the stock instead of worrying about making the company better or long term goals. and you know if if people are saying well bob eiger went back to disney but he didn't manage to raise the stock price well maybe he was making long-term decisions for the good of the studio for disney that's what netflix does that's one of the reasons why netflix is so extraordinarily successful they're not worrying about they do look at the stock price obviously and make course corrections but for the most part they're investing in their own company and he comes out with this enormous exit package, you know, 800, what is it,$800 million or something?

13:56So he's really, I will say this, there was a party, pre-Oscar party, and I've heard other people report this at the Vanity Fair party as well. He would be walking around the party with his wife. No one would go up to him. No one would say hello. You know, I think he's going to be a real pariah in Hollywood. I think he's in for a real rude awakening when this change occurs.

14:21Ryan Lattanzio:The outcome of this is depressing in the sense that for the last four years and looking into the next however many years, the people who are really in control of the studio are not inside the system. It's stockholders' demands that are really pulling a lot of the strings here. And that's how you end up with something like the streaming slop series at HBO Max. That's the new Harry Potter series, which looks ghastly and like a total cash in on nostalgia for the original movies that aren't even that far in the rear view. This is a series that similar to Lord of the Rings Amazon, which they don't really share their viewership numbers.

15:00Ryan Lattanzio:They've given some vague ideas, but I don't know that this one. That one looks like an accident may to happen. When you're going from, I remember, I've said this before, when they announced, you know, Superman versus Batman, Ken Tsujihara at Comic-Con, you could tell, you knew it was just, it was just a stock market play that they were reverse engineering into a movie. That's not the way to run a studio. No, and that's exactly what they're doing with this Harry Potter series in preparation for HBO Max or HBO even to become a tile on a broader Paramount platform. This series is coming out at Christmas, so I won't be viewing it, but I'm sure many will.

15:42I haven't looked at it yet.

15:44Ryan Lattanzio:Don't bother. So Ryan, the Cannes lineups are coming out. I'm dashed that we won't see the Spielberg or the Inuitu or the Ostland, because they're not ready, apparently. But I'm excited for new films from Polish director Paweł Palakowski and Russian Andrzej Zwieg. Let's see if I can do this. Zwiegintsev. What are you looking forward to that you expect to see there, Ryan? You're right, Anne, in that I think this is going to be a can that's light on studio fare. We're not going to have a Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. It's going to be heavier on auteur movies and European Art House, which, you know, that's home sweet home for me.

16:25Ryan Lattanzio:So I'm super happy about that. Yeah, you're talking about Andrei Zviagintsev, who has a movie out coming called Minotaur, which all his movies have played at Cannes, and it seems like a lock. And from his first movie, The Return, to Leviathan and Loveless, he's someone who always works in political allegory out of Russia, but it's grounded in real emotion. I'm a huge fan of his. I love his work. Yeah, me too. Another Russian guy that we love that is pegged to possibly premiere there is Kantomir Balagov, who did Beanpole. And that was in 2019. But he's since left Russia post the invasion of Ukraine.

17:04Ryan Lattanzio:He's got a movie called Butterfly Jam. That's an English language movie with Barry Keoghan and Riley Keogh and our friend Harry Melling. So that could end up there. We like Harry Melling. Yeah, the other one I'm hearing is locked, and a lot of people have reiterated this already, is Christian Munju's Fjord, also an English-language debut, and this one with Sebastian Stan, who is Romanian, so I'm presuming there'll be some Romanian in the film, but then you also have Renato Reinsva in it. Other ones that are pretty sure bets are the new Ryosuke Hamaguchi, French language, all of a sudden, with Virginie Ephira.

17:42Ryan Lattanzio:I also heard that James Gray's movie, Paper Tiger, truly isn't ready. Often not ready is a misdirection. That means it got rejected or something, but I'm hearing that's actually not the case. But it did apparently receive an MPA rating, even though it doesn't have a U.S. distributor. Well, James Gray has always been canned friendly. but is there any any possibility that Joel Cohen's Jack of Spades will be there? I did hear that that is submitted so I think that would make sense unless it goes to Venice or you know goes the way of the fall. Pavel Pavlikovsky has a new movie 1949 with Sandra Hewler and this is about author Tomas Mann.

18:23Ryan Lattanzio:I'm sure it's like another black and white movie that is somehow an ode to his parents, which he wants to do. Can't wait. I'm a big fan of his. Well, Sondra Huller. We can't wait to see her anytime, anywhere, including the project Hail Mary, by the way. Yeah, so Anne, there was a movie that premiered at Toronto last year that's coming out April 10th, but we want to talk about it now a little bit, which is Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers. This is his second movie. Now, I mean, last year he really had three movies come out, between Presents, Black Bag, and then this movie at TIFF. And this is with Michaela Cole and Ian McKellen.

18:59Ryan Lattanzio:What were your thoughts? I really, really liked this. And my big question after I saw it was, why didn't it have more buzz at Toronto? And it has a decent Metascore in the 70s. And it would have been, I would think, one of the better films that played at Toronto, given everything else. But it really didn't, I didn't hear much about it, which makes me wonder about Toronto as a place to, you know, how things get lost there. There's like 300 features there every year. It's been true for a very long time. It's a two-hander between a garrulous old artist. I like using the word garrulous as well. A garrulous old artist, Ian McKellen, and his almost silent younger artist that he's hiring as his assistant, supposedly, as you say, McKellick Kuhl.

19:51who is expressive in her own way. She is remarkable, actually, to look at and to watch. And she holds the screen in a very interesting way. The only thing I can think of, because it's so claustrophobic, because it is so much about the two of them navigating this rather tricky situation where he hasn't finished all these paintings and she might want to finish them for him, but he might not want her to, and his children are involved in trying to cheat death with these paintings. But the screenplay is fantastic by Ed Solomon. I'm going to meet him while I'm up here. I really enjoyed this. It's a smart audience movie, like most of Soderbergh's movies.

20:38Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I loved it. And it doesn't pander to the audience either. You're exactly right. It's for smart viewers. And I don't know how many we have left. But actually, we do. We do. I should be more hopeful in that regard. Yeah, Michaela Cole is not only extremely striking looking, she's also a brilliant actor. And she also is starring in David Lowery's Mother Mary from A24 that I am also embargoed from speaking about, which I have seen. So I think between these movies, she's doing some of her deepest work since I May Destroy You, which was her HBO series from 2019 that won a bunch of Emmys. And then you have Ian McKellen having great fun playing a gay character, which I love to see.

21:16Ryan Lattanzio:and here he is hilariously spewing vitriol and cynicism while doing these cameo birthday missives for fans to earn money that he doesn't really need now that he hasn't had a good painting in a couple of decades. And these actors have a great rapport. This is out April 10th and I am really excited for people to see it. Yes, we recommend that. So Ryan, the other movie that we saw from Neon recently, did you see it? Did you see Exudate? I did see Exudate and this was at Cannes in 2025. It's based on a walking simulator video game called The Exit 8, and it's directed by Genki Kawamura. And it was already released in Toho to great success in Japan last year.

21:58Ryan Lattanzio:And well, I'd love to hear what you thought of it. But what I enjoyed about this, which is, you know, it takes place almost entirely in a Japanese metro station. And some audiences might find it a bit one note, but in terms of the latest craze of movies cashing in on video games, It's refreshing to see such an original piece of IP. I couldn't agree more. It's a very strange labyrinthine, as it were, right? You're using your words today, Anne. I know. I love using my long words. Japanese movie with a high concept, which I don't want to give away. Yes, he's in a loop. He's kind of trapped in the subway.