Chris Columbus on Harry Potter, Home Alone and The Thursday Murder Club

23:28Do you think the family knew that as the process was going on? I'm sure they knew it. I mean, certainly Daniel Radcliffe's family were not initially interested in having him in the movie because they knew what eventually happened. But they were such wonderful people, all of the parents, that they protected their kids from the eventual reality of fame. You know, what would happen when this movie came out. Suddenly these kids went from, you know, a few photographs in the newspapers before we started shooting. It didn't mean anything. It really, the kids could go about living their life. But the moment the film was released in the UK and across the world, suddenly they couldn't go out in public anymore.

24:03So everything changed for them. And the parents had to prepare them for that. And that's what I meant by casting the parents as well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you can see the three of them seem very smart and together, which is lovely. That's testament to, you know, you can put your kids on the stage, but you've got to be surrounded by smart people. Can I ask one question about the Harry Potter thing as well? Well, Rick Mayo filmed some scenes in the first Harry Potter that haven't seen the light of day. Do you remember working with Rick? Yeah, yeah, I do. Because the situation was, I was obsessed when I started Potter, funnily enough, with this character Peeves, who was this sort of mischievous ghost who was about two feet tall, who haunted the hallways of Hogwarts.

24:45And Rick Mayo came in and did an amazing sort of reading as Peeves. I bet. And we filmed the peeve scenes, but we could never digitally. It was a CGI character and we could never get it right. We never were able to design the character to any of our liking. So the peeve scenes were cut from the film. Rick Mayo's performance was lost. And that's the thing I'm probably most excited about in terms of the HBO series. I want to see how they do peeves because we could never we had designs for peeves and they never were appealing. They were kind of, I don't want to say grotesque, but we just would have turned the audience off.

25:22So we decided not to shoot Peews. But Rick Mayall's performance was fantastic. He would have been a great Peews. In fact, Izzy went to the Nazi. Is there any chance we might ever see that performance? But you're saying it doesn't, it no longer exists? We would have to go back to the initial film, find the negative, go back and actually digitally put Peews into those scenes. So Izzy, I think what Chris is saying there is no. It's because of the HBO thing that there's really no chance. I mean, they'll do peeves and it'll be fine. I don't know who's going to voice peeves. So you had to cut down the first two Harry Potter books into shorter films.

25:54When you look at people making these big HBO series who can sort of cover every piece of dialogue on every page, are you jealous of that or do you think that's less fun? Oh, I've not. No, jealous. No, I'm sort of like I'm so beyond it. I did it. My feeling is, OK, I've done that. It's time to move on. I've always had issues with the idea of franchise. Franchise, when we did Gremlins and Goonies and those films, people were all, that's why I never did the second Gremlins film. I said, my attitude then was, I've done it. It's time to move on and do something different. Same with Potter. I feel like I've done it.

26:26I'm really proud of those films, the first three that I was involved with. And I'm moving on. So now it's interesting. As of yesterday, I think, I looked online and there were photographs of Nick Frost as Hagrid. along with the new Harry Potter. Now, that's not Nick Frost. That presumably is still Martin. I don't remember his last name. A rugby player who played... Yeah, Martin Bayfield. Yes, who played Hagrid with a giant sort of fake rubber Hagrid head that we sometimes replaced with CGI. So I'm seeing these photographs of... Now, it looks like Martin, I could be wrong, wearing a Nick Frost head walking down the streets of London.

27:06And I'm thinking... And he's wearing the exact same costume that we designed for Hagrid. Part of me was like, what's the point? Part of me is like, okay, great. You're doing, I thought it was going to be, I thought the costumes were going to, I thought everything was going to be different, but it's more of the same, which is interesting. It's very flattering for me because I'm like, that's exactly the Hagrid costume that we designed. So part of it is really exciting. So I'm excited to see what they're going to do with it. Part of it is sort of deja vu all over again. Lots of people talking franchises have asked about Gremlins 3 though, which I know you went involved in Gremlins 2 but maybe he might be involved in Gremlins 3.

27:42Well now that the franchise train exists in Hollywood. Might as well jump on. Might as well jump on in terms of it's a much more complicated answer than that because as we see with what's going on at cinema in cinemas that most of the films that are successful are either based on IP or successful sort of reboots of other franchises. Yeah we talk about it a lot. And there is the Beetlejuice film was gigantic and it was, I guess, part nostalgia, part people want to pay to see that. So what will people pay to see? Very few original films. That's why I champion films like Sinners, which is a big original movie.

28:21And I love that. But again, that's a rarity. So I'd be foolish not to entertain the idea of a Gremlins 3 or a Goonies 2. And we are working on those scripts, but we've been working on it for 40 years. Let's be honest. I mean, we have not, I stopped, decided not to do Gremlins 2. Goonies 2 came about, interestingly enough, let's go back to Home Alone. Home Alone was in a situation with a studio, and the studio decided to shut the film down because the budget was$18 million. So they shut it down on a Friday. That Friday, when I had to go around and basically say to all the heads of the department, I'm sorry, but we're shut down and you don't have a job.

29:08I go back to my office. It's about five in the afternoon in Chicago. So it's about two o 'clock in Los Angeles. I get a call or three o 'clock in Los Angeles. I get a call from Steven Spielberg and Richard Donner. And they said, we have an idea for Goonies, too. And I said, really, what is it? I want you to fly out to Hollywood and we'll talk about it. We'd love you to write it and direct it. And at that point, I had just shut down Home Alone. And I was definitely open to entertaining a franchise. And I said, because I needed a job. And I said, okay, let's see what happens. I should be free next week.

29:38They've just shut my movie down. We sent the script to 20th Century Fox. Joe Roth at Fox agreed to make the movie for 19. It was a million-dollar difference. So basically, everyone had their jobs back by Sunday night. So Monday, we reported to the set. Goonies 2 never happened. throughout the years. I've been meeting with Spielberg and Donner and we discuss it and no one really could agree on a story. And we still are working on a story. So it's basically what we've been doing for 30 plus years, 40 years, however long it is. And we're working on Gremlins 3 and Goonies 2. But who knows? We're not going to do those films.

30:18We're not going to make them if they're anything less than great. It's not just a cash grab. We're not interested in that. Would it be fun to go to a cinema and see Gremlins 3? Of course, it would be great, but it has to be great. The movie has to be great. Lots more questions, but let's go for a little break first.

30:38This episode is brought to you by Sky, home of Atomic, the new Sky original series. Max, a free-spirited drug smuggler, is forced into an unlikely partnership with JJ, an enigmatic fugitive seemingly allergic to eye contact. They're involuntarily trafficking, life-threatening uranium. If it ends up in the wrong hands, the fallout will be nuclear. They're being tracked by covert operatives led by Cassie, a highly skilled scientist and undercover CIA officer who will do everything in her power to stop a potential Armageddon. Thanks, Cassie. Conspiracies, car chases and morally grey zones. Atomic stars Alf Yallin, Shahzad Latif and Samira Wiley.

31:14Is high stakes, offbeat and somehow still full of heart like Thelma and Louise if they were carrying uranium and everyone has sand in their eyes. Watch Atomic. Brand new episodes every Thursday on Sky. Requires Sky TV subscription. This episode includes a custom segment in partnership with The Long Walk, only in cinemas from the 12th of September. Adapted from the first novel Stephen King ever wrote, the film is a gripping thriller about endurance, discipline and the cost of survival. Now, Stephen King published this under the pseudonym Richard Backman in 1979. That's the identity he used when he wanted to cut the sentiment from his writing and explore darker, more merciless ideas.

31:50and he certainly does in this. Set in America, stripped of time and context, the rules are simple. 50 boys keep walking at the set pace, no rest, no finish line, fall behind and you're executed on the spot. The last boy standing can claim whatever he wants. Do you think there's ever been a writer who's had better TV and film adaptations than Stephen King? What a run of form he has had. It is unbelievable. There are so many and you think, oh my gosh, that's his as well. His name often sort of, you think of spectacle and horror and Carrie or The Shining. But it's interesting, I think, so many of his most enduring films are things that are quieter and much more human.

32:28So Shawshank Redemption. Stuff about people. He writes about people. Misery. Incredibly well. I genuinely think that possibly three of my top ten movies of all time would be Stephen King adaptations. I think Shawshank Redemption, for sure. Misery, for sure. Also Stand By Me. Stand By Me. Which is a short story from the same collection as Shawshank Redemption. I mean, that's pretty impressive. And then you haven't even talked about, you know, it or the shining or any of that kind of stuff it's really it's like sometimes you hear about writers having their work but on screen and actually there's something about the writing that doesn't quite work cinematically and the thing with stephen king's he's collaborated with lots of different people and some of these things he's had nothing to do with some of these things he has but they seem to work time and time and time again that's what's so interesting something about the writing something about twists and turns but always always always based on character all of Stephen King's work, there's always kind of an everyman or an everywoman somewhere in there.

33:20There's always somebody who you're rooting for. And, you know, if you write great plots, and you have great characters, then it's quite hard to mess that up. Yeah, The Long Walk is a sort of bridge between those two types of things that it is horrifying and terrifying, but it's also a very human and character led. I think something quite interesting has happened to dystopia, that in the past, often we thought of dystopia, these huge kind of big budget things, really over the top spectacle, villains, big tech. But now lots of these things have become about tension and endurance and I suppose death games.

33:53Yes, there's a lot of death games. There's a lot of death games out there. I don't know what that says about this particular cultural moment, but The Long Walk isn't showy in those particular ways. It's much more realistic. It's set in a sort of rural, weathered America. People-based, human-based. People-based, human-based. And who is in The Long Walk? It's got a fantastic cast. It's got David Johnson, who's from industry. Oh, I love him. He's also in Rye Lane. And Rye Lane. One of my favourite movies of the last 10 years. He got the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Cooper Hoffman, who they're sort of joint leads, but he's Philip Seymour Hoffman's son.

34:26Oh, he's from Licorice Pizza, right? He was in that. Yeah, from Licorice Pizza. There's a very interesting piece of casting for the evil antagonist in the movie as well. The evil antagonist is played by none other than Mark Hamill, who plays it as this kind of absolutely grim, grotesque, militaristic, kind of fascist leader. I bet he, you know what, that's lovely. If everyone knows who's Luke Skywalker, that's a nice thing to get your teeth into. From Stephen King and director Francis Lawrence, the filmmaker behind several Hunger Games films and starring David Johnson, Cooper Hoffman and Mark Hamill, The Long Walk is exclusively in cinemas from the 12th of September.

35:00Book tickets now at thelongwalkmovie.co.uk. John Ares has arrived. I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate AI soldier. He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent. You think you're in control of this? You're not. On October 10th... What are you? My world is coming to destroy yours. But I can help you. The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Ares, rated PG-13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now.

35:41Welcome back, everybody. It's my great pleasure to be asking your questions to Chris Columbus, one of the all-time great directors, currently directing the Thursday Murder Club movie as well. I'm going to ask a question now from Ben Boyce, which I think is an interesting Mrs. Doubtfire question, which leads us up to talking about Robin Williams as well. Ben asks, who would you cast as Mrs. Doubtfire if you were filming it today? No one. There's no one. No one like him. The reality is it's not just because I was friends with Robin Williams. Working with Robin Williams, you realize that there is some sort of odd spiritual intervention in that performance.

36:14There is no one I've worked with since. Prior to Robin, maybe John Candy had a bit of this, which was a sense of improvisation. Even Robin couldn't define it. So Robin and I had this deal with three scripted takes. So we would do three scripted takes. So by the time we did those three takes, we had the scripted version of Mrs. Dotfire. So, yeah, it's in the can. It's in the can. And then Robin would say, now let's play. By playing, he meant let's go to 15 takes, maybe 20. I think the most we had done was 26 on certain scenes. And Robin would start to improvise. But we had no idea what to expect.

36:49At that point, I realized as I was shooting, I had to put three cameras on. I had to put two cameras on the other actors and one on Robin. And Robin, but what I meant by divine intervention is Robin would do his performance. And suddenly I'd call cut. And then he'd say, what a boss. he'd always call me boss or capo capo what did i do what just happened like he didn't remember what he just did and this poor script supervisor every take was a different dialogue and she was handwriting it so he would then say to her what did i just do and she's still writing down what he did it was paragraphs so he never did the same thing twice couldn't if he tried to duplicate it wouldn't be the same so we basically had cameras on pierce brosnan and sally field for their reactions and as a result of that i realized as we finished mrs doutfire and we put the film together that there really could be no one else who could do this there's no one i've met who is capable of that sort of divine intervention and he had it if you look at his films i see robin as this sort of that golden age of improvisation when it was really good morning vietnam was the moment When I took notice of it, that performance still flies off the screen.

38:05Fisher King has a lot of it going on. And then Mrs. Doubtfire. That's sort of where that madness really is, has been committed to screen. And I, you know, that's sort of the magical time of that. And so there's no one else. How is the edit on something like that, though? Because you've got so much choice. Over a million, almost two million feet of film. I think that the edit was the first time we did electronic editing, which is standard today. So we had choices, and I've said it in the past, we did have an R-rated version of the film, an NC-17 version, because Robin just went blue and said whatever he wanted, and it didn't matter.

38:42We weren't necessarily going to put it in the film. And so as a result of that, we're in the process of doing a documentary at this point about the making of Mrs. Doubtfire, only because we want to show the audience sort of his process, which was so unique. That sounds amazing. And you've got all the footage. All the original negative is in some sort of underground vault in Nevada. So we have to, you know, the studio is paying for the excavation of the material. We bring that back, digitize all of that. I hope this is part of the documentary, the excavation of the museum. Yes, I want to film myself walking into the vault with a shovel, an archaeological expedition.

39:26and I truly am really excited about it because I don't remember, it's 1993, so I don't really remember all of the takes we didn't use. I only remember, and I barely remember what exists in the film. It's not like I watch it all the time. It's not as if we're cutting a different version of Mrs. Doubtfire. I just want the audience to sort of see his process. It would be like your version of Get Back. Exactly, yes. Now, was that the first time you'd worked with Pierce Brosnan? Mm-hmm. And again, I think we were at an event last night which was a lot of fun but you were saying actually that's the time when you really realized what a great comic actor Pierce Brosnan was because he would stand toe-to-toe with Robin Williams and he could give it back when he was taking it as well.

40:08So we'll move on to Thursday Murder Club. Nicole asked this question. She said, although it is getting a small cinema release in the UK, most people will watch the Thursday Murder Club on Netflix. Do you make considerations on style and pacing knowing you are making it for a streamer as opposed to the cinema? I never even take the streamer into account and that's because I've spent most of my career making films for the cinema. So for me, that's all I think about. I think about the cinematic experience. It's amazingly cinematic, the film. Yeah, and it's meant as a cinematic experience. Whether it exists in cinemas for a week or two weeks, it is meant to be seen in a theatre.

40:42If I'm a layperson listening to this, as a director, can you give us a couple of concrete examples of how you would make something differently for a small screen than you would for a big screen? Imagine someone knows nothing, which most of us do. It's so boring to get into, but I'll try to not be boring about it, which is if you're doing something first. Chris, I've known you a long time. I've never known you be boring. Well, thank you. But if you look at something like The Bear, which is a show that's very popular. I don't know if it's popular. The rest of the one. Yeah, it sort of is. Is it a comedy?

41:11We get annoyed that it gets nominated for comedy Emmys. Oh, yes. Well, I think it's a brilliantly acted show performance-wise. But if you look at The Bear, which is a perfect example of television, Everything is done in very, we call them chokers, which means intense close-ups. So most of the scenes you see in the bear are very, very close. When you're doing something for a giant screen, you don't have to get that close to the actors. So in Thursday Murder Club, I want to see the performance from, you know, I want to see the body. The performance of Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley and Celia Emery and Helen Mirren.

41:47I want to see how they move. I framed most of the film not in intense close-ups, in medium shots, in widescreen. So when you're seeing it in a cinema, you see five people on screen and you see how they interact with each other. That was the first thing. The photography was intentionally not super bright. The photography in many scenes is darker. And that was really an effort by myself and the cinematographer, Don Burgess, to make sure that it felt like film. Even though we didn't shoot on film, we wanted the look of it to feel like it was shot on film. I think you'd just been working on Nosferatu.

42:24Which was all shot on film. And again, you said whenever you work with anyone, you're always picking up little things and little kind of tips and anything. So it'd be immediately apparent to people the similarities between Nosferatu and Thursday Murder Club. But can you tell us if there are any? The similarities would really be my desire to do certain scenes in one shot. Now, I haven't. It's not like adolescence where you're doing the entire film in one shot. But I decided on this film, watching what we did on Nosferatu, to let some of the scenes play in one shot as much as I could. I still fell back onto my own style of filmmaking, but there are probably less cuts in this film than in most of my films.

43:05Nevertheless, when you're dealing with four of the Thursday Murder Club in one scene, and then you've got the policeman, Daniel Mays, and Naomi Aki, and you've got six people in one scene. You can't fit them all into one shot. We tried, and we were successful in a few situations. I often have to fit them all into one chapter, and that's difficult enough. I get to, like, book four, and I've got so many characters now, because apart from the ones that got murdered, I want them all to stick around. So I apologize for films two and three, Chris. There's an awful lot more characters coming. I'm looking forward to it.

43:33It was one of the reasons, though, that our sets were bigger than most film sets, because we had to accommodate so many actors. I thought you were going to say because you had to accommodate me. No, no, no, I'm not. Wow, this ceiling is high. But we did. We had to accommodate in Elizabeth's flat. We had to accommodate six characters and in Joyce's flat at the same time. And in Elizabeth's flat, by the way, forget about it, more than six characters, there were like ten people in the flat by the end of the film. Towards the end there are, aren't there? But how do you feel about making stuff for Netflix?

44:02I mean, you love making stuff for the cinemas, But where are we going with cinema to you? Is that a different industry making films for streamers than making films for cinemas? What is it about the experience of going to the cinema that you love and you love making films for? And how do we protect that over the years to come? I think if you have the accessibility to cinemas, it's always great to be able to screen the film in a cinema. Yeah. The great thing about what Netflix has done for Thursday Murder Club is there were other studios interested, obviously, in making this film, but they wanted to cut about 40 percent of the budget.

44:39So because of the nature of the film, because it's even though it's based on an extraordinarily successful book, because it's not a superhero film, because it's not relying on visual effects. it is basically a performance piece. And those types of films don't warrant the kind of budget that most studios will give you. So as a result of the other studios getting involved, they said, yeah, we will give you this amount of money to make the film, which means I wouldn't have had my cast, which means I couldn't have afforded to pay any of our cast members. Netflix, on the other hand, a wonderful budget to make this film the way it needed to be made.

45:16And that you can't discount that. So they are willing to pay for bigger films that wouldn't necessarily get made anywhere else. And that's important. That's important to remember about Netflix is you will see a film like Thursday Murder Club. That you would not have seen in that way. Yeah, you would see that film in the cinema in the 90s or the nots or the aughts, but not now. That's what's wonderful about it. To actually get in to go to be able to have a week's theatrical release is wonderful. But that's, listen, that's where art meets commerce. And you must have come across that so many times during your career.

45:45If I could find a way to sort of sum you up, it would be you are an incredible artist and you love the art of cinema and you love the art of screenwriting and all those things. But you also absolutely understand the business. You understand how to get a film made. You understand how to work with actors. You understand that everyone has to get paid at the end of the day. And you understand that at the end of it all, there is an audience who must be entertained. Do you think somewhere between the two hemispheres of your brain, the great sort of cineast and artist and this sort of person who genuinely understands what the job is and what needs to be done, do you think those two maybe give you that sensibility we talked about at the beginning?

46:20I think the sensibility really exists in the idea that all of the films I fell in love with, the films that actually propelled me to want to have a career in this business, were films that were entertaining for an audience. And that's just part of my DNA. I'm never thinking about, will this be entertaining for an audience? Honestly, and it's the way I've worked for 35 years, will it be entertaining to me? I have to trust myself. And I realize the types of films I love, going back to whether it's A Hard Day's Night or Dog Day Afternoon or Serpico or any of the, or All the President's Men. Those are films that are all based on performance.

46:56A Hard Day's Night I reference a lot because of the sheer charm of that film. That film is all about charm, enthusiasm, and humor. And I love the fact that it's still, it's a film from 1964, but it still feels as if it were made yesterday. That's the beauty of cinema, though, isn't it? This stuff is going to last, if it's lasted 30, 40, 50, 60 years, it's probably going to last 400, 500 years. We would hope. We have no idea what people will be watching in 400 years. Well, we talked a while. I'd love to do a few on this. Just very quick, this is a question from me. The idea now that AI is becoming so prevalent in lots of the creative industries, it means that everything made pre-AI, so everything made, let's say, 2020 and beforehand, becomes sort of canon.

47:40There's a lot of talk about AI, people embracing AI and filmmakers embrace. Let's use AI. I love that for about three days because the problem with AI is that it's moving at such a fast rate, such a fast rate, that it's remarkable the difference between what happened two weeks ago and what's going on now. Don't necessarily know if I agree with you that in 200 years time, we're going to be able to tell the difference. I'm concerned that in two weeks time, we may not be able to tell the difference. But the thing about something pre-2020 is you know. We just know by the year. Yeah, exactly. But will you know when you're seeing a George Clooney movie that's been made in 2096 that it's – will people have the ability to decipher what was made prior to AI?

48:28I'm concerned that they won't. I'm concerned that AI is going to get so good that it might be better. And that's what people don't want to admit, that it actually can tap in to the creative instincts that we all have, but do it better. And that's frightening. That, in other words, suddenly turns every filmmaker into Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg. Is that possible? I'm afraid that it is. And I'm not the old guy yelling at clouds. I'm concerned that it is. I don't know, from the most recent episode of South Park where Donald Trump is running around naked in the desert.

49:08That's all AI. So that is and that's pretty well done. So I don't know what happens a year from now. And I'm worried about the thing I worry most about is I have children and their friends who are all wanting to break into the industry, either as writers or directors. And they they're feeling it. They're feeling it. And they're not afraid of it, but they can feel that it's coming. Chris, I'm going to finish with a couple of more random questions. This is a question I always think I'm always fascinated because there's always stories. Were there any projects you turned down that someone else picked up and turned into a huge hit?

49:41Good Will Hunting is the first one that comes to mind. No, really. I mean, of course it's going to happen, right? Well, Good Will Hunting was a situation that the studio at the time and my agent were pushing me to do this film. I read the script and I stupidly said, who's starring in it? And they said these two young kids who wrote the script. And I said, well, I want to be, as a director, I want to be able to cast it. What a moron I am. Who would have thought it would be Ben Affleck and Matt Damon? And I think at the same time, they were, these guys were such visionaries in terms of being, in terms of screenwriters and artists, that they said, why would we want the Mrs.

50:24Doubtfire Home Alone guy to direct Good Will Hunting? So on both sides, there was, I know that there is some book somewhere that documents Damon and Affleck's conversation with Harvey Weinstein about not hiring me. And there is my conversation that I remember having in my New York apartment with my agent, who was reading me Robin Williams' speech in the middle, you know, toward the end of the film, and reading it over the phone saying, this is the most brilliant writing. And I said, but as the director, I must cast this. What an idiot I was. So there was that one. I love that film. I think it's a brilliantly made film.

51:01Thomas Mansbridge asks, who is easier to direct, children in Hogwarts or pensioners in Cooper's Chase? Pensioners at Cooper's Chase. Children at Hogwarts, remember the kids at the time had never been in a film. It was just the fact that we had three cameras on them at all times. the first three weeks, essentially someone would say a line in character and then look at the camera and smile. Like, this is fantastic. I'm here. Wow, I'm on a movie set. They would just look around. They would look around at all the people. And I had to have three cameras going just to get a moment when they were focused.

51:34When one kid was focused, the other kid was grasping at butterflies or something. It was a course in film acting. In other words, and also Home Alone as well. I was basically the acting coach for those three kids. And then they had to leave. And then I became them for Richard Harris or Maggie Smith or Alan Rickman off camera. Wow. So you have been Harry Potter. I've been Harry Potter. I've been Hermione. I've been Ron. I've been Neville Longbottom. I've just been whoever was off camera. And that's why there are so many cuts in the first Harry Potter film. We couldn't do one shot. You know, and by the time we got to the second film, midway through the second film, the kids were great.

52:14And suddenly I could do a tracking shot with the three of them having a conversation. And that was kind of a wonderful thing to get to that point. But it was also wonderful for me to be able to do scenes with these legendary actors off camera. It was just fantastic. Well, listen, Chris, I have to say, firstly, thank you so much for coming in. Secondly, having worked with you now for a little while and seeing what actors think about you and they adore you. I love that. But you can see it from Dame Helen, Sir Ben, Celia, Pierce. They all absolutely adore you. When I've been down to the set, it's clear the crew adore you as well.

52:48It's been such an absolute pleasure seeing your process as well, seeing the way you work and seeing what you bring to a film. It was lovely when Steven Spielberg came down and you could see him. He's just looking over your shoulder saying, what's Chris doing? What's Chris doing? It's such a lovely thing to do. It's been one of the greatest joys of my professional career having worked with you. So thank you so much for that. The Thursday Murder Club film is out today. Yes. On Netflix. We recommend everyone goes to see it. And maybe we'll do another one next year. Two more. Two more. Two more, yes.

53:16There's loads more books. Yes. Chris, thank you so much. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

53:30Thank you. Hello everyone, this episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Now, whether you're dancing through life in the Emerald City for the first time or flying back for a magical encore, Wicked is now on Sky Cinema and with the Sky Glass TV, Oz feels closer than ever. Bring the gravity-defying ballads home with a Dolby Atmos soundbar built in for a truly cinematic experience. The high notes and the harmonies have never sounded better. Sky Glass automatically adapts the picture and sound to whatever you're watching. Brumsticks whoosh faster, ballads hit harder, emeralds gleam brighter.

54:03And with voice control, the real magic is doing it all without lifting a finger. Love the idea of ballads hitting harder. They couldn't hit harder. Just say, hello Sky Wicked, and it's showtime. Enjoy the enchanting sights and sounds of Oz in full 4K picture quality on Sky Glass. From the best seat in the house, your own. And if you want a smarter TV without lifting more than an impressed brow, head to sky.com. Requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions, broadband recommended minimum speed 30 megabits per second, 18 plus, UK Channel Islands and Island Ban only.