How To Win Lunch With a Celeb

0:00The Rest is Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, show business is full of people who start out as one thing, but then take on some completely new role that completely eclipses it.

0:10Richard Osman:And before we get on to how Octopus Energy has done that, a few examples. There are people who start out, you know, bands as singers, as actors. A good example would be Victoria Beckham. She started off in a band, Richard. She was in a band called The Spice Girls. You're going to tell me next that David Beckham used to play football before he became an advertising guy. They have earned far more from their second careers, these businesses they've built up, than they ever did in their first ones. So the idea that she's a singer, that gets her through the door, gets her known, the culture knows who she is.

0:42Richard Osman:She then thinks, I'm going to see if I can do something else. And she has the audience who, if she does it well, goes along with her. But do you know what it reminds me of a lot? Tell me. It reminds me of Octopus Energy, because Octopus Energy has also outgrown its own introduction. It's the UK's largest energy supplier, but is now also one of the country's biggest installers of heat pumps, solar panels and batteries. The list even reaches the driveway with a major electric car leasing business as well.

1:14Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

1:20Richard Osman:And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. So Marina, you are still away, but I think it's your final day. I'm very much enjoying talking for you, although I'll be much happier when we're back in the studio together. But have you got some questions for me? Got loads of questions for you. What is the buffet like at the hotel? I'm not in a hotel. I have loads of questions for you, but let's have listeners' questions, shall we? Or viewers' questions, because that's the kind of medium we're in. Graham R. has a question for you, and it concerns Spider-Man, which I think we'd like to talk about anyway, because it's been such a sensation.

1:56Richard Osman:Graham asks, from listening to your show for a long time, I'm concerned about Spider-Man breaking box office records. He's concerned about it breaking box office records. I want studios to be investing in new IP, not superhero slop that is now on its 10th outing. He sort of has a point. It's an interesting question. Well, yeah. So this is Spider-Man brand new day that came out whenever, I don't know, I saw it on that first weekend. It's the biggest opening of all time, even bigger than Endgame. The second weekend, it was$143 million domestic, I think, which is bigger than any other movie's opening.

2:28So it's extraordinary. I will say about this, I know what you mean, Graham, and I'm no fan of a vast amount of the Marvel output. And in this case, but remember, Sony make this. It is Marvel, but Sony still have the rights to it, and they make this. I think, in general, you need, and Hollywood definitely needs some franchise stuff. It's the way world we live in. You need stuff that kind of iterates and goes on. I agree with you on originals, and we've seen lots of interesting originals. We've seen many more originals this year than we have in any other year recently. This genre in general, superheroes, is not anything like what it was back in, say, the late 2010s, nothing like it at all.

3:12I sort of love this story. First of all, I think the Spider-Man is just a brilliant superhero. For them to have had this, it's lightning in a bottle. They've got these two principals who were cast opposite each other, Zendera and Tom Holland, and then obviously in real life fell in love. They've gone all the way through this and they've just got married. I mean, it's kind of incredible. And everyone likes them, by the way. These are stars that actually are not polarizing, that people really like.

3:40Richard Osman:But also behind the scenes, you never hear a bad word about them either. Oh my God, I think people love them. Yeah. and it's interesting various and it's there's something about Spider-Man when I was watching I was thinking it's so weird it always remains a kind of coming of age story even though you know he's come of age and they've been through various episodes of this but things that big coming of age stuff like Stranger Things that ended very cleverly they brought in Sadie Sink to play a character from Stranger Things to play a character in this and so I think it really it just sort of really works and it was none of these things are, you know, slam dunks at all.

4:19I will say that when something is this successful, it helps cinema owners who take half the box office. There are huge, go and sit in the, I mean, that's why Marvel always put all their, you know, trailers and stuff. They have a middle credits trailer at the end and an end credits trailer for something coming up. And in this case, of course, it's all Doomsday, which is coming at the end of the year. But the amount of people who work on these films, the huge numbers of creatives work on this. This is like a windfall for the whole industry. As I say, the genre is not where it was at all, but this is the best of it.

4:51I really like the stars. I think they did a great job on the film and they preserve something of its essential nature and it's a great superhero. And so I just think that this is a feel-good story for the industry. And of course I want originals. And we're very lucky we've had many more originals this year than we have in recent years. But I think that you have to have some franchise things and just to keep things going, because otherwise you can't get a payday this big. I have to say with an original, I can't see it happening.

5:22Richard Osman:Yeah, I think that we, you know, I think we were in danger three or four years ago, certainly post pandemic, that the Marvel Cinematic Universe had lost some of its luster. And so we're in the stage where even the blockbusters weren't really working and people are saying, OK, we need to invest in, you know, original IP. but the money wasn't really there because you know these studios do depend on these tent poles to bring in i mean you know this is going to make over two billion dollars spider-man and a lot of that is profit and of course some of that you know will go into the pockets of studio heads and into the pockets of people involved but a lot of that will go back into new movie making and i think we were we were in danger a few years ago of if these big tentpole movies weren't working they weren't about to start putting money into smaller movies anyway, that we were in danger of cinema becoming a declining and dying industry.

6:16Richard Osman:We talked about it an awful lot, and there are lots of think pieces about it. And as you say, the shares of some of the cinema chains were absolutely going through the floor, and people are thinking there is no future here. The incredible thing we've seen over the last few years is suddenly some of these movies, Spider-Man particularly, but you look at Minecraft, Mario Galaxy, all of those things, are making huge amounts of money. And that is great for the whole infrastructure. And people in Hollywood want to make movies. They want to make great original movies. And as you say, things like Backrooms and Obsessions have been incredibly useful to show that there is money to be made in it.

6:52Richard Osman:So yeah, I think it's a huge positive. I think the more people going to the cinema is a huge positive. Marina, because you are something of a superhero expert. I have always wondered, I know that Avengers is going to be absolutely enormous, but Spider-Man specifically has seemed to grow and grow and grow and grow. And I know they've made great movies. Is that why it is? Great source material, then they make great movies. It's interesting. I'm trying to work out quite why. As I said, it's a bit lightning in a bottle. You've got these two principal actors who are brilliant and have this real life romance.

7:30I do think Spider-Man is one of the absolute very best superheroes. It's so relatable. So I think that's a big part of it. The way they've made these films, as I say, Sony makes these for Marvel. They're not made by Disney Marvel. They've always had a kind of – they haven't had that overlaying sort of irony, jokey-ing that lots of the other Marvel ones had. There is an earnestness to them because of the character. I think the character is very appealing and always has been. And I think that, yeah, I would say that, and there's been, I mean, obviously they've brought back other ones. Older Spider-Men like Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire, and they've done that very cleverly.

8:13I think the story just will always resonate. But the way they've made them is brilliant. I thought it was great. I really liked it. This is a great film.

8:21Richard Osman:And also the sort of little team that seems to be set up for the next Spider-Man movie as well is really, really, really good. I mean, no spoilers, but there's a couple of characters in here who you now think, oh, okay, I see that going forward, Spidey's going to have these little psychics. You think, oh, yeah, I mean, count me in. It's worth noting as an aside that Zendaya may well have a$5 billion year this year. If you take Odyssey and Spider-Man and Dune, I mean, she could have, I think she's already possibly had the highest ever grossing year and she's only going to add to that as well. Isn't that?

9:01Richard Osman:I mean, that's got to be healthy. Those three, and actually John Bantel, who's Frank Castle, He is amazing. He's so good in the Odyssey. He's Menelaus in the Odyssey and he's absolutely brilliant. Really eye-catchingly brilliant in that. So yeah, I mean, I think in general, it's really good for the industry is what I would say. I understand your reservations, but I didn't think this was slop. Sam Stevens has a question for you about Postman Pat. You can't say we don't have range. There's huge range here. Since you're not allowed to gratuitously showcase one particular company on TV, this is about undue prominence.

9:34How did Postman Pat get away with promoting or displaying Royal Mail on his van for all those years? Did the animators do a deal with Royal Mail or the BBC, or did he get away with it because he's a harmless and friendly animated postie?

9:47Richard Osman:You know what? Thank you, Sam. Someone's finally called this out. It is. Funnily enough, when Postman Pat started, well, firstly, when Postman Pat started, he didn't have any Royal Mail branding. He didn't have any branding at all. He had like a red fan and stuff like that, but there wasn't Royal Mail on the side of it. But I think very quickly from the second series onwards, they did have Royal Mail branding. But that's because at the time, Royal Mail was not a, you know, it was a publicly owned utility. so that you know there wasn't it wasn't kind of we didn't used to have um fedex and all that back in the day did we so you you were allowed to put royal mail on your thing because it wasn't seen as a as a as a commercial organization they had more trouble when they rebooted postman but you know they rebooted postman pat yeah in a privatized post office world and a privatized post office world and there they couldn't use royal mail because by that point you know royal mail was one of many parcel providers that you can use.

10:44Richard Osman:So in the newer Postman Pats, he becomes, it's quite a big change, he becomes head of the SDS, which is the special delivery service. And he moves to Pencaster, which is, you know, one of the big urban centers. It's sort of like, you know, when Spider-Man grows up. In the new ones, so there's no rule in my branding because he works for SDS. He has a Jeep. He has a motorbike and sidecar. Jess sits in the sidecar. He has a gyrocopter. Like everything changes in the new Postman Pat. Well, it was this or him being imprisoned falsely by his post office bosses, I guess. Oh my God, they should have done that.

11:27Richard Osman:They should have done a Mr. Bates versus Postman Pat spinoff. That would be a mess. That's like Deadpool and Wolverine. Yeah, that story remains developing, so don't rule it out once we get our final judgment. And so, yeah, basically it wasn't undue prominence because it was a publicly owned utility, and perhaps in the next few years there'll be more of those, so you'll be able to do that. But in the newer iteration, it is absolutely a commercial organisation called the SDS. It's playing off the SAS, but for postmen. They did an interesting... um we talked a number of times about attention spans and we talked about where our culture is going and you know this need for you know 15 second sound bites and things to be incredibly sped up one of the few really long form studies they've ever done on that about kids attention spans and what's happened to them was actually based on postman pat uh and they took a bunch of very young kids and they split some postman pat episodes into into slow ones and fast ones so they had some very fast postman pat episodes which must have passed me by and they showed these different um episodes to kids because this obviously that's a control which is it's always it's the same character it's roughly the same storylines but one is cut much faster than another and showed them to kids and watched their reaction measured their brain waves all that all that kind of stuff and they concluded via this postman pat study that it has zero difference it was made zero difference to their entertainment value zero difference to their concentration and so listen citation needed of course but one of the uh the greatest studies on the on the concentration span of very young children it's based on postman pat and essentially said don't worry too much about the speeding up a culture it doesn't seem to make much difference i i i i i have no way of knowing how rigorous that was, but I thought it was an interesting conclusion and I wanted to thank Pat for his service.

13:26Richard Osman:I remember one of the funniest, we're going to have to get the beep out, one of the funniest lines we ever had on 8 Out of 10 Cats was when Danny Dyer came on and I can't remember why Postman Pat came up, but he did, and Danny Dyer just went, he's a busy c**t, isn't he? That's so unnecessary, which is why it was so funny. He can't help himself, Danny, can he? That's what Yapstam called the Neville brothers. Really? Busy little c***. Did he? Yeah. That's what they should call stick to football. That'd be a good title. On that bombshell, shall we go to a break? I think we better. Yeah.

14:11This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's Rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll because there might be a bonus scene right at the end.

14:21Richard Osman:They're absolutely one of my favourite things in the middle. Yeah, you never know. In Marvel's ones, there used to be a mid-credits scene and then there'd be an end-credits scene. I remember the first one I really remember. Well, two, I remember Ferris Bueller's Day Off where he tells you to go home at the end, but also Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little glimpse into a different world. And it doesn't quite have to be over. Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show.

14:47Richard Osman:You've given everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra. Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's Rewards. Extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway, your daily banking. From shopping to streaming, you can bank on Lloyd's to help your money go further. It's rewards like this that make 14 million people bank on Lloyd's. Search Lloyd's Rewards in your app. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions apply, retailer offers and cashback amounts may vary. UK residents, 18 plus. This episode is supported by FX's The Shards, a seductive drama from executive producer Ryan Murphy.

15:24Set in 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of glamorous, deeply entangled high school seniors drawn into a life of wealth, beauty, parties and access. At its center is Brett,

15:36Richard Osman:whose reality begins to unravel when the arrival of a new student coincides with a series of mysterious murders. FX's The Shards, now streaming on Hulu.

15:53Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Marina. Natalie has a question, which I think you will have a good answer to. She says, Natalie says, I understand that some actors, instead of an upfront fee, will take a percentage of the box office for a movie. I have heard that Bruce Willis made a lot of money from this for The Sixth Sense and Marlon Brando lost a lot of money from renegotiating his fee for The Godfather. Who are some of the biggest winners and losers from this? Okay, good one, Natalie. Yes, The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis famously did really well out of. I think his salary at the time was kind of, he would have got 14 million, but he instead took a back end on it.

16:28And he got 17 % of the worldwide box office. And remember, home video profits, DVDs were obviously such a huge market then. So I think he ended up getting between 100 and 120 million.

16:42Richard Osman:That's amazing. Yes. Great film. Yes. Now, Keanu Reeves did one of the greatest deals. He maybe took, on The Matrix, he took maybe 250 million across the franchise. Like, unbelievable. Alec Guinness, we've talked about this before. and I think maybe some of our bonus episodes, that was an amazing deal he did. He took 2.25 % of George Lucas's royalties and over a lifetime on that, that was just beyond anything. By the way, that's the cleverest way of doing it because quite often on things, projects and things, you say you can have a piece of this or you can have a piece of the back end of this.

17:19Richard Osman:But the way that back ends are calculated, there are people who say, oh, I've got some back end on this movie that has made half a billion, but I've never seen a penny because of the way it's accounted. Hollywood accounting, it's cool. Yeah. So what Alec Guinness has done there is he's not said, I want two and a half percent of the back end. He says, I want two and a half percent of what George Lucas makes because you know that George Lucas will be the first to be paid in a situation like that. So that's the clever... Do you know what? I've never heard that before and that's very, very smart. Well, Tom Hanks did something similar on Forrest Gump.

17:54Now, Tom Hanks, he got something, which I'm going to talk about in a minute on that movie, but he got 70 million from that now because he took first day gross, which now only one person gets, which we will talk about. Another Tom. Yeah, another Tom, exactly. And Winston Grimm, who wrote the book, he had a net profit participation. And thanks to Hollywood accounting, as they say, you know, like, oh, my God, you know, no, Forrest Gump has yet to make any money. So you still don't have any. Anyway, there are lots of people who do. Jack Nicholson in Batman, they said he could have 10 million. And he said, oh, I'll take 6 million, thank you.

18:27And I'll have back end and participation and merchandise, which he did amazing. He must have got 80 or 90 million in 1989 money, which is crazy. But talking about that first day gross thing, Tom Cruise is the only person really who still gets first day gross. And he's just successfully always negotiated that. I mean, it really is vanishingly rare now. A few people used to get it. What that means is that you start profiting from day one. So whatever it's earning in the cinemas, you're getting a percentage of that. You're not waiting for them to say, oh, yeah, well, now we pay back the marketing spend.

19:02We pay back all of this. Now you can start making money, which is what most back end is. First Day Gross is now this kind of vanishingly rare thing, as I say. But even on Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, he was still getting First Day Gross. And then, you know, they've got sort of, there's lots of other ones that are sort of fun. but the biggest losers we will talk about. James Cameron offered Matt Damon the role of Jake in Avatar and he also offered 10 % of back-end profits which on Avatar is pretty good but Matt Damon was doing the Bourne ultimatum and he lost out on however much, I think hundreds of millions.

19:38Now Sean Connery is a classic, Sean Connery's done a couple of these. In Lord of the Rings, he was offered something like 15 % of the worldwide box office gross as well as a standard salary. And he would have got hundreds of millions from that. But he explained in 2005 why he turned it. And I said, yeah, well, I never understood it. I read the book. I read the script. I saw the movie. I still don't understand it. He also declined to be Morpheus in the Matrix for the same reason. Didn't understand it.

20:06Richard Osman:Wow. Yeah. I read somewhere that they reckon he may be lost out on$400 million because of the Lord of the Rings thing. Yes. So you can lose out on a lot if you don't deal with the Hollywood accounting. Remember David Prowse, who was the sort of physical body of Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. He agreed to his back end on net profits. This is a disaster rather than gross revenue. And Lucasfilm just, you know, everything is charged back. And I think he got no dollars in profit participation from Return of the Jedi. So it is quite hard to arrange. Never, ever accept a percentage of net profits from anyone, ever, anywhere.

20:47Richard Osman:It's the easiest thing to give you because there are, you know, in any business, it's very easy to make something, not make money. Because you can borrow against it, offset against it, put all sorts of costs against it. And so if they're offering you, it's the easiest thing to offer an actor because the actor thinks, oh, my God, this is amazing. I'm getting a share of the back end here. And the studio is going, I can pay him$2 million less because I'm offering him a share of net profits. And I guarantee, even if this film is the biggest movie ever made, there will be no net profits to share. Yeah.

21:19Or just get Tom Cruise's agent to do it for you. That's a good idea. Because they will have nearly done a great deal.

21:24Richard Osman:Isn't it amazing how so many of the biggest actors in the world are called Tom? Yes. Now Tom Holland's joined them. Yeah. Tom is like the male Olivia. Like our culture is absolutely run by Olivias and Toms. Anyway, maybe there's a question in that somewhere. Right. Lots of people are interested in this one. IMAX. Yes, Alfie Jackson says, after the success of The Odyssey and the high demand for IMAX viewings, will we see more IMAX films in the near future? Who do you think will turn to IMAX next? I think, funny enough, IMAX is sort of the tip of a slightly more interesting iceberg. So IMAX is just, you know, one format for showing movies.