The Traitors & Our 2025 Predictions

0:03Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. How are you, Marina? The first week in January is never the most uplifting time. Except the telly is incredible. So I actually particularly enjoy it. I've still got some Christmas food left over and I've got a lot of New Year television to get through. Have you got any Quality Street left over? Why don't we have a clean slate? Why don't we go into this year with a clean slate? Let's not ruin 2025 in the same way we ruined 2024. for. You know how quickly it will descend into sweets or case-related bickering, but for now, let us just...

0:39Let's talk about the important things because let me tell you something, Richard. Traitors is back. I mean, and it's so lovely to have it back. We're going to be talking... We'll talk about it. I think we'll only talk about the first episode just in case people haven't... I think most people would have watched the first one, but we won't go any further than that, I don't think. But we would... But we'll talk about it more widely as the format, the flaws, the tricks, all of that stuff. Exactly. Celebrity traitors, all of that malarkey. With reference only to the first episode, but you could skip to the ad break if you have not yet watched that.

1:10But by the way, what are you doing? Watch it. I do on almost all podcasts. I skip to the ad break, listen to the ads, and then I skip the second half as well. I'm like that with the Army Hammers podcast. Army Hammer Time. We're also going to be talking about your movie predictions for 2025. We're going to be talking about all the big movies coming out and also some of the more smaller ones that I'm quite excited about. the big ones and whether they're going to hit or flop or just be put in my generally dicey pile. Because movies had a great last couple of months of 2024. So can they continue that into 2025?

1:41Shall we talk about Traitors? It's back. It is brilliant. I should say that right away. This is obviously on the BBC, hosted by Queer Audio Winkerman. I don't feel like I need to say any of this. It is now, Richard, it's the third generation of this show because it's the third time we've seen it out. I think it's quite interesting, like with any of these formats, anything, once people get sort of wise to the format in different ways, and also it becomes sort of iconic. So when they're running into the castle, you see all these kind of squeals of recognition because they recognise the set. And so with any format, some of the innocence is gone.

2:17Everyone now, and people understand much more about the gameplay, and so everyone now wants to be a traitor. Actually, as we have discussed before, the actual strongest position is to be a faithful who is recruited towards the end game. Obviously, in that case, with your producer hat on, you have got to disrupt it a bit. And so you constantly have to make things that one doesn't expect happen. And they do that in the first episode with this business on the train. Yeah, so there's a thing on the train where there's 25 of them and they have to get rid of three. And watching it, I can't help but think those three people are going to come back because there was some pretty good casting in the people that were there.

2:55There's a guy who's a diplomat. And he says, well, the only way to do it really is to toss a coin. And someone said, no, that's completely unfair. And he goes, well, it's actually the only fair way of doing it. And then they all go, well, it sounds like you know what you're talking about. Why don't you leave? And he just goes, OK, I mean, I guess so. But he sort of volunteers. I was really surprised at this. Well, I would, maybe I'm just very selfish here, but I thought it was mad human behaviour. I understand the nature of sacrificing yourself, like if you're fighting the Nazis or something. But this is just like, hang on, I'm on the train.

3:31All my luggage is on the train and I'm going on traitors. By the way, it's not the only instance of deranged human behaviour in the first episode. There are several of them. You've got someone who's pretending to be Welsh. I mean, that is, I mean, come on. You've got to do a Welsh accent. And there's someone else Welsh on the show who actually speaks Welsh. Welsh is her first language. But you've got to do a Welsh accent for the entire duration of your time. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis has stayed in method acting roles for less time than that. It's like giving yourself... Why would you handicap yourself in that way?

4:01She's doing it because people trust the Welsh accent. What, because of someone like Amanda in Series 1? Yeah. I mean, whatever small piece of research she's seen that says that on the internet, I strongly advise you not to make things difficult for yourself. I'll tell you another terrible tactic. don't make your character I am very intelligent so that when you get in the car what about that one but she wouldn't stop going on about how she was a behavioural expert honestly almost the last thing she said to a bunch of the contestants before of the group was I'm not going to sleep tonight because I haven't built up enough social capital bye bye yen and duly she was eliminated because she had made her sole character note I am extremely clever and I'm very good at understanding and manipulating human behaviour We lost a lot of good people in that first episode, I think, which is one of the problems of the show for the producers.

4:51So we get rid of the three people right at the very beginning. And you get rid of people who've actually got some strength of personality there because they're willing to lay down their life for the rest of the gang. For people they're never going to see again. Or they're good game players, exactly. And they're thinking, there is no way that you would bring me all the way up here, make this happen and not bring me back into that house at some point. I agree with that. And that's the only possible explanation for that behavior, because as I say, they're not fighting the Nazis. And then you lost Yin, who she was talking about, you know, behavior and talking about body language and all this.

5:24And you think, oh, you're going to be like one of those psychics who they put on every few series and who are a nightmare. In the end, when she's voted off, actually, she's incredibly sweet. The big issue with this show, if you're a producer, is you do tend to lose your best personalities very, very early on because those are the people that you vote out. You never think, I tell you who will vote out a really sort of boring guy in his early 40s, hasn't done anything or said anything and doesn't seem to have any insight into human nature or any insight. Well, they didn't get voted out of anywhere.

5:54Everyone's got 15 of them in their office. The lovely thing about The Traitors is this huge hit, but the format doesn't really work because there is absolutely no reason why you would vote off the stupid people. And so season after season after season, Australia season two was the worst example of this. You end up with the people with no insight at all. And often people with no insight, also people with not the greatest personalities either. So that happens time after time after time. That's a big flaw. Another big flaw, of course, is there's three traitors. Then what if they get voted out immediately?

6:29Well, if they get voted out, you just put new traitors in. And so actually the early weeks of it, like the early games in a set of tennis, are meaningless because they're just going to get replaced. If you get a traitor on week one, you might as well not because they're immediately going to get replaced. You might as well for the first three weeks just get rid of people who annoy you. Despite those flaws, I still find it an incredibly compelling television show. Completely. I totally agree. There are other ways, I think, in which it's flawed, that they're still doing that thing where the last three people in to breakfast are the people who have been in the mix to be murdered.

7:08And so they're still doing that. And you would think that the contestants had slightly cottoned on to that. What happened in the second series of the US one, where the faithful sort of become sentient in some way. And there was this one competitor, if you haven't seen it, I won't see who it is, but who sort of publicly built an alliance, very publicly, and then declined to be recruited as a traitor, which, as we said, is the strongest position in the game. And then I think that what happened there, and I've actually loads of viewers think what happened, is that the producers became scared because it seemed like it was going to break the game.

7:43the producers would have to choose new traitors because the people who were being asked wouldn't join. So it looked then that there was supposed to be a banishment in which this guy would have likely gone, but there was a twist which saved him. And so lots and lots of people think, oh, they interfered with the gameplay there. I'm sure they perhaps didn't, but people think they did. Oh, they definitely did. But that's the beauty. As a viewer, I love watching it, but as a TV producer, I love watching it because I keep seeing the situations they put themselves in and the difficulties they have given themselves and see the ways in which they try and work their way out of that.

8:18Last series, for example, they kept recruiting men, just time after time after time. And so this time we go, no, we are starting with three women. That's absolutely what we're doing. But then, of course, one of the contestants goes, oh, don't forget last series, it was all men. You become much more self-conscious because you've watched the show a lot if you're a competitor. So they start editorialising and they start saying things like, well, this is what life's like. People have got that residual memory of like alpha male traitors like, say, Paul last year. Oh, you're the same type as that. I've seen a type like you before on this show.

8:51And so they have a sort of view. I think it's really and they know they know so well not to try and take it personally. And they all go up there with the best of intentions. But it is a game about becoming institutionalized. There was, you know, Harry, when he was doing his maybe one of his interviews at the end last year, said, I felt like we've been here for months. It is like those kind of lots of experiments in the West Coast universities in the 1960s and 70s. The Stanford Traders experiment, they can't help themselves. They're going to behave in certain ways, whether or not they want to. There are moves that can help you.

9:22It's great if you don't explain that you're very, very clever at the start. You don't want to be a sort of savant too early either. Just saying, I get this vibe. I get this vibe all the time. Just stay in the slipstream of others. Don't, you know, understand that thing of if you have just accused an actual traitor of being a traitor, They are not going to vote you off if you do that. It is unlike almost any other format in that it is a real movable feast. You know, we talked in one of our bonus episodes about how to come up with game shows. And one of the key things is your rules must be absolutely the same each time and it must be completely unbreakable.

9:54The traitors is not that. It is eminently breakable. Definitely lose all three traitors in the first three weeks, for example. Would you be really scared if you're a producer? No, I would love it because people watching it buy in. And I think they know that and they understand that there has to be some jiggery pokery. And they understand that the format is flawed and they understand that they will have to bring in new traitors and what have you. And actually, it gives it a soap opera element. And you'll kind of forget who the first three traitors were by the end of the series because we know where it's headed.

10:26And where it's headed is so exciting. They've had to tweak that end bit, haven't they? They had to say, when we get to that final, the final sort of end game, if someone is banished, they're not going to say at that point whether they were or were not a traitor. So that's going to make that end bit hard. I think what they keep doing, they obviously had huge success with Diane and Ross last year. This year, they've got those two sisters, Maya and Armani. Oh, dear. I mean, and one of them's been made a traitor. And the little sisters really suspects it. I didn't love that. I didn't love it. No, because that would be, to me, it would be obvious that that's what you would do.

11:00If there's two people who are sisters, I like the fact that on the train up, they're going, we absolutely have to tell people we're sisters because we talk exactly the same as each other. We look pretty much like each other and we've got all the same mannerisms. I think people will work out we're sisters. So people know they're sisters. And therefore, I think the obvious thing to do as a producer would be to make one of them a traitor. But I think, you know, that then you might get that just incredible moment of sisterly confrontation and betrayal, which would be the huge marmalade dropper. and in my view was sort of worth it, the stabbing in the front or the, I don't know, having to betray them.

11:34Now, in the UK and the US, funnily enough, the traders have been an absolutely huge hit. Huge hit over here, huge hit in the States as well. So it's been recommissioned and recommissioned and recommissioned. In lots of other territories, it hasn't done all that well. Normally, if a format is a hit in one territory, it will be a hit everywhere. The format is very, very, very flawed. Over here, we don't mind so much because we can see it's a battle between the producers and the contestants as well as the contestants and each other. And it's also they are exceptional at casting things. We've learned to say, do you know what?

12:05I get that the producers are having to work quite hard here. But while you've got these contestants who we love and while you've got this format that we love and while you've got Claudia and while you've got people being murdered and while you've got these amazing round tables, which are some of the most compelling bits of television, especially in the entertainment world, we will go along for that ride. There's a new show out this year, which everywhere around the world has said it's the new traitors. It's called Destination X. And the BBC have bought it and NBC have got it. And it's sold in sort of 50 territories.

12:38And it's a sort of traveling around in a blacked out van and no one really knows where they are. And you have to work out where you are. That's the basic principle of it. It'll be very, very interesting to see if Destination X does what the traitors has done. Because, you know, Traitors at some points, a regular series and a celebrity series each year, how long do viewers buy into it? How long do viewers kind of allow the sticking plasters to stay where they are? Celebrity Traitors, I do think, is going to be a phenomenon. The calibre of the names linked with that, it's so extraordinary that it's such a level of prestige that the people who want to do it, and I know some of the names, but they're sort of extraordinary, the level of people who want to do it.

13:20I think that's right. I think it's going to be, it's one of those celebrity shows where people just go, this is like a once in a lifetime experience. It's very interesting that they are like that, actually. I almost feel like, I know you think it's really classy and that it's just a game. And it's almost though those celebrities signing up don't realise in many ways how exposing it is and how they will become institutionalised. But that's what it is. It's so compelling, the format, that it's sucking people in and people think, I would love to be involved in that skullduggery. I don't think they realise how exposing it can be.

13:50But this series, as you say, a great cast. I think it's going to be a huge hit again. The traitors that we see at the moment, they're probably not all going to last to the end and they'll be completely different people who are traitors. But we bought into that. It's a very, very unusual example of a television programme that you can absolutely see the flaws, but everyone goes, we are having such a good time. Let's just all overlook them. So they're showing it Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and they stack up on the iPlayer as well. OK, then, Richard, shall we go to a break? Yes, let's.

14:28Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Rest is Entertainment. Marina, you are now going to take us through your movie predictions for 2025. What's going to hit? What's going to miss? New things, unexpected things, remakes? I'm going to start with the tent poles of the year. These are the sort of really big movies that the studios are putting out and they provide the sort of structural shelter for the rest of the schedule, hence tentpole. I suppose the first thing to say is that there are many fewer tentpoles than there were in 2024 and more originals, which in my view is great. But that does count as quite a big risk for the studios.

15:07And it means that the ones that are big that are coming out really need to be hit. So I'm going to go through the things that need to be hits. I'll tell you whether I think they will be. The family genre, that's doing better than anything at the moment. And it's thriving. And this is where you're likely to see the biggest hits and the returns, I guess. A lot of these, you're going to think, oh, my God, is everything a sequel or whatever? Well, as we know, sequels make money. Now, Zootopia 2, and you're going to think, what on earth is even that? Zootopia was a real sort of surprise animation hit.

15:37It really rates on streaming. and Zootopia 2, bear in mind, then you just get whole sort of, I don't want to say generations, but like little micro generations of children, you know, then the two-year-olds start watching, then the four-year-olds and they're all growing and then they're ready. By the time a sequel comes out, you've got a load of people who want to go and see it. Like Moana. Yes, exactly like that. So, you know, that has the potential to be a billion dollar title. How to Train Your Dragon, I think, let me tell you, dragons do well. People love a dragon. Spoken like a commissioning editor.

16:06Yeah. Yeah, But people love a dragon, and that's the live-action version of something that people already like. It's a live-action version, like with real dragons? Well, yes. They look very real, yes. But, okay, still in the family genre. Pixar did really well. Remember, Pixar had this amazing hit with Inside Out 2, and so they've had a bit of a renaissance because they were on dicey ground before. They've got something called Elio coming out. You know, a little boy becomes intergalactic ambassador for Earth. Dicey. I think it's dicey. But we could be looking at another sort of elemental, like one of those ones that doesn't do anything.

16:39I don't think that's going to be, it's definitely not going to be anything like Inside Out. Why was Inside Out 2 such a big hit? Because Inside Out 1 wasn't enormous. No, Inside Out was, and it was critically adored. Inside Out was very, very big. And what they did was they grew with the fans Inside Out 2, so she's becoming a teenager. So streaming is really the thing with these, you know, Disney and Pixar sequels, is that there's a generation who just watch and re-watch and re-watch these films. I'm disappointed because the Minecraft movie, it's got Jack Black, and kids do like Jack Black, by the way, and Jason Momoa.

17:11I personally think that if they'd had Chris Pratt and maybe made Mr. Beast the villain, this would be like the biggest movie of next year, which is ridiculous. It's a shame because Minecraft could be an amazingly big movie. So there's a Minecraft movie you're telling me. This is the first I've heard of it. I know. We're still in the family genre because, as I was saying, this is where you're going to get a lot of your tentpoles from. Sonic and Mario are both enormous hits Yes And Minecraft by the way was a sort of joke And it was for nerds If you look at someone like Mr Beast Who plays Minecraft all the time on the gaming channel And people watch him People do like Jack Black But I don't think he's ageing out a bit I wouldn't have had Jason Momoa No kids are going to go and see that I would have tried to do something completely different But maybe it would be a huge hit Lilo and Stitch I want to say that's not going to do well at all That's the live action version But that is tracking very well And people are really aware of it It's a property that I basically don't understand.

18:06Do you ever have those things that you just think, you know, someone's going to explain to me why Lilo is... Well, I remember that from when my kids were little, like a long time ago. My kids are in their mid-20s now. I just, I don't think it's all there. This is dodgy for Disney, I think, definitely. Snow White, the live action. Right, I don't mean to be a bitch, but I think Snow White is like the most boring, she's the most boring princess. I mean, maybe, okay, maybe Aurora as well. Who's the best princess? Tiana. Okay. Tiana's from The Princess and the Frog. Why is she my best princess? because she works hard, right?

18:35She wants to own a restaurant. Yeah, she works hard. Okay, Tiana, I love. And it's all down in the bayou and it's quite cool. It's quite a cool vibe. She's my best princess. They've got a lot of problems with Snow White in lots of ways. People hate the trailer. As I say, I think she's boring and they've also got a problematic star in it. They've got Rachel Zegler who has got a number of political views and she's expressed those views. Disney is massively retrenching from having any form of view about politics at all and that includes its stars. Yeah, I think that's probably on the iffy list, I must say.

19:06It needs to be a big hit. It's a live action thing and it needs to be a big hit. Obviously, the biggest movie in that genre is going to be Wicked Part 2. OK, this is an absolute gimme. By the time anyone who hasn't seen this in theatres will have caught up with it on streaming and it will come out at exactly the same time around Thanksgiving that the one came out in 2024 Part 1 and that will be absolutely massive. So that is nailed on. That could be the only thing holding the tent up. Actually, it's not because there's something even bigger coming after that, but I'll tell you that in a minute.

19:39Right. Jurassic World Rebirth. I'll be honest with you, Richard. Like dragons, dinosaurs lay big money eggs. They do. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, in my view, they are too old. They're in their 40s. Mahershala Ali is probably 50. I mean, dinosaurs are really old. Yeah, dinosaurs are really old, but that's why it's really nice to put them up with some young stars. Okay. But they don't do that anymore because we have to have very middle-aged people doing all these things. However, I love the director, Gareth Edwards, and I think that might do well. Oh, is he doing that? That's amazing. So he's done some very interesting movies.

20:09There's an argument that says the kids are there for the dinosaurs and the Mahershala Alis and Scarlett Johansson's are there for the parents. So there's something for everyone. As I say, I think it will do well. Right, now we must come to the superhero genre. Superhero genre still accounts for like a third of the whole box office. 2025, there are four new or rebooted titles for Marvel. Now, this is such a make or break year for Marvel. Blade has been completely pulled. I don't even know if that's happening anymore. They've got the X-Men back, but they're not going to be in the MCU till 2027. We've got Captain America Brave New World.

20:41It's no longer Chris Evans and it's Anthony Mackie. I'm sounding that noise. I don't think that's going to do that well. Putting someone else into the suit. No, no, I don't think this is going to work. Of more interesting, like, it really needs to work is Thunderbolts with an asterisk. I know that's ridiculous. Kevin Feige, who's the sort of supremo of the whole of Marvel, is going to tell everyone what the asterisk means at some point. Now, this is a sort of team of antiheroes. Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan's in it. Again, it's kind of vaguely doing okay on the tracking. What's it called, Thunderbolts?

21:16Thunderbolts with an asterisk. And is it Thunderbolts with an S or with a Z? With an S. Count me out. here's a big one. This will be big. Fantastic Four First Steps. They've got the Fantastic Four back Marvel and they've got Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Musbackrack. That is going to be really big. They're going to put so much behind that. In their back pocket, they do have the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is coming back, as you know, to the MCU and he's going to be in Avengers Doomsday and Avengers Secret War. But that's not this year. That's not next year. But what they can do is they can put him in an end credit sequence.

21:54Yeah, yeah. So if they decide to put him, I mean, they might not need it. They might be a bit crowded for Fantastic Four and they might not need it. If they put him in one of those other ones, but they've got this thing Marvel where if they feel like something's not going to hit, they don't want to almost contaminate the brand of the other one by putting them in the end credit sequence. It's absolutely weird the way they fit it all together. People will literally go to, because they know that someone's in the end credit sequence. Anyway, they also have Beyond the Spider-Vers, which will be terrific.

22:19and that will do really, really well. The most interesting in many ways is DC because James Gunn, who is the director of Guardians of the Galaxy and we're still in the superhero genre here, obviously, he came in to reboot the whole of the DC universe. And I keep thinking of that line from the first episode, I think, of The Sopranos where Tony Soprano says, you know, lately I've been thinking I just sort of got in at the end of something. And I really feel like who wants to be rebooting a superhero universe when the genre in 2025 where the genre is faltering and people are talking about superhero fatigue which is not great.