Will Elon Musk buy Disney?

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1:13Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hey, Marina. How are you, Richard? I'm all right. I've been in India and I got back last night. I might have to rely a little bit more on vibes today than insight. It's all vibes, Richard. Everything's vibes. It's all vibes based. The rest of the year is fives. Now we've got three things to talk about today, two of which you would say are normally very important. Is Elon Musk going to buy Disney? Is that his long game? Should TikTok be banned? That's a big deal. But we're also going to talk about Greg Wallace's life in the day.

1:45And knowing the two of us, I know which of those three will spend the longest. Oh, yeah. I've got a tight two days on Greg Wallace's one day. As have I. But probably we should start with Musk. Like a teenage boy's bathroom routine. Let's start with Musk. Let's start with Musk. Elon Musk has attended a premiere of a film and I'm going to tell you in a minute what the premiere of the film was because it's quite special he was there with Nelson Peltz who is an investor in Disney he doesn't own a huge amount of Disney but his investment fund owns probably less than 2 % but he's trying to make trouble for Disney this is what you call an activist investor he wants seats on the board he wants to install his own people and he's been making trouble for some time activist investor is one of the few times you can use the word activist and know you're describing a wrong one Absolutely wrong.

2:30Yeah, activist investor Nelson Peltz. Now, at a premiere, again, we're going to come to what it was for in a minute. Elon Musk attended with Nelson Peltz. And he's probably a surprise attendee at this thing. And they said to him, what are you doing here? And he said, you know, just looking around, seeing about companies to buy. So it's either Disney or the cinema. And people have said, could he buy Disney? And I'm afraid I would have to say the answer to that question is no. Like all of these newspaper questions to which the answer is no. Could Elon Musk buy Disney? No, he couldn't. That's not going to stop us having that as our tagline on this episode.

3:05Oh, no, that's 100 % going to be the tagline on this episode, of course. Will Elon Musk buy Disney? In the great... Is this the face of Christ in a piece of toast? No. Okay, will Elon Musk buy Disney? The answer is no, he won't. First of all, it would cost him about five times what he paid for Twitter, now X. Not five times its value now, but ten times its value now because he's halved the value of Twitter. So I think that would probably be one of the questions that the board would, and the shareholders indeed would ask, have you bought any companies recently? If so, how's it going? How's it going?

3:36And he would have to say, well, I mean, I've had a little bit of trouble with this thing I bought, you know, last year or whenever it was. As an absolute sidebar, you know when everyone, you know, lots of people left Twitter and they said, no, I'm not, I refuse to make money for Elon Musk. You think, no, you're losing him money. That's why I stuck around. Every day I'm there, I'm costing him an absolute fortune. Yes, yes, this I agree with. Okay, so now I'm going to tell you what the movie that they were attending was because Nelson Peltz has another job other than activist investor and General Oran Brongan.

4:07He's the father-in-law of Brooklyn Beckham And the movie premiere in question was Lola, written, directed by and starring Nicola Peltz, Brooklyn Beckham's wife. Obviously putting herself into the tradition of the great auteurs there, writing, directing, starring Orson Welles. So, yes, this was the premiere of this film. The film is called Lola, in which Nicola plays a poor person, just trying to make ends meet for her little brother, a stripper, obviously. Her little brother is a stripper. Yeah, no, the little brother isn't the stripper. Okay, she's the stripper. She is the stripper. And yeah, she's...

4:42Anyway, there's obviously been some criticism that she's on some kind of poverty safari. I don't think we really want to get into that. Anyway, the premiere was attended by not a huge number of celebrities, but one of them was Elon Musk. And something else that Elon Musk has been doing to Royal Disney is that he has said, I'm going to back... Because obviously various people have lost their jobs for things they post on Twitter, famous and non-famous. X, we have to call it now. We don't have to. We don't have to actually. We can do what we like. Let's just call it Twitter. Let's just, that's what anyone calls it.

5:14Because also it's confusing every time someone says X because... Formerly known as, yeah, okay, fine. We're just calling it Twitter now and they'll have to write in if they're upset about it. Can you imagine if, I don't imagine they would. Please write in and we'll read your full letter out. Anyway, so Musk had said, I will back lawsuits for people against their former employees if they've been sacked for things they've said on the platform. He's actually making good on this. There was a person called Gina Carano. She was in The Mandalorian, which is obviously a Disney property. It's a Star Wars property, but that all comes under the umbrella of Disney.

5:43And she said a number of incredibly imbecilic and offensive things on Twitter, one of which was being a Republican nowadays is like being Jewish in the Second World War. No, Gina, no, it's not. Anyway, and Disney had enough of it and sacked her. And Musk has actually come good and he is funding her lawsuit. the legal documents are hilarious for this particular lawsuit because they contain i'm going to quote one line from this karana was terminated from her role as swiftly as her character's peaceful home planet of alderaan had been destroyed by the death star wow that's in a legal document yes that's amazing her career was choked as ruthlessly as darth vader choked grand moff tarkin i mean that's not in the legal document but yeah yeah i mean i've got to think But in some ways, all these lawsuits just seem like another sort of Musk version of shitposting.

6:35He's the world's most expensive sort of shitposter. He has the soul of a poster, which is why he wanted to buy the platform. And he does these things. He can't really make any particular trouble with these things. In terms of what Nelson Peltz can do, that has been treated slightly more seriously because Disney have had problems over the last few years. If you look at what's happening, their parks and cruises, by the way, are performing brilliantly. but you need the sort of content funnel into the parks and cruises because you can't have a Disney cruise without good... We should have called this podcast the content funnel.

7:05The content funnel, yeah. It's like a foie gras thing. We're just going to put content down, whether or not you want it or not. Anyhow, Disney have been having problems. They got late into streaming. They've sort of caught up and it is working better now. But all of these big, big brands that they own have all sort of... You know, they've got Lucasfilm. Owned by Matt Lucas, of course. Owned by Matt Lucas. they've got Marvel, Pixar and they've got all the sort of Disney legacy catalogue and ideally hopefully new Disney creative projects that can come out of that particular sort of silo in their business and all of those have faltered and they've had outright flops and disappointing things and things that seemed like absolute surefire bankers say five years ago just haven't been although nobody by the way in the industry believes that Nelson Peltz is the answer to any of this.

7:52He's also being backed by a guy called Ike Perlmutter, who's the former absolute kind of irascible, genuinely, he is a wrong person who used to own Marvel. Now we'll get sued. Yeah, but if we do get sued, you know what's going to happen. I don't think they know what wrongan means in America. But listen, Elon Musk will come and just say it's free speech, man. That's free speech. And suddenly we'll be up in court, funded by him. It'll probably be selective, his commitment to it. I think it's safe to say that Perlmutter and Nelson Peltz are very focused business people. Yeah, they're very focused business people.

8:26And there's a big meeting, I think it's April the 3rd, that the big shareholder meeting is going to happen. And Disney had a quarterly earnings call last week where they actually look like now they've done enough to head off, not that they were necessarily ever in danger from this particular sort of sally by Nelson Peltz, but it could have built. It's their best quarter for a long, long time for Disney. And they've got some exciting sort of things coming up. They're going to release a new Moana movie. No way. Yes. Okay. Don't laugh about Moana. I'm not. It's huge. It's so massive. When Netflix had the sort of Disney properties, before there was Disney +, and Netflix showed Disney properties on their platform, more people watched Moana than Avengers Endgame.

9:09Yeah, I bet. Moana and Encanto. Yeah, Encanto is huge. Encanto is absolutely huge. And what else have they got coming out? they've got Mufasa, which is a Lion King thing. Again, people may not have talked about the last Lion King live action thing, but it grossed 1.6 billion or more, maybe 1.7. Okay, it's bigger than Barbie. But you may not have found it sort of like, maybe it didn't dominate the discourse in the same way. But perhaps most interestingly, and something we'll end up looking at more, not today because we won't have time. Because we've got to talk about Greg Wallace. We've got to talk about Greg Wallace, which is a much more significant global thing, is that they're doing a joint venture, a standalone sort of sports streaming platform with Warner Discovery and Fox.

9:51So Disney's sports business, by the way, is ESPN. So that potentially, if it's able to launch and it doesn't get fouled up in sort of antitrust monopoly kind of stuff, will be really interesting to see whether they can make that work. Yeah, it's impossible to overestimate how big sports are in the US. I mean, they absolutely dominate. I mean, we had the Super Bowl was this weekend, of course, but the NFL and the sports are enormous business. in America. That's a potential game changer. But Nelson Peltz, who I always, whenever I hear his name, I think of Nelson Muntz. Yes. On The Simpsons. That's not his fault, but I do.

10:23He, as you say, he's desperately trying to take control of the board at Disney. That earnings call that they had last week, and as you say, he doesn't have a huge amount of Disney stock, but he's got enough. That earnings call made him half a billion dollars just in that call because the price went up. And yet he's still furious he's still he's still saying same old story you can't please a rich guy same old story you made half a billion pound in one day it's like it's like bradley walsh or something yeah but the answer to the question is elon musk going to buy disney it feels like that's even for him that's impossible so he's going to talk a lot about buying disney yeah and that narrative may come you know more and more into the fore but we're saying now marina hyde is giving you the guarantee the rest is entertainment guarantee the content funnel guarantee that musk is not on her by Disney.

11:11As a side note to the story about Gina Carano who's suing for sort of damages, she also says if she wins the lawsuit that they have to put her back in the show. I love that. I mean can you imagine walking in on Monday morning and the writer's going, yeah we've got a couple of ideas for your character. Yeah, yeah. Well listen, we'll be FedExing the pages over this evening. But it's an amazing soap opera that and I love that it brings in everyone from Elon Musk to Nelson Peltz to Trump to the Beckhams I mean it's a it's a whole big sort of I slightly like that you can't and no matter how rich you are in the world there are just some social engagements that you really can't get out of I say she's got a movie premiere she's written she's directed and she started okay okay I will be there yeah and the after party yeah I'll be there I'll be there yeah what did I think of it um I thought it was really interesting still processing it yeah but uh I mean yeah listen She's done it again, Nelson.

12:07She has done it again. By the way, on a side note to that. Side note to the side note to the side note. Oh, yeah. In fact, I've gone all the way around the side, and now we're back where we started. The Beckhams were on an advert during the Super Bowl for Uber Eats, which is where Brooklyn Beckham's little pop-up came. Pop-up, which, of course, I dined at. I dined at home, but I ordered it in. But that explains a few things. That explains a lot of things about how Brooklyn Beckham got his Uber Eats pop-up. Yeah. Listen, that's show business, isn't it? That is show business. So yes, I think we've done a full meandering tour around that particular subject.

12:41But we'll come back to Disney and particularly that sports bundling thing because it's quite interesting, even if it might sound boring at first outing. It's going to be crazy. We'll probably come back to Elon Musk at some point as well. Oh, I feel we will. At some point. I tell you what, if the fortunes of his platform could not be completely restored, if he can get Donald Trump back onto his platform in an election year, that will make things very different for that particular business. But we'll have to wait and see whether he can. Shall we move on from Elon Musk? to Greg Wallace. Greg Wallace.

13:08Now, Greg with two Gs. Greg... Wallace with two Ls. Yeah. Traditional. Not this weekend, but last weekend. Greg did the equivalent of one of those Sunday Times lives in the day. It wasn't. It was my Saturday, and I think it was in the Telegraph Saturday magazine. And his day caused a certain amount of merriment among the wider social media community. And in fact, it seems to have caught fire. It seemed to be trending on all platforms for days and days. Let's just take a look at what his day involved. Saturday routine, he was up at five, checking the numbers for his health programme. Before we go into this, because I don't want anyone to think this is going to be 20 minutes of mocking Greg Wallace.

13:45Because it's not. Because it's really not. I've got a number of reasons why I quite like Greg Wallace, which we'll get onto as we go through his day, I think. I think getting up at five o 'clock in the morning, that's okay, if you want to get up at five in the morning, wouldn't do it myself. I get up at five every morning. No, you don't. Yes, I do. If not before, yes. Is there a time before five? There is, I'm afraid. Four or five is not my choice, but I've been quite busy this last year, and so I have got up. So your schedule, very much like Greg Wallace. Much like Greg Wallace. Up at five. I don't go to the gym, which staff opened an hour earlier just for Greg, just so he can have a swim and sauna.

14:19I don't do that at five. I don't think he does that at five, actually. I think he does that a bit later on. About 7.30 or something, isn't it? Yeah, he says that the gym opens for him. And again, listen. Don't knock it. If they could do it for me, I would have it. Yeah, and that's the thing. Everyone, if they say, I mean, honestly, it would be easier for me if it was 7.30. And, you know, David Lloyd himself comes down and says, come on then, Greg. Let me roll out the road carpet. Yeah, of course. At least he's going to the gym. We really got into the territory of Partridge when he divulged that he has breakfast at a harvester with his PA.

14:49Yeah, I mean, that is unfortunately Partridge. But at the same time, listen, Greg says that the harvester's never let me down. And I have to agree with him. He's going to have a PA. That's okay. Elon Musk has got a PA. Greg's a busy guy and he likes to have a breakfast at Harvester. I think, listen, he's gone to the gym, then he's bought himself a fried breakfast at Harvester. Thus far, I'm very comfortably on board with Greg Wallace's day. Yeah, I mean, he plays with his son for a bit, then he spends two hours locked in his study playing Total War Saga, Thrones of Britannia. Again, I mean, can I just say something about this, which I think you're probably going to end up agreeing with, Richard, is that don't we want our celebrities to be like this?

15:29My least favourite thing ever to read in these celebrity life in the day things is when they say, then I'll have lunch or dinner, which will be steamed fish and vegetables. If any celebrity mentions steamed fish and vegetables, I just want to shoot them. I mean, please don't think that your diet, your nutrition passes for conversation. It does if it's a harvester. Then it's a conversation topic. It does not if it's steamed fish. No celebrity should ever use those words again. All we want is the people who do these profiles to kind of be crazy and ridiculous. Sometimes they do very funny ones. Tom Hollander did an absolutely hilarious one in the Sunday Times where he said things like, in the afternoon, I might go for a walk along the canal or masturbate.

16:09And everything was hilarious. Orlando Bloom did an absolutely classic one where he said, I like to earn my breakfast, so I'll just have some green powders that I mix with brain octane oil, a collagen powder for my hair and nails, and some protein. But wait. Sorry, did he have the word just in that sentence? Yeah, yeah. And then my other favourite thing that he did is that he said, like, constantly think about roles that I need to advance people. Myself, women and minorities. The three big ones. Yeah. Again, I mean, this is what we want celebrities to say. Do you remember Mark Wahlberg's routine?

16:43Yeah, his was crazy. His was, he gets up at 2.30am, wakes up, then he has prayer time. I mean, what is he, a fishmonger? Yeah, I mean, exactly. Then he has prayer time, then there was breakfast, then there was workout. then there was another he had so many workouts and there was tiny bits of family times that are scheduled into all of this but what seems so odd to me is that first of all quite gutting because this used to be the guy that was the inspiration for entourage and Wallace yeah Mark Wahlberg Mark Wahlberg okay I'm with you sorry I mean I know you yeah yeah and then and you thought this is so depressing I mean is this what sort of modern acting of a certain type is the bit where you're actually pretending to be someone is a tiny tiny bit of the day and mostly it's this insane workout schedule.

17:28Also you can star in like Daddy's Home 2 with Mel Gibson and it seems very odd to me that so much of, well in fact male and female actors, the day is spent on this kind of extreme conditioning. Just fitness, right? I mean it's just fitness. This is why when a new Bond film comes out, Daniel Craig's trainer would go on the interview circuit himself and explain like how many inches he'd got off the thighs or onto the thighs or whatever was necessary. Marvel are incredibly strict on what they will allow people to say about what they do in order to get to bulk up for these roles. But it is absolutely gruelling.

18:02The bit where you're actually acting is such a tiny part of your day, week, month, year. Almost all of it is this extreme conditioning. But it's something quite different that's changed for when you were Humphrey Bogart and you were an actor. And, you know, you just needed to go down to the Coconut Grove and have a few drinks and stay out till four in the morning and then go make Casablanca the next morning. this is a very different way of life now listen, to return to Greg Wallace just for a moment, I mean he is very much our Mark Wahlberg and our Humphrey Bogart yeah, he's like Wahlberg meets Bogart people were so sniffy about his day, I'm with you about I just found it quite interesting for lots of reasons but it's lovely that some of our celebrities are Michael Sheen but not everyone could be Michael Sheen or Timothy Chalamet there is room for Greg Wallace's in our culture and also there's a massive audience for Greg Wallace's in our culture.

18:56You tell me who Saturday's got so much airplay ever, ever before. Exactly. It adds to the gaiety of the nation. And he's one of those people that people go, I don't understand the appeal. You think, well, that's okay. You don't need to understand the appeal of anyone. But you put Greg Wallace on a TV show and loads and loads and loads and loads of people watch it. He's been on House of Games, Greg. I have to say I really, really liked him and he's got such a great energy. The biggest compliment you can ever pay to anyone is all the crew loved him. Makeup loved him. Wardrobe loved him. The runners loved him.

19:25He was absolutely charming to everybody, which is the mark of a celebrity. It's amazing how many celebrities still, given that the most bad celebrities are psychopaths, and there's a few of them, a psychopath must know that if you're horrible to someone in makeup, people hear about it. And yet they still do it. I find that very peculiar. Anyway, perhaps Greg's a psychopath. No, he's not a psychopath. So Greg was absolutely lovely to everybody. I was watching this week. Inside the Factory is one of my favourite shows of all time. Of all time. I love Inside the Factory. This week they went inside, Greg went inside a jelly bean factory.

20:01Oh my God, it's amazing. You know what? They had 87 million jelly beans in their sorting room. At that one time? Yeah, at that one time. On the premises? Yeah. Wow. Jelly beans are, listen, I digress, but jelly beans are tiny, right? Tiny little things. do you know how long it takes from the glucose arriving to the to the final jelly bean leaving shock me 11 days shut up is one of the most complicated it was like building a jet engine the way they were making uh a jelly bean and greg is there throughout he's moving it along it's an open university production and so there's lots of great educational stuff in there as well but he is somebody that audiences like and the audiences come to and there's a certain group of people commentators who we've talked before about mrs brown's boys that where where the successful version of the thing they don't like is the thing they hate the most because there's loads of unsuccessful versions of greg wallace who doesn't don't exercise anybody on the factory floor yeah exactly seconds uh and you know but but greg brings an audience to what he does it brings an enthusiasm um to what he does by the way they're replacing him on inside the factory with paddy McGuinness.

21:09Now I would have liked that gig. I would have done Inside the Factory in a heartbeat. They show you how they make Watsits and stuff. And the machines are crazy. So anyway. If it doesn't work out with Paddy McGuinness, I think you've just issued a Come and Get Me plea. Big time. Osman issues Come and Get Me plea to BBC. Now he's persona non grata at Channel 4. He has to go to the BBC. Also, I think there's a more serious thing about Greg Singh. He talks later on about his son who's non-verbal autistic and everyone's having a going and for you know not being around his kids and you know what any you look at his other postings and it's clear he's sort of doing like an edited version of his day and he's tweeted before about his son and about his wife and all that stuff that's he's a guy living his life being honest about what he does and you think oh come on I mean really in this world full of what's going on we're going to have go at Greg who's a guy I would never get I I never try and get at people about how they've how they're dealing with their children never mind because it's impossible right to deal with your kids because in the words of that character in Jeremy Gwai it is an up at dawn pride swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about yeah and I I really you don't get involved in how people are running their day with their children and honestly half the people well sometimes you read the comments on mail online and I honestly just feel like this is just people say no sorry I mean, mummy can't come and play.

22:31She's having wine time and just slagging off a few celebrities for how they look, you know, five hours later. I don't believe, no, I don't, I would never, as someone who writes about all these sorts of different things, I really try in general not to get involved in writing about how people deal with their children. I'm trying to think of the times I, I did mention it with a million caveats when Matt Hancock went on I'm a Celebrity because I thought the stories that came out about when he had left his wife and how it all happened, And I just thought, why would you then do this? And why would you then put your children, you know, it's Tuesday.

23:04And I personally wouldn't put my children through it. But I thought very hard about how I would how I would write it and say it. Whenever writing anything about children, you don't know. You don't know anyone else's life and what their parenting is like at all. And as I say, quite a lot of people spend the day commenting on it instead of playing with their own children. That's true. So I will say about that piece. It's Saturday Telegraph. It's really worth a read. It is, and Greg will be the first to admit, it's kind of, it is funny. God, I mean, if we did our own Saturdays, I'd be horrified. Yeah, it's great.

23:34And he's a spicy flavor, Greg. But, you know, from my dealings with him, he's a fundamentally very, very nice man. He's sung for his supper. This is crucial. Yeah, exactly. And also, he's so good at mentioning all of his offshoots. I think he gets up at 5 a.m., checks the subscriber numbers to his health app. And he's literally, he's got his health app within the first three. Do you do that? Do you hit your promotional marks? I bet you're really great at that. Of course I do. Every time. Yeah, my new book coming out in September. I just check on the numbers on Amazon. But, you know, he's got it down within three lines.

24:07And, you know, you give up reading an article at some point, but you don't give up reading after three lines. Steamfish and vegetables. It's the time for me to get my backpack and leave. So, yeah, Greg Wallace, yeah, he took a lot of stick, and he came out fighting, and good for him. And I would really recommend the Inside the Factory one on jelly beans. It's fascinating. It really is. I'll catch it now. Honestly, the way they polish them, you would not believe it. Okay, I think it's time for us to have a little break. I hope we're advertising Greg Wallace's health app. And jelly beans.

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