'Michael’s' Big Win, the Reshoot Drama, and Sequel Hurdles with Lionsgate’s Film Head

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23:45Matt Belloni:12 months special financing now at the Home Depot. Offer valid April 16th through May 3rd, 2026. Exclusions apply for licenses. See homedepot.com slash license numbers. Let's move on to some other Lionsgate stuff because you have been on a roll. I mean, honestly, I know this sounds like I'm blowing smoke, but like I've been hard on Lionsgate over the years. There was that period coming out of COVID where there was a bunch of bombs, you know, Borderland and a bunch of other movies that just didn't work. I think you guys had higher hopes for Ballerina, the John Wick spinoff. But Housemaid coming off of Now You See Me and then into Michael and you've got this sort of low budget action business that's doing well.

24:32Matt Belloni:How do you see the studio right now? How do you see Lionsgate in the landscape and how do you compete with the other majors? It's a great question. Look, I appreciate your kind words and anyone who's seen you would not think you would be blowing smoke for the sake of blowing smoke. So I appreciate it. Got to give the credit. I appreciate it. A couple of things. First of all, the team that I've been able to put together, I could not be more proud of. and the system is now working. When I dreamt about how it might work someplace someday, this system is working. That's from John and Michael in terms of the flexibility they've given me to do what we're doing in the film group.

25:19That's how the production team, the marketing team, the distribution team, and the international team are all working together. What's been really gratifying, so my, I say my slate, and I think, you know, we mentioned before, Joe Drake deserves There's a ton of credit for having the courage to bring Michael in. And frequently, when you do things at a studio and then you decide to leave or you're asked to leave, in my case, once upon a time. Oh, we don't have to talk about that. I'm just saying, like, it happens. Do you remember?

25:45Matt Belloni:I was there your last night as a studio. It happens. It's fine. We were in Toronto at the Rush party. That is correct. And I said goodnight to you. And the next day, I heard that you got, like, fired on a plane. You meant it. It wasn't on a plane. But, yes. It wasn't on a plane? No, it was the next day. But anyway, often you don't get credit. Whatever you left behind, you don't get any credit. And Joe deserves a massive amount of credit. But John and Michael have built something pretty extraordinary. You've watched other people try to build studios or create studios. And this place, I think, is something really special.

26:18We are small and nimble enough to be able to make, market, and distribute smaller films that not only can be artistically satisfying, but actually meaningfully contribute to the bottom line. And at the same time, even though we are so much smaller in number of people in overhead, when we have a Michael or Hunger Games or in the past, a Twilight or something like that, a John Wick, we are able to compete like a major when we have those films. And the ability to do that is, I think, unique. It isn't to say that it wouldn't be amazing to have the resources and the opportunity and the IP and all the other things that the bigger legacy studios have.

26:58But when you look at these films, my slate technically started with The Long Walk. The Long Walk is one of the proudest green lights of my entire career. It is a movie that a lot of very talented people tried to make in different incarnations for 20 years in this business. It could not get made. Francis Lawrence, who is obviously one of our most cherished filmmakers by virtue of Hunger Games movies, but also by virtue of him signing a first look deal because he wants to make movies at the studio, came and said, I have a passion for this film. Can we figure it out? And we figured out a way to make what was deemed largely an unmakeable movie such that not only did it get extraordinary reviews, but it was made for a price where that box office led to a really meaningful profit for the studio.

27:50Rejuvenating Now You See Me, recognizing that there was a reunion aspect to putting that cast back together and that people who had seen it a decade or more ago at one age now had families and would bring families. The Housemaid, one of the benefits of not having six or seven or eight tentpoles on a schedule is that if you find something that you think can not just compete, but thrive in the rarefied air of a release schedule that usually has to be reserved for massive tent poles.

28:23Matt Belloni:If you were Disney, you could never put the housemate on Christmas. You have a giant$300 million movie that you appropriately need to maximize and doing for it. We will end up north of 400 million worldwide on that film. And part of that was the ability to treat it like a tent pole, even though it was a net$30 million movie. Um, and And then, Michael, to have a film do the biggest business you could possibly do, I think. Yeah, but you only get, Michael, because these big intermediated companies have so many different arms that they find it problematic. Historically, yes. But, and I promise you as much as I think it might be easy to think I would be overconfident.

29:05I promise I'm not. but I would point you to our securing the rights to the correspondent a couple of weeks ago.

29:13Matt Belloni:You guys have been talking about this. Why are you so excited about that? It's a, it's a Jane Fonda movie. No disrespect to her, but she's 88 years old. Well, I, here's what I would tell you. Every studio in town, all of the majors, maybe save one, offered the exact same amount of money we offered. And there was a, for lack of a better word, there was an audition. And what won it for you? I think it's a few things. I think that - This is a big book, by the way. It's a very bestseller. It's a big book with a massive level of audience engagement. So did you just say, here, Jane Fonda is going to be our Sidney Sweeney.

29:53Matt Belloni:This is a huge book. We're going to get to 400 million. The pitch that the production team, that Aaron Westerman and the production team heard blew them away. and when they came and shared it with me, I was equally moved by it. I recognized, similar to some other moments in my career, when I sort of saw signals of books that were becoming something that weren't just of interest but were a passionate interest. And the way our production and marketing teams combined to present our vision for how we would bring this movie to market, it, I think, on the back of Housemaid. And the other thing I would say is we encouraged everyone in the decision-making process to go have a conversation with the other authors who are in business with us.

30:41Go speak to Frieda McFadden. Go speak to Suzanne. She said the movie is better

30:45Matt Belloni:than her book. I said this to Paul Feige. What author has said that? Lovely. Go speak to Suzanne. go speak to stephanie from twilight and one of the again one of the benefits there are challenges and and and other things being smaller but i think each of those authors who have earned the right to feel like they are a huge and meaningful part of the process i think we're all able to share authentically how much a real part of the process they felt and that despite the best efforts of incredibly talented people at every studio by virtue of how small we are you are on the phone with the key decision makers all the time you go to disney you go to warner's you are fifth on the call sheet you come here you're number one and i don't look i don't i i definitely am not suggesting for a second that any of the filmmakers i'm mentioning here would turn down jobs at the legacies but paul has his first look deal with us and francis has his first look deal with us and if you asked Graham King, who has been everywhere and seen everything about his experience with us, I think he would tell you, not that it was better than anything he's ever seen before, but I'm guessing he would tell you it's as good as anything he's ever seen before.

32:06And the fact that we're able to do that given our size is an opportunity.

32:10Matt Belloni:But how do you do international? I know it's case by case, right? Because you don't have a traditional international distribution apparatus. So for some movies, you sell off territories. So we have a traditional apparatus in two of the biggest international markets in the world, which is the UK and Latin America. And I think that often gets understandably lost because unlike the majors, we do license our content to third-party distributors outside of the UK and Latin America. I think there is a misconception about what that means, too. too. People think it's... Clear it up, because I've talked to filmmakers who said, I'd love to go to Lionsgate, but I don't want to get into a situation where my film was released one way in the U.S.

32:51Matt Belloni:and then in some haphazard way all over the world. I've heard that, too. I hear it, and it's something I have to deal with all the time. What I would say is if Francis Lawrence and Nina Jacobson, our producer on The Hunger Games, or Chad Zahowski and Keanu Reeves and Basil on John Wick felt like their films were being less than perfectly handled or felt like they were being undercompensated for the success of their movies. They would have stopped a long time ago. So I think there are people one can talk to and say, how does it work? But also, I think one of the other misconceptions, people talk about it as though we are selling the rights to our movies to third parties internationally.

33:28And that's not the case. We are licensing the movies. What does that mean? It means that they are paying us up front. It means that they're taking on the marketing costs and responsibilities, but working with our global team in Los Angeles to make sure that they have all the assets for our campaign, or if they need something different, we talk about it.

33:46Matt Belloni:And there's not going to be anything embarrassing that's going to go viral on the internet where they're selling a movie in Spain in some weird way. We have permission. They ask us. And it then means that when they overperform in any particular territory, we are sharing in the upside on a territory by territory basis. In the case of a movie like Housemaid, where it overperformed everywhere, it means we're seeing significant overages from virtually every territory. In other cases, you sometimes have a movie that will really overperform in two or three markets. And if you are a legacy studio, you take those wins, but you also have to swallow the losses in territories where it didn't perform as well.

34:31Well, in this case, we are the beneficiary of upside in territories that work, and it doesn't cross with territories that perform less well. So especially for a studio that doesn't have multiple$300 million movies, the efficiencies that it creates are beneficial, and we have found ways to compensate our talent so that they feel financially protected. And we have not had an incident where some territory has gone off and marketed a movie in a completely inappropriate way. We have controls on that, and it's worked really well.

34:59Matt Belloni:And it used to be that the movies would go to Starz, which is sort of no man's land. They still go there. But now you have this Amazon deal where they then go to Amazon Prime Video pretty closely after they go to Starz, correct? So Star, look. Because the pay one deal matters a lot. Sony pitches themselves. As you come here, you get full theaters. You get the full marketing boat. And then your movie's on Netflix in three or four months. So you get the streaming boat as well. Sony is an exceptionally run company. I think they're, I have incredible. You don't have to be nice. Come on. I think that that group is incredible.

35:34Matt Belloni:They passed on this movie. They passed on Michael. But what I would tell you is that, first of all, Starz, in terms of delivering for the audience at services, is running a really good business. But no filmmaker wants their movie on Starz. Well, so The Housemaid is the highest-grossing P-Vod title for any movie south of$150 million domestic in history. Oh, my God. How long did it take you to memorize that stat? I got it out in one completely clear piece. All right, that's great. I mean... And the revenue on that window is exceptionally beneficial to everybody. Let's talk about the PIVO window because you guys often will cite.

36:20Matt Belloni:You have all these smaller, you know, action-y, I call them the AFM-style movies where you'd see the bald, tough guy on the cover. Fewer now and going forward than we had in the past. But yes, a staple of Lionsgate. But you do that. And whenever one of those opens to 5 million and everyone writes about how it flops, I always get an email from Lionsgate saying, you don't understand the model. These do really well on P-VOD. And in the discussion that the industry is currently having about these windows and when movies should go to P-VOD and when they should go to subscription streaming, you guys haven't talked about a 45-day window.

36:54Matt Belloni:And I assume that's because a lot of these movies, the theatrical release is really cursory. It's really just marketing for P-VOD, and you want to get the movie there as soon as possible. So we are, a couple things. This past year, in terms of time from theatrical launch to SVOD, which I think everyone would agree is theoretically the most challenging in terms of does it in any way hinder people from going to the theater people think it's free we were the longest between theatrical launch and s-fot of any studio in hollywood last year um as it relates to those some of those smaller films you mentioned um i think it is entirely possible that there will be fewer of them because we are not going to be an outlier um and if the industry is is all moving and i think there's a valid justification for it if the industry is moving to 45 days across the board for anything that's launched yet theatrically, we will participate in that.

37:58Now, um, universal said they're going to be doing that. They didn't say it was true necessarily for focus. So I'll be interested to see, does it apply to, because we are, we're effectively like three or four studios when we have Michael or the hunger games or house made, we are like a legacy big studio. And it's fair to judge us that way. When we have a film like The Long Walk, I think it would be more fair to think of comparing what we're doing to what A24 or Neon do. And when we have some of those films that are much smaller and are really designed to set themselves up for home viewing. Genre, mostly.

38:35Yeah, Americana was one of those. Lots of different, lots of films that have fit in that category. The ability to go relatively quickly from theatrical into home has been a value, but it doesn't surpass our need to be a great partner to exhibition. And so we're not going to fight a fight if that's where everyone is moving. I do think the SVOD is the biggest question that all of us as an industry are going to have to answer. And, you know, I was talking about PVOD a long time ago. You probably were reporting on it.

39:06Matt Belloni:You make so much money on it. And if the pressure is on you to not do it, Where does that leave you? Well, so much money is relative to the cost of the movie. If you acquire a movie for$500 ,000 and you make$3 million, that is an extraordinary return on investment. It is an opportunity to cultivate relationships with filmmakers. You know, we did a movie a couple years ago called Sisu. Oh, yeah. And that filmmaker is doing John Rambo. And that filmmaker is doing John Rambo. Which I've heard is actually looking like it might be really good. The dailies on John Rambo are exceptional. And it's rare.

39:42I mean, I'm not. I know. Everyone blows smoke. I don't come from production. Let me guess. It tested the highest you've ever had. I haven't seen a cut of the movie, but it's rare for a non-production genius to look at dailies. I think I was quoted somewhere saying, and I meant it. I either think that looks like what I hoped it would look like or, oh, no. Those are kind of the only two things I'm capable of. occasionally it happened on a few scenes in the housemaid occasionally i see something in dailies that i think oh my gosh that is so far beyond what i thought was possible and yomari is doing like the the action and the and what's happening on screen is happening in camera um this is so i'm able to see stuff before any effects work goes into it and it it blew me away so um so sometimes, you know, in the case of, in the case of Americana, again, very, very small investment.

40:36We were in business with Sydney and expected to be in business with Sydney and just wanted to have other touch points to be able to maintain that relationship. And, um, it was a good thing for us. And I happen to love that movie. Um, so it may be that some of those movies no longer have a viable path theatrically that I think that would be a shame for those movies. But if we collectively as an industry feel like moving the window back is going to continue to drive a better attendance than fantastic.

41:07Matt Belloni:Kind of a bummer for theaters because the increased windows would actually kill a few theatrical releases that you guys would put out. That's not your problem. I am not. There are many, many smarter and stronger voices than mine that participate in this process. But what I would say is, as a general point of view, I think it is best to try to figure out what the right course of action is when you're operating in a moment of strength, not a moment of weakness. Finally, last question. Where does Michael get to? What are the numbers showing you right now? We had a great Monday. 700? 800? Does it have a chance to beat Bohemian Rhapsody?

41:47Matt Belloni:It does. So that could potentially make it the first billion dollar grocer for Lionsgate. Is that a possibility? It has. There is a chance it could get there. And obviously, there are lots of results well below that that are still a giant win for everybody. But based on if you were to just look at the number of movies that have opened at or right near a hundred million dollars domestically and think about where that's headed. If you add on top of that, what just happened internationally and then you layer on the one additional component which is a universal amazing partners it was a great experience with them the only territory they don't have internationally is japan which we handled separately yeah yeah and that market could be massive they expect it will be massive they're treating it like it's going to be massive i think when you add it up it's going to end up being in a in a huge place but very good for my box office draft uh i heard yes i have it in the draft i'm excited for you i know people say i'm a michael movie hater but i am not and i have it in the draft well i appreciate it All right.

42:46Matt Belloni:Well, thank you very much. Is there anything else you wanted to get off your chest? No, I'm super appreciative that you invited me, and I'm happy that I got to share. I know this is a big deal for you. People have been questioning whether this movie would work. So, congratulations. Thank you for letting us celebrate it. We are back with the call sheet. Craig, I'm going to out you right now, because you don't normally ask if the movie premiere will be in L.A. or New York, but you asked about Devil Wears Prada, too. On behalf of my wife. Uh-huh, yes. This is Top Gun Maverick for wives. Sure. Okay.

43:18Matt Belloni:Unfortunately, it was in New York, so neither of us has seen the movie. I do have tickets for the IPIC this Friday night at the direction of my wife. We have reserved our spot. So neither of us has seen this movie. The original Devil Wears Prada opened to$27.5 million. That was in 2006, so 20 years ago. A lot of inflation at work there. Is the traction double that now? Oh, it's now up to 73, according to NRG. And I've seen up to 80. I mean, Disney is treating this like the frickin' Avengers. This marketing campaign for a movie of this budget and this style, they are giving it the full-freight Disney experience here.

43:57Matt Belloni:I wouldn't be surprised if this marketing campaign was like$150 worldwide. I mean, it's kind of amazing what they're spending. So they think they've got something here. I'm going to take the over. I think this will overperform. Yeah, I don't know what it would take for us to take the under on this. It feels like it has good momentum. The numbers have been going up. NRG's numbers, they were at 60, then they were at 68, now they're at 73. So that usually indicates that people are choosing this. The pre-sales are strong and the momentum is going to keep going. But you never know. It's funny. There's not a lot of legacy sequels for movies that are directed towards women.

44:32Matt Belloni:Usually legacy sequels are like Top Gun Maverick and the old action hero comes back. this is a new I mean there's like Freakier Friday yeah I was gonna say Freakier Friday which overperformed which did I would argue Beetlejuice but that's sort of all audience you know Hocus Pocus 2 Practical Magic 2 those are in that genre but you're right I don't know I just feel like this movie managed to kind of hit the zeitgeist a little and it's got that early May spot that Disney has traditionally released big superhero movies they don't have that this summer so they're going all in on this and I think it's going to work.

45:08Matt Belloni:And what's the next big release coming up? Mandalorian at the end of May? Pretty much. Yeah, there's some small stuff. And then it'll compete with Michael, but yeah. Yeah, and I think the Michael audience does overlap. I mean, Michael is older women, but this, I think the younger women are going to care about this. That's the crazy thing, is that everybody in this movie is 45 and above, and it seems like younger women care. Yeah. Yeah. They all look like they're the same age as when they originally came out. Meryl Streep and Halfway. And Stanley Tucci. That guy's ageless. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

45:42Matt Belloni:All right. So, we're both taking the over. What's the exact number? 70? It's 73. Over on 73. So, we're taking the over on 73. How much over do you think it'll hit? I think it'll be over 80. Yeah. Okay. Not quite Michael numbers, but… Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely worth Disney's while. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Adam Fogelson, producer Greg Horlbeck, our editor John Jones. And I want to thank you. We will see you tomorrow.

46:09Hey, Mama. Thanks for making all my favorite recipes.

46:12Matt Belloni:Hi, Ma. Thanks for your unfiltered advice. Hi, Mom. Thanks for always being by the phone. Hey, Mom. Happy Mother's Day. When you ship UPS Air at the UPS Store, your items arrive on time or your money back. Guaranteed at no extra cost. Exclusively at the UPS Store U.S. retail locations. Visit theupsstore.com slash air shipping for full details. Terms and conditions apply. Send your Mother's Day gifts at the UPS store and we'll get your gratitude there on time.