The Townies: Hollywood’s Best and Worst of 2025

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1:44It is Monday, December 22nd. It's the Townies. What a year in Hollywood. Two studios were sold. One, Paramount, is still trying to acquire the other, Warner Brothers. And Netflix did something almost nobody thought it would do. It bought its way to growth. So it hopes. We'll see how the Warner sale turns out. All the major streaming services became profitable except one. Sorry, Peacock. Amazon finally bought the James Bond franchise that it thought it was buying three years ago. And Apple finally had hit movie in theaters thanks to F1. Diddy went to jail. and a couple filmmakers we won't name went to director jail.

2:19Donald Trump wreaked havoc on both Disney and Paramount. And most of all, a cloud of funk seemed to have descended over the entertainment industry and parked there, starting with the fires in January and the exodus of productions and all the layoffs associated with the Paramount sale and the general slowdown in production. The fear of what's to come as AI really established itself as the defining challenge for the professionally made movies and TV industry. Merriam-Webster declared the word of the year is slop, which thanks in part to Disney's landmark deal with OpenAI could be a sign of things to come in Hollywood.

2:52But it wasn't all bad news. And as is tradition, Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg is here. We both put our tuxes on and we're going to stage our very own award show, The Townies, given for outstanding performances in categories that only we choose and only we decide have real meaning and influence. Kind of like the Golden Globes, but classier. Though the Townies are also available for purchase. It all leads up to the coveted Who Won the Year honors for both talent and executives. So, pop the champagne, it's the Townies. The best and worst, and what the hell, in the year in Hollywood. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Belony, and this is The Town.

3:28All right, thank you, Craig, for playing our awards music play-in for this. Lucas and I are here live in the Spotify headquarters, The Ringer headquarters, downtown LA. I took a Waymo not knowing that Waymo's been on the freeways yet. Lovely view of the side streets on the way from the west side to downtown LA. All right. So here's how this is going to work. If you haven't listened before, Craig is going to go through the categories. And Lucas and I are going to offer our choices. And then we will decide amongst us or will Craig decide what the winner is in each category? I don't know why we're making this competitive.

4:05It's got to be competitive. It's like a team sport. No, it's got to be competitive. There's always a winner and a loser. If you guys have a consensus, then that's the winner. Okay. But in any dispute, Craig will decide. Sure. So let's start, Craig. Go with the first category. Okay. The first category of the 2025 townies, biggest flex. This one's easy, right? Mine are totally different from yours, I would guess, because both of mine are music. Oh, okay. Mine is movies. It's got to be Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi at Warner Brothers. they were literally being escorted out of the building by the media in March.

4:37We knew from reporting that David Zaslav, their boss, had talked to people about taking over their job, running the film studio at Warner's. Then they fire off five movies in a row that are all big hits. And several of them were not supposed to be hits. Sinners, Weapons, Minecraft movie, they did not have much to do with that. I think, no, I mean, Weapons was made by a, director whose previous movie had done well and been well regarded. But not$300 million worldwide well regarded. That was, I mean, horror, whatever. No, no, no. I totally agree. I had them for a different category. It was very impressive to go from your boss auditioning other people for your job or at least meeting with other people about your job to then go on the heater of all heaters, be kind of the studio of the year.

5:27Disney will end up with the most grosses because of of Zootopia and Avatar at the end, but I still feel like this was sort of Warner Brothers year between... Oh, you do? Yeah. Superman kind of worked. The horror stuff worked. I think... Conjuring. Between Sinners, Minecraft, horror, and the fact that one battle after another seems like a sure thing to win Best Picture, even if it was financially not as successful as people want you to believe, like, that's still a win for them. Sure. If you win Best Picture and you're a big studio, you are flexing. So that is the definition of this category. I would actually say Superman is sort of like the weakest of that, but that's also the one that is not theirs, right?

6:04That comes from DC. And honestly, Superman did what it needed to do. They can credibly release more movies in this universe, and that's all that matters. All right, so who do you have? I have a tie, both from pop stars. One was Taylor Swift buying her albums back. Okay, I had that in another category, but that's a flex. Yeah, and the other... Even though it sort of renders all of her previous decades worth of re-recording's mood? Yes, but it was She Finally Won. And the other was the Lily Allen album, which is, I don't know if you have listened to it or you're aware of this story at all. I am aware of Lily Allen.

6:38Come on, I'm not that lame. But putting out an entire album that's just a huge middle finger to your ex-husband, which, by the way, then completely revives your career. Because that's the thing about Lily Allen. Lily Allen was like a huge deal 10 to 15 years ago. She then kind of disappeared, now maybe to be a mom, but also just musically didn't do much that mattered. And now this is, I would say, the biggest and most relevant she's ever been. She's performing SNL. She's going to sell out her tour next year. So, all right, I'll take it. I mean, you could argue that Scooter Braun responded to the Taylor News by dating Sidney Sweeney.

7:10So that's kind of a flex. You think he responded to the Taylor News as if he just says this, I get to pick this. Sidney Sweeney has no agency. I'm assuming he went into overdrive working it to try to woo her because he was in a bad place that Taylor had finally got her master's back. I think he's been single for a while. I'm sure this was on his mood board of things that he wants to accomplish in his life. So good for them. I had a couple runners up. I had Lorne for the SNL 50 hoopla. That's a huge flex. Was that still this year? That was this year. They sort of owned the culture in February for a little while.

7:47I had David Geffen buying Warner Discovery stock when it was low right before the sale. I had David Geffen as my third option. Hard to say that possible security fraud might be a flex. I'm not saying that he did that illegally. I'm just saying that it's a little suspicious. And then I had, you know, this year in January was when Greta Gerwig got the 1 ,000 IMAX screens for the Narnia movie. So, big flex. Getting Netflix to give you 1 ,000 IMAX screens, pretty big flex. Sure. All right, let's move on. Should we crown a winner? It's got to be Mike and Pam. Come on. Despite the compelling case for Scooter Braun, it is probably Mike and Pam.

8:23Yeah. All right. Let's move on, Craig. Number two. Next category is the most destructive public backlash. This one for me is easy. It's got to be Snow White. That movie came out this year, finally. The Rachel Zegler Snow White that seemed to be hated by everyone. Like the advocates for little people didn't like it. and the people who would prefer that Disney movies be all white didn't like it. 205 million worldwide. Big money loser for Disney. Mark Webb, maybe director jail? Maybe not. I don't blame him for this. I don't think he takes that to loss. Yeah, this is not his fault. This one went off the rails for many, many reasons.

9:03But yeah, the whole hoopla surrounding Snow White and the Fox News of it all, very destructive. It was one of those that it was doomed before it came out. And they knew it. They punted it a year. Iger knew it when he was fighting with the activist investors. He had two problem movies on the schedule for this year or for that year. And it was Elio, a Pixar movie, and Snow White. So he just punted them and then they had to come out this year. Right. The only couple that I could think of were just like the whole 60 Minutes situation. Sure. But was it destructive? Ratings are fine? No, not for the show.

9:39For democracy. Purely reputationally. reputationally. That one... For our society. And then maybe the OpenAI Sora launch just like completely blew up in their face. And then they had to That's a good one. They had to retrench. They then do this deal with Disney, which I don't know that it would have happened without that. Oh, definitely not. Yeah. They had to fully retrench, get their house in order. They had to have, you know, the Disney General Council come to their retreat. They had to basically put their tail between their legs and say, okay, we tried to go scorched earth on the copyright industry.

10:14It did not work. And by the way, our video app might be behind our competitors. Exactly. So how do we do this? Oh, let's put Yoda and Peter Griffin on the app and see if it works. So that's how that... I agree. I'm going to go with OpenAI. Yeah, even though it had a good result for Sam Altman, I think that it was a pretty destructive... Yes, OpenAI as a company doing just fine. Although, they're spending a lot and, you know, Google's kind of getting their act together. Yeah. Even though both of their AI switches suck. Like they both suck. Why is that? I don't know. I don't want AI search. I want regular search.

10:49I like it when it's right, but it's not right. I mean, you and I are probably above average Googlers and searchers. This is the problem. We're super consumers. And we care about accuracy because if we're looking for something, we want it to be right. We have very specific needs. Yes. And I don't want to just like have AI nonsense. All right. We're digressing. Craig, please keep us on topic here. Honorable mention for most destructive public backlash in the 11th hour here. I would say Trump's tweet about Rob Reiner kind of brought Democrats and Republicans together. Agreed. In defense. Great one.

11:19That's a late winner for this one. I mean, we don't need to talk about it. The whole thing is so awful and sad. But, man. And will it actually be Donald Trump? Will any of that cling to him? I don't know. I don't know. Fox is going hard on the pro-Rob Reiner stuff. That's the interesting thing is that I have not watched, but I've seen some of the coverage of Fox. and they're talking about how great he was and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, how he was always willing to engage with them. And like, he's being sort of universally praised except for one person. Yeah. Who happens to be the president.

11:51Usually when, I mean, we'll get to this with other people, but usually when someone dies, you don't pile on them. Right. Especially if you are a... Especially if you are, if it seems to, if it seems like you were murdered and you did nothing wrong. Exactly. Oh my God. All right, we don't need to get into that. Craig, next topic. Next category is the most baffling success of 2025. I have one for this. I have one that... Oh, you go. Well, I have one that I know that I debated using for a later category, but I struggled with this category, so I put them here. And I'm going to say this is where I'm going to put David's ass on.

12:30Oh. Most baffling success. I mean, sure, lay it out. Only in the sense that this is someone who, if you were to... The Warner Discovery CEO. The CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery had merged Warner Brothers and Discovery in a deal that he said was going to position them to take on Netflix. It didn't work. The stock price fell by 60 plus percent. He became probably the most hated executive in Hollywood just because of various efforts he made to cut costs and shelve movies. and show up at Cannes events in cream-colored suits. And he had a lot of PR blunders that did not help. And then he ends up pulling this deal off where the stock price shoots up.

13:16He's going to get paid at a minimum$600 million. And at least for shareholders, he can go out a conquering hero. Sure. Took the company public at$24 a share. It's going to sell for at least$30 a share. Even if it's not a huge, huge win, he has pulled the rabbit out of the hat. It is. And it's baffling because this guy is not a builder. This guy is not a founder. He didn't do anything. He didn't do anything. In fact, he did so much that hurt the company that it got bidders in place to say, oh, we can go after this. And then all of a sudden, there are three of them interested and the stock shoots up.

13:55His argument would be that this wouldn't have happened if he hadn't cleaned the company. Oh, no, he thinks that because Warner's had a good year at the box office, that's what made this. Between the good year at the box office and some of the stuff they did on streaming. Nobody's buying Warner Discovery because Sinners did well in theaters. Like, I'm sorry, they're just not. They're buying it because of the library and because of the streaming subscribers and because of the infrastructure that they built over 100 years. He's someone who a lot of people would use the phrase fail upwards. Sure. Sure.

14:25And again, like of what his job is, his job is to deliver value to shareholders. Right. And you can argue that he did that. But the circumstances that led to that are some of the most bizarre and indeed baffling that I've certainly ever seen. I mean, look, did you see the disclosures that they put in their filing where a lot of these division heads at the company are getting one hundred are going to get over one hundred million dollars? Well, not division head. It's like his direct reports. Okay, but the head of HR making$30 million on a fire sale. The head of the streaming unit making$150 million.

15:02Like, JB Peretti, smart guy. But like, this is a fire sale of the company. This is not a company they founded. That's the thing. So, because this answer could have worked for Flex. It could work for Executive Win of the Year, which I think is where you're going to go. And because if you look at it, at the beginning of the process, they were pushing out. we want$30 a share. And everyone was like, you're not going to get it. And then they got it. So they happened to have the world's second richest guy and the biggest entertainment company by market cap. And another player that was at least interested.

15:36Sure. But quickly realized that it's like a land war in Asia. Do not want to get involved in a bidding war between the Ellisons and Netflix. What is your baffling success? Mine is much lower stakes. Mine is Dancing with the Stars. Season 34 of this show and the finale generated 10 million viewers. Was it? So like, where did the ratings come from? This show was like declared dead. That's much better than it had been. Oh, it's way up. It's way up this year. And I think what happened is they finally leaned in to just casting social media stars. And they've done that in the past, but they really win it.

16:10Who do they have besides Alex Earl? The guy who won was Steve Irwin's son, the crocodile guy. He has a big following. There were some others that I'm forgetting, But basically, they they leaned into the social media thing. They started putting clips on TikTok and like really positioning that well. And it worked. They got 10 million viewers. So good for them. Baffling. Yeah. It is rare for a show that long. 34th season to go up. They put it on Disney Plus. Remember the Bob Chapek move? They put it on Disney Plus exclusively. Yeah. And they undid that. But yeah, I feel like a lot of those long running reality shows, whether it's Bachelor or American Idol, like, they can have, maybe they just have a year where they pop up and become really popular for a second.

16:54Well, there's some storyline. Like, there was Love Island, it felt like blew up even more in year seven or eight or whatever this was. Or the Scandaball thing on those shows. Yeah, exactly. Honestly, if this Warner Discovery thing closes and David Zaslav's out of a job, Dancing with the Stars, man. He'd be great. I'd watch. I don't see that in his seat there. Okay. Greg, next category. All right, next up, most annoying media narrative of 2025. I don't know that you're going to like mine. Oh. But I have three. Is this something that I wrote? No, no, no. It's just not like... Mine is the whole mini-drama thing.

17:29Oh, micro-dramas, yeah. I have gotten requests every few weeks to be interviewed for something about the rise of the mini-drama. And I want to ask everyone who sends me that, do you watch them? Do you know anyone who's watched them? Yeah. Who's not a relative in China. We have just decided, without a lot of evidence that this is the next huge trend. And also, people are all drawing the wrong conclusion from Quibi, which was just like Quibi was too early, which is not the reason it didn't work. Why didn't it work? Quibi did not work because it was a bad idea from the start. It assumed that people did not value YouTube and that if you made a better version of YouTube, that people would pay for it.

18:14But the content wasn't bad. People really liked YouTube. No one's going to go to a separate platform and pay money. They spent too much money for something that wasn't, it was filling a need that did not exist. Anyways, mini dramas are one of those things where like someone does a story and then every other news outlet has to do a story. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure a couple of companies will end up raising a bunch of money. Well, half of the out of work TV executives are now working in micro dramas. If you look at like the big names from the 90s and 2000s, like Lloyd Braun, Jana Winogrey, like these people that had big jobs are now like jumping aboard as if it's going to be the next thing.

18:50It feels very NFT. Yeah. And then the other one I had was this whole narrative that 800 million is the new billion when it comes to movies. So I had a related one to this, which was the studios don't make movies to make money comments that people got when. It's just like, no, no, no. Like, yeah, they just made it for the art. Okay, sure. Or, you know, it's going to be huge on streaming. Yes. Like the whole Amazon Apple thing. Well, it doesn't really matter if they have box office. It's going to be big on streaming. It's like, okay, well, then what are they doing in the theatrical business? Like Amazon is going to put 15 movies in theaters this year and they just don't want to make money on them.

19:25Yeah. Like, you know, you can make a$70 million Luca Guadagnino movie and put Julia Roberts in it. And like if it grosses$10 million in the U.S., that's a failure. I don't care if you get to put Julia Roberts on a tile on Prime Video. I feel like every year, some version of our most or every year, one of us picks for most annoying media narrative, some version of like the people who want to pretend the movie business is something that it's not right now, because there's always those. Well, that was my other nominee, which is the whole narrative that original movies are back. We saw this this summer after Sinners, after Weapons, after Materialists.

19:58But honestly, if you look at the theatrical releases from this year, the only original movies that clearly made money on a wide basis, I'm not talking tiny indies, the only wide release movies that were original and made money were Sinners, Weapons, Materialists, and One of Them Days. Well, also F1, if you consider that original. I don't know original characters but branded yeah I don't so I had predicted that at the beginning of the year that all of the top 10 movies would be sequels reboots whatever which is true unless you count f1 if you don't count f1 the highest grossing original movie is sinners at number 16 worldwide so there you go original movies are not back it's great when they were it's very nice and and you know I hope they get made so we can have these moments when people get excited about original movies, but to say that original movies are going to overtake the branded stuff is pure fiction.

20:53My other one was just people getting all up in a huff over carriage fights. Like, this is the carriage fight that matters. Like, YouTube versus Disney. Forget all those other carriage fights. This is the one that really matters. I had one that, I don't know if it's fair, because it was actually more like a sources narrative thing, but if you talk to anyone about Warner Music Group this year, they would just be like, Robert Kinsel, Deadman walking and guess what we're at the end of the year still has a job always happens yes how many times has so-and-so been fired and i mean yeah it happens with with a lot of these things someday it'll be true someday it'll be true and they can say i told you so yes exactly um all right so there's a lot of nominees there i'm gonna go with the 800 is the new billion okay as my winner because you heard that all the time when these movies like jurassic world and you know minecraft Yeah, like huge hits, but did not get to a billion.

21:44And that's a problem. Like these movies would have grossed a billion dollars in the pre-COVID times. Yeah. And they're not getting there. And you can't just say, arguably, it should be a billion is the new 800. Right. Because of inflation. Right. So, all right. Yeah. Well, inflation, but then like the loss of China and Russia, it's complicated. All right. Next up. Next up. The least believable announcement of the year. This is where I had Trump's tariffs. Oh. Okay. That's better than what I had. Honestly, I had one in here that I don't totally believe. The whole Colbert was fired for his budget.

22:21I actually do kind of believe that. Yeah, I did Colbert for something else. I do kind of believe that Stephen Colbert's show was canceled because it's super expensive and doesn't make money. But the widespread belief around town is that politics was the only reason. I think it certainly played a factor. The decline of late night is obvious. and if it wasn't going to be Colbert this year, it was going to be one of these shows in the next year or two. I actually think that if there wasn't such backlash to that and there wasn't such scrutiny on Paramount, that they would have canceled The Daily Show also.

22:54You think so? The Daily Show, not a big moneymaker or sunsetted it after this year or something like that. But I think that because - They had to add. Especially if Stuart was willing to come back. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So the only other one was Jeremy Zimmer's quote unquote retirement at UTA. Like he was pushed out, but whatever. I see, I think Trump's tariff wins just because it was one of those where like, okay, he spends some time talking to Stephen Paul and John Voight and he talks about tariffs and then there is zero follow-up. He clearly knows nothing about what he's doing. And you could, for least believable announcement, if you were to step out of the entertainment business, you could just like list 10 Trump tweets, right?

23:32Because he says he's going to do something and then he doesn't do it. Or his announcement at the Kennedy Center Awards that it's going to be the highest rated award show ever when we know that they don't have a football lead in this year and it's probably not even going to match last year. We're not going to get into Trump stuff about that affair. Let's move on. Craig? Next up, the sneaky success of 2025. All right. Now, I have a couple of pretty obvious successes that just didn't get enough attention. And the first one, I think, is the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. Yep. because the numbers that were coming out of there, $2 million a day at the sphere, like that is insane.

24:12And totally a surprise to me because I would not have thought that people would pay$150,$200 for a reimagined version of Wizard of Oz with some smoke and mirrors that makes you feel like you're in a tornado. Like pretty amazing. I can't pick something that I wrote about as somewhat extensively as a sneaky success of the year. Because this is the I told you so. I told you that it was a success. No, no, because that would just be me telling you. But that was like that story. The newsletter I did on Wizard of Oz of the Sphere was probably one of like my 10 most red pieces of the year. Yeah, because I was like, holy shit.