Minecraft: A Huge Mess But A Huge Hit

This episode is brought to you by Sky, which, as great TV lovers, we are delighted about.

It's fantastic news.

I'll be honest, though, I'm also a fan of Netflix, of Disney Plus, of iPlayer, and this is supposed to be an advert for Sky.

Well, the good thing about Sky is that it's not just good for Sky shows, it's basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for TV lovers.

Mmm, buffet.

If you've got something specific in mind, what about that thing you were talking about the other day?

Memento Mori.

It's a one-off drama.

It's on BBC iPlayer if you like that sort of thing, based on the novel by Muriel Spark.

That's niche.

So it's got everything, the niche stuff, the mainstream stuff.

It's got all the apps you like.

If you want to go straight to watching the best that TV has to offer without the fuss of searching, Sky is a game changer.

Just go to sky.com to find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by Carvana.

Buying a car shouldn't eat up your week.

That's why Carvana made it convenient.

Car buying that fits around your life, not the other way around.

You can get pre-qualified for an auto loan in just a couple couple of minutes and browse thousands of quality car options, all within your terms, all online, all on your schedule.

Turn car buying into a few clicks and not a full week's endeavor.

Finance and buy your car at your convenience.

On Carvana.

Financing subject to credit approval.

Additional terms and conditions may apply.

This podcast is brought to you by Carvana.

Got a car to sell, but no time to waste?

Hop onto Carvana.com to get a real offer for your car in seconds.

All you have to do is enter your license plate, answer a few quick questions, and if you accept the offer, Carvana will pay you as soon as you hand the keys over.

They even offer same-day pickup in many cities.

Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way to Carvana.

Pickup times vary.

Please may apply.

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osman.

Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

How are you?

Yeah, I'm not bad at all.

Have you had a a nice week?

I've had a lovely week.

Part of it was having dinner with you.

You and Ingrid.

We all went out to dinner.

That was very nice, but also part of it is you've been to see the Minecraft movie.

But let's keep your powder dry on that because we're going to talk about it.

We're talking about two very, very similar creative projects today.

We're going to talk about Minecraft and we're going to talk about Black Mirror.

Yeah.

And also, I think we're going to talk about...

Three very similar projects and also the Four Beatles movies.

The Four Beatles movies.

And the casting, which has just been revealed last week.

Listen, I loved ants.

I'm going to enjoy Beatles.

Shall we get straight on and talk about Minecraft?

Because it is clear in your mind.

You've been to see it.

Remind us.

Remind me why I'm talking about it.

How well you thought it was going to do the Minecraft movie?

I'm not alone in this, but when we did our look ahead to the box office, and I was trying to name the biggest movies of what I thought would be the biggest movies of 2025.

I was like, oh, quite iffy on the.

I certainly didn't include it as one of the ones I

thought would be the biggest movies.

The tracking has been so wildly off on this.

The reason we're even talking about it is because it is a massive, massive massive hit.

It's an enormous smash.

It's coming against the backdrop of the worst box office since the 1990s bar the pandemic.

It is an enormous, it's made like 157 million in the opening weekend

in the US.

It's more than the Mario movie.

It's made more than Mario.

It's like about three million off Barbie.

It is, it's way beaten inside out to, by the way, it's made on a 75-25 split between Warner Brothers and Legendary.

And it's about the, it's the fourth Warner Brothers film ever to open over $160 million and they were Batman Superman Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Barbie the biggest movie video game movie opening ever

so now I remember because just just before

just before you were going to see it you texted me and just said why have you got all these old people on the posters okay I so I we'll get into that I went to the 920 showing a bit at Westfield that's 920 a.m yeah on Sunday morning you know a film's doing good business when it's got a 920 we weren't alone in the cinema My children were like, there will be.

I managed to persuade two of my children to accompany me.

Yeah, so 14 of them left at home.

Yeah.

In the shoe, the old

in the shoe.

And there was, and we saw the poster, and my son said, oh, and it's got Jack Black on it.

And he's like, oh my god, he's about 90.

It's like, listen, have some respect for the star of School of Rock and the guy who's been, you know, number two or three on the call sheet ever since.

Yeah, except for Kung Fu Panda, but it's a voiceover.

This guy was number four on the call sheet of the holiday, and there's only four people in it.

Come on.

I don't know where you put him on Jumanji, but it's obviously not a number one.

Now, listen, the point.

Anyway, and Jason Momoa, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, he's a sort of.

Does he get the joke of Jason Momoa?

I get it.

It's sort of, it's hard to say from the fact that.

I think the fact that he doesn't get the joke of Jason Momoa is the joke of Jason Momoa.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, but yeah, you're never quite sure whether they do.

In a way, I think Nicholas Cage perhaps does.

Anyhow, anyhow, Minecraft movie.

People made a lot of fun about that indefinite article when that first came out.

Let me assure you, this will not be the only Minecraft movie after these numbers.

Another Minecraft movie, yeah, oh, yeah, another.

There'll be several others,

but yeah, I mean, it's really hard to describe it other than critically, it's been completely panned.

Yeah, under 18s are given an A on Cinema Score, which tells you a lot.

Yeah, I mean, it is a genuinely

constant, endless loop loop of gibberish, kind of would-be comic action sequences that

my 10-year-old was like, why was none of that explained?

There was no narrative.

What, you know, what happened to their parents?

We were talking about orphans again.

Why are they born an orphan?

I was like, oh, I've just done something on this.

Please, if you've got questions from me, send them to the podcast.

And also, can you wait to the end of the film?

But you know, in America, they religiously break down the demographics of the box office, like what, almost in real time, while while it's happening.

So, we know that 78% of the opening night box office was aged 13 to 24.

I think 35% was 13 to 17.

Now,

again, people say, oh, they don't want to go to the cinema anymore.

You know, they only watch YouTube.

Okay, if you go onto YouTube, you can't watch anything without having to watch a Minecraft advert first.

And I have to, I mean, it's almost as if adolescents, what adolescents really want to watch is not necessarily adolescents.

It's this rubbish.

Sorry, no offense, no offense.

offense i'll watch it and i sat through i can say what i like if any of you goes in westfield at 9 20 on a sunday if not don't write in yeah it's funny no one's saying you know what i think they should show this in schools yeah it's very important they show this in schools but imagine if you did imagine you're going to school and they're showing this you'd be oh my god it's the best day ever at school yeah it's amazing what are they showing at a what sorry sorry who's it stephen who

written sorry written by jack what yeah well there was lots of reasons that people thought oh it's not going to do very well yeah there was you know like always when they're especially when gamers are involved, there was some sort of vocal fan opposition and people saying, oh, they shouldn't have made it effectively.

It is CGI, but it sort of looks like it's live action.

They should have done it in as animation.

Bear in mind, by the way, this movie, this is another crucial part, it cost 150 million, which is not very much.

Obviously, they'll have spent 100 plus on marketing, but it's not crazy.

It doesn't matter really if the CGI is not great, which it isn't in lots of parts, because

well, and it's certainly not the main problem with the film, but it doesn't matter if it isn't, because you know, my how lo-fi is Minecraft, it's supposed to look like it, you know.

So there was some vocal fan opposition, and people sort of

looked at the trailer and said, Here's how I would have done it.

You know, I'm building my own Minecraft trailer, and everyone's like, Oh, these are so beautiful, these are great.

The fans should have been allowed to make this movie.

Well, you know what?

The fans love this movie, okay?

Yeah, and also, you probably wouldn't have made $153 million in your opening weekend

with your version of it.

Yes, absolutely.

The other reasons people in the industry didn't think that it would do so well is because

they thought, yes, sure.

By the way, it is the most popular video game of all time.

And it's had, you know, got every month they've got

180 million players.

Yeah, 300 million copies.

Many sold.

The guy who came up with it, Marcus Person, he's a billionaire, quite rightly.

I think it's kind of a great thing, though.

Oh, God,

it's a wonderful thing, Minecraft.

Something's going to be the big phenomenon of someone's childhood.

Minecraft is so imaginative.

It's wonderful.

It's so creative.

That's the fascinating thing about it.

We'll get back onto the movie.

But the thing I love about Minecraft is it, you know, there's lots of different ways to play it.

It's kind of open-ended, it uses kids' imagination, you know, it's it's building stuff.

It just seems like an extraordinarily

useful thing to have in a child's life.

It's absolutely wonderful.

If you're going to watch some nonsense, and it's interesting you're talking about the amount of trailers there are for it on YouTube, because the game itself became so enormous really through the internet and through you know people playing it and you know people watching other people playing it and the fact that you know you can design your own mods for the for this game just the whole thing is so anathema to anything that we grew up with we had sort of you know choose your own adventure you know if if if you think you should jump in the river going to pay 17 if you you know that's that was our how interactive our childhood was this is i mean it's it's extraordinary and for anyone who kind of bemoans children sitting in front of screens if your kid is playing minecraft and they're really engaging with minecraft i mean you couldn't have a better sort of route into life.

I mean, it's extraordinary the challenges you're set and the way you have to collaborate with people and the ways that you can use your imagination.

Or the way you can just use it like Lego, on-screen Lego.

I hope, you know, if you're not playing in survival mode and if you're not, you know, or watching like KSI play it, which I'm afraid I've seen an awful lot of.

I've done a lot of Mr.

Beast and KSI playing Minecraft.

There are videos of people watching them, watching them do it.

Anyway, I do.

Yeah, in funny enough, in the New Thursday Murder Club book, it's out in September,

there's a scene where someone someone is watching somebody watching a video on their phone and next to someone and listening out loud on their phone as well.

I won't tell you what happens to that person, but they regret it.

It's nice having a universe.

It's just disposing of the Richard.

It's nice to create your own universe, which is sort of what Minecraft is.

But the other lovely thing, I think, about Minecraft, and this, I think, the computer games industry has hit up on this beautiful thing, which we haven't quite gotten in other creative industries yet, early access model that they have for their game.

they've nearly finished a game they will then release it to a select group of people you have to pay for it but essentially they're saying can you be our testers yeah because it's quite hard with a video game there's bugs everywhere and people are so excited to be involved at that stage at alpha stage or or beta stage that they pay to play this game

to then send off saying oh there's a bug here this is a problem this is an issue so they're doing the job of a of a you know a games tester but also

they are spreading the word about this thing.

They're saying, oh, I've got this incredible thing, it's going to be coming out, it's going to come out of September, and then they still buy the thing when it comes out as well.

It's such an amazing thing, it'd be interesting to see how you could make that work in the world of sitcom or sketch show or something like that.

I suspect you could.

So it's not quite Kickstarter, it's not quite wiki or something, but it's yeah, it is something even more impressive than that, where people really feel part of something, but are also providing an incredibly useful service to that product.

So, again, anyway, enough of that because everyone just wants to hear your view of the movie.

No, no, no, no.

The movie at 9.20

at Westfield.

Okay.

Do you know how you know cinema's in trouble?

I'll tell you, I think apart from the box office, which we're going to come to, but I think it's really interesting.

One of the things I walked past on the way to the Minecraft screen, one of the other very big screens, there was a sign for a church, and one of the screens is now a church on Sundays.

Is it?

Good luck.

Celebration church.

What do you think of that?

I think it's great.

We know that sometimes cinemas are sort of closing down in Harvey and becoming climbing walls and soft place, but there was something so weird about people going into one of the screens and it being used as a church.

I think that's great.

Because what is a cinema?

It's an enormous screen where you can see something and it's quite comfortable.

It's a religious experience.

Don't say it's a religious experience.

It sort of is.

You can watch, you know, you can watch National Theatre Live and stuff like that.

This is just God live.

Let me just download some further thoughts on that for a future episode.

I think if you're...

I'm going to investigate more.

Listen, in the same way that Fulham now has a private members club so they can make money during the week, if you've got you've got a massive screen there and loads and loads of chairs on a Sunday morning where no one's, there's only one film a year they're going to see and that's Minecraft,

you might as well rent it out to a church.

Okay, fine, fine.

Let me think about it and let me investigate more about that church thing because I find it quite fascinating.

Anyhow.

But you know my view of I think cinema should show television.

That's what that's been.

I know your thoughts on this.

I mean it's crazy that they don't.

I mean that that to me would that that's the easiest win in the whole world.

Just show TV.

You know, people would go crazy for it.

Well, you don't run cinema chains, but let me tell you, let me, not yet, but let me tell you who does run cinema chains, okay?

And this really shows it.

So maybe we should have predicted this because let's go through the top 10 box office of the whole

of last year, right?

Number one, Inside Out 2.

Number 2, okay, Dead Pull and Wolverine.

Not two, Inside Out 1.

Number 3, Moana 2.

Number 4, Despicable Me Four.

Number 5, Wicked.

Number Number 6, Mufasa, the Lion King live-action spin-off.

Number seven, June, number eight, Godzilla V Kong, number nine, Kung Fu Panda 2.

Kung Fu Panda 4, sorry.

And number 10, Sonic 3.

Okay.

That's 7 out of 10 are straight-up kids' movies, right?

It also sounds like the football results.

Kids run cinema chains.

Okay, that's they are keeping the lights on.

And that's why when we got to the end of the last year and we were saying what looks in relatively good shape, we hope, is the family genre, because that is all, this is this is keeping it going, okay?

So it helps that it's become a sort of event movie, this thing in that way.

You know, like the gentle minions when people put on the suits and they go and see the you know,

it's been such a phenomenon, it doesn't matter how, of course, it matters how good the film is, but it's, of course, if you're a kid, you are going to want to watch this film, whatever the reviews are, because it's been such a large part of your childhood.

I mean, it's really

like, well, and they thought, oh, no, unlike Mario, which had generations of people who'd liked it, this has only got 15 years or 16 years or something, and maybe people won't go for that in the same way that you, because your parents have got to take you in lots of cases.

But as it turns out, they have.

But also, every parent has seen an awful lot of Minecraft, has been exposed, let's say, to an awful lot of Minecraft information.

And realizes it's not the worst thing in the world.

Yeah, and a lot of the other stuff.

And also, it kind of goes, what else are we going to be doing at 9.20 on a Sunday morning?

Well, you know, because there were relatively young children in my screening, so they didn't do the TikTok trend.

Have you seen what this is?

Oh, no, go on.

People are having to, you know, like all things like, how can I eject these people from cinema in the same way that the gentlemen were ejected?

They scream and they throw popcorn at the trailer lines.

So if a line from the movie that's been in the trailer appears,

they everyone screams.

So, you know, and they like to get, they get thrown out and they film themselves being thrown out.

So it has become an event movie, you know, for good or for ill Richard.

I don't know about that.

Yeah, no, I know you don't know about it.

Luckily, this did not occur, but I could hear children all around me, and there were, you know, quite a few in there for 920 they're so excited when they see the physical version of the sort of diamond sword or whatever it is but it is exciting so if your favorite book is made into a movie it's exciting whatever it's like it's exciting

but it's really weird now if you go i mean you know which was an original that movie free guy with ryan reynolds which is a sort of gaming sort of fantasia i suppose um now during that when they had various bits of ip sort of clashing into it was like oh there's this from fortnite there's that the children in the cinema are going nuts because they can see things from games they play on the screen.

So,

as I say, children are keeping the lights on, and everyone's saying they'll only watch YouTube or whatever.

It just doesn't understand it.

They'll be advertised on YouTube and then they will make you go.

If it goes through their school or whatever it is,

they don't want to wait till streaming.

So, they will make people go.

Well, that's it.

If this is like reimagined, if you reimagine cinema, so do our cinemas are certain things.

We grew up and there were like three movies came out a week, and you know, your mum would take you to one once a month, and then when you're a bit older, you started going to see them.

Kids have not grown up with that.

So, what they're actually saying is, you know, this thing that you love on your tiny screen at home, they have built a huge room with an enormous screen.

They've made it like an experience, like a live experience of it.

They've got loads of chairs you can go see with all your mates, and you can sit and watch it.

And they go, That sounds like the greatest thing.

They have such expensive, slushy cups with like Minecraft figures on the you know, sculptures on the top of it.

They've got the whole look.

I'll say, before we talk further, culturally

pops.

Um, no, because

that's piqued my interest.

At a 9.20 screening of a film,

is that too early?

You know, like, if you go on holiday, you can have a drink at the airport.

A weather spins, yeah, of course.

If it's 5 a.m.

If you're at the cinema, can you have pick a mix or popcorn at 9.20 on a Sunday morning?

I was amazed that neither of my children tried it.

Maybe they just think I'm a dragon and would have said, don't be stupid.

Maybe it's too early.

We're going out to lunch because I couldn't let this be my day.

So I've made you come at 9.20.

I just wanted it out of the way by 11.35.

Always put the first time.

11.26, it finished.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So I thought, yes.

I mean, people were getting stuff, yes.

Were they?

Bear in mind, cinemas are food retail, aren't they?

And also bear in mind that a lot of kids have been up since 5am.

Yeah.

So for them.

I'm waiting to see mine greetings.

It's sort of lunchtime.

Of course,

we're going to talk more about the movie industry later

from a completely sort of different art house-ish-ish end.

Yeah, the Beatles, who were the Minecraft of their time.

And they were.

We'll talk about that.

I think we will end up talking a little bit about some of that.

But it's interesting what sort of weird kind of convulsion Hollywood's in at the moment, apart from all the fires, apart from all those terrible things.

As there was last year when they had terrible quarters, and then suddenly a movie comes along and saves it.

Remember, they had the whole mantra survive till 25, which was post-pandemic, we'll get back, and then everything will be all right in 25.

Well, it's not all right in 25.

The box office is down 11% year on year.

Because of the Minecraft movie, it's now only down down 6%.

That's one movie and

that's not good.

And so lots of movies that they thought would be bigger have already failed.

They're in that thing now where they've had one kind of huge hit and they're all saying, oh, well, this is great.

You know, everybody's back.

That is not the sign of, I don't think, of being back.

And I think that the big, big, which we'll talk again later when we talk about the Beatles.

They had Cinemacon last week, which is when all the studios in Las Vegas, and we're definitely going to talk about that later, when all the studios go and they show their upcoming wares to the people who put them on in theaters.

And it's quite secretive, actually.

And I don't know,

it's a shame that this movie didn't happen just the week before because then people might have thought, oh, well, you know, there's still stuff out there.

But it is a time of worry for that business, very of big worry.

If I'm going to go to CinemaCon next year,

I'm going to say, put TV on.

all.

I want you to do a presentation there.

If you're Amazon or someone,

just buy a cinema chain and put loads of TV on.

Just put friends on all day.

You know, just put your new stuff on.

People will go absolutely nuts for it.

It's a great, it's a great advert for you.

You can keep giving this idea away for free.

For free, because I want someone to do it.

I know you do.

I'm too old to get involved in all that stuff.

I know you can't get involved in theatrical distribution.

You know what I mean?

You know what?

You've got a few career changes, but I think that one's going to be.

What's Richard doing now?

Oh, he's running a series of cinemas in the Midwest.

How's it going?

He's really having a bad time.

He's not enjoying it at all.

But they're doing an incredible documentary about it.

Turns out people don't want to watch TV in the cinema, and so he's lost an awful lot of money.

Give us a 30-second review of the movie and what it is and what people are going to expect.

Okay, I've...

Jack Black is not 90.

He's 55.

Jason Momoa is 45, apparently.

Hardwood between them.

Enjoys partying, I think.

If I can put it that way.

and yeah, I mean, they're two what my children regard as quite old people

having a sort of buddy.

I, you know, there's no dead wood, everyone wants to put a joke on a joke.

I don't know if the lines are so bad that Jack Black, Jack Black's delivery throughout is extraordinary.

It's like he's in a panto.

And I wonder if you just thought, I can't.

I just, we've been through about a hundred rewrites.

I don't know where to start with this.

If I just do everything in a stupid, like,

stylized voice, like I'm just doing an SNL sketch, then maybe it will just somehow cohere.

Yeah, and also they can fix it in the edit.

And he's gone in to watch it at 9.20, and he's gone.

Sorry, you left all of it in.

All I was doing was giving you options.

I really felt a significant amount of it was improvised, and at a certain point, Jason Momoa is like, I'm great at improvising.

Can you just say?

Not sure you are, but anyway,

the children in it, the boy is very forgettable.

The girl in it, Emma Myers, the sort of older sister who's, because, of course, they're orphans,

she's Emma Myers, she's in Wednesday and she's in Good Girl's Guide to Murder and she's got, but you know, she doesn't have a whole lot to do.

Danielle Brooks, nobody has a huge amount to do.

I mean, the plot is genuinely.

It's a basic storyline.

You see, that's the thing.

They've got to get a glowy thing back.

I mean, that's the story of every

get the glowy thing back and unite it with its special case.

It's pretty much almost Shakespeare.

You just, yeah.

Yes.

And I think they try at a certain point to sort of foreground it.

It begins, the whole way that they even get into it starts with a sell-off in storage units.

Because, you know, obviously the guy hasn't claimed it's not at all explained.

Also, no children in that cinema, let me tell you, knew on earth what a storage unit was.

They've storage was.

Did not appreciate that sometimes things get sold off at the end of when no one's just turned out to pay the bill for a while.

That passed them all by.

They were literally waiting to get to the overworld and to be in the, you know, to go through the portal.

I mean, it is honestly completely episodic.

You know, nothing

it's they're just sort of moving through the world with no rhyme or reason, much as you might if you were playing the game

and making I really have to say it is a complete mess.

But they all seem to be it's a lucrative mess.

It's unbelievable.

So there you go.

It is it and that doesn't mean that of course that the critics were wrong, not at all.

It's interesting and it's great that young people do want to go to the cinema

and just I mean it it has blindsided everybody.

Even the tracking, which is an industry and is a business.

They missed it.

It was way under half what they were saying.

I mean,

they were saying even less than it was extraordinary.

And people were just thinking it wasn't going to take off.

So there'll be lots of people listening to this now who have, they are very aware in the week ahead that they are going to this with a child or a niece or nephew or grandchild.

I mean, is it

if you don't go at the 920 show,

say you get to go at a five, I don't think it would be unreasonable to have one of the little bottles of Blossom Hill that they try and sell you.

That might help.

You know, just let it wash over you like,

you know, 100 minutes where you don't have to really do any parenting.

Yeah.

And if anyone is listening because their parents listen to this podcast in the car and they're in the back of the car and they're huge Minecraft fans, are they going to enjoy it?

My children liked Minecraft and didn't, but the children around me liked it very much.

They were younger than 10 and 14, but they liked it very, very much.

And I'm, you know, if you like what you like, so go and have a look.

I assume an amazing, just a genuinely amazing, ironic watch for students in their early 20s who also grew up with Minecraft.

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

the

watching it ironically.

The ultimate edibles movie.

Yeah.

Let me leave it at that.

And on that note, we will go to our break, where I believe we're not advertising edibles.

We're not, but we're going to talk about Black Mirror straight afterwards.

Yes, we are.

This episode is is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch unmissable shows, which includes the new season of the multiple Emmy Award-winning Hacks starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder.

We love Hacks so much.

Absolutely love it.

I'm so looking forward to this new series.

For people who don't know Hacks, Marina, talk us through it a little bit.

It's focused on the relationship between the older comedian who's played by Gene Smart, Deborah Vance, who's one of those real old showbiz troopers.

She plays Vegas.

She sort of does residency.

She's sort of, yeah, almost like a Joan Riversy Riversy type character.

She's the boomer, and Hannah Einbenders is a kind of Gen Zero.

It's really interesting on the stuff between the ages.

Yeah, so she plays Ava Daniels, who's essentially becomes Deborah Vance's writer.

So she writes for very cool.

She's been cancelled for a joke at the start.

So we start in the culture war and we continue in it.

But what I love about the show particularly is the absolute reverence for comedy and the graft and the craft of it.

And what a tough kind of man's world it remains, definitely, definitely.

And so, how hard it is to be a woman in that male-dominated industry.

Yeah, amazing on Showbiz, amazing on comedy, amazing on the industry, but also just the relationship between the two of them is a really lovely generational sort of thing.

It's like a sitcom thing.

It's very dramatic, but a lot of comedy in there as well.

They've got some terrific guest stars in this season.

They've got Helen Hunt, Tony Goldwyn, Eric Balfour, and obviously the returning cast who are peerless.

Yep, the mix of comedy and drama is spot on.

You can watch season four of the Emmy Award-winning hacks right now on Sky.

Hello, I'm William DeRimple.

And I'm Anita Armand.

And we are the hosts of Empire, also from Goalhanger.

And we're here to tell you about our recent mini-series that we've just done on the Troubles.

In it, we try to get to the very heart of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the 1960s all the way up to 1998.

It's something that we both lived through and remember from our childhoods, but younger listeners may not know anything about it.

And it's a time when there was division along religious and political lines.

Neighbours turned against each other.

Residential city streets became battlegrounds.

Thousands were killed.

And the IRA bombed London.

It seemed as if an end was out of reach.

But in 1998, a peace process finally brought those 30 years of violence to an end.

But the memory of the troubles is still present, not only within northern Irish communities who experienced it, but in international relations and political approaches to peace.

And new audiences are starting to understand this national trauma through films like Belfast and Kneecap and TV shows like Dairy Girls.

In fact, our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden-Keefe.

Now, he's the author of the non-fiction book that inspired the hit TV drama Say Nothing.

It's one of my favourite books.

It's, I think, the kind of inco blood for our generation, extraordinary work of nonfiction.

To hear the full series, just search Empire wherever you get your podcasts.

Running a business comes with a lot of what-ifs.

But luckily, there's a simple answer to them.

Shopify.

It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku, and it'll help you with everything you need.

From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations, Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality.

Turn those what-ifs into

sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/slash special offer.

Sweat moves you forward.

Degree antiperspirant is here to make sure it never holds you back.

Clocking in, sweat.

Lunch meeting, sweat.

Biking home, sweat.

Degree Advanced is for the hustlers who put in the sweat.

The world's number one antiperspirant with up to 72 hours sweat and order protection.

Degree, here for sweat.

Try it today.

Welcome back, everybody.

Now, we are going to talk about Black Mirror, which comes back on Thursday of this week, which is obviously Charlie Brooker's amazing series.

So, Charlie, who started as a video games journalist and then created this sort of fake Radio Times listings page, which just seems like an ancient thing as an idea anyway, called TV Go Home.

And then he had a column in The Guardian.

Then he began writing for television, a touch of cloth, all the screen wipes, news wipes.

I mean, it's been an incredible journey, but I always think he's very interesting about it because it's wrong to suggest that, oh, the technology is so evil.

It's really a show about people because

the technology, as he says, is neutral.

And

it's the people who are using it and

how we're becoming warped

or not by it or how we're trying to claw something back from it anyway.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a season seven just coming out, as you say, starts on Thursday.

They've gone a bit more old school again on this one.

I think, you know, the last series, there's great kind of horror stuff, folk horror and things like that.

This one is a bit more traditional, Black Mirror, and yeah,

the dangers of technology.

But it's worth pausing, really, just to think what an extraordinary success this show...

has been.

You know, there's so many enormous shows that come on every five seconds.

And, you know, this started in 2011, and it's still such an extraordinary brand created by charlie and by annabelle jones his uh producer and they've worked hand in hand on you know the whole lot all the way through it started on channel four and it went to netflix jay hunt commissioned it he was head of channel four uh at the time commissioned so many huge hits that are still going now we've talked a lot about you know terrestrials not being able to afford to do big things and i think black mirror might have been the very first example yeah of how that was and actually when you look into it and you know there was a big there was a split between annabelle and charlie and channel four and whose fault was that And actually, you look at it, it was no one's fault.

Everyone did the right thing, I think, at the time.

So Charlie and Annabelle had done a thing called Dead Set,

which the brilliant Andy Nyman starred in, which was like a zombie thriller set in the Big Brother house.

And, you know, it had been a huge success, and they'd loved making it.

And they'd, you know, it looked amazing.

It had this great scale.

And they said, well, I wonder if we can do some sort of, you know, an anthology.

Now, it's worth saying now that anthologies are the worst nightmare of every single TV channel that's ever existed.

Well, that's what I, yeah, that's what I always think.

It is, it seems like, oh, he's just a different thing each week.

I think it's so much more work.

Well, it's so much more work for the people making it.

Yeah.

It's so much more expensive for the people paying for it.

And if you're

just to be really clear, because you have to have a whole new load of sets, a whole new load of characters.

The whole thing, the production,

the whole thing is...

It's all standalone.

There's no economy of scale, really, because each one has to be conjured from nothing.

Exactly that.

Which is why no one ever commissions it.

And then people go, oh yeah, but you know the Twilight Zone, which is the one that's most often talked about, the Twilight Zone was so wonderful and so successful.

The Twilight Zone was cancelled more than almost any show in history.

The Twilight Zone is constantly cancelled because it was really expensive and no one really watched it.

We look back now and go, we've got this great library of Twilight Zones, aren't they amazing?

And you know, some of them are.

But yeah, it was not something that people were particularly excited about.

We can go back and look at it because it was nothing like as expensive as this, even

on its own terms.

Exactly that.

So Charlie has this idea and Charlie and Annabelle go into Channel 4 and Channel 4 quite rightly are not that excited about it.

They're like, I don't know about this.

Shane Allen, who is the head of comedy at Channel 4, said, oh, I'll do this black mirror thing.

So it actually came through Channel 4 Comedy, which is a very peculiar place for it to come through.

Obviously, a lot less money there than drama.

So it really was a big punt and took a huge amount of their budget as well.

And that first series is hugely memorable for everyone because it started with National Anthem, which is the one with Rory Kinnear, where he is forced by black male to have sexual relations with a pig, which, of course, foreshadowed so much of British politics.

So there was that and, you know, a couple of others.

It was ludicrously expensive, but, you know, there was some buzz around it for sure.

Oh, absolutely.

It felt incredibly exciting.

Amazingly directed.

All three of them are very different.

Amazingly directed, great actors in them.

Charlie's a wonderful writer, Annabelle, an incredible producer, very involved in the process.

You know, I think Channel 4 realised that they had a sort of buzzy show on their hands.

The return on investment wasn't really there they did another series of it at which point channel four said look we have to get co-production money we know this show is great we know people love this show we need to get co-production money and annabelle and charlie gone over to the states and seen everyone really seen all the networks and they all went no it's an anthology show are you crazy there's absolutely no way we will do this we all know that anthology shows don't work we all know they're too expensive we all know it's essentially you know commissioning six standalone films instead of a series where you have returning characters and cliffhangers and you know catchphrases and stuff like that the stuff that tv is usually made of and so all the networks said no so Netflix got the rights to show it in North America and in the rest of the world as well and you know didn't didn't cost them an enormous amount of money and but it looks you know it looked great and so they showed it and that's when that's when everything changed it went absolutely crazy immediately because there's something about them that although you know they're they're very British and obviously Charlie and Annabelle have a very British sensibility there was something very worldwide about them the whole worldwide they speak of the age that what's so interesting is that they really do seem to satirize the now via the 10 minutes into the future, which is, I suppose, your dream of all those kind of dystopian things.

You know, when something's crossed over into a completely different realm of kind of buzz and reception, when it sort of becomes the brand name for a feeling.

Yes.

And people saying the whole time, oh my god, this is so bad, Mirror.

The Twilight Zone, people used to say, oh my God, it's like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

And people do say things like, this is so mad, it's like an episode of Carbi or Enthusa, or something like that.

I think that is almost

the most mass market one I can think of of everyone because everyone is living in this time of incredible technology acceleration and to always have a word, to have two words for it, which are always like, oh my god, this is so Black Mirror.

I know, pretty much anything that's happened in politics in the last 10 years has been very Black Mirror-esque.

So it goes out on Netflix.

Suddenly, everyone in America is going crazy.

And more importantly, every single actor, writer, and producer and director in America watches it and loves it because they recognise the job that Charlie and Annabelle have done.

They recognize it's brilliant.

Jay Hunter Channel 4 and Shane Allen and all the people who've been involved, they recognize there was this amazing thing.

Channel 4 and Charlie and Annabelle go, let's do a Christmas one.

And John Hamm comes on board, who's the first big star really to have been in one of these, but like Big Star.

And he came on it because.

It was coming off Mad Men.

I mean, it was a huge thing to have someone do something like that.

And since then, their leads have been, I mean, their leads are always really incredible.

Yeah, always interesting.

But Bill Hayder had said to John Hamm, you have to watch this show.

And so John Hamm had watched Black Mirror and just went, I mean, of course I did.

And he did it for Channel 4 regular rate, like everybody else.

And so he came and did it.

And that Christmas episode, by the way.

One of my favorite ever Black Mirrors.

So then they're in the situation where...

every single network in America is saying to Charlie and Annabelle, we want the show.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Yeah.

Americans are trying to say yes now.

You know when we said we didn't want to do the show?

Well, you know, now because every single dinner party we go to, people will, it's all they talk about it.

We would now like to do this.

It had this huge buzz, but it's still very, very expensive for Channel 4.

They can't really make it.

So, she said, well, look if we can get co-production, so then they can.

I think the one place Channel 4 didn't want a co-production with was Netflix because Jay was very perspicacious, and she sort of knew that Netflix was the beast that was going to eat everything.

And for Charlie and Annabelle, actually,

because Netflix were able to say, here's an immediate six-episode order, it can be any length you want, any genre you want,

here's the money, which is probably four or five times the budget you would get on Channel 4.

Here's the freedom.

Would you like to sign up with us?

It's sort of impossible to say no to that.

So Jay has to say goodbye to it.

It's the truth.

You can't keep doing it.

Whether it would have been the phenomenon it is if it stayed on Channel 4 is difficult to tell.

Charlie and Anna better have said that.

No, it wouldn't.

I mean, I think

it just definitely wouldn't.

But they had the bravery to commission in the first place.

They had the bravery to put out National Anthem as the first one.

So they are absolutely part of the architects of the success of Black Mirror.

As I say, now we understand that Netflix comes in for things and, you know, prices other people out of the market.

This is such a perfect early example of exactly that happening.

Big hit show that was already on a terrestrial broadcaster.

Terrestrial broadcaster cannot afford it.

Netflix are able to come in, throw a huge amount of money at it, and throw a huge amount of creative freedom at it, which also Channel 4 are not able to do.

But that's how they got everybody in.

Yeah,

I think Channel 4 said we might be able to find out some money.

We need to see all six ideas,

which is like a year's work.

And

we could just go to Netflix and not do it.

And yeah, so ever since then, it's been this phenomenon.

You know, shows win Emmys all the time.

So, you know, Sopranos will win Emmys every year.

Fraser will win it every year.

But because, you know, you know what you're getting.

Black Mirror won Emmys three years in a row, but for shows that were entirely different, made by entirely different crews, entirely different genres.

So San Juniper Perro, some people think is the greatest ever.

Black Mirror won the Emmy.

Then USS Calister, the Jesse Plemons won.

Which they're doing a sequel of.

They are doing in this new one.

And then Bandersnatch, which I think is one of the greatest

technical achievements.

Unbelievable.

There's a trillion different ways to watch it.

They won Emmys three times in a row with things that are entirely different stories and things.

That they brought up from the ground each time.

For me, it's extraordinary in that, in the way that something like the day-to-day, right back in the 90s, was, which is it sort of satirizes the future and it somehow manages to stay ahead of things.

As I say, everything's moving at such a pace.

And television, as we know, takes forever to make.

I mean, it takes forever to make.

So I wonder how there must have been a couple of times where they've had an idea and in development shelved it because for some reason that particular area of our craps at world has accelerated so quickly that you think this would actually look like you know we'll be looking back fondly on whatever this

yeah they they and they they they sort of gut things for parts and take things from you know kind of other ideas the one thing always anyone is ever around charlie or annabelle there's always always, oh, I had an idea for a black mirror, and they never, they never work.

The hardest work I've ever seen anybody do on any show because they are making like a whole series of movies.

I think they're so amazing at any given time.

And one or other of them.

Everyone knows Charlie's amazing, but as you know, I think she's brilliant.

Yeah, she's incredible.

But one or one of them is always on the set.

Yeah.

You know, they're absolutely hands-on all the time.

You know, it's an extraordinary achievement.

So yeah, so this new series,

there's a follow-up to USS Calister, which is going to be very, very exciting.

There's a sort of follow-up to Bandersnatch as well called Plaything, but no interactivity.

I think the interactivity thing nearly killed them.

I think it must have, yeah.

There's a Paul Giamitti in something where you can walk into old photographs.

Which people are already saying you're going to be able to do.

All of it, it keeps pace so brilliantly.

Yes, it really does, doesn't it?

It's amazing.

They're just sort of 18 months ahead.

But they're much more than 18 months ahead because it takes so long to make.

To make them as well.

And it's funny to think back.

I tell you the interesting sliding doors thing when charlie and annabelle met at a company called zeppatron which was um like a comedy company the other side of zeppatron went off and made would i lie to you which i think is the greatest program on television so you got this group of amazing people it was um charlie ben peter and neil when they started like charlie was doing tv go home you know the fake listings thing where i think the idea of the having relationship with a pig came from uh yeah so they went off and did black mirror this enormous sort of dystopian world beating thing and the other side of it um peter holmes especially went off and and made the most joyful, beautiful bit of funny television that anyone's ever made.

And how lovely that it comes from a shared sensibility.

But yeah, a huge British success story.

People, of course, always want to say, oh, yeah, it's not as good as it was.

And, you know,

they'll never top this, but it's because they're doing all these six episodes.

And you know, watch any season of Black Mirror, and there's at least three of them that are heads and shoulders above pretty much anything else on television.

And that will be the case this time as well, I'm sure.

It's not, yeah, because it's not so much a kind of visual aesthetic, although they do sort of cohere in lots of different ways, but it is a sort of a mood of the age.

Well, the interesting thing is they have entirely different production teams on all of the different shows.

It's different directors, different everything.

So there's no, it's not like inside number nine

where there's a shared team.

It's, you know, everything is entirely different.

As someone who likes to set his creative bar to easy mode in terms of how, is this going to be difficult to do?

And if it is, can I do a different idea that's going to be easier to do?

That's why I love House of Games.

I just knew I could sit in a room with a bunch of people and you don't have to worry about what the scores are particularly.

And

you just make it as much fun as possible.

And Charlie and Annabelle, every single time, make things as difficult as possible for themselves.

And it pays off in space.

Every time.

And every time I see them picking up Emmys or something, I think that's where this app, if you're brilliant and you have an incredible work ethic, that's where it gets you.

We've done Minecraft, we've done Black Mirror.

Where do we go from there?

We're going to the Beatles, Richard.

I've heard of them.

Now,

as I said earlier, there was Cinemacom, which is the event where all the studios take their best wares, their best upcoming wares to Vegas and show them to the theatrical releases.

But

they do try to make it, I mean, they did some really,

you try and get all the stars along.

Everyone is sort of, you realise that people are still committed to putting things in cinemas, but obviously

we're looking at a pretty gritty landscape, okay?

So, you know, Tom Cruise will turn up to talk about Mission Impossible final reckoning, but he did a minute's silence on stage for Val Kilmer, who, by the way, we've got a special episode on later this week, which I think will be for our members.

What I find interesting about Cinemacon is that you don't get to see, the fans don't get to see anything.

It's just for the business.

Business to business.

Okay, now, look at Comic-Con, which has understood that it has this intense fan community and that you give something back.

I am going to get onto the Beatles in a minute, but this is giving you the landscape.

And here,

you know, they showed a trailer for Avatar.

They showed a trailer for After the Hunt, which is the Luca Guardonino film with Julia Roberts as a sort of post-me to thing, Andrew Garfield, IO Ada Biri.

I think, but you don't see any of these things.

So you can see people writing down what happened, or else journalists are probably banned from reporting it.

They have lots of stars there, but it's mega, mega-controlled because people don't necessarily want their client to be out there.

Maybe they'll do some ad lib that will go.

But actually, I would start saying, you guys have got to reach to understand the people who watch your films in cinemas are the fans.

That thing I said at the Oscars, which when we've you watch at the Grammys, all they do is thank their fans from the winners.

You never see anybody at the Oscars thank you know what Norma Desmond called all those wonderful people out there in the dark.

I think that instead of just being so controlled, they're just going to have to try and reach out, make it more of an event, just try and get some buzz out.

As you say, the buzz that people, the way that Minecraft achieves buzz, the way that

other industries that are doing better achieve buzz.

Especially as

it is an industry thing that is specifically about movie theaters.

And so if you're creating the buzz, you're not creating buzz around IP or around, you know, actors.

It's literally buzz around what is going to come into a movie theater, which has, which makes that much more an event.

If you're excited about the thing that is coming into a movie theater,

then you're not.

And you're made to feel like, excuse me, as the ticket buyer, that you actually matter.

If you're never thanked, you don't feel like you're part of someone's fandom, you don't feel like you're part of a community, then why should you turn out?

Why not wait till streaming?

Well, someone who does really care about theatrical release is Sam Menders, and he is doing something extraordinarily ambitious, which is bringing out four Beatles.

I don't want to say biography movies, it's set at a certain time, and the way they all intersect, all the different styles.

And he went to Cinemacon

last week and they unveiled the casting.

And it really is

sure.

I mean, yeah, it's so Harris Dickinson is John Lennon.

And we know him from...

So Harris Dickinson, who you know from Baby Girl, is John Lennon.

Paul Meskel, who you know from all sorts of things, is Paul McCartney.

Barry Keogan from Saltburn, Banshee's Vinish Reen,

is Ringo Starr.

And Joseph Quinn, who had his sort of breakout in the last series of Stranger Things, but is going to be in The Fantastic Four, is George Harrison.

Someone said all four of them are sort of internet boyfriend types.

Well, that's that

way of talking about things.

Yeah.

I mean, I suppose what you're trying to do is qu and they and they also did which I thought was quite unusual, which you don't normally see when people have just sort of signed on for something.

They had a photo shoot of all of them.

I'm wearing a black jumper in honor of it today, Richard.

All in their sort of all in black, all together.

And then they were brought onto stage and they all said a line from Sergeant Pepper.

And it was there is a sort of these movies are, by the way, all coming out in April.

We don't quite know the release schedule, but we know it is April 2028.

So it's April 2028.

Yeah, I mean it's four movies.

Gosh.

There are some economies of scale, but you know what?

Anyway, so but these particular actors, and there are other actors who have something of that quality, but they are really sort of viral

ones, ones who are obviously, you know, they're always in fan edits.

You can sort of see that there's going to be an attempt.

Yeah.

And there's an inevitable mania that will be created a little bit around seeing them all together.

What could they call it?

Yeah.

Putting them all together does make them seem greater than some of their parts.

And all of these things are designed to sort of create a buzz.

Because, you know, this is a huge sort of theatrical event.

Funnily enough, Sony Pictures is being done with Sony.

Sony Pictures and the chair, Tom Rothman, said, this is the first bingeable theatrical experience.

Now,

you know, there's an element of this that is a sort of art house front.

It's not supposed to be art house because you want everyone to want to to go and see it's like they want to go and see Barbie or Oppenheim or whatever it may be but a sort of there's something sort of slightly franchisable about it like to say this is something different I thought I did what would be a bingeable theatrical franchise showing television in cinemas

Okay, strangely, they didn't talk about that at Cinemacon, but as you know, you'll be doing a presentation next year where you explain this.

With Paul Mescal.

The medium that's eaten you.

Why don't you put it on in your television, in your theatres?

You might as well, right?

Yeah, okay.

Well, I look forward to your presentation right now we're talking about the beatles one okay um anyway so it is a sort of you know you're trying to create a sort of release phenomenon that thing where people feel like oh they they must have you know that i have to see this and i have to have the view it view on it but tom rothman did actually also say this is slightly giving me avatar flashbacks because he oversaw that when he was at fox oh really and that was it yeah so it's going to is it's it's is a big beast it's quite black mirrory in that there is four separate although there's a presumably there's a there's a shared aesthetic Yes, yes, and there's a, well, he's directing them all, and there's a, but, but there's something interesting you said to me about Beatles questions on your time on Pointless.

Yes, I always find it fascinating.

Pointless tells you an awful lot about what people actually know about, and you show pictures of famous people, and

because you ask 100 people, you find out, you know, exactly who is well-known and who is not well-known.

You said they didn't know about movies in general.

No one knows about movies.

No one knows who writes books.

No one knows anything about who was in movies.

They sort of know about television.

They know about pop music.

That's about it.

But yeah, towards the end, so the beginning of

Pointless, you know, if you had a Beatles question up there or McCartney or Lennon, you know, you'd be up in the high 80s.

And then as the years went by, firstly, you'd say to someone, you know, it's about the Beatles, you know, are you a fan of the Beatles?

And people under 25 would go, I don't really know who they are.

I have heard of them, but I don't really know them.

And you didn't see that at the beginning of the series.

It was something that came in.

And also the scores for Beatles things would start going down still much bigger than pretty much anyone else you know you could find from from their era but you know they were coming down and down and down and I was thinking it's it's interesting that every generation has their the thing they go to I think you know the generation who fought in the Second World War grew up on cowboy movies because it was a thing that happened sort of 40 50 years before them and was iconic and then our generation funny enough grew up on second world war movies war films because it was something that happened you know 40 40 years ago, and it was something that could be mined.

And now there's so much Beatles stuff around, and it feels almost like the Beatles are the Second World War for this generation.

It's really interesting.

I think people not knowing so much about it.

But that's the thing is, because we didn't, you know, the Second World War,

so much of what we learned from it was from films.

Obviously, we've got grandparents and stuff like that in the same way that we can talk to grandparents about the Beatles.

But the showing of it on television made

everything kind of, you know,

made that tale much, much longer.

And it feels like the Beatles now will live forever because we're starting to go, we mustn't forget.

We mustn't forget.

Well, it's creatively, that's a really interesting position to be able to be in to say, oh, let me illuminate them for you completely differently for a different generation.

Because I'd seen, you know, the biographer, Hunter Davis, the band's biographer, official biographer, said on the Today programme, maybe quite recently, the strange thing about the Beatles is that the longer longer we get from them, the bigger they become.

I don't think that's true.

And I think that the appeal of this is that you can,

I'm stunned by how many people,

young people I've seen, say, I don't really know anything about Bob Dylan.

And after a complete unknown, I've done a deep dive into his music.

It's like, oh, wow, okay.

And that was quite a small movie.

This is obviously

huge.

With the four biggest young stars in the world, apart from Timothy Shannon, who couldn't be it because he's French.

Although he could be Bob Dylan, but also, yeah, he couldn't be in it because he's Bob Dylan.

You can't put Bob Dynan in the Beatles.

It's interesting.

God knows I've tried.

Bob Dylan didn't mind what they did with his life.

He's one of those people who just said, do what you like.

But I think it'd be interesting to see how the Beatles kind of, the surviving Beatles,

kind of think about this.

But I think the best thing you can always do is just say, make what you will.

Make what you please.

And there'll be a sort of greater truth in some ways than if you're trying to sort of really kind of stick to a particular line.

But one interesting thing is that nonetheless, and it's such a sterile way to talk about it, but this is the age we live in, the Beatles are nonetheless IP.

Yes.

They are a form of IP.

They really are.

And this is the first narrative feature that's been granted the music rights to

their catalogue and all of that.

There's been lots of movies before.

Backbeat is a great movie about the Beatles.

Nowhere Boy was about the Beatles.

But yeah, this is the first one.

This is like the full theatrical.

It's got everything that you could want from the Beatles.

Well, they're trying to create event cinema and they're trying to

create something that enough people feel like, oh, they can't miss.

And you'll get all those things.

There'll be memes about the marathon of it, like going in again for number four, whatever.

But

that's what you want.

That's what you need in order to create, you know, in the same way that Barb and Heimer happened as a sort of organic, you need there to be that kind of euphoria, the need to have an opinion on it, like everyone felt they had to have an opinion on adolescence, the need to get the backlash.

Do you see the amazing thing where,

was it Nick Ferrari who was saying to Kemi Badenock,

have you seen Adolescence?

She She said, No.

He said, Well, you should.

He was like, really saying, I think it's a dereliction of your duty that you haven't watched it.

You haven't watched it.

She's like, I don't have to watch everything on Netflix.

Yeah, and I saw, you know, those people descend, you know, like that, what's his name at Spike, the sort of

high wanker at Spike, who had to descend down and be the contrarian thing and say,

you know, I mean, really, on the pages of Spite, you're writing a contrarian thing page saying that Stephen Graham's done something bad to the working class.

Oh, how's he now?

Please do, die.

Have a listen to yourself, honestly.

But you need all the backlash, you need all of that stuff, really, to create these organic moments.

And it's a long time till 2028, and there will be, but having chosen those particular four stars,

and they've all got different projects coming up, very different ways, you're hoping that

alchemy happens all the time, and that there's a sort of mania about seeing them together.

I do think that the observation that actually the Beatles, the anti-Hunter Davis observation, or not anti-Hunter Davis, he's a brilliant man, but this idea that actually then memory has got fainter and fainter, I think, is actually a huge strength because there's obviously still an enormous amount of people who, you know, know the Beatles were the greatest band of all time.

And a younger generation, like, oh, yeah, I sort of know the name, and then they will see these four kids, and then they'll go to the movie, and the music stays the music, you know,

the song remains the same.

And so,

I think it's one of those things where people, a new generation, will find this band for themselves, and that gives you another 50 years, doesn't it?

Well

I let's hope so.

I think we've done quite a lot on cinema this episode but one of the things I spoke to a few people who were at Cinemacon, different people who were at Cinemacon last week and I did get the distinct vibe from all of them.

They all said that

anyone having a hit now is good.

Bear in mind this is all like the old is it the gourvidal quote you know it's not enough for me to succeed my friends must fail that that is sort of in in that things are in such a parlor state that actually you want hits even if rival studios are having hits and that's something different than than has always been the history of hollywood is that lots and lots of people just want anyone to have hits now because they want it all to be kept alive um and you know going for a big swing like this well why not yeah absolutely um any recommendations this week i've been so looking forward to recommending this book for you which i have known about is this is by the way this is such a funny book i got sent this this, someone wrote to me and said, and I've got a quote on the cover of this book, in case you're looking and thinking, someone wrote to me and said, I've written a book

and I'm writing a book.

I wonder if you'd consider giving a quote, looking at it when it comes out.

And I thought, well, maybe you'll, you know, finish it.

Maybe anyway, it did come.

But he did also say, I've given my advance to Warchild, who are an amazing charity who deal with children in conflict zones, and I'm giving all the profits to Warchild.

So when the book came, I thought, I'm really going to have to read this one because of the Warchild thing.

Anyway, it's called The Accidental Soldier by owen mulligan okay honestly by page five i'm like sorry who the hell is this guy this is so funny it is the story he's in the ta in the territorial army in 2006 and it is the story he and he actually gets sent to uh iraq he obviously thinks he's going to be doing he's very clever something to do with maps or something

He is leading a fighting unit in Azra.

I mean, I don't want to, can I say after that, it is so funny.

I laughed out loud.

It's a genuinely funny book.

He is a first-time author.

The book is out this Thursday.

Pre-orders matter so much to first-time authors.

You know this.

Yeah, huge deal.

It is such a good and funny book.

It is absolutely fascinating into the world of what it was actually like.

And, you know, there's a whole world of the army.

It's very, very funny.

I mean, people in the army I always find are quite funny.

But this is just genuinely brilliant.

And with a real gut punch, you know, it's incredible.

I really, really recommend this book.

Owen Mulligan.

The Accidental Soldier.

I was going to do a recommendation.

I'll save it till next week because that.

I went on so long.

I'm so sorry.

No, absolutely not.

But that's so heartfelt.

And it's, as you say, anyone who could, if you like the sound of it, buying it now is worth more to

Owen Mulligan than buying it in three weeks.

Buy it in three weeks if you want to.

Yeah.

But it's so good.

It's so funny.

Okay.

Question and answers on Thursday?

Very much so, Richard.

Look forward to seeing you then.

See you next Thursday.

There's a catchphrase.

And also, as you said, a bonus on Friday.

Celebrating the life and times of Val Kilmer.

A lot of very interesting stories in there.

That's for our members.

If you want to sign up, it's therestersenttertainment.com.

Otherwise, we will see you anyway on Tuesday.

Oh, my God.

On Thursday, maybe?

On Thursday.

Today's Tuesday.

I'm so confused, Auntie.

Well, that wraps up another episode of The Wrestlers Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky.

Now, what have you got on your must-watch list at the moment, Rebecca?

At the moment, White Lotus enjoying the latest season.

Oh, it's such a treat.

Oh, my God, it's incredible.

It's so good.

A dark treat.

A dark treat.

The visuals are really great, and with your Skyglass TV, you'll be able to enjoy it all in its 4K glory.

And also, the built-in sound bar means you can also listen to it in its full whatever the sound version of 4K glory is.

But it sounds immense, I'll say that.

It is indeed.

It brings everything to life, and it really gives that cinema experience at home.

It feels like Jason Isaacs is in your house.

Like sometimes I go downstairs, I'm like, Jason Isaacs, come on, man.

Cup of tea, please.

But he's not there.

No.

But for our listeners who want to experience this with Skyglass 2, visit sky.com to find out more.