Will The Harry Potter Reboot Fail?

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restaurants Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman.

Hi, Marina.

And lots and lots of our wonderful listeners, hello listeners, have asked us questions.

And they have.

And what they've done is they've asked us at the old email address because we've gone official.

We've got a new email address.

We have.

It's the restasentertainment at goalhanger.com.

I had no idea we work for Gary Lineke, but anyhow.

Whoa.

So does Gary Lineker know we work for him?

It's so unclear.

The angles are all unclear at the moment.

But that is the new email address.

Should you wish to send us more of your brilliant questions?

Therest isentertainment at goalhanger.com.

Ask us what's Gary Lineker like.

We've never met him.

Occasionally, he appears as like a hologram floating over the desk, doesn't he?

And he goes, you are all doing terrifically well in your podcast.

That's the only thing we ever have to do with Gary.

Occasionally, Alan Shearer will pop in, like an enforcer, just to check that everything's going okay.

And he goes, good podcast.

Be a shame if anything happened to it.

I can see Shira, but he's pressing his, like, he's pressing his face up against the window of the thing.

Oh, and

he's doing like a slit throat

thing.

Come on, Shira.

Maybe he's just saying he's got a sore throat.

Have you got a sort.

Have you got a sort.

Oh, yeah, he's having a strep sol.

Everything is fine.

Should we get on to some questions?

Let's hit each other with some questions.

I've got one that I have to begin with.

You it relates to deal or no deal.

Jonathan Hindley says there's an urban legend that a contestant on opening the last box between 250k and 1p sadly opened their final box and got 1p.

Then an anonymous donor called in and gave them the 250k.

The anonymous donor was allegedly George Michael.

Is this true?

If so, how do acts such as this work?

This is not an urban legend.

I'd heard it isn't interesting how things work because it is definitely based on a truth, that's for sure.

And that is there was somebody who was playing a deal-on-oh deal many years ago and Noel at various points says, what do you want the money for?

And she was using it for a final round of IVF.

I think she's had three rounds and she wanted to do a final round.

And anyone who's done IVF knows it's very, very expensive.

Can't remember how much she needed, 18,000 something like that anyway she crashed and burned on the show won 500 pound or something like that and the morning after it came out there's a call at Endermol into

my good pal Tim Hinks who I used to run Endermole with and the person said I was watching the woman on deal or no deal who needed £18,000 for IVF I'd like to pay that £18,000

please and Tim goes okay we can we can do that he said there's one condition that is you must never tell her who has paid this money and Tim goes okay but who is paying this this money and it was George Michael so George Michael had been sitting watching this thing he said and also there was a guy last week who he had to go to vet school something like that and I'd like to pay his as well but again you mustn't tell him so he did that

she got the money and when George passed away I wrote I put this on Twitter I said that he had done that and the woman got in touch and she said, do you know what?

Never forgotten the fact that I got that money.

I never knew who it was from.

She said, the IVF, it didn't work.

And now to find out it was George as well is an extraordinary thing.

So yeah,

he was essentially just sitting watching at home and decided he wanted to give.

The actual version of the urban legend isn't true.

But the heart of the urban legend, which was George Michael was an extraordinary human being and an extraordinary kind man, is absolutely true.

Isn't that lovely?

That is such a lovely story.

I knew that he used to do things like that, but it's...

You do slightly feel like, oh, they're urban legends, and it's not really clear.

Sad to be able to tell the story because we're going to tell the story because he's no longer with us because he was absolutely adamant no one finds out no one knows i'm doing this and that's the true meaning of selflessness isn't it it's not oh this would make me feel good about myself or this would you know this is going to look good for me the truly selfless good deed and also you know he just used to sit around watching daytime tv all day didn't he

which makes you warn to him even more yeah so yeah um if you ever feature someone who needs money on a television show it's all it's it's it's all someone will always ring up someone will always message and say has that been taken care of of?

And almost always it has.

Almost always there's been 10, 12, 15, 20 people have all emailed in, have all rung in to saying, is there anything I can do to help?

Is there any money I can give?

It's not always George Michael.

No.

But it's just people who are watching TV and have that money.

I mean, at the end of the last season of Traitors, when Alexander didn't win, they banished him because they weren't sure if he was a traitor or not.

And he wanted to start a charity in his late brother's name.

And so many people, there was a sort of crowdfunder for that, wasn't there?

And it went way above what he would have ever even won on the show almost immediately.

So people do kind of step in.

And he's now got his own show and classic of him, right?

He's a real media mover and shaker, isn't he?

I have a question for you, Marina, from John Gill.

John says, Is it just me?

Oh, I like it.

You never know where this is going.

Is it just me?

says John Gill.

Oh, John, what if it is?

Oh, no, should I read on?

Is it just me, or is there far less romance on screen nowadays?

I know Marina suggested that Twisters was loveless, but is this a growing problem?

By the way, what happens at the end of Twisters?

Sorry, this is not a major plot point.

I want to say that Glenn Powell like asks the Daisy Edgar Jones character like for her informed consent to like phone her after the credits it's genuinely it couldn't be more sort of sexless I do think well first of all my opinions let's back it up with some statistics first yes the number of romantic movies is definitely definitely falling in 2000 nearly 35% of films that were made were listed as romance it's now something like eight percent really and is it on the imdb where everything's put into various yeah into categories categories?

But that's happened before.

There was a bit of a drop in romance until the 60s and then it kind of recovered.

Now it's on a, it seems, I don't want to say it's on a permanent decline because everything comes in and out of fashion, but it really is.

I really think comedy and romantic, I mean, obviously in romantic comedies, romance and comedy, by the way, are the two genres in biggest trouble.

The streamers are trying to revive romantic comedies, and obviously they had a big success.

Netflix had a big success with Nobody Wants This.

So in general, both of those genres are in a lot of trouble, really um cinema romance and sex in general is kind of weird because movies have been definitely desex in recent years and there's lots of different reasons for this gen ed don't particularly love it and they're always trying to get them in they they're much more interested in things like about self-care relationships self-love i don't mean masturbation you know when you look at marvel films as i've said before They were almost entirely sex, almost entirely sexist.

There's one guy who has sex, and he has to be fired into the sun quite soon afterwards.

It's very hard to get out out of the suits.

It's very hard to get out of the suits.

But what you have is people who are in beyond peak physical fitness.

They're like Olympic athletes.

Big motives, really, are sort of sex, money, and revenge.

And if you remove one of them, then you're sort of slightly contracting the possibilities of storytelling.

Money or revenge.

But yeah.

But there's no, the motive

is always I want to take over the world for unspecified reasons.

And I want to fight you for that glowy thing to stop you.

Yes.

And I don't just want to bang someone.

Yeah.

But the British Board of Film classification, there's fewer films rated 18 for sex, far fewer.

The ubiquity of porn has changed a lot of stuff.

I remember in newspapers

when they used to do kiss and tells, which, you know, Sunday tableau, they'd be a kiss and tell and someone would expose their affair with a politician, there would always be a few paragraphs of description of the sex in it.

You know, you could just buy that in the news agent.

But now you can just have anything you want to extreme levels on your phone.

We don't need to read about David Mellor anymore.

We don't actually need to get turned on vicariously by what David Mello did or didn't do.

As Hollywood has become more and more sexless, the porn industry has got bigger and bigger.

I thought it's become more sexual.

Porn really now is very, very sexual.

This is the rest is adult entertainment.

For the reasons I explained in terms of storytelling, if you remove kind of romance and sex and things like that, you are contracting the possibilities.

The idea that cinema was a kind of bounty-pushing art form in lots of ways and you could see things in the cinema that you couldn't necessarily see elsewhere, I think that has receded slightly as well.

You don't really feel that...

But also books, you know, have gone crazy for romance.

You know,

books are absolutely huge.

You know, Romanticy and Romance Itself, you know, Colleen Hoover, all the, you know, the biggest selling books in the world are romance books now.

And a lot of those are being adapted.

You know, there is a whole industry that has gone very, very romance heavy.

And perhaps that will drip feed back into movies.

So not sex heavy maybe, but maybe romance heavy.

I feel that everything swings around and it must come round again.

That's sex for you.

Yeah.

But the good news, John Gill, is it is not just you.

It is not just just you, John.

It's everyone.

A puzzles question, Richard, meaning it is by law for you.

That's for me.

Lizzie Canon.

You do sex, I do puzzles.

That makes it sound a lot more excellent.

Lizzie Connegie, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that well.

How are the New York Times games created, Richard?

Are they made by people or is there some kind of AI involved?

They are made by people.

The New York Times games section is one of the single most successful and profitable creative endeavors of the 21st century.

It's a huge thing.

It's played by a huge amount of people.

And, you know, most people who do the New York Times games are, you know, absolutely evangelical about them.

I'll tell you the order they do them in, the order I do them in.

Spelling B, always first, meaning we'd always play spelling B, and we race to get to genius.

And whoever gets to genius first is the winner and crows about it.

And then we team up to try and get to Queen B.

That's what we try and do

on spelling B.

Then the crossword, the New York Times crossword is not a cryptic one, but it's very cleverly gridded.

Then there's strands, which is their sort of word puzzle.

These are sort of high-end versions of other people's games.

Then there's connections,

which we will get onto, because that's a very, very interesting one.

But no, they are definitively not AI-led, which is why they're so good, I think.

So Spelling Bee is a really interesting one.

So Spelling B is absolutely huge.

It's enormous, created by a guy called Frank Longo.

And Spelling Bee, if you don't know it, it's sort of one of those word things, you know, where you've got letters around the middle letter and you have to make words.

It's got a very, very simple trick, which is you can use the letters more than once.

So, so long as you use the one in the middle, you can use letters more than once, which makes it incredibly addictive.

And it has a very clever scoring system.

You know, if you start, you get to solid, then you're on nice, then you're on great, then you're on amazing, then you're on genius, and then you can get to Queen Bee.

So it's incredibly addictive, but no, every single day made by real people, Sam Azerski is the guy who puts those together.

It's interesting to answer this question this week because something happened on Spelling Bee last week that's never happened before.

I felt a disturbance in in the force for the 2500th spelling bee yeah a letter was on the grid that has never been on for the first 2499 spelling bees there had never before then been a letter s

in a spelling bee ever ever in the history because samazersky thinks it sort of makes it too complicated slash easy when you've got plurals and you know so

because it was the 2500th one uh and the pangram was fabulous as the first time ever there's been an S.

Hasn't been one since either.

So it's the only S of all time.

Wow.

People love playing those games and they take exactly the right amount of time and you can always test yourself against other people.

You can go back and play the archive.

The crossword is extraordinary, it has these incredibly dense grids.

Will Schultz was the great genius behind most of the MYT crosswords and Samazewski does lots of those as well.

But connections is the one I want to talk about.

So connections is the one, you know, you haven't talked about anything up to this point.

connections is

the thing there's 16 words and you have to put them into four groups of four four sets of four and if you do that you win uh and they launched it a couple of years ago 18 months ago maybe and said we've got this brand new game it's called connections you have to connect four groups of four and the whole of britain went oh you've in you've invented that have you you i'm so i'm sorry new york times Because by the way, we love the New York Times puzzles page and we love the people involved.

But sorry, wonderful news to hear that you've invented this game, which is you've got a, let's say, like a wall of 16 clues and you have to put them into four subgroups and we put them together and then we score points.

This is amazing.

It's called Connections.

You say connections.

That's interesting.

What does that remind me of?

Connections, connections, connections.

Oh, because we have a show called Only Connect, which has been doing the war for about 12 years.

When they brought Connections out, everyone told them this.

I think Vicki Corrin told them, like, everyone was saying, oh, you know that you haven't invented this.

Yeah.

You know, you haven't invented this.

You know, this, and

they have publicly never said anything about it.

And still going, this is our great new game, Connections.

And listen, I play it.

I get it.

But it's some.

Have they not said anything?

No.

Grow up America.

I know.

Sometimes it always.

Oh, no, because they're names of Reese's Pieces products.

You think, but we don't have them over here.

So I just have to wait to the end.

I don't know what connects them.

Like stuff from the real world I can do, but they were, or oh no, they're all Canadian ice hockey teams, if if you think about it, yeah, they're all in the Lucky Charms box, right?

Oh, are they?

And you know, when you get to because you can usually isolate the last group, and you're going, I have no idea what that is.

This is going to be something from American pop culture.

And they go, and of course, it was all nicknames from Leave It to Beaver.

And you go, Oh, yeah, it was.

So, listen, I bow to very few people in my love of the New York Times puzzles page, and the people behind it are love it.

They lovingly curate these things, which is why they're so good.

All done by human beings, not done by AI, but they definitely, definitely ripped off the OnlyConnect wall for connections.

And listen, I look forward to the puzzle wars in the future.

In 40 years' time.

What will I have done for a puzzle?

When the world is...

We'll look back and go, it's funny, isn't it?

Because we thought that the Third World War would come from, you know, be like Trump or be Putin or be something like Musk would have done something.

And you go, and then you look back and it all came down to OnlyConnect fans against the Connections fans, and that's why the world is a wasteland.

And that's my view of what's going to happen.

On that

dystopian note,

perhaps we should go to the adverse.

Yeah, should we?

This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch unmissable shows such as the new season of Gangs of London, the BAFTA winning Emmy-nominated series starring Joe Cole, Michelle Fairley, and Shopei DeRisu.

Now, Richard, in season three, chaos erupts after a spike drugs shipment floods the streets, killing hundreds of civilians.

But here is the twist.

I mean it sounds like a big enough twist already, but you know I love a twist.

I know you love a twist.

Despite shipment, it wasn't an accident.

It was a planned and calculated attack.

Oh my god, knowing what I do about TV crime and writing, all that sort of stuff, I suspect this is just the beginning.

Correct Amundo.

I love your catchphrase.

So bring me maybe anyone listening up to speed who hasn't seen the first two seasons of Gangs of London.

People absolutely love this show.

In the first two seasons, we saw the battle for power between Sean and Elliott.

Let's not forget he's an undercover cop.

came to a climactic head with Sean's now in prison at the start of season three.

Now, the aftermath of all of that has sparked a brutal power struggle right across the capital's underworld.

We're talking tested loyalties, shifting alliances, unexpected betrayals.

Who can be trusted?

Elliot, who we've seen fight very hard to obtain power, struggles to hold onto it, while behind bars, Sean is still able to wield influence and affect events outside the prison walls, meaning the various gangs are looking over their shoulders, not knowing who to trust.

In my books, I have a drug dealer called Connie Johnson who's always in prison, but she's always got like an espresso machine and her Wi-Fi is absolutely sensational.

I cannot wait to see what unfolds.

Genuinely, so many people have told me about this show.

Watch season three of the BAFTA Winning Sky Original Gangs of London on Sky right now.

This part of today's show is brought to you by the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra show's product.

Now, if you're a fan of the show, you will know that Samsung have been sponsoring us.

And we've been lucky enough to be given the new Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra to try.

I have it in my hands right here.

Now, it's got some great features, this, and I'm going to test you out on one of them.

This uses AI.

This is one of the good things about AI.

How would you say, Marina, how would you rate your artistic skills?

They're not too dreadful.

I have previously mentioned that I've been trying to renovate some chairs.

I've completed my chairs, actually.

And also, I've been teaching myself calligraphy.

Well, I wonder if you could renovate a chair on your tablet now.

No, I'm joking.

I wonder if you could do a drawing for me.

Is there a drawing you're any good at?

Do something that you think I might recognize.

Any drawing.

Can you do that?

What, like a who?

Like a character, a person.

Yeah.

Okay.

I can, I can, I like the sound of that.

Okay, I'm going to do it and see if you can recognize.

Okay,

I'll do an edit on this and wipe it so it looks like you did it in like 20 seconds.

Now, are you done?

Yes, I am.

I told you could do it in 20 seconds.

That's the magic of editing.

Now, with the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, it can turn anyone into a modern day Picasso.

Why don't you show me your picture?

I will show you my picture.

Now, here is my picture.

That's not bad.

An iconic character.

Is it my old art teacher, Mr.

Tiller?

In the top left-hand corner, you have something which is called the sketch to image tool, which you can have on this tablet.

If you press it, something extraordinary will happen to that drawing that you just did.

Sketch to image.

and AI will turn your drawing into something even more impressive.

There we go.

Now there is Sherlock Holmes, the famous deer silker, slightly better than my rendering, I think we'll have to say.

He appears to be in a sort of Brooks Brothers shirt.

This is when he went to Welcome Wall Street after he'd finished doing all this.

He looks a bit like Fireman Sam, but that's because that's what you drew.

Yeah, I mean,

there's a limit to what it can do.

But that was instant as well.

Yeah, that was instant.

There we go.

Oh my God, you can honestly just show off to your kids all day long.

Another one.

Whoa.

See?

Is it a Sherlock Holmes to you?

Yeah, it is.

It's sort of hipster-ish of Sherlock Holmes.

But then I think there was in my original drawing.

I thought your original drawing is not bad.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

The Samsung drawing is better.

Yeah.

I think it should be.

But yours isn't bad.

I think you've got a future.

I mean, it did take, listen, I don't want to give away any edits or anything like that.

It took you about seven minutes

and it took the AI about 0.1 seconds.

Yeah, it's very, very quick.

And all the family will have endless fun with this because you can do all sorts of different things, seeing what you can create, fun cartoons all the way through.

That wraps up this special section of the show, which was brought to us by Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, where you can both watch your favourite shows and draw them at the same time.

Welcome back everybody.

Marina, I have a question.

Chris Shipp was saying, I was wondering if when you see that shot of a plane taking off a landing at an airport to signify a character has departed or arrived, there has to be a second unit to go down to the airport and get some shots, or is there just the big vault of these shots slash different planes slash airports, etc.?

Yes, there is.

There are airport establishing shots you can just get.

There are banks of these things because it is expensive.

Obviously, you have to have a load of permits to film at an airport, and it's just a it does sometimes happen, but not in general.

One of the other things Chris has actually said was that I'm sure there'll be people watching a film and saying, That's definitely not Albuquerque Airport because they don't have those runway lights.

Oh my god, please.

Plane nerds, if please don't don't write in,

some of the, they can't watch anything.

They notice every single little thing.

There are people who say, I can't possibly watch Top Gun because the Russian MiGs have just re-sprayed F5s.

Yeah.

Same.

Yeah.

Because how would the American Air Force have got them?

Yeah.

Marina would be my question.

How, yeah.

It's an absurdity.

Think of the geopolitical things that would have had to go on.

So that Mr.

Tom Cruise could win World War III.

Okay, any form of hardware, particularly military stuff, is the stuff that has people lighting up the internet to say, sorry, how has that plane got a gun?

That particular model of aircraft doesn't have a gun.

Sorry, a Rootmaster bus in 1959, but it's a Mark III.

Yeah.

What tank are you now using?

Interesting, Mr.

Scorsese.

The film is ruined.

As you know, I'm a franchise completist on the Fast franchise, and I think it's Fast and Furious 6, where there's a fight on the run.

You know, the plane is approaching takeoff, and it's going really quite fast because it's about to approach takeoff speed.

And it goes on for something like four minutes.

At that speed, I think the runway people were working out.

It was going to be like, is this a 25, 26 mile runway?

I mean, it's literally bigger than the English channel because so that they can have this fight.

Now, and was that a shot that was just in a bank, or did they have to film that themselves?

Well, that, well, that's a joke.

I joke.

A vidies.

There's no archive of those, Richard.

Every one of those is a true original.

One of the most famous shots in lots of ways, which is a really great story, and

is from The Devil's Candy, which was written by a woman called Juni Salomon.

I might have mentioned it before, but it's all about the filming of Bonfire of the Vanities, which is a huge 80s movie that they spend a lot of money on, and it's a complete flop.

It's based on a massive sort of hit Tom Wolfe book that started.

One of the best books of all time, in my opinion.

Which is brilliant.

Yeah.

And again, but magazine, in fact, originally is an Esquire magazine series.

Anyhow, it's directed by Brian DePalmer.

There's this guy called Eric Schwab, who's the second unit director to Brian DePalmer.

He's been second unit on lots of Brian De Palmer's films and continued to be.

And second unit is they'll send you off to, you know,

sometimes you're filming two things at the same time and you'll send someone someone off.

It's an action or sort of background or something like that, and the directors filming with the main actors and what have you.

He had this idea that, you know, it's all about sort of 80s excess and Wall Street and whatever.

And there's a shot where Concorde kind of comes down.

He wanted Concorde to be landing at sunset with the Empire State Building in the background.

And Brian De Palmer says, I bet you 100.

Okay, fine.

Do what you like.

But it might not even be in the movie.

And I bet you $100 you can't get it.

he spends literally so many months he works out that there's only 30 seconds of the year where the sunset and the empire state building are in the right place for the runway I mean they meticulously plan this shot this is by one of the only things in the movie that works bit of a spoiler here they hire a Concorde and they have it landing and he pulls off the shot it's amazing and you hover down out of a shimmering orange sky it's amazing it's in it's 10 seconds it cost them 80 grand in the 80s which is a huge amount of money for one shot um because they got the Concorde to land and take off.

And anyway, it all works.

He puts it in the film and it's one of those famous...

But the film is still a flaw.

It's really interesting because he wanted, you see, Eric Schwab really wanted to be a director.

But DePalm was his mentor and he really wants to impress him.

And actually, I recently was looking at Eric Schwab's.

He never, he's always been on second unit.

All the way.

Yeah, but he's done millions of, you know,

second unit for DePalm Robin Mission Impossible.

That's pretty good.

He's lots and lots of things.

You know, he was a sort of artist.

He wanted to be a creator and he had this vision of this shot.

So that's my kind of favourite plane shot, but sorry to land that plane, as it were, Chris.

Yes, they do often use stock shots and people do complain that it's the wrong thing.

Richard, here's one that I feel both of us might have something to say about.

Rob Master says, what are the execs of HBO thinking by greenlighting Harry Potter as a TV series?

We know exactly what's going to happen.

It's going to take an entire decade to finish.

Why not spend the money on an original Harry Potter spin-off, same universe, same draw to Potter fans, but with the ability to actually create something fresh and exciting, something that gets people talking.

I mean, that's the easiest question to answer in the whole world, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, of course, you've got to remake it.

I mean, the book, I mean, if you were 12 when that first book came out, when the first Harry Potter book came out, you are 40 now.

Okay, you know, you are old.

Firstly, it's been a long time since those movies came out.

The thing that people love are the sacred texts, and the sacred texts are the books.

I mean, that just happens to be the case.

You can do a million spin-offs, and we know how spin-offs go.

And they've done a few.

They've done fantastic.

But, you know, those are people, people people find them quite controversial and they're not huge.

You know, they might do well, but they've done slightly diminishing returns.

Yeah, but I'm afraid this IP is very, very old.

And if you grew up with it,

you are old.

Yeah.

And therefore,

it's a tale that's going to need retelling.

It's a tale that huge and massive, like three or four generations have grown up since these books came out.

You know, two generations have...

have grown up since the films came out.

There is a huge market here for a new generation to watch this exact same story.

And there's a huge market of everyone who love the books and who love the films who just want to see exactly the same story again.

At much greater length.

Yeah.

This is the closest thing I can think of in the whole of the entertainment industry that is an utter banker.

Yeah.

I mean, beyond.

That's what they said about Snow White, the live-action Snow White.

I actually don't think that they would say that.

They're going to spend HBO, by the way.

Francesca Gardner, who...

worked on succession is dark materials who's brilliant she's going to be the show runner of it they say it's going to be 10 years i would say it will be at least 12.

They're doing something like $200 million

a season.

And each season, by the way, is going to be, I think, maybe 10 episodes, and it's for one book.

Give you an example of how big a market is.

I've seen more stories just about speculative casting for this show that hasn't even started shooting yet than I have about many of the biggest shows currently on TV.

There's such fever about this always.

And as I say, this is as close to a bank

as you can possibly get it's interesting you know i have to say that hbo are scaling back lots of things perhaps that they did before you know there are fewer limited dramas being made because returning things and so much is being funneled into this show uh but that's because it will be unbelievably hugely successful and there is just no possible way they wouldn't do this i mean it it's one of those things that we often think things are a lot more recent than they are and think why are you remaking this really recent film and you want to go no it's it's it's really really not recent and obviously I've been working with Chris Columbus who made the first two movies

and who you know has amazing stories about the making of those two movies but even he would say oh no I think it's time you can you can now do a different version of that TV they're doing it totally different and as you say instead of you know seven films you've got 70 80 hour long episodes that are gonna last forever if you're the accountant looking after Harry Potter and there will be a team of accountants you can see how much money the books are making they still make really good money you can see how much uh money the films films are making.

They still do okay.

But neither of those is going up.

You know, the numbers are not going up.

Whereas this will turbocharge absolutely everything.

It's 12 years of almost certainly guaranteed profits for everyone involved in that industry.

Exciting for everyone who loves the books.

A fun gig for loads of actors.

And making them all in the UK at Levesden.

Yeah, employing huge amounts of

UK talent in front of the camera and behind the camera.

You know, Mozart wrote his symphonies many, many years ago, but people keep playing them.

This IP now lasts forever, and they're going to remake this every 15, 20 years until the end of history.

It is, as we've said before, show business.

Yeah.

John Lithgow's Dumbledore.

See, immediately

you want to recast it.

Charlotte Matera is Professor McGonnell, I think.

You know, Cap SG maybe is Snape.

Who knows?

I mean, as I say, just the speculation is getting more kind of pull on the discourse, as it were, than a lot of the bigger shows currently airing.

There'll be some point in kind of season four where there'll be an old professor who just sort of pokes his head around the door, and you go, Hold on a minute, that's Rupert Grint, and you're like, There are just a million little things like that, which will delight everyone.

So, yeah, what are the HBO execs thinking?

They are thinking exactly the right thing.

This will be a good business, yeah.

This will be enormously profitable business that everybody will love and will keep us in a job for a really long time.

I think is what they're thinking.

Marina, Terry Wilson, Terry with an eye, so a lady Terry.

Lady Terry.

Stephen Spielberg's press officer is called Terry Press.

Is she actually?

I mean she's more than a press officer.

She's marketing.

She's a million things.

But yeah, her name is Terry Press.

That's great, isn't it?

Incredible.

That's what one of Reagan's spokesmen used to be called Larry Speaks.

Anyway, I digress.

Terry Wilson says, which shows, which have been critically panned, publicly trashed, and cancelled early, have you loved and wished could return?

Okay,

this is a bit of an ironist one, which I feel bad about, but it just did make me laugh so much.

And I've since found a community of people who also regarded it as a sort of ridiculous watch classic.

You know, Aaron Sorkin is amazing.

Sorry, it's really bad when you have to start like that, isn't it?

Aaron Sorkin is amazing.

The West Rings Incredible.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which ran for one season.

How can I explain this if you haven't seen it?

It was made by NBC, who, and it was effectively about Saturday Night Live, an NBC show that I also don't love

and have never, you know, like lots of British people just think, oh, well done, America, we don't love this.

Tina Fey also had that same season out, 30 Rock, which was basically a half-hour comedy version of something about SNL.

So it's like...

Possibly the greatest sitcom of all time, by the way.

Oh, it's just so good.

It's so good.

I love 30 Rock.

It's got to be, it's definitely going to be in the argument.

We should do best sitcom of all time as a bonus episode one day.

Oh, please.

Yeah.

Well, I mean,

that would be a long one.

Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford, Bradley Whitford are kind of like a pair of writers who are given the reins of SNL.

Not you know whatever it's called.

Maybe it's called Studio 60 on the Sunset Road.

Never ever ever have TV programs about stand-up comedians or writers because then you have to try and make them sound funny and it's you know it's it's impossible.

It is so ridiculous.

It's like oh no the shows in the doljs we're given the we can't we have to decide what to do and they have to the whole one is called the cold open when you know that this is episode one okay by the way the show where you're like, what the hell am I watching?

So they've got to try and get back to the American viewer.

And they can't think of a cold open till like almost the last minute.

And then they think of doing...

A musical number, which is called, we'll be the very model of a modern network show.

Everything about this is just a massive miss.

And I feel so bad because, you know, I see people like laughing at Aaron Talking for bits of dialogue.

You're like, oh my God, okay, he's Aaron Torgan.

What have you ever done?

Yeah.

So also he's written a lot.

And I realize I'm doing a version of that now.

And I'm sorry.

Listen, let's go on the record now and saying, if he's ever written bad dialogue, it's because he's written more dialogue than anyone else.

Did he write?

And almost all of it is better than anyone else's.

Yes, most of this isn't in it.

But as just a sort of myth, it is hip.

And I've watched the whole series more than once.

And it's like 12, one hours, or maybe more than that.

When you watch someone who's a genius doing something wrong, it's like I always think, you know, it's great being...

I hate myself for this answer, but being the fastest runner in the world is great.

Okay, so if you're saying Bolt, that's great.

Unless you're running in the wrong direction, in which case you are farther away from where you need to be than anybody else in the world.

That's a very good way of putting it.

Seeing a great genius get something wrong.

Boy, oh boy, do they get it wrong.

It's such an amazing intro.

Like

every single way that it can go wrong goes wrong to the nth degree.

And it's incredibly expensive and beautifully shot and all of those things.

So

it's not like watching some cheap bit of TV that doesn't really work and no one cares about.

It's an extraordinary production that everyone there is giving everything they can to

look away.

Like, how bad is it now?

There's something about it that I find hypnotic.

And actually, I'm going to have to watch another episode of it this afternoon.

I'm going to go home.

I mean, literally, every single person listening to this podcast is going to.

I'm sorry, I might just watch the first episode of that.

And I'm really sorry.

I hate myself for that answer, but it's the honest truth.

That about wraps us up for today.

Got a bonus episode actually tomorrow, which is on the worst chat show guests and appearances of all time.

And if you want to sign up to the club, it is therestisentertainment.com.

And also, if you sign up, we did the best short books of all time.

And anything we mentioned, any any books we mentioned, you can get money off if you're a member, all sorts of fun things there.

Other than that, either see you with a bonus tomorrow or we will see you next Tuesday.

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