The Town with Matthew Belloni
The Town with Matthew Belloni

Oscars Winners and Losers, and Universal’s Pivot to Keep Movies in Theaters Longer

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Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to recap last night’s Academy Awards, including what the show was like from inside the theater, and give their biggest winners and losers of the night (00:00)....

Transcript

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Tamara is. This episode of The Town is brought to you by The Madison, the new original series on Paramount Plus. It's Academy Award nominee Taylor Sheridan's most intimate story yet. A New York City family is uprooted to Montana after an unexpected tragedy.

In the quiet majesty of The Madison Valley, they confront love and loss, discovering resilience and the transformative power of family, and the land that grounds them. Led by a powerhouse cast, Academy Award nominee Michelle Feifer,

and Golden Globe nominee Kurt Russell. Don't miss The Madison, the highly anticipated new series streaming now, only on Paramount Plus. It is Monday, March 16th.

Often the least sexy aspects of Hollywood are the most important to the business.

In movies, I'm talking about Windows, these short-hand for how studios get the most value out of each title

by releasing it first and theaters,

then for rent on home video, then on subscription streaming services and so on. As we know, the windowing system has been under attack since COVID. Universal first blew up the traditional window of 75 days or even 60 days to institute a system that guaranteed a movie only 17 days and theaters. Most got more, but it varied by title and the message to consumers was pretty clear.

This movie is likely going to be on streaming pretty soon. Other studios followed with variable windows first to P-Bod, then to S-Fod's Netflix and Hulu all to feed their streaming business. Meanwhile, moviegoers were getting the message and skipping theaters. Theater chains of all either gone bankrupt or been perpetually teetering,

like my friend Adam Aaron at AMC. But then last week, Universal announced a change, says it's going to switch to a minimum of five weekends of exclusive play for new movies up from three. Next year, we'll go to seven weekends before P-Bod. That's about 45 days, similar to what Paramount recently committed to for its movies and Warner Brothers titles of that field happens.

Donalangly, the head of Universal, she told the New York Times,

"Our windowing strategy has always been designed to evolve with the marketplace."

We firmly believe in the primacy of theatrical exclusivity and working closely with our exhibition partners to support a healthy, sustainable theatrical ecosystem. Tom Rothman, the head of the Sony Studio, who came on the show a few weeks ago to argue for longer windows, he followed it up with a Times op-ed P-s last week where he revealed that in Sony's new Netflix deal, films won't go to subscription streaming till 100 to 120 days after theatrical release.

The P-Bod versus S-Fod question is extremely important to this debate. But why the back track now? And what's the right window for movies to rent and watch on services many consider to be free?

That's what we're talking about with Lucas Shah or Monday Guy.

Today, we're going to do the Oscars, of course, our winners and losers, what Craig and I ate, important stuff like that. And we're going to do the new shift in windows strategy. How long is long enough? From the ringer and puck, I'm that felony and this is the town.

Okay, we are here with Lucas Shah from Bloomberg. Welcome back, Lucas.

How was your first Oscars?

I cannot believe you haven't been ever. It's kind of insane. Take it up at the Academy, take it up. I like having Oscars. I grew up with my parents, having Oscar parties, making themed food.

It's fun to watch at home with friends. And so that on a very, like, this is a very not-town comment or not math-coated comment. It's a privilege to be there as someone who loves movies and loves the Oscars. I found myself feeling at a certain point like, there's the more skeptical, like cynical side of me that I'll get to in a second.

But you take it all in and it's something that you grew up watching. And so it is very fun to sit there and see it and experience it in person. I agree, yeah. As cynical as we can be on this show about all aspects of Hollywood, there is something very cool that this thing exists.

And it's a hundred-year-old tradition and we get to go. I did have the Chicken Pot Pie, your recommendation is excellent. Delicious, right? Unfortunately, they moved the sushi bar at the governor's ball. It was not where it normally is, they moved it to the opposite side of the party, which caused me to have to search for it.

And then by the time I got there, there was a little bit of a line, which was disappointing. I still don't get why at a Wolfgang-Puck catered event, you're going out of your way for the sushi.

That's the globes with no boo.

I don't know. I don't know why. I just love it so much.

Maybe it's because I have an eaten in five hours, and they added a little crispy rice station this

year, which I found delicious. So an overall little caviar cone station. So this is, I will say, because I've been to all the other major award shows. It doesn't other than like the crazy security to get in. It doesn't feel any different. It's like the same thing. How it does? Are you kidding?

I feel like it's way, people take it way more seriously. First of all, everyone except you is dressed up. You for some reason we're not wearing a tux. But everyone is full formal, and people care.

Like Michael B. Jordan brought his dad who never comes to anything to the Oscars.

Like that's the difference with the Oscars. People care, and it's taken more seriously, which is reflecting the security. I just mean I was in a candy what my experience is, is not that different. Yeah, the red carpet part sure. But then when you're in the show, okay, I'm watching the show, I'll go out to the bar,

I talk to some people, I go back to watch it, you're at the governor's ball. Like it doesn't, the star wattage there isn't necessarily higher than it is at the globe. Is it the Grammys? And at Bagley Junior is there for some reason. I don't know why every year he's there. Before we move on, I want a couple winners and losers from the night.

Sure. Just to get your sent.

You can go with the first winner, which is obvious.

I mean, the obvious winner, I'm going to do two in one because they're related. Mike and Pam, Koseo's of Warner Bros. One battle after another is their movie, "Cinners Is There Movie." They were seen as kind of these risky bets because they were one was original. The other, the coogler movie was original and fairly expensive. For an original movie, the PTA movie was an adaptation of a Thomas Pinchon novel,

but also far away the most expensive movie that PTA had ever made. The "Cinners Is Not Only A Huge Box Office Success" but goes on to be the second biggest winner at the Academy Awards. One battle after another loses money and theaters. Yeah, so I'd say that number isn't as great as people were hoping in box office, but it did pretty well. You throw in the big Oscar campaign. It's going to have a long life,

fun, streaming, and rental, and it's so it'll end up being something that they're happy to have in the library. And they get name checked on stage for believing in original work again and again and again. Four times, I counted. Four, four, my compam, thank yous. Amy Madigan, Ryan Cougler,

MBJ, thank them, and Sarah Murphy, the producer. So, did you hear Azazloff thank you?

Yes. Someone, someone, I forgot which one of the ones you just said. I think it was maybe an early one, but someone did say thanks to David Azloff. Maybe I have a blocker on my radar. The other one that I think, and I don't know if this counts for the same, but I just think it was so evident, both from the crowd reaction, but also the way in which Michael B. Jordan spoke about him, the way the cinematographer spoke about him, like Ryan Cougler, huge individual. Like

I would say maybe even bigger than PTA as a winner or season. Well, certainly in the room, the crowd was like three or four times bigger and more enthusiastic for sinners than one battle, which is I was like, holy shit, it's just going to win. Didn't happen that way. I think a lot of the international voters fell for one battle, but in the room, like he was the man of the hour. And you got to throw Azazloff in there as a winner. Did you hear what happened at the

Warner's party on Friday about his speech? Yeah, he got up at the Warner's party in front of all the talent from all the movies and went on and on about one battle and sinners and didn't mention weapons and Amy Madigan and Zach Craig are standing right there. It's like dude, I mean, you have a whole team of Adlers, like get a speech together that's not going to happen. Mike and Pam, to their credit, Mike got up and like, dude, if we thank them and made them feel

successful. Yeah, that's what's man. As long as your studio chiefs do it.

Shout out for amazing stuff. Yes. Shout out to David Zazloff for dusting something off of

my Tuxedo that you don't think was a Tuxedo. Oh, that was nice of him. Yeah, we had some nice chats this weekend. He's very happy. Are you going to go with a winner or a loser? Let's go losers. I mean, well, I was going to say the other winner first is the theaters. If you look at these winners, take out the Netflix movies and take out the international winner, all of the narrative features that one Oscars last night were movies that grossed over $100 million worldwide. So these are

movies that people saw. Well, and even if you don't want to count it for the eatery, and it's the two Netflix movies that won most of the awards Frankenstein and K-pop are also very popular movies. They were not small movies. So everything that won was something that a lot of people saw. Yeah, exactly. And that I think is a huge win both for movie going and theaters and Netflix. And for the Oscars. Now whether it leads to ratings, we'll see. Yeah, we do not have the ratings yet.

Well, I'll get there for one of my losers. And then the quiet winner, we both saw him on the

Way in.

jobs at him. That was not gratuitous. I said, how does it feel that nobody knows who you are and

you're the most powerful person at this entire show? That's not rude. His publics didn't

like that. I mean, that guy is just like stealth power. He knows that he is the most powerful guy there. YouTube people and Disney people were both in the room and kind of circling each other and trying not to interact too much. And it was funny because they've also traded executives where one of the topics that is at Disney is this guy atmosphere. They used to be at YouTube and one of the top executives at the YouTube is Justin Connelly who used to be at Disney. And that leads

into one of my losers on that. And we can go into that Disney. I mean, come on, the amount of spawncon, all the promo. It used to be that Disney recognized that, you know, they are a television network and a film studio. So they were very cognizant of not using the Oscars to promote their own wares. Then that has gone out the window. Now they just do not care. They lost the Oscars to YouTube. So it was one after another. Grogu's sitting next to Kate Hudson, the Robert Downey

Jr. Chris Evans, thing where instead of introducing the category, they're basically just talking about the Avengers. It was pretty cringy. Like, if I was going to happen once they walked out, it was unfortunate. I know. But, but I don't think they got a big boost out of that. If I'm going to a Marvel fan, and I look at that, I'm like, wow, is Avengers not cool anymore? Like, I don't know, man. That just wasn't. And then they got Anna Win Tour to come to LA and promote

Devour's product within Hathaway. See, it reminds me, and we've talked about this in the past. If they were just better about using the Oscars as a promotional campaign for the movie business and for the movies that are coming up. Like, if you had it with, you know, you had trailer debuts. If you had other things, it would feel less. Yeah, I've talked about it. It would feel less spawn-conny and more natural if there was a way to do it. Well, this feeds into

my other, I think one of the losers is the producers of the show in general for a couple of reasons.

One, it ran way, way, way, way long. And as a result. And they also managed to cut people off. And as a result of that, that K-pop moment was dreadful. You have like this huge moment that

they're never been a K-pop song that had won the, the woman on stage, E.J. who got it was like,

she's been such a sweetheart throughout the whole awards process. Because she's sort of like a hidden person. She's not in the movie. And then she tried to hand it off. They were not ever supposed to be a band. Yeah, people watch it. She tried to hand it off to someone else and they cut it. And then they waited for like 45 seconds because they'd let other people pick it up and they didn't let it with just so awkward. And I felt so incredible. I kept saying to Craig, I was like, oh, no, he's

trying, he's trying to come back, he's trying and, oh, they're gonna let him, they're gonna let him come back. One up. Yeah. I mean, there's a, I have a lot of thoughts. Like, why bring out the women from Bridesmaids? If you're not gonna have them do something funny, why have them just piss it like,

oh, I think they thought it was gonna be funny. They thought that was funny. I just don't think it was.

My loser, which is an obvious one, is obviously Marty Supreme. And I think age 24 in general, because I also lost a couple other categories. You know, where, I think they're gonna do a lot of soul searching about where the Marty Supreme campaign went wrong. Because you have the number one film marketer out there right now in Timmy Shalamey who could seemingly do no wrong and was everywhere. And one, a lot of the precursor awards. And then the campaign just hit a wall.

And all of a sudden, it was nothing. So I had that question, but not so much about age 24 about about Chalamey. If you're a him and you seem like a sure thing, right? And you're marketing campaign, which by the way, one of the stories I wanted to do this Oscar season that I didn't really get around to, because was, my understanding is a lot of what happened was actually him, not the studio. I mean, he was driving the campaign. Yeah. Yeah. You hire him. Yeah. He had people he works with who

or who are setting up different partnerships and came about without even a 24 needing to facilitate in some cases. And then you, you kind of blow it at the last minute or it doesn't happen for you. Do you blame yourself? Yeah. Does that make you change your strategy at all? Or do you say, look, what I did meant that this movie opened, it validated me as a major star. I almost want again. And one of these days, the academy is gonna reward me because they know I'm great. Or does he,

like, pull a cruise where he changes his behavior? Or changes his entire outlook, what movies he's making, all that's new girlfriend, new strategy? Does he believe in the Kardashian curse because of this? Or something like that? I don't know. I mean, first of all, the number one, the movie opened

and the movie performed worldwide. The fact that this movie got above $200 million is still opening

around the world. Like, that is number one. You have to think of the money first. And he is not

any less of a bankable star because of what happened to the Oscars. Now, having said that,

I think you do.

of your career, you do a full autopsy on what happened. And why they, did they do one to many things? Did they do 10 to many things? Is scarcity, the new, you know, ubiquity? All of that gets looked at. The whole thing with the ballet stuff, that happened so late that it didn't, I don't believe

impact voting at all. People in the real world think it did. But I don't think it did. I think he was

losing this regardless. But what that did, the ballet and opera thing, although I don't think it affected him losing the Oscar. But it was a product of, I think, like, over exposure. And I bet you, that is the takeaway. He probably was like, okay, I did so much. It worked open in the movie. But for the campaign, he did so much press that you're bound to like slip up every once in a while. So I bet you, whatever thing he does next, I bet you, he's going to disappear for a little while.

And whatever he does next is not going to be the same Marty Supreme full throttle over the top marketing company. I bet you he will be a little bit more subtle next time. Well, we've got Dune coming up end of the year. So does he pull back on that? But that's not going to be an Oscar play for his it for acting. Maybe it's fine.

Never know. You never know. It's the end of the trilogy. And they talked about how the last

one didn't, didn't get nominated because everyone's waiting for the third one, like, Lord of the Rings to go nuts on it. So maybe there will be another Oscar campaign. It's just hard to ride that hot for so long. I mean, he basically been doing press for two straight years from Bob Dylan through this. Yeah. And he's got yet another end of the year movie.

So I'm right. And we're still team Timmy on this show. Are we not?

Yeah. He's like the most bankable movie star under. Look, 35. Yeah. I'm I'm happy that Michael be Jordan one. I personally would have voted for Shalime. I thought that movie was was really good and he was in every frame. Another loser was was Amazon just the Conan joke about how they had no nominations. I you know, again, I would say other winners. I'm going to give a shout out to security. Didn't have any misapps despite all the threats. Sure. No drone strikes. No drone strikes

Norway. When it's first. I think they said it was that is it's first international film Oscar.

Someone can someone. I believe that. Check me on that. In Memorial section was a highlight of the show. Yeah. And fortunately, Craig and I watched that with Drinks in our hands from the lobby. I did just we got locked out. Yeah. And I would just say in general, people might not like it or not, but the international film people. But for documentary, for the winners, have you ever done or like the only people willing to say anything political? Whether you agree with what they said

or not, I think it is notable that basically other than Jimmy Kimmel, no American had any stones

to go there. So yeah, I'm mixed on that. I don't love the politics stuff. I just think it's preaching to the choir and alienate the audience. But, you know, maybe I'm maybe I'm jutting just not forgotten. I'm no. A lot of people feel the way you do. A lot of people. And it was better than

the globes. Like globes had nothing. Yes. Well, also the first female San Mitaker for

to ever win an Oscar. Autumn, Archipok. Yeah. That was a nice moment. And I like that cone in like because people at home wouldn't know that. I like that they acknowledge that. We're going to talk about another cone in joke as a segue into what else you want to talk about. Do you think that Randows Joe? Do you think that people at home understood the Ted's Randows joke? Oh, yeah. He made it very clear that this is Netflix and it's the first, yeah, first time in a theater

and you got it. Now, the thing is Ted laughed very heartily, like good sport, Ted, how furious on a scale of 1 to 10 do you think he secretly was? I'm going to go not that furious only because he was the only studio chief to get like a moment in the sun during the show. Oh, the flex. And like it shows on on ABC and last I missed the Josh tomorrow, the new CEO like didn't have a moment for himself. No, obviously. And I don't watch the broadcast, but I don't even think they flash to him.

Usually they will flash to Eiger. Someone showed that they flashed at least the camera got Josh and Dana. Oh, they did. Okay. All right. I mean, he was at Governor's Ball for a little bit and then left. But I actually think Ted was probably if he thinks about that joke a little bit, I think he's going to be a little mad about it. I just put it like a six or seven because the whole, I mean, we know how much Ted loves awards and we know how much they covet the best picture.

And this kind of thing, it once again just doesn't sum up against a wall when trying to appeal to voters because they are now the enemy of theaters. And he's just come off a campaign of two to half months where he tried to change that opinion. And, you know, people and now he's going to go back to being the guy who's trying to kill theaters, at least in the public perception. I know he doesn't say that. And he says he loves personally going to movie theaters.

But jokes like that don't help. I saw one of his movies and theaters over the weekend. My mom and I were the only people in the theater. Yes. That's really funny.

Speaking of theaters and nobody in them, let's move on to windows because som...

this week, we had hot on the heels of Tom Rothman coming on this show talking about how the windows issues needs to be addressed. We had universal announced very publicly in the New York Times that they are moving their windows back, not quite to where they were pre-COVID, but they are going to guarantee seven weekends of theatrical exclusivity starting in 2027,

five weekends until then. And that is a change from where they were. Why is universal doing this?

I think it's about optics and PR more than anything. I don't think it's a huge business mover. I totally disagree. I think this is part of the retrenchment that is going on and people are seeing that the numbers not like what Tom said on the show. It's not necessarily those later weekends

that are suffering. It's the first weekend because people are being trained to know that the

movies are coming sooner rather than later. And this is a parachute for the industry. They're pulling this to say, listen, we've got to slow down. We can't go towards our streaming services so much. We need to protect this window. This doesn't actually affect the streaming window at all. You mean the free streaming window? Yeah. We're going to talk about this. This is the window to peeva. This is to buy and rent at home, which is not streaming. I agree. The streaming window

for universal remains one of the longest in the industry. The ability to transact at home is where they were more aggressive because they believed that there were some people who were just going to once you get to the third or fourth weekend. Those people weren't going to come and we're going to

stay home. I think I don't know that we totally disagree. I think that it is about reinforcing the

article, seeing that even five years, depending on when you want to start the clock on COVID,

but over the industry has not bounced back to where it was in 2019. And if you want to try to

reinforce it, you're going to do some things to help prop up the numbers. This is the biggest year of releases that the industry has had since then. And they're hoping that they can sort of help retrain the consumer a little bit. But I think when we're talking financially for the studio, like universal was pretty clear that they were making good money from peeva. They didn't think it was cannibalizing that the actual. And that they have a longer window than some of their peers

in streaming. And so I think this is now they're going back on that. Like that holes. No, where they put the, again, the streaming window didn't change. So I was also saying on peeva, they are going back on it. Like that experiment they did for wicked. That won't happen where they released it on Thanksgiving and put it in peeva for New Year's that won't happen under this month. I think part of it is trying to, to kind of signal to the consumer in the industry that we want

to reinforce theaters. And I think part of it is also you're competing for, you're competing for filmmaking talent. You, if, look, the argument that they would make is a nuanced one, which is actually like our windows are some of the best in the industry when it comes to streaming, but not as good when it comes to peeva. But try to explain that to most people and they don't really get it. And it opens you up to potential attacks from Warner Brothers from Sony, from whoever

saying or from your talent. I mean, if I'm Chris Nolan, that's what I mean, but in regards to talent,

you, if you have a project out there, you can have Tom Roth, then Mike Luke, who I'm ever saying, you know, if you come dust, we're going to leave it in theaters for six weeks. Don't worry about.

Right. No, and Chris Nolan, who is arguably Universal's most important filmmaker, he's now

the president of the director's guild. And he thinks that the actual window should be 60 days. Is that even arguable at this point? Is that just because like out of difference to Spielberg? What do you mean that Nolan is the most important for me? I mean, I only say that because it's not, and it's not like Nolan is under contract at your rehearsal fair. He could take his next project. If he, if he wants to do another Superman or Batman movie, he's got to go to Warner Brothers for his

next movie. But he is now done to in a row, and they would like to keep him. And I think it's a nice message to talent who obviously they want this. And I want to be clear here because you have said it. The P-Vod window is very different from the S-Vod window. And the people that I have talked to in this space are saying exactly what you have said, which is the real issue is the S-Vod window. And Tom Rothman at Sony, he put in this New York Times piece that he wrote this week,

that in the New Sony pay one deal with Netflix, they have a 100 to 120-day window for their movies. That is not what a lot of these other studios are doing. They are having a variable S-Vod window where sometimes on the movies that are not bigger hits, they go to S-Vod much sooner, especially if it's an owned and operated platform. But for the biggest movies, for Disney's biggest movies for Universal's biggest movies, they're that long, if not longer. I mean, I think,

Well, Zutopia 2, I think it was a 100-day movie of last year, it was 104 days.

and a lot of people in the industry think that it should be 120, that for those kinds of movies, it should be at least 120. Chris Nolan has it in his deal that it's 120. Yeah. So that means

that for universal with the Odyssey, it's 120. I think for a lot of the universal movies for

streaming, it's 120. But my point is, is that I think the movement now in the industry is to get that S-Vod window to be longer. Yeah. And it's less about the P-Vod and, you know, Universal's statement is nice, but it's more about the S-Vod window because that is what the consumer sees as free. If the consumer continues to see these movies hitting quote-unquote free streaming within a couple months, that is what is hurting the box office. They've been slowly

walking back a lot of the changes they made during the pandemic. Basically, where they

they compressed these windows. Universal had been a little bit of an outlier with P-Vod, which made it with drove a lot of a lot of the theater owners crazy. I mean, not as much as Netflix tries some crazy, obviously. Yeah. I know. And every time one of these movies flops, it's a chance for Tetsurandas to be like, "Well, look what the consumer is telling us, the consumer doesn't want the theaters, the consumer wants it at home." But do you think this

is an admission by Universal that maybe P-Cock is not the priority that it once was?

Again, I don't note because it doesn't change the streaming component of it. I don't know that it's a commentary on P-Cock. I do think it is more. Well, but presumably that it's the P-Vod window is longer than maybe the streaming window that will be longer. I think the streaming window for them is already quite small. Yeah. So I think it's, I think it is trying to to buttress the theatrical business at a time where it really needs some help. And Universal is

most years the number two studio. And they'll have a nice announcement and the money that they sacrifice from two weeks of P-Vod is worth it to them for what they're doing. It's kind of signaling to the industry to talent. Well, and they'll have a nice announcement at CinemaCon and they'll get a big ovation from the theater owners and guests who will be at CinemaCon this year. I imagine Chris Nolan in some capacity. So he will get to hear that. Spielberg will get to hear that. All

those filmmakers will get to feel good about Universal. Yeah. And that could be enough. All right, Lucas. Thank you. I'm going to get you a Tuxedo for you to wear in the future. Do the town budget is now going to accommodate a Tuxedo. Just because I don't like bow ties. You know? All right. Well, there you go. Thank you. We were back with the call sheet. Craig, give me your take. I didn't ask you

your take on the evening. Your third Oscars. How does this compare? I thought this one was the most

energetic in the room in terms of suspense. What was going to happen next? Not really knowing

still the end, who was going to win best picture. I think because the sinners contingency was so

loud, even though it was expected when battle was going to win, there were still some suspense at the end that sinners could potentially steal it. And they had kind of gone back and forth all night. Yeah. It's funny because I got some feedback from friends that said that it felt like there was not that much excitement or enthusiasm in the room. Yeah. In the room, I thought it was of the three that you and I have been together. The most energetic of those three. I agree. I also think

there were just tight races that were more interesting to me. Like the best actor race was incredibly interesting. A winner we didn't get to of the night has to be Leo's mustache. Oh, yeah. You're a big fan. I was a little confused by it. I know he's shooting the Scorsese movie in Prague. But I thought he looked great. I think Leo has looked better than he has in years. I don't know if he's like working out or doing whatever for the role, but his the mustache and Leo looks great.

He's back. And he had some nice memeable moments. What was your best moment? For the first time,

we went down to the lower lobby level where you were excited to see a bunch of stars boozing it up. Well, it's fun because there are real stretches where we were down there for, I don't know, maybe a half an hour during the show. And like Emma Stone's there where there has been having glass white wine, stellen stars, scars scars are just during the show. Timmy and Kylie were gone for like 45 minutes during the broadcast hanging out. It's very cool to see that they

kind of just like us go in and out. Yeah. Just like us, they're like hankering for drinks during the show. And then get a constant by the security when you try to bring your drink back to your seat, which is not allowed. One other moment I want to shout out, I don't know what award we give this most professional moment, but I thought Camille Nogiani handled the tie very, very impressive. They clearly prepped him in advance. They told him when he walked out like FYI, it's a tie.

This is what we do. And he was good about that. My favorite moment was do remember when they announced the shorts and the second movie was announced that two people exchanging saliva. The guy in front

Of us immediately clearly he was involved with the movie.

second floor. So the mezzanine level. This guy got up and literally said to his buddy,

I'm going for it. He got up and like ran out to go down the stairs to try to get on stage with the rest of the winners. He had no shot. He had no shot. It was not happening. Did not make it on stage. But just these sheer balls to think that he could go from the mezzanine all the way down to the

orchestra and get on stage with that movie, loved it. Yeah. That's what's great about the

Oscars. I think Lucas is wrong. I think that the thing that's different about the Oscars is everybody cares. They really care. And I know they care about any award, but they really care about the Oscars. It is meaningful. These people getting up there talking about how much it means for their country, how much it means for if they represent a particular ethnic or racial group, the first win for female cinematographer. And she asked all the women to stand up. That's why these awards matters

because they represent so much for these people. It's like culmination of a career. And that's why it's fun. Totally agree. All right. So having said that, let's talk about gambling. I'm talking about what's really important because this is as you know, we have both been experimenting with gambling this season. And I want to go through it. Like, I ended up, I only bet on two categories for the actual show. Actually, three. I bet my strategy, which is the heavy

favorites. The ones that I know are going to win. So I bet golden to win best song. Did not win very much money. I bet like a hundred bucks. And I ended up winning like 19 or 20. And then I also bet. No way, not even that. If you've been a hundred bucks, you probably won three dollars. No, because it was like 80 something percent to win. Oh, okay. When I bet. So then I bet on I've been a while ago. Then I bet on one battle to win. And which was a heavy favorite, but not a guarantee.

And I won there. I lost on Timmy. I bet on Chalame and I did I bet on him as well. Yeah. So you lost it. But how did you do otherwise? I bet on Sean Penn a few weeks ago or a month ago at this point with paid off. And then I went for the value. I bet on centers to steal best picture just because all these things were like five or six to one. I bet Timmy. And then just to spite you, I bet on golden to lose, which I was wrong. Oh, why would you do that? Because it was like five dollars to win 50. That's

that's how you're supposed to never going to happen. What did you think was going to win the

center song? Yeah, that's what I bet on. I lied to you by saying that center song. Well, okay. Well,

good. I got some stats from Kalshi and they had $105 million exchange hands for prediction markets

for the Oscars this year. Best actor closed at 25.5 million. So more people bet on that than best picture, which I guess makes sense because it was this three way race that people were interested in. Well, and the lines were rapidly changing. I think I saw a report that even during the broadcast Leo started to surge as a potential sleeper pick to what the actor, the thing about Kalshi that's different is the numbers you're seeing are all based on what the public sentiment is. I'm not the

biggest guys exactly. It is not Vegas setting these lines. So you trust it a little less. What's going on?

I had a positive experience. Listen, I'm not a gambler. I don't do this up normally. I'm not a sports gambler and I thought it was kind of fun. It is a little fun to do a little sprinkling. Oh,

well, here's what I'll say. I hope to God that the Oscars never incorporates anything into their

broadcast. What the globes did that whole thing? When the Oscars goes to YouTube or anything like that, please never incorporate gambling into the broadcast. No, it's just fun to do on the side. And it was fun to go up to Kate Hudson at the nominees, brunch and say, I won money on you. What's she appreciated? All right. That's the show for today. I want to think my guest Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horoback, Artators, John Jones and Jesse Lopez. And I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.

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