#132. 'DC League of Super-Pets'
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Vic is off this week ("family stuff"), so it's a two-hander with Sonny and JVL covering DC League of Super-Pets along with a pile of industry news. Neither is impressed: JVL saw it with his son and calls it forgettable, part of a dispiriting run of bad kids' movies (Sonic 2, Lightyear, Paws of Fury) that's made him reappraise the original Sonic the Hedgehog as a minor classic by comparison; he pins the blame on lazy celebrity voice casting, singling out Kevin Hart as terribly miscast and low-energy and the Rock as a "site gag" comedian who doesn't work when you can't see him, while praising Kate McKinnon's hairless-guinea-pig villain as the only consistently funny performance because she's an actual pro. Sonny is similarly lukewarm, noting his three-year-old was bored and his seven-year-old only half-remembers it, and both fret about the box office slump for family films post-COVID. The back half pivots to Warner Bros. Discovery's earnings call and the shelving of the nearly-finished Batgirl as a tax write-off (with a Scooby-Doo movie getting the same treatment), which sends JVL down a rabbit hole of Hollywood's unreleased-film history — Roger Corman's Fantastic Four, the Rolling Stones' Cocksucker Blues, and Jerry Lewis's notorious The Day the Clown Cried — plus the Ezra Miller mess threatening The Flash and the coming HBO Max/Discovery+ merger, which the two debate at length (Sonny thinks HBO and Discovery audiences don't see themselves as the same customer; JVL thinks bundling prestige HBO content with "garbage reality TV" is a mismatch). The long opening stretch is pure banter: JVL recounts eavesdropping for three hours on a man at a new North Carolina Starbucks counseling a woman through her divorce via stories of communing with his dead brother's ghost (robe and sash included) and his dead cat's ghost, before the conversation curdles into an evangelical pitch; Sonny counters with a Great Wolf Lodge trip report, praising the "Magic Quest" wand game as a brilliant device for tiring out kids via constant stair-climbing, plus a ropes course with his daughter and a tangent about F&Birds guy's Comic-Con hooker intel.
From the show notes
On this week's episode, Sonny and JVL (Vic has the week off) discuss DC League of Super-Pets , ghosts, Great Wolf Lodge, mergers, shelves movies, streaming consolidation, and more.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00When one has an abundance of power, they have a certain duty to use that power to... Sorry, you were saying something? How much did you have to drink? I had two toilet bowls and a bidet. Bidet too, which is crazy. I didn't even know that was a thing, but it's like a dog water fountain.
Sonny00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Victorino Matus? Question mark? No, I'm Sonny Bunch along with Jonathan V. Last. Just the two of us, two-man show today. Just a reminder, thesubbeacon.com is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and don't forget about the Sub-Beacon Merchandise Store at teepublic.com. Gentleman, how are we? JBL, how are you? JBL:
JVL00:00:59Alright. So, I'm at Starbucks working. I am down in North Cackalacky.
Sonny00:01:04Not at this moment.
JVL00:01:05No, earlier this week. I am in North Cackalacky. They have just gotten a Starbucks out here, and boy, the locals are super-duper excited about it. It's, I don't even know, it's like when they first got indoor plumbing. It's great.
Sonny00:01:25You are at a North Carolina beach town that has had Starbucks before, certainly. No. At some point.
JVL00:01:32No, the nearest Starbucks is 20 miles. The nearest Starbucks is 20 miles, actually, prior to this place opening. Anyhow, unimportant, unimportant. What's important is that I am in there working, doing my thing at like 8:00 in the morning the other day. And because it's new, it takes people a little while to filter in. And eventually, I had a gentleman and a lady who both looked to be in their late 40s sit down kind of adjacent to me and begin a long conversation, which I could not help but overhear. Sure. The conversation began as her seeking his counsel about a potential divorce from her husband. Okay. Which I guess is a thing that happens. I would say these people didn't seem to be already good friends. It wasn't like it did not seem like this guy had been one of her best buds in her high school crew and she was looking seemed to be somebody who she was not terribly intimate with. And about 20 minutes into this, I overhear him beginning to talk about his encounters with spirits. Sure. Which I don't mean like the Distilled Spirits Council. Sure. Sure. And and talking about ghosts and the ghosts that he's seen. And and and it begins with this one about his dead brother, you know, his dead brother appearing to him and and then how it took him a while to understand the significance of the fact that his dead brother was wearing both a robe and a sash. But that really brought some things home to him. Once he had time to think about it. Sure. And and I was originally chuckling at this, thinking this is all kind of funny. About 15 minutes later, I sort of, you know, dip into their conversation and I hear him talking about him communing with the ghost of his dead cat.
Sonny00:03:48Sure. As one does.
JVL00:03:50And about his just how special it was because he had missed this cat so much in that he could just, you know, the his cat's ghost just was rubbing his whiskers against his against his cheek. Now, at this point, I I really did fight the urge to go over and ask some questions like sixth sense style, like, oh, I'm sorry. So the ghosts can interact with the physical world. You can feel the whiskers. How does that work? What are what are the laws governing this? But I didn't I didn't. I sat there.
Sonny00:04:21Well, it's not like this man is a, you know, is a necessarily a expert on ghosts just because I mean, I I watch television. I couldn't tell you how plasma crystals worked.
JVL00:04:33So that's where you're wrong, because I did back into this conversation about 30 minutes later, and he's explained to her that he has reached the point where he can basically summon the spirits at will. And now I'm wondering, oh, is this is this guy doing the spook show? Is that what this is, that he's running a con on Nightmare Alley? Yeah.
Sonny00:04:59Yeah. But then I come back to this 30 minutes after that. How long has this conversation been going on?
JVL00:05:08These people there for like three hours. Okay. The two of them sat there nursing their coffees for three hours, although, of course, they didn't get coffees. Of course, they got like giant sugary Frappuccino, cold foam, brown sugar syrup, blah, blah, blah.
Sonny00:05:23Obviously, they got a 1700 calorie coffee.
JVL00:05:27Yeah, okay. Anyway, and we had transitioned away from the spook show to pure evangelical Jesus talk. Sure. And all this was his like way of getting her in on. And so I thought, oh, it's like a revival.
Sonny00:05:46He's a revival preacher.
JVL00:05:47Yeah. A revival. This is like a minister doing outreach to. And I just thought to myself, what a beautiful country we have, and I'm I'm so glad that we have a social system which allows people with this level of intelligence to somehow make enough money to own a home and own a car and drive around and buy six dollar coffees because that's great. That takes all sorts. You're acting all blase about this, but surely if you heard this happening eight feet away from you, you would have been thinking to yourself, what?
Sonny00:06:38No, I would have put my noise canceling headphones on minute one. The second they sat down, I would have cocooned myself away from them and never heard a single thing that they said. I just would have been blasting my Fallout Boy or Metallica at full volume until they would have had to come to me and say, please, sir, could you turn that down? We have spirits to talk about over here.
JVL00:06:59Enjoy the background burble of coffee shops. In fact, for many years, I had an app on my computer called Coffitivity, which which played the sounds of a coffee shop for you in case you weren't in a coffee shop.
Sonny00:07:14That's the weirdest.
JVL00:07:14I mean, it's like white noise, but it's a very distinctive kind of white noise.
Sonny00:07:20I understand the concept of having white noise, but having that specific. So, you know, I don't like that kind of white noise. I don't like I don't like hearing other people talk when I'm trying to read because it interferes with what I'm trying to read. I don't like having other people around me talking when I'm trying to write because I'm.
JVL00:07:36This is an odd case only because of the relative emptiness of the new Starbucks that I was able to pick out specific conversations because they were the only other people there. Right. This is the you know, normally in a bustling coffee shop, you can't pick out more than just like random words here and there. You don't you don't hear the uninterrupted flow of people conversing because there's
Sonny00:07:56there's stuff happening, right? That's true.
JVL00:07:58You're the. Brist is talking to one another and then, you know, the people ordering and the clink of glasses and the of the steam wand and the of the the the little they they they have in Starbucks, this little thing that they use to wash out cups. Oh, yeah.
Sonny00:08:17Like the glass, the glass upside down.
JVL00:08:19They are like they have those at bars. I totally want one of those.
Sonny00:08:24Yeah, it's like if you go to a bar and you a lot of the times you'll see, before they pour your drink, they'll put the they'll put the glass on top of the thing. It'll wash it out. Then, you know, you have a clean glass because water cleans everything. I want one of those. So they're pretty they're fantastic. I want one for my wine glasses because I don't like putting my wine glasses in the dishwasher because they're too big. So I feel like lay them sideways. But the but like if I had one of those little push down, jet up things, I would be much happier in terms of cleaning my my wine glasses. That would be. Yeah, that's what I got. What do you got? What's going on, man? I took the kids to the Great Wolf Lodge.
JVL00:09:10Oh, we did the Great Wolf Lodge once.
Sonny00:09:13Great Wolf Lodge.
JVL00:09:15Because there's one in there's one in. You're from Virginia. What's the throw over? Williams was all of the Williamsburg. Yeah, there's one in Williamsburg. Did you buy to do the. Apparently they're all over. Did you do the. Like D Kitty D and D thing where you buy. Yes, the magic quest. Yeah, you did that.
Sonny00:09:34So we did that. We did. We did that because, you know, I have two kids. I've got a three year old and seven year old, and the three year old basically was not into the water park at all, like didn't couldn't couldn't do like the biggest slides isn't big enough for like the big slides on the on the rafts and the tubes and whatnot and didn't really like to do the ones where he just he just laid there. He was he was a little bit it was a little over. Well, for him, and also it's just like really loud in there because there's constant there's like constant waterfall noise. So he was like a little overwhelmed by the whole thing. So we didn't actually spend a lot of time in the water park part of the water park. We spent some, but not not a ton. The thing he liked most was the lazy river because he wears he wears like a he's too small. It's funny. He's too small to be in the in the tube.
JVL00:10:22Yeah.
Sonny00:10:23So he he just like floats on the river because he's got his little vest, right? His little. Yeah. Little arm float. Huddle Jumper. Yeah. Puddle. Thank you. Puddle Jumper. And he he just like literally just like floats along in the water. He like swims and it's like he's swimming really fast. He gets very he gets very happy about that. But but like so we there was a fair amount of time not in the water and we had to find things to do. And one of the things that apparently all the Great Wolf Lodges have is this, as you say, like sub DND Kitty DND thing, which is actually an ingenious invention by by the Great Wolf Lodge. So. Let me explain what this is to people so that if they don't know, basically you get there, they give you a wand and they give you like a little buy a wall. Well, we we it was part of our package. Oh, OK. So we don't give you anything at the Great Lodge. No, no. Nothing is free at the Great Wolf Lodge. But but we we we so we get the wands, we each of them gets a wand and we and basically you go to this room where there's a sleeping dragon and you find you get a quest and they give you a little book. And essentially what this is, is a method of tiring out children, because the way it works is each of the quests is like, all right, first you have to go to the shop, the Hall of Shops and the Hall of Shopkeepers, and you have to find, you know, something there. And then, all right, on the second stage of your quest, you have to go to the Piney Woods or whatever, again, whatever, whatever the damn names are for all these places. And that's like three floors up. But they're all marked on the stairwell. So you go up and down the stairs, just up and down stairs, up and down stairs, up and down stairs, and it wears kids out. And that's perfect. That's exactly what you want from something like this, because it is just and like, it's also good for me because I'm eating like 17,000 calories a day at the goddamn buffet restaurant, because it's like the it's the only place to eat in there. So like, you're just you're going up and down and up and down. And it's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's so much better than the rip off arcade that they have there. Which is like the most ridiculously overpriced art. I thought Chuck E. Cheese was bad, but no, this is like a whole a whole other thing. Anyway, the thing the whole thing was very fun. I did a ropes course with my older my older child, my daughter, which was like I'm I'm not afraid of heights in the sense of like roller coasters or going up a tall building. Like if I if I'm if I'm within a structure or if there are rails or whatever, I'm fine. But these ropes courses, you know, you're up like 40 feet in the air.
JVL00:13:01You're just like you are right. Harnessed in your heart. Right.
Sonny00:13:06Right. You're just right. You cannot you cannot possibly die on this. Like, I mean, it would have to take some sort of catastrophic system failure on multiple levels for you to, like, fall and die. You're harnessed. And if you fall off the if you fall off the thing you're on, you'll just hang there and you'll look like an idiot for ten minutes till they come till they come retrieve you. But the but like it's still. Still kind of there there's a there's an element of like terror that accompanies just being
JVL00:13:34on a giant platform that's 40 feet off the ground. And then you're going like across rope bridges, you know, or like not I was I was a little
Sonny00:13:45bit freaked out. Seven year old totally into it. She's like going. She she had one moment where she like there was a big step on one of the rope bridges to the platform and she like she was like, I can't do it. It's too far. I can't reach. And luckily there was somebody there to like stick out a hand and like pull her up because she was like starting to come back. I was like, no, you have the only way through was forward. The only way through was forward. So that was that was but, you know, we did like zip lines and stuff. It was fun. It was great. She was she was she was a champ on that. I was like I was probably more scared than she was at a couple of points because I'm a I'm a I'm a little child at heart. But the whole thing was the whole thing was. It was nice. It was a nice couple of days away. We, you know, both of the kids like it. The indoor water park, the outdoor water park is fine. It's not really my scene.
JVL00:14:41I don't like water, because if you don't like sand, I can't understand how you could possibly deal with a water park. Oh, and there's no floating randomly.
Sonny00:14:52I don't feel I don't like beaches. There is. Oh, there's no. Filth in the beach. The beach is where whales go to shit and die. I mean, come on. But no, no.
JVL00:15:03But there is there is filth at the water park is what I'm saying.
Sonny00:15:05Well, there's filth. There's filth everywhere. JBL. There's filth in there. You walk down the street.
JVL00:15:10What are you breathing?
Sonny00:15:11Sitting at the table eight feet away from you at Starbucks, particularly, you know, animal fertilizer, probably every any time you go outside. So like, I'm not I'm not super worried about it. But the but it's just not like the ride, the slides, whatever. It's just not. It's it's not the squeeze isn't worth the juice for me or the juice. The juice isn't worth the squeeze for me. So I like I don't I don't love it, but I didn't hate it either. And the kids had a good time. That's like, again, the whole point of taking them there was like, did you take them out of the house for a couple of days? What's that?
JVL00:15:44Did you take them solo?
Sonny00:15:45No, no, no. We went. We went. We went. I was still I was still working. So I would I would like, you know, work for a couple of hours and they'd go to bed. And then I work for a couple more hours. Luckily, I'd taped most of mine. My podcasts and stuff ahead of time. I think there are two weeks last week, I think I've heard that was a I can't wait.
JVL00:16:05That was a fun. Listen to it.
Sonny00:16:07That was a fun pod. I didn't really realize how big a deal F and birds is, but like I was I'm just friends with Aaron from Twitter. And I was like, oh, I guess you're kind of you know, you're you're you're you're and I like I like the F and bird stuff. Like I have some of the postcards and I like I bought one of the shirts and send it somebody because it made me laugh. But like I didn't I didn't really realize like he he's got like a whole little little empire here. And it's like he goes to conventions and so he was at San Diego Comic-Con with with some of his friends. Anyway, that was interesting.
JVL00:16:40Listen to the show yet. Have you asked him about the hookers at San Diego Comic-Con? Was that one of the topics because that is something I'm fascinated about because supposedly San Diego Comic-Con is one of the premier destinations on the sex worker calendar every year because it's filled with nerds who can't get it except by paying for it. Yeah. And and so, you know, the the ladies who are who are into this bring their costumes and their cosplays and they just make mint.
Sonny00:17:16That sounds right. I believe it. I don't doubt that for a second. No, but now it's like the Super Bowl. We did not. We did not get into that. We did get into we did get into one thing we I want. But one thing we did discuss was and we he didn't use any names, but there's a there's a Star Wars actor who when he goes to these conventions, guess how much he commands.
JVL00:17:39Well, you got to give me which French you got to give me which trilogy original original
Sonny00:17:46trilogy original trilogy.
JVL00:17:49I can't tell you who it is. Is it a somebody who is like John Ratzenberger, somebody who's it's a it's a big it's a big name. It's a big name. Then I would assume a couple million.
Sonny00:18:02Two million dollars.
JVL00:18:03Yeah.
Sonny00:18:04Two million. That's not right. Like and that's like that's like against, you know, how much money he makes doing photos and stuff. So if he may. That's just a million dollars. Right. But the but like two million dollars. It's crazy. Anyway. Yeah. Sounds about right. Big business. The comic cons. Big business. So anyway, go listen to that. Go to F and Birds. Buy some buy some post. I have one. I was just I've showed it to him on the show. This is this sits over my desk all the time. So I'm unsure as to why I should give a fuck about your opinion. That's how I feel about everyone all the time. So anyway, a fun show. Go listen to that great Wolf Lodge Wolf Hall Lodge. Whatever it's called. Fun. Speaking of the wolves.
JVL00:18:48Speaking of wolves, speaking of wolves, that's there. There was almost a super pet named Why? Well, I don't know. Vic.
Sonny00:18:58I don't know. We're trying to get to the show here.
JVL00:19:00Here. What? Don't you want to talk some? I'll give you one quick Vic-ism. There you go. So Sonny, how are the lifeguards at the Great Wolf Lodge?
Sonny00:19:14No comments. No comments. It's definitely funny going to a place like this after going to Disney World because everything is just worse. Oh, yeah. Everything is just like. It makes you appreciate how perfect. It's not as good. Disney is, right? The rooms aren't as good. It's just not as good. This place was actually very nice. We had a good time. I don't want to besmirch the good name of the Great Wolf Lodge. No.
JVL00:19:43But it is the difference between a Roger Corman movie and the original Star Wars.
Sonny00:19:49Yeah. Right? In terms of production values and everything. Yeah. It's not quite that bad. It's not quite that bad. That's more like how I feel going to now it's just King's Dominion. It used to be Paramount's King's Dominion. Back when it was Paramount's King's Dominion, it was still kind of neat because it had the branded rides. There was the Italian job ride. Nickelodeon. Right. But now it's just King's Dominion and the Italian job ride is called Backlot Movie Studio Ride. It's the Leppin version of Paramount. Or some nonsense. It really is ridiculous. It really is ridiculous. Anyway, do we want to talk? Since Vic isn't here, do you want to nerd out about Warner Brothers Discovery Plus HBO Max news?
JVL00:20:34Did you see all this? Which news are you referring to? Are you referring to the Batgirl news? That's all part of this. I have definite thoughts about that. Yeah. That's all part of this. Yeah. What else?
Sonny00:20:50What is the other HBO Max Warner Discovery News? Warner Discovery Media or whatever the fuck this company's called. He's called now. They had their earnings call. They had their earnings call this week, yesterday, Thursday. They had it on yesterday afternoon, Thursday. And there was a bunch of stuff about their earnings are down, but that's because they've assumed a bunch of debt and they're blah, blah, blah, whatever. I don't understand any of that. But the things that everybody was freaking out about through the week, things that leaked out like Batgirl got canceled. We're not going to pay for the money to finish making Batgirl and put it even on HBO Max. David Zaslav or whatever at HBO Max.
JVL00:21:37You're underselling this Sonny. You need to explain to the people who have not seen this. Batgirl is mostly finished.
Sonny00:21:45We can talk all about it. I just want to lay out the broad structure. On top of that, HBO Max and Discovery Plus are probably going to merge at some point in 2023. Before the actual call, people had been freaking out. They were like, "They're going to cancel HBO Max. HBO Max is done. They're firing everybody at HBO Max. They're getting rid of all the original programming. They're not having any of the shows on there." Most of this was overblown. Some of it is interesting and kind of tricky, but mostly this was overblown. Basically, the long and the short of it is the folks at Warner are recommitted to theatrical. They do not think streaming is necessarily the end-all be-all. They want to have a properly windowed system and a properly good content ecosystem, let's call it, where something comes out of movie theaters, something comes out of movie theaters, then it goes to a pay video window, then it hits streaming. You hit every part of the waterfall all the way down. Everything makes more money that way. Everything makes more money that way, but to do this, the things have to be of a high enough quality to be released in theaters. Which brings me back to Batgirl. So Batgirl is done, is my understanding. It is essentially done. There's maybe a couple million dollars worth of post-production work left to do. But it's filmed. It's shot. It's in the can. Edited and locked. They're done with it. Not locked. Edited and locked. Yes. This was always intended to be an HBO Max streaming property. It was not intended to be a theatrical property. So they made this specifically for HBO Max. And the new guy comes in, Zaslav. Apparently, test screenings are terrible. And he's looking at this and he's like, we're going to have to spend another, we'll have to spend probably another $15 to $20 million on effects work to get it up to snuff to be a theatrical release. On top of that, we're going to have to spend $50 to $80 million marketing it. We're looking at another $100 million to "finish" this thing and release it theatrically. And we only want to release DC stuff theatrically, we want DC stuff to be in theaters, building the brand and getting people back to theaters and bringing them back to HBO Max. And then again, we're going to create this whole ecosystem, the whole waterfall of revenue is going to be better, blah, blah, blah. So he says, I'm taking this finished film and I'm putting it on the shelf and we're never releasing it. And I'm taking the $40 million tax write off or whatever, like the $70, $80 million tax write off. You just write it off, Jerry? We're just going to write it off. Write it off. We're going to shelve this thing forever. No one will ever see it. We'll never make a dollar on it. And we're going to take the tax hit. And they also announced that they're doing this for like a $40 million Scooby Doo movie. At the same time, he was like, we're also doing this on a Scooby Doo movie, which like how bad can a Scooby Doo movie be that you can't even put it on HBO Max, but like neither here nor there, neither here nor there. So I am, I, it's, it's fascinating. It's fascinating on a bunch of levels. I mean, I want to see the movie now just because like, how could it be, how could it possibly be that bad? Um, I've seen birds of prey and you know, whatever. But the, uh, but like, I, there, there are just, there, there are a whole bunch of different levels and layers to this on top of which was today or yesterday on Thursday on the, on the earnings call, they recommitted to releasing the flash in theaters next year. And I don't know if you know anything about what's going on with the flash in production
JVL00:25:15on that. We've done.
Sonny00:25:17Totally. It's done. They're done. It's done. They're done. That movie is done. They're, they're trying to do reshoots now. My understanding. I suppose. How good my understanding is. My understanding is that they are doing reshoots now to tweak the ending in a way that I think would probably eliminate Ezra Miller from the franchise if I had to guess, because, uh, I, again, I don't know how much any of you folks know about what's happening with Ezra Miller. Um, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's a, he's a certifiably insane person who has gone through a variety of gender identities over the last six months or so. And like, uh, has kidnapped children from their parents. Who have like gone to the police and been like, Ezra Miller movie star has taken our children from us and we cannot see them. They are loaded up on drugs and they are unintelligible when we try to talk to them, um, the whole thing is bad. The whole scene is very, very bad. Uh, and, and like Miller himself is, I like, I don't even know. I don't know who's, who at Warner brothers is trying to like get ahold of him and like ratchet him down and get him, you know, back on campus. But, uh, the whole thing is the whole thing is very, very bad. Long story short, um, they are still releasing that movie in theaters. They're still gonna put that through the, the, uh, the theatrical release process, which good luck.
JVL00:26:38Uh, if you told me that Tom cruise or the rock, uh, eight babies in their private lives and, and that the, the movie studios just covered it all up because these guys were so valuable financially. I wouldn't believe that. I mean, I wouldn't really believe it, but I'd be like, yeah, okay, sure. What is, what in the world is Warner brothers doing sweating Ezra Miller, a, a nobody Miller who is, well, no, I'm bit like they, they have known what he is. They've had him in house and they, they knew, you know, they just, they kept him around with the, uh, the, the Harry Potter spinoff weapon series. And they went ahead with the flash after having dealt with him in justice league. Like why wasn't this guy cut off three projects ago instead of just like, well, we'll just hope Ezra doesn't go really crazy this time, because that is, you don't have juice not worth the squeeze. He's just Ezra Miller, like he does not, he does not put asses in seats. He does not have, you know, a track record of opening movies. He is not the greatest thes being in the world.
Sonny00:27:55Do you, do we, do we want to say what the real answer is here? Cause I think we both know what the real answer is. The real answer is he was a, uh, an adorably quirky gender nonconforming person who would do things like wear dresses on the red carpet. And everybody talked about how wonderful he was. And you can't fire that person at a certain point, at a certain point, it becomes too problematic and too difficult to fire Ezra Miller. You're only. Again, you're only non-gender conforming actor in one of these big movies can't do it. And so now they've got this thing where he, he, he has basically gone Colonel Kurtz on them. He is up the river and just doing his methods have become unsound. And they're, they're basically sending Michael Keaton in as Martin Sheen, uh, Michael Keaton is returning as Batman. Uh, and he's gonna, I think, put the bullet in, uh, Mr. Mr. Ezra Miller's flash. That's my understanding. I don't know. I like the, but this is, this, it's, it is, it is 100% tied up with extraneous political stuff that makes it very, very difficult to retake control of your project at a certain point.
JVL00:29:10You think, I don't know, man, I mean, they just killed cat woman, which was gonna be a big girl. Oops. Sorry. Bat girl was gonna be a big diversity project at the end of the day, these people don't care. They don't care.
Sonny00:29:26They don't care about anything. Everybody is. Yeah. But, but the, but here's the problem. I mean, this is, this is why you say they're, they're going to bat for Ezra Miller. They're not, they're going to bat for the flash. They're trying to figure out how to salvage the $150 million flash movie that they've
JVL00:29:39made. No, I just meant going to bat. I meant like continuing to give him work. Right. I mean, when, when they, they had, once you, once you cast him in justice league, you basically
Sonny00:29:51have to like, that's how these dumb universes work. He's not. He's not. He's not like war machine, you know, from iron man.
JVL00:29:58You can't just replace him in he's I mean exactly like that, by the way, you know, can I, can I just say on the subject of war machine, I was watching the first iron man with G money a few days ago. I love Don Cheadle. I think Don Cheadle is great. One of the great actors of his generation. I prefer Terrence Howard in that role to Don Cheadle in the role as a, as roadie.
Sonny00:30:25That's because Terrence Howard has like, no, I was just saying no, again, no disrespect
JVL00:30:32to John Cheadle, who, who I think is a superior actor to Terrence Howard in basically every way. But Terrence Howard's great in that.
Sonny00:30:39He is great in that. I mean, the, the thing about Terrence Howard is that Terrence Howard gives off slightly like dirty bird vibes, low key dirty. Like you could, you could see him like enjoying the strip club airplane. More than I think you could see Don Cheadle doing it. I don't know. It's am I wrong? Yes. Yes. Is that like the, like, I just feel, I get that sense from, from Terrence Howard that I don't necessarily get from Don Cheadle, even though Don Cheadle, you know, played a porn star in Boogie nights. Like I like, there's just like a different, even in Boogie nights. So he's like this weirdly, he's like this weirdly wholesome. He's like the most wholesome, super nice in Boogie nights porn star, um, which is very funny. Respectful of everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like total, total nice guy. Yeah. I could see that. I mean, I, I liked Don, I probably liked Don Cheadle more just generally, but I could see preferring Terrence Howard as, uh, as what's dusty roads.
JVL00:31:34No, that's the rest of it. Colonel Rhodes.
Sonny00:31:37He's a roadie. Roadie.
JVL00:31:39Roadie. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, anyway. Yeah. All, all I'm saying is they absolutely could have, could have changed this. Uh, they could have kicked him out and had literally anybody else in the world, uh, play that part. It would have been just fine. Uh, it was madness.
Sonny00:31:52But the problem, again, the problem is you're, you're looking. You're looking at this all wrong because like they, like, you know, you gotta go all the way back to 2015, 2016, right? Because in 2015, 2016, Zack Snyder is shooting Batman versus Superman and justice league, basically back to back. Um, flash is a huge part of justice league. Ezra Miller isn't an insane person yet. He's he's a small part of literally reverses the flow of time to save. Uh, everybody in that movie. It's an, it's an amazing, it won best, uh, moment, best audience reaction moment at the Oscars. JBL.
JVL00:32:34Don't you remember that?
Sonny00:32:35I don't remember that the flash reverses time won the best audience stand up and cheer moment at the Oscars. Don't recall that at all. The botnet pulled it off. Don't recall it at all.
JVL00:32:45You don't remember that? So sorry. Don't remember that. Okay. No, doesn't, doesn't do anything for me. And, uh, didn't the Harry Potter people cut bait with him?
Sonny00:32:54No, he was in the lot. He was in the most recent one. I haven't watched any of those movies. I haven't watched any of these movies, so I have no idea. I don't like the, the fantastic beasts and where to find them series is, uh, is, is as far as franchises go is a total black box to me. I don't understand anything that happens in it. Every once in a while, I'll see, uh, a trailer with Eddie Redmayne and I'll be like, Oh,
JVL00:33:17one of these movies going out again, huh? William Cohen made a, uh, writes the dry powder column for POC. Um, I don't know if you read him, uh, or if you are purely a Matt baloney guy, but, uh, he did a big piece about Comcast yesterday and his takeaway was he thinks Comcast will buy HBO discovery probably within a couple years that this makes the most sense, uh, that the paramount would be a more appealing target. Um, but that that would not work because they'd never get approval because they can't own both NBC and CBS, because it would be NBC and CBS, um, but that HBO and, and discovery make all the sense of the world and that Comcast is gonna catch up and that that's, that's in our future. Um, and that sounds like it's gonna get out or, or Apple or Amazon.
Sonny00:34:19I mean, I like, I, if you, if you're, if you're Apple or Amazon, what are your, what are your deficits? Right. You, you need IP and you need a library.
JVL00:34:29And uh, I mean, I like Amazon just overpaid for MGM by like five X.
Sonny00:34:36They don't need to do this again. It depends on what they do with it. I don't know. But I mean, I, I mean, I don't, I don't see any reason why you, why, I mean, Comcast would be a good, I mean, this is the, the insanity of all this is that, you know, uh, people spent years, years. Railing against the bundle. They wanted to unbundle everything and they got their wish. And then they realized that unbundling fucking sucks because you end up paying the same amount of money for like a 10th as many channels or properties or whatever. Um, and now we're just, we're slowly gonna end up with like Disney, Hulu, ESPN, uh, HBO discovery, Paramount's showtime, you know, like we're just gonna end up with all of these things coming back together. There'll be five mini bundles that are like 25. Five dollars a piece.
JVL00:35:25But at least you have the choice of which mini bundle. The problem with the cable bundle was that there was really only like one thing you could choose and it was the, the giant 400 channels. And then you could add like three different premium channels to it. But that was it. You got all these other 400 channels and whether you wanted them or not and like who the fuck wanted them.
Sonny00:35:47And whatever, whatever, man, I'm just, all I'm saying is that I, I am spending, I am even if I, if, if I got rid of my cable. Package tomorrow, which I might end up doing anyway. But if I got rid of my cable package tomorrow, I would be spending more money on streaming than I do on cable.
JVL00:36:03Sure. But look, I haven't had cable in years. I probably pay, no, I don't pay anywhere near that. But between I, and I have paramount, I have, uh, the, the Disney ESPN bundle, the Amazon prime. I have basically all of them. If it is a streaming network, I have the Brit. Box subscription. I've got, and I get fewer channels overall, which is good. So I've no chaff. I'm not getting anything that I don't want.
Sonny00:36:34And if I'm paying a little bit more, I've never understood this better. Never understood this. Why would you, why would you want to pay more for fewer channels? I don't understand.
JVL00:36:42If you don't watch the channels, I'm offended by their existence. I'm offended by having them in front of me and also I'm offended by them getting my money because all that, all that goes to, you know, you pay for the bundle then, you know, all these channels get your money in their distribution phase.
Sonny00:36:58I have a theory about this. I have a theory about this, which is, and let me, let me see how you feel about this, but I have a theory about this, which is that half of the objection, more than half, maybe two thirds of the objection to the bundle in general is people not identifying with the packages and the channels that they're paying for. Right? Like, so this was, this was always like the focus on the family's complaint against the bundle, right? Like off-core porn on FX, you know, basic cable channels. Why are we, why are we funding this sort of smut when all we want to get is, is Trinity broadcast news or whatever. And like, and, and it's the same sort of thing with, um, remember when you two dropped the album into everybody's iPhones and people lost their fucking minds about it because it, it, it didn't really matter that it was a free thing. People felt violated. Like I have had my, I have had, I have. It was an assault against my person that I have been, uh, gifted this thing and it is in my phone because people don't want to be YouTube people.
JVL00:38:00I still can't get it out of my library. It is still inside my, my iTunes library and no matter what I've been able, what I've tried to do, I've never been able to delete it. So anytime I go to shuffle randomly through the things that I have after five songs, I will get a track from that fucking album.
Sonny00:38:16See? And, and it's a, it's a real problem. But the, and this is, this is, so I have a theory that it is a mistake. A mistake for HBO max and discovery plus to merge, because I think that a lot of HBO max people simply do not see themselves as discovery plus people. Even if it's the same exact price, let's say you, you have both channels, they're $15. You're just getting everything and it's just, it's the same price. Whether you would have had HBO max or HBO max discovery plus, you're getting all this extra free, you know, HGTV content like home demo or Renault or whatever. Uh, and like, but people, people won't want that. People will be like, I refuse. I re I am not a discovery plus person. I'm an HBO person. How dare you make HBO max and discovery together on my, my home screen on my Apple TV.
JVL00:39:08They don't fit. This is what, look, if you want to bundle, uh, the MLB MLB channel with the NFL Sunday ticket, right? Like a bundle with those two, right? Oh. Like every baseball game and every major league baseball game, you're like, okay, well, there are probably a lot of people like both those things taking HBO max, which is, I think you and I believe the best of the streaming services, uh, with the highest quality overall and the most interesting products and merging that with the most low rent of the streaming services, which is nothing but garbage reality TV filler, uh, which exists. Like just for people to have on his background noise, nobody, nobody needs that. Right. For people who are just looking to kill time sitting on their sofa or having his background.
Sonny00:40:01This is 100% the wrong way to look at discovery plus, but go ahead.
JVL00:40:06But that's what it is. Right.
Sonny00:40:08It's just not, it's loads and loads and loads of cheap content. It is. I mean, you, well, yes, it is loads and loads of cheap content, but there are people who I look, I, I will say that in my household, the two most watch services, HBO max me and like me. And Beth, we watch, we watch that a lot discovery plus number two, and she exclusively watches that and loves it. And like, you know, watches the watches, the, you know, maybe they should sell it as a,
JVL00:40:36maybe they should make HBO max blue and they should make discovery plus pink.
Sonny00:40:41Well, that's, that's basically what they said in this, in their, in their pitch deck to the, to the subscribers. And of course everybody on Twitter was figuring out like, oh, it's so sexist to suggest above it. Oh, HBO max is male skewing. And discovery plus is female skewing. How dare I'm like, yeah, it is, it is anybody who has ever been in a real relationship would tell you like in a second that like, that is, that is the way the world works. And like, this is not to say, again, this is not to say that my wife doesn't watch HBO max, but she like watches much more discovery plus I like, that's just like whatever it is, what it is. And it's not, I like refuse to accept that this is like some sort of sexist proposition that the, you know, that the, the corporation. Are foisting upon a population that couldn't possibly agree with it. It just like is what it is the world.
JVL00:41:31All right. Should we talk about super pets and then do you want to do bat girl later? Right. We shouldn't, we should talk about super pets. We can do bat girl later. I have thoughts on bat girl.
Sonny00:41:42Okay. Okay. Uh, sure. Uh, well, I don't really have a ton to say about super vets. I, so I went to see super pets with my kids, uh, and my wife, we were, we all went as a family. We were, uh, three-year-old not super into it, uh, was much more interested again in the popcorn, the endless popcorn bowls at the Alamo draft house, um, seven-year-old more, more into it. She was, she was like, oh, this is, you know, the dogs. And she will occasionally be like, oh, you remember when the dogs did the funny thing? And I'll be like, yes, I do remember that. But I don't remember it. Cause I can barely remember anything that happened in this movie total in one eye out my ear. I like, I, the here's the basic plot. The basic plot is, uh, uh, creepy. Crypto Superman's dog has to get some dog friends because Superman wants to get married and crypto is super jealous of Lois. Uh, and then they get superpowers when a Guinea pig that had been abandoned by, or I guess, taken from Lex's, uh, Lex Luthor's, um, uh, uh, hideout, uh, puts together a device that pulls some orange kryptonite down as orange kryptonite, orange kryptonite, which gives all of the pets superpowers. All the pets get superpowers, then they have to do battle and they do wacky dog things. And, and I, I don't know if you know that there's a turtle who gets fast. What? Turtle. There's a turtle who becomes fast. That's crazy.
JVL00:43:07Did you know that that turtle was voiced by Natasha Lyonne fresh out of rehab?
Sonny00:43:10I did. Oh, well I, I saw that. I saw that in the credits. I was like, oh, that's interesting. That's interesting. Um, uh, I, the, the movie's not good at all. Am I wrong that it's not particularly good? It was, it was, it's fine as a kid's movie, I guess, but it's, I didn't find it terribly entertaining. Uh, kids, as I said, my seven year old, uh, was, was into it. Three-year-old kind of bored. Um, uh, but the, you know, the, the, the, the interesting thing about this and we, we skipped box office talk, by the way, we skipped box office talk, interesting thing about this movie did not, did sue, did not do super well at the box office and it is the latest in a series. Family films to not do super well at the box office. The only family film that is really popped has been minions and that I think appealed more to like the teens. Yeah. That was more a teens and young adults, uh, driven hit because you know, that's right in there. Nostalgia wheelhouse, um, family movies, not like this, the bad guys is going to get to about a hundred million light year did, you know, 115, 120 million, um, the family movie has not come back. And I wonder if for all the chatter about olds being the, the audience to disappear forever, if we are actually looking at a much, much worse situation, which is that basically an entire generation of film goers is just like, ah, we're gonna watch things on Disney plus now.
JVL00:44:39Uh, so I don't think that's what's going on. Um, I, I think what we have is a quality problem. Uh, the look at Sonic two. Two did great.
Sonny00:44:54The kids all went pretty well to see Sonic two.
JVL00:44:59And at the time I said, boy, Sonic two is not very good. That's sort of a crappy movie. Uh, every kid's movie I have seen since then has made me reapprise Sonic two. And I have gone in fact, all the way back to Sonic one, which I used to think was a mildly cute movie. And it's basically Casablanca. The first Sonic movie is the greatest kids. Movie ever made. Uh, because since then we've gotten Sonic two, the good guys, uh, light year, which by the way, G money watched yesterday now that it's streaming. And he came up to me today and said, you know, that, that movie light year, isn't very good. Not very good. Not very good. Uh, and then the pause of fury and now justice super pets and the problem with all these other movies is that they're not good.
?00:45:52Yeah.
JVL00:45:53And you know what? Like kids are not just super discerning, but they're like a little bit discerning, you know, like they, they, they, because a good kids movie, they'll watch them 500 times. Yeah. And not even like a, a good, a movie like the original Sonic, the hedgehog movie, they'll watch 500 times. Yeah. Uh, and the league of super pets is. Yeah. Better by an order of magnitude than pause of fury.
Sonny00:46:28But beyond that, I didn't see that one. I didn't, I didn't see that one.
JVL00:46:31Yeah. I mean, pause of fury is one of the most disastrous kids movies I've ever seen. Um, like I can't understand how it was made, uh, but it's got all sorts of problems and I've got a cute, I mean, did you, did you appreciate some of the Easter eggs that were in there for us, uh, almost all of which came in the form of whenever there are clips of the news on the crawl running underneath, uh, one of which was, you know, crisis of infinite Guinea pigs and another of which, uh, after the, the gigantic, yeah, some of those are battle in which, uh, the, the justice league was captured. The, the crawl was like, well, that escalated quickly. Um, it was great. There was, you know, there's, there's a Jonah hex's burgers joint, which you can see in the background. Um, no, I didn't see that. Those things are there just as like breadcrumbs for parents who are dying in the fields. And, uh, it would help if the movies were better and, uh, it would also help if the voice work was competent. This movie is loaded with celebrity actors and not just the rock and Kevin Hart, both of whom are terribly cast in us, but John Krasinski, uh, Natasha, Leon, Mark. Maran, Thomas Middleditch, Keanu Reeves, Olivia, wild, Jamila, Jamil, Jermaine, Clement, all that. You just get some fucking professional voice actors, please don't why, why, why did we,
Sonny00:48:07when did we shift from like professional voice actors to celebrity voice actors?
JVL00:48:11When was that? I'll tell you exactly when it was. It was a Shrek, no ants with a Z, the very first dream works animation film, which, uh, was, was not only, uh, was advertised as starring Sylvester Stallone, Woody Allen, Jennifer Lopez, Jean Hackman, Sharon stone, like, look at this, we just wrote a bunch of checks to big stars and so Kevin Hart is terribly miscast in this, uh, just as a voice.
Sonny00:48:43He's so low energy and bad in this. Like if you're gonna have Kevin Hart wire, why isn't he being like ramped up and goofy? Yeah. And instead he's like, I'm a dog and my, my I'm sad because nobody wants to adopt me.
JVL00:49:00And you know what the, the thing about the rock and comedy is the rock as a comic commodity is a site gag. If you can't see him, then it isn't funny. Right? I mean, this is all, all of the stuff that is really funny about Jumanji and then even this, that's pretty funny in jungle cruise depends upon seeing this gigantic cartoon like character saying the things he's saying and here just having him like, none of the jokes land, none of them. It's very bad. Kate McKinnon is the only, the only competent voice actor in this. Uh, and it's not a coincidence then that her character, she voices the, the villain is the only consistently funny character. And the, the joke. The joke of this is that she is a hairless Guinea pig, uh, who lost her hair as a result of a, an experiment that Lex Luthor did on her. And she views her relationship with Lex Luthor as if they were, uh, they were a mad scientist and his assistant and who she kind of has a crush on him. And everybody else is like, no, you were his Guinea pig. You were literally his Guinea pig. And she's like, nah, we were partners. And that's kind of, it's like the only consistently funny bit in the whole thing because McKinnon sells. In fact, I, I didn't realize it was Kate McKinnon until I went and.
Sonny00:50:31I didn't either. I did not either. Cause she's.
JVL00:50:34I didn't realize that. Yeah. A competent professional who's good at this. Yeah. Uh, yeah. It's bad. Like I.
Sonny00:50:41Yeah. I thought, I thought, I thought Dwayne Johnson, I thought the rock was fine, uh, in, in his voice work. He sounds, I mean, the thing is he sounds like you would imagine super dogs, Superman dogs. To sound like, right. He's like kind of, you know, he's like a Dudley do righty type more or less. Yeah. But they didn't lean into. I think that works for the character.
JVL00:51:00I mean, to make this movie funnier, they would've had to lean into crypto being a simpleton and instead they didn't instead he is Dudley do right. You know? So he's like, yeah, sure. He seems like he's a little bit, you know, too much of a straight laced stick in the mud, but actually he's a. The born leader and at the end of the day, he's right about people and that's not funny. What would've been funny is playing him as a simp who just, you know, is wrong about everything, but because he's fucking super dog, you know, what does he care?
Sonny00:51:39That would be funny. Well, I mean, I like, this is a script problem. That's a script problem.
JVL00:51:43That's not really a. That is a script problem. Voice problem.
Sonny00:51:46Yeah. But no, but the worst voices again, like I, I'm not even a huge Kevin Hart fan, but if, I, like the thing that Kevin Hart does well is kind of like exasperated manic-ness yes. And like the character he's playing in here is not that at all. It just like, he's just like, it's very low energy, very, eh, it's weird. Such a weird role. I think I don't, I didn't get that at all.
JVL00:52:10Yeah.
Sonny00:52:11I, uh, didn't get that.
JVL00:52:12I didn't, you know, G money was very like, it was like, yeah, that was really great. I think he just likes going to the movies and you know, like, uh, The only, honestly, the only movie he minions really landed for him. And he wants to go back and see minions cuz minions is playing at the, the beach movie theater here, which by the way is a four screen theater with no stadium seating. It's just like the old seats and it is, it's awesome. Oh, it's so great. So, uh, good crowds, uh, like four, four families in there with us. Um, it, uh. And the kids, I mean, the kids laughed, you know, during it, but you could just tell like this isn't, I don't think any valuable IP was being created there. You know, I don't think there's gonna be a clamor for nobody's gonna go home and stream this on HBO, you know, on their kids profile over and over and over again. I don't know. Yeah. You know, they'll sell a couple lunch boxes, but this isn't, uh, you know, that that's what this should have been. This should have been. A real swing for the fences attempt to create, uh, a big piece of DC IP. Which could exist totally outside of, which is something DC does in the comics pretty well. I mean, there, there is a whole series of DC comic books, which are a team up between this, the Batman family and Scooby-Doo, right? So it's, it's not canon at all, but kids like it. It's funny, right? Couldn't, uh, Warner brothers do that with this. And the answer is because Warner brothers can't do that.
Sonny00:53:57That's why. Yeah. Well, we, we'll talk about, you want to talk about Batgirl after the, uh, post-credits do post-credits on Batman?
JVL00:54:03Yeah, we could do that. Batgirl.
Sonny00:54:06Sure. Batgirl. All right. Uh, anyway, uh, any more thoughts on, uh, on that movie? League of Superpets?
JVL00:54:13No, I don't. I mean, I can't remember a summer this slow. I mean, August is always a little. A little slow.
Sonny00:54:22Well, it's just less stuff. There is less. There's just less. I mean, the, the studios have less, the studios have, the studios have less, had less stuff in the production pipeline. It's all post-COVID, right? Yeah.
JVL00:54:32Yeah.
Sonny00:54:33I mean like stuff got pushed back. So I mean like in theory, you know, this month we were supposed to get the new Mission Impossible movie. Um, we were supposed to get, uh, Black Adam, the, the Dwayne Johnson movie that got pushed back to, I think October because of VFX slowdown, like they just, the, the visual effects weren't done. Yeah.
JVL00:54:53Well, they, they're really working on the digital fire for that movie. So they're gonna, they're gonna try to make the digital fires look amazing.
Sonny00:55:01Vic's gonna be real happy with how that turned out. Uh, but I mean like everything, everything, you know, there were, there was a production slowdown. So things have just been kind of stretched out in terms of how they're releasing them. But like the next two months are dire. I mean, after a bullet train this weekend, there's like nothing, there's nothing tracking above $40 million. The new Halloween movie, which comes out, uh, I think the second weekend of October, first weekend of October, somewhere in there. And then black Adam, the week, the week after that, we're gonna have to find stuff to talk about. It's we're gonna have to find some stuff. Maybe we can watch some of the great streaming hits. I've been watching the boys. I'll just, uh, just pick something. Did you watch the boys?
JVL00:55:43I watched the first two episodes of it. Um, and I, you know, I read the comics so long ago, I don't even remember them. Yeah. Did you like it?
Sonny00:55:52I remember you would want it to maybe do an episode. Yeah. I I'll be honest. I've been, I've been, I've found it very entertaining. Uh, there it's eight episode seasons, so it's like a little more compact, a little more, you know, less drag, less drag than, you know, than, than some of these other shows, but
JVL00:56:12it's good. Okay.
?00:56:14It does.
Sonny00:56:15Okay. It's they, you know, not that it's not, you know, necessarily a total killer, but. Yeah. And, uh, it does pretty good.
JVL00:56:23All right.
Sonny00:56:24But yeah. All right. Uh, that's all the time. All right. That's all the time. It's all the time. We're giving to this episode. It's a great episode. Questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Matus, the glue of the show. Come back, Vic. Uh, he's, he's just off this week. He had some family stuff to take care of this. Nothing to worry about folks. Uh, again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patreon. Just go to subbeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends until next time.
?00:56:51.
Sonny00:56:52All right, uh, Batgirl thoughts.
JVL00:56:59So, uh, there is a, a long proud history of unreleased movies in, in Hollywood. Uh, the one that you and I are probably most familiar with is the Roger Corman fantastic four. Sure. Uh, there was, uh. Uh, the, the most recent one I think was the Louis CK movie, which was, it was like, I love you, daddy or something that was canceled when he went to, it just disappeared. Right. Yeah. Um, there is the documentary about the rolling stones, the cocksucker blues, which I don't know if you remember this, but, uh, so the documentary is shot, the stones then object to what's in it and there's a big lawsuit about whether or not it can be distributed. The, the judge's Solomonic compromise is that the director can show this in theaters whenever he is physically in attendance at a screening, so like, you know, you would have to sit in a movie theater, you know, 10 hours a day to, to show people, but the, the most famous of all these, which I had forgotten about when I went and, and started looking this stuff up is the day. Clown cried the 1972 Jerry Lewis written, directed, and starred as a clown who leads children to the gas chamber at a Nazi concentration camp, which was totally shot, locked and ready to go until somebody at the studio saw it and said, what the fuck is this? And said, this can't ever be released ever. Uh, but Sonny. Did you know that they are actually gonna show it?
Sonny00:58:54Well, Jerry Lewis gifted it to the library of Congress. Didn't he? So, uh, like a, I think like 25 years after his death or something, it gets unsealed after
JVL00:59:06his death and it can only be seen in DC. And I think it might, I, I don't know if it's gonna be with, in conjunction with AFI or like the Holocaust museum or something, but it's basically gonna be like, you know, only for scholars. Um, you have to go see this Sonny.
Sonny00:59:23Well, if I'm still alive in 25 years, uh, no, no, no, it's his, he died, no, no, he
JVL00:59:29died a while ago. This is the, right.
Sonny00:59:31This is, I mean, there's still like 20 years, he died less than five years ago. It's, you know, there, there's still ways to go before that, before that comes out.
JVL00:59:38I think, I think we're closer than you think on this. I'd have to, I'll have to go effort it after the show, but whatever. But the point is it can be done and you should see it all of us just say that Batgirl must be so unbelievably bad, which I kind of have trouble. I ha I kind of have trouble believing that, that it's really just terrible because the directors do they directed the bad boys sequel that was very competently shot and yeah, right.
Sonny01:00:13I have a, I have a hard time believing it is, it is so bad that it cannot be seen. What I, what I do not have a hard time believing is that it is. So bad that it could not possibly make money in theaters. And also that like, again, the cop. So again, like the argument here from Zaslav and, and Warner brothers media, Warner brothers discovery media, again, whatever they're calling this company now, um, is that look, we, we only want to put DC stuff in theaters. We're not doing these one-off, you know, HBO max things anymore. They need to be in theaters. They need to be building the brand and then they need to come to HBO max and people need to watch them there. Uh, well, I, I, I am very curious to see what happens with peacemaker. I mean, that got greenlit for season two, but I don't, I don't, you know, I don't know if that, if that necessarily makes sense anymore. Uh, um, well that, that said, I mean like, well anyway, but the, the, the argument here is that look, it would cost us, it would cost us a hundred million dollars to finish this up to the standards of theatrical distribution and to market it. And uh, on top of the, you know, $80 million that's already been spent, that's $180 million to make money back on this. You would have to gross to make, to make, to make our money back theatrically on a movie like this. You would have to grow something like $400 million worldwide. That's never gonna happen. Uh, so we're just gonna, we're just gonna take the $60 million tax write off or whatever we get for junking it entirely. Um, at which point they only lose 30 million, right. At which point they only lose 20 or 30 million instead of losing, you know, 200 million, which is like, you know, a thing that could have, or, you know, instead of losing a hundred million. Yeah. Whatever, whatever the number is. I mean, I, I understand that logic it, the problem with that is that it really fucks you with the creative community. It fucks you badly with like the people who make movies. If the, in the back of your head, you're always thinking like, wow, are they just gonna shelve this? Why would I want, I mean like the canary in the coal mine with all this, remember was Christopher Nolan, Christopher, Christopher Nolan bailing on Warner brothers after, and look, I, I wrote this, I think, I think I wrote this for the Washington post, but like Christopher Nolan came off as kind of an ungrateful prick in his exit from Warner brothers, considering that Warner brothers has been his home for a long time, uh, that Warner brothers had released tenant against their own better instincts and like put it in theaters in 2020 and it did not do particularly well financially. So he was kind of, he was kind of a dick, but he was also right because the way that Warner brothers treated everybody during the, we're gonna release everything in theaters and on HBO max simultaneously. It was disastrous. I mean, it was a, it was a, it was a terrible, terrible decision. Now that was the previous regime. That was the previous regime, but the new regime doesn't really seem to be any better in terms of how they're dealing with talent and how they're, how they're, they're making everybody happy.
JVL01:03:03So I, I don't know. What's what's funny about this though, is so the, the previous regime, which was Jason Kilar, uh, blindsided all of the Warner brothers creatives with his decree that like, Hey, we're just gonna simultaneously release everything on. On, on streaming and the creatives went crazy and they didn't like it. And so now we have Warner brothers basically fixing that and saying, we're recommitting to theatrical and they managed to do that in a way that will terrify and piss off Warner brothers creative. Like it is, it is an amazing, yeah. Amazing level of corporate idiocy. And I don't know, like, well, I mean. Fucking put it on. If it's done, fucking put it on the service, right?
Sonny01:03:54Just put it on HBO.
JVL01:03:55Just put it on the service. Just bite the bullet. You do it. Bite the bullet. They, this is what the directors sign up for. They sign up to be streaming. You put it on. I mean, I guess what they're saying is, is that it would cost the IP reputational cost to DC as a, as a, as a franchise would be more than 20 to $30 million by having this on stream. Streaming. And I'm sorry. I just don't buy that. Like go, go look at Marvel, go look at how many shit ball series Marvel has put onto
Sonny01:04:27Disney plus, uh, well, don't you think that has devalued the Marvel brand?
JVL01:04:32No, I think, I think putting out bad Marvel movies with characters, nobody cares about because they didn't want to keep paying Robert Downey jr, a hundred million dollars a picture is what has devalued the Marvel brand. The problem is that they've moved on to, you know, they are, they, I don't know what the, you know, they're not the rock bottom, uh, IP, but they're, you know, like they're, they're dug into the IP, which just isn't as valuable anymore right now. I'm sorry. Dr. Strange. Yeah. Uh, and Ms. Marvel in Shang Chi at the eternals. That is not, that is not captain America and iron man and Spiderman. So you know, the Spiderman movies are doing fine and have not been hurt by Disney plus having a bunch of shit ball series on, on Marvel.
Sonny01:05:19So, yeah, I mean, I do, I do think the Marvel, I think the Marvel brand has been hurt somewhat by the fact that like, it is now to the point where like, you don't really need to see it. I like, I didn't watch minute one of Ms. Marvel. Um, I watched like an episode of what if, uh, you know, I like, I don't, I am not, I am not, you know, tuning in religiously. I did end up watching all of moon night, but I watched it on my phone, on, on the elliptical, you know, um, I'm one of those people now. I'm one of your people.
JVL01:05:49Yeah. I watch Marvel as a bundle.
?01:05:51Right.
JVL01:05:52You see, there are people who want the theatrical and people who want, uh, the, the streaming content content.
Sonny01:05:58They're just all bundled together for you, Sonny. Ugh. I'm sure it's fine.
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