Why Do Streamers Care About More than Eyeballs?
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Julia Alexander of Parrot Analytics and Puck to discuss the wild couple of weeks in streaming. From HBO Max to Netflix to Disney+ and unbundling to rebundling, there’s a ton to discuss. Of particular interest to folks interested in how the business of streaming works is Julia’s expertise as a consultant who helps studios and producers understand why st...
1hr Aug 11, 2022
1hr
Convention Life with the Creator of Effin' Birds
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Aaron Reynolds, creator of Effin’ Birds. Having a daily comic read by half-a-million people is cool and all, but what’s really cool is criss-crossing North America to sell merch featuring that comic and other various designs. Aaron talks about the economics of convention life, how COVID has shaped the way conventions work, what it’s like to have a boot...
49m Aug 04, 2022
49m
Harvey Weinstein's Enablers
On this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny is joined by longtime New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, who stops by to discuss his new book Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence. Both a biography of Weinstein and a tick-tock of the trial that ended with the Oscar-winning producer’s imprisonment, Auletta’s new book is a fascinating glimpse at the life and tim...
38m Jul 28, 2022
38m
'John Wick,' Gun-Fu, and the Art of Oral History
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman to discuss their new history of the John Wick franchise, They Shouldn’t Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Ass-Kicking Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action. (Listen to the podcast to hear how to properly announce this title.) In addition to talking John Wick and the history of the action...
50m Jul 21, 2022
50m
Ron Shelton on the Struggle to Get 'Bull Durham' Made
On this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny is joined by Ron Shelton, the writer/director of Bull Durham, to talk about his new book on the making of the film, The Church of Baseball. In addition to discussing the fights over casting, the weirdly lackluster response from test audiences, and the movie’s impact on the minor league game writ large, we also chatted about some of ...
48m Jul 14, 2022
48m
Summer Movies Are Back—But Is Trouble on the Horizon?
This week, CNN’s Frank Pallotta rejoins the episode to do a box office victory lap. The movies are back, baby! Older audiences are showing up for Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis; younger audiences are showing up for Minions: The Rise of Gru; and no one’s showing up for Lightyear. Why are the first three hits and the last a miss? What’s the most successful way to sell moviegoing audiences on future ...
32m Jul 07, 2022
32m
What's Up at the Mouse House?
On this week’s episode, The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield returns to talk tumult at Disney, what Hollywood might be looking for in a studio head, and how the town is feeling about Netflix. If you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
34m Jun 23, 2022
34m
How to Design an Iconic Movie Mask
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Jason Baker of Callosum Studios, the house that helped design the sure-to-be-iconic mask from the upcoming horror film The Black Phone. They also discussed designing masks for the WWE, pandemic-related slowdowns, working with FX legend Tom Savini, and Jason’s documentary about said legend, Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini. You can stream that...
32m Jun 16, 2022
32m
Stop Stealing Movies!
On this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny talks to the CEO of Creative Future, Ruth Vitale, about the costs of piracy. A longtime producer in Hwood, Ruth has seen firsthand the costs of theft on productions big and large, but in an age where stealing a movie or a book or a song is just as easy as popping onto Google and punching in some search terms, how do you convince fol...
50m Jun 09, 2022
50m
Goodbye, Norm Macdonald
Over Memorial Day weekend, Netflix released a new stand-up special from Norm Macdonald, who unexpectedly died in September of last year. Unexpected to us and his friends; perhaps more expected to the comedian, who had kept his cancer diagnosis incredibly secret. On the occasion of the release of Norm Macdonald’s “Nothing Special,” Washington Post national arts reporter Geoff Edgers published a ...
34m Jun 02, 2022
34m
Where Are the Kids Movies?
Sonny takes a break from talking to industry experts this week to kvetch about something that’s been bothering him and JVL: Why are theaters so empty of movies for kids? A nearly two-month gap between The Bad Guys and Lightyear feels like studio malpractice; why didn’t Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers get at least a token run in theaters? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
37m May 26, 2022
37m
Summer Movie Preview! 'Top Gun,' Dinos, and Buzz Lightyear, Oh My.
On this week’s episode, Sonny is rejoined by CNN’s Frank Pallotta to preview summer movie season. Blockbusters, big horror, comic books, and kid-friendly films are coming to the multiplex—but they’re doing so at a slower clip than years past. What’s changed since the pandemic and how is the industry reacting to it? Plus: Netflix, Disney+, and the evolving streaming situation. Learn more about y...
38m May 19, 2022
38m
How Ben Fong Torres Defined a Generation
This week, Sonny is joined by Suzanne Joe Kai to discuss her documentary, Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong Torres. New to Netflix, her doc is a pleasantly vibrant look at the life and work of Ben Fong Torres, who is best known for his era-defining work at Rolling Stone magazine. This documentary covers that ground—just looking at Torres’s box of archival tapes is enough to m...
37m May 12, 2022
37m
The First Draft of (Streaming) History
This week, Sonny talks to Dade Hayes, co-author of Binge Times: Inside Hollywood’s Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix, about the rise of streaming in the face of technological change and a population forced to stay home thanks to COVID. Among the many topics discussed: how will sports factor into the future of streaming; why are so many of the channels leaning toward ad-based mo...
50m May 05, 2022
50m
Are Casual Filmgoers Finally Coming Back?
David Herrin of The Quorum—a must-check site for movie-data nerds—joins us live from the corridors of CinemaCon to discuss the mood of theater owners, the vibes of theatergoers, and the state of the industry as we exit the pandemic. If you enjoyed our chat, share it with a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
40m Apr 28, 2022
40m
How Hollywood Trade Papers Shaped the Movies You Love
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Eric Hoyt, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about his new book on the rise of the Hollywood trade press and how these papers helped shape the movie business as we know it. From covering labor disputes to navigating the waters between big-city and small-town movie houses to engaging in some of the earliest film criticism, the topics cover...
46m Apr 21, 2022
46m
NATO Head on the Return to Theaters
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by John Fithian, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, to talk about post-pandemic moviegoing, the evolution of theatrical dining, the excitement of CinemaCon, and the potential of theaters as sites for esports and gaming events—both as spectators and as participants. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend! Learn mo...
41m Apr 14, 2022
41m
Lloyd Kaufman and a Half-Century of Troma
On this week’s episode, Sonny is very pleased—and a little star struck!—to be joined by Lloyd Kaufman, the mind behind Troma Entertainment, to discuss his latest film, #ShakespearesShitstorm, as well as his 50 years in the business as one of the few truly independent indie filmmakers. Kaufman is probably best known for directing The Toxic Avenger, its sequels, and Tromeo and Juliet, as well as ...
46m Apr 07, 2022
46m
The Nic Cage Book Every Fan Needs to Own
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Keith Phipps about his new book, Age of Cage: Four Decades of Hollywood Through One Singular Career. Looking at the trends of Hollywood through the lens of Nic Cage’s various personae—as an oddball actor catching the tail end of the 70s auteur wave; transitioning to a “normal guy”; hitting action star peaks in the 1990s; and settling into a series of more-...
33m Mar 31, 2022
33m
No One's Seen the Best Picture Frontrunners. Does It Matter?
This week, Sonny talks to the Los Angeles Times’s Ryan Faughnder about a new poll showing that Coda and The Power of the Dog, the frontrunners for the Best Picture Oscar at this weekend’s Academy Awards, have been seen by just four and six percent of entertainment consumers, respectively. Then they discuss the walkout at Disney over the Mouse House CEO’s failure to speak up more vocally against...
29m Mar 24, 2022
29m
Why the 'Head of Story' at One of Hollywood's Biggest Agencies Writes His Own
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Adam Novak, head of story at one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood, WME. Adam is also the author of the novel Rat Park, out this week, as well as three other novels. Adam discusses his three-plus decades in the industry as a script reader for stars like Bruce Willis and directors like John McTiernan. What’s the role of a good reader in Hollywood? How do...
40m Mar 17, 2022
40m
A Crucial Film to Understand Ukraine's Struggle
Sonny is joined this week by Andrea Chalupa, the screenwriter of Mr. Jones, the true story of Gareth Jones’s efforts to bring the horrifying reality of the Stalin-made famine in Ukraine that killed between 3.3 and 3.9 million people. They talk about getting that film written and financed, the response to it, and how best to push back against Russian disinformation via the arts. Mr. Jones is str...
44m Mar 10, 2022
44m
Would You Pay More to see 'The Batman'?
On this week’s episode, CNN media reporter Frank Pallotta returns to the show to talk about studios boycotting Russia, why AMC is charging you a little more too see The Batman (but not a little less to see Dog), and Disney’s decision to put Turning Red directly on Disney+. Plus: Oscars talk!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
35m Mar 03, 2022
35m
The Art of Editing
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to George Folsey Jr about his career as an editor. From the blaxploitation classics Black Caesar and Hammer to the great comedies of the 1970s and 1980s like Animal House and The Blues Brothers to assists on classics like Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger and cult classics like Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body, Folsey has had a hand in a number of the movi...
42m Feb 24, 2022
42m
Can a Lawsuit Against WB Slow the Streaming Tide?
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Deadline’s Dominic Patten to talk about Village Roadshow’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. for killing the profitability of the Matrix franchise, the newly filed wrongful death suit against Alec Baldwin, and the Super Bowl’s big (but maybe not surprisingly big?) ratings. You can see Dominic’s archive here and follow him on Twitter here. And if you enjoyed...
37m Feb 17, 2022
37m
How to Get Your Script on The Black List
On this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny Bunch is joined by John Zaozirny of literary management company Bellevue Productions. You can see John’s bona fide’s here, but his clients have written scripts set up with virtually every major studio. Bellevue has had 42 screenplays make the last seven Black Lists—an important compilation of un-produced screenplays voted on by peop...
45m Feb 10, 2022
45m
How Is Chinese Soft Power Reshaping Entertainment?
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Erich Schwartzel, author of Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy. Erich’s book is a fairly exhaustive look at the sweep of Chinese influence on Hollywood, from Mao’s shutting the industry out during the Cultural Revolution to the return of blockbusters to the fact that Chinese investment funded the very recliners you s...
46m Feb 03, 2022
46m
Janice Min on the Future of Entertainment Media
This week on the show, Sonny is joined by Janice Min, who has teamed up with BGTH favorite Richard Rushfield to beef up Richard’s fabulous newsletter, The Ankler. Sonny and Janice discussed her career from US Weekly to the Hollywood Reporter to the wild world of Substack newsletters, how the Hollywood trades are defying the death of advertising, their strategy for spinoff newsletters, and why t...
34m Jan 28, 2022
34m
Programming TV's Most Beloved Festival
On this week’s episode, Sonny Bunch talks to Rene Reyes, the Paley Center for Media’s Vice President of Public Programming and Festivals. Among other duties, Rene plans the much-loved PaleyFest LA, which has panels featuring some of the biggest and most critically acclaimed shows on television. We talked about the joys (and COVID-related challenges) of in-person festivals and ran through some o...
30m Jan 20, 2022
30m
How Audiences Reshape the Movies You Love
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Kevin Goetz of Screen Engine/ASI and the author of Audienceology: How Moviegoers Shape the Films We Love. Kevin is one of the masters of the art of audience testing, that stressful period of time in a film’s life when it leaves the loving arms of its director and enters the world for approval by the folks who will be paying to see it. Sonny and Kevin discu...
44m Jan 13, 2022
44m
'The Spine of Night' and the Business of Animation
Sonny is joined by Philip Gelatt this week. In addition to talking about the art of rotoscoping and the years-long effort to get his new film The Spine of Night made, and then released, we also discuss the state of animation more broadly in America and beyond. As a script adapter on Love, Death + Robots, Netflix’s hit animated anthology, he has a lot of experience and wisdom to share in this re...
32m Jan 06, 2022
32m
'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Co-Writer Chris McKenna
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Chris McKenna who, along with his writing partner Erik Sommers, wrote Spider-Man: No Way Home, which has grossed about $1.2 billion around the world … so far. In this in-depth interview, Chris discusses how a blockbuster of this nature gets made, from pitch meetings to brainstorming sessions to rewrites during the shoot to additional photography to tig...
47m Dec 30, 2021
47m
The Greatest Movie Ever Made Hits 4K
Last month the Criterion Collection kicked off its new 4K lineup with what is, arguably, the greatest movie ever made: Citizen Kane. And the disc is absolutely loaded with special features, including a rarely seen BBC documentary on the making of the movie, multiple commentary tracks, and numerous interviews—including one with film historian Farran Smith Nehme. She joined Sonny to talk about Ci...
34m Dec 16, 2021
34m
Tim Miller and Sonny Talk 'Don't Look Up'
Special bonus episode this week, as The Bulwark’s Tim Miller stops by to talk about Don’t Look Up, the new satire from Adam McKay (Vice, Step Brothers), as well as how it felt to return to the multiplex and take in some movies. (You can read Sonny’s review of Don’t Look Up and Red Rocket, two films that are very much about the last five or six years of American life, at The Bulwark's website.) ...
35m Dec 10, 2021
35m
All I Want for Christmas Are ... HDMI Cables?
On this week’s episode, Tony Davis of Tessive returns to the show just in time for Christmas to walk you through the upgrades and lateral movements you need to be thinking about if you have home theater gear on your Christmas wishlist. We discuss HDR formats (what’s the difference between Dolby Vision and HDR10, and does it really matter?), why movies and TV shows on Amazon look so bad (hint: t...
46m Dec 09, 2021
46m
Tracking—And Recapturing—Movie Audiences
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to David Herrin the CEO and founder of The Quorum, a film research firm that has done something rather remarkable in making tracking data available to the public in the same way that box office data is available to the public. “Tracking” numbers are the data points used by studios to help determine how a film will perform in theaters, and The Quorum is buildi...
33m Dec 02, 2021
33m
A Century of Black Cinema
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Wil Haygood, author of the new book Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World. Haygood’s book is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about largely forgotten trailblazers such as Oscar Micheaux, better-known figures like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, the controversies over movies as diverse as The Birth of a Nation and ...
1hr 2m Nov 18, 2021
1hr 2m
Hollywood Goes to War: The Film Industry's Response to World War II
On this week's episode, Sonny is joined by Christian Blauvelt, author of Hollywood Victory: The Movies, Stars, and Stories of World War II. From the pre-war skittishness of the big studios about alienating German markets—and potentially alienating an isolationist homefront, pre-Pearl Harbor—to the wartime efforts to raise funds and produce works of art that inspired Americans to resist the fasc...
44m Nov 11, 2021
44m
'The Beta Test' Director Jim Cummings on Indie Life
On this week’s episode, Sonny is joined by Jim Cummings, whose new feature The Beta Test drops on VOD and in select theaters Friday, Nov. 5. In addition to discussing his few film and its acidic take on the dispute between talent agencies and the WGA, Jim also talks about landing a featured role in Halloween Kills, how he financed and distributed his first feature, Thunder Road, and his horror-...
33m Nov 04, 2021
33m
What Does a 'Buy' Button Really Mean in the Digital Age?
When you click “buy” on a digital product at Amazon or Apple, as opposed to “rent,” what do you think that means? Most folks think of it like buying a physical copy of a thing: they can sell it or pass it down to heirs. But as Aaron Perzanowski, a professor at Case Western, notes in his sit-down with Sonny Bunch, that’s not really the case: you’re just buying a license to a thing. And if that l...
37m Oct 28, 2021
37m
Netflix's Big Week
This week on The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, CNN’s Frank Pallotta rejoins Sonny to talk about Netflix’s big week! New subscriber numbers, new data numbers, and a newly controversial gloss to the biggest thing in entertainment. Plus, we talk a bit about Halloween Kills, Dune, and the impact of streaming on box office numbers. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend! Learn more abo...
37m Oct 22, 2021
37m
The Business of Sports Ads
Ryan Faughnder of the Los Angeles Times’s Wide Shot newsletter rejoins the show this week to discuss the boon—and burden—of sports betting ads. What are some of the rewards, and the risks, of this enormous advertising market? We also discussed Squid Game and Netflix’s efforts to internationalize entertainment as well as the age-old debate: subtitling versus dubbing. Make sure to sign up for Rya...
31m Oct 14, 2021
31m
Scott Eyman on Daryl F. Zanuck and 20th Century Fox
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Scott Eyman about his new book, 20th Century Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio. Zanuck’s reign as a Hollywood mogul ran through nearly every major technological and business innovation Hollywood saw in the first half of the 20th century and beyond, and Mr. Eyman’s book paints a compelling portrait of a producer as both busine...
36m Oct 07, 2021
36m
Scott Tobias on the Business of Film Criticism
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Scott Tobias, formerly of The AV Club and The Dissolve, about his new Substack endeavor with Keith Phipps, The Reveal, as well as the evolving world of film criticism. With so many local newspapers cutting back on movie reviewers for budgetary reasons and so many websites merely hitting the most popular of topics to generate clicks, it’s interesting—and, f...
40m Oct 01, 2021
40m
Rod Lurie Part 2: 'The Outpost'
Welcome back to the show! Please check out last week’s episode if you missed it; Rod Lurie (The Contender, The Last Castle) had a ton of great stories about transitioning from the Army to the world of film criticism to the world of filmmaking. This week we talked about shooting The Outpost: the difficulty of bringing such a sensitive story to the big screen and trying to decide what to cut and ...
38m Sep 16, 2021
38m
Rod Lurie on Breaking Into the Biz
This week (and next week!) Sonny talks to Rod Lurie, the director of The Contender, The Last Castle, and The Outpost, among other films and television shows. This week’s episode is all about Rod’s early efforts to break into the business, from Army officer to film critic to writer/director. He tells a great story about his first meeting with Bill Paxton, fills us in on the difficulty of getting...
35m Sep 09, 2021
35m
CinemaCon in Twilight
Richard Rushfield, proprietor of The Ankler, returns to the show this week to fill us in on the declining fortunes of CinemaCon in an age of streamers and theater-threatening diseases. We also discuss low-budget horror and why studios seem loathe to fill their slate with surefire hits in addition to checking in on the minions celebrating the downfall of Mike Richards, Jeopardy scourge. ...
31m Sep 02, 2021
31m
Jake Tapper on Afghanistan War Classic 'The Outpost'
On this week’s episode Sonny is joined by Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and author of The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, to talk about his book on Combat Outpost Keating and its adaptation into the defining movie of the Afghanistan War by Rod Lurie. Why did the book expand from coverage of the rare battle that saw two living Medal of Honor winners emerge to a book about the life an ill-a...
35m Aug 26, 2021
35m
Zak Penn on 'Free Guy,' Writing Villains, and the Fate of 'PCU'
Very excited to have on Zak Penn this week, who, in addition to being one of the writers of Free Guy, is also a credited writer on a series of HBO classics from my younger days: Last Action Hero, PCU, and Behind Enemy Lines, among others. On this episode we talked a lot about Free Guy and the state of Hollywood’s internal struggle between IP-branded ventures and original films, but we also dove...
58m Aug 19, 2021
58m
Matthew Belloni on the Changing Ways Hollywood Gets Paid
This week, Sonny is joined by Matthew Belloni, author of the newsletter “What I’m Hearing” for the exciting new web publication Puck.news. Formerly an entertainment lawyer and editor for The Hollywood Reporter, Matt joins the show today to talk about Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit, the ways in which streaming economics are upending traditional compensation packages, and Disney’s new “socialism.” ...
32m Aug 12, 2021
32m