transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:05] This episode of The Town is presented to you by AMC Networks. Billy Magnuson and Zach Galifianakis star in the new series The Audacity, on AMC and AMC+. Influence rises, people unravel, and CEO meltdowns are business as usual among Silicon Valley elite. Executive produced by Jonathan Glatzler, a writer, producer of Succession and Better Call Saul. Watch new episodes of The Audacity, Sundays exclusively on AMC and AMC+. It is Monday, April 20th. Some big news last week for those in Hollywood who think that big media is getting too big. The federal judge blocked the $6.2 billion merger of two television station giants, Nexstar and Tegna. Those are TV station owners, not networks, and the deal would allow the combined company to reach 60% of the country's TV households. That's well above the limit of 39% that's currently in place, but the FCC commissioner, our guy Brendan Carr, he granted a waiver because he and Donald Trump see the more conservative station owners as better for their agenda than the more liberal network news operators. But even though the federal government blessed this deal, eight states and DirecTV sued on antitrust grounds, and a judge in California agreed, saying the combo would likely cause consumers pay TV bills to rise and local news coverage to suffer. Station groups will appeal, of course, but that is not the only antitrust ruling last week. Live Nation lost its jury trial. The federal jury last week determined that it indeed operated as a monopoly by owning Ticketmaster and booking the venues for which Ticketmaster sells tickets. Restricted competition and it drives up ticket costs, according to the jury. Live Nation is also vowing to appeal, and it's unclear what the impact will be on ticket prices or even whether the judge will force a break up of the company. Seems unlikely. But remember, the federal government also agreed to settle here, and that settlement is still being worked out. So it's again the states that chose to fight Live Nation and at least for now have come out on top. So is this a new twist in how big media mergers are going to be treated with the balance of power now shifting to the states that seem to be much more skeptical of big media than the federal government? And most importantly for people in Hollywood, what does all this mean for Paramount's pending $110 billion deal to acquire Warner Brothers' discovery? The Trump administration seems to be on board with that one and the Ellison's have obviously greased the Trump administration as well. But the blue states are preparing to sue according to multiple reports. Of course, all those Hollywood people who signed the petition to block the merger, that's 3,000 and counting, they'd very much like the anti-trust tide to turn against WarnerMount. Can it happen? That's the question we've got for Lucas Shaw, who's back here, our Monday guy, he's here to discuss. It's Tegna, Nextstar, Live Nation, Paramount, Warner Brothers and the anti-trust impact on it all. From the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Belloni and this is The Town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back, Lucas. We missed you in Vegas.

Speaker 2:
[03:22] You know, one day they'll get me back, but they have to put me on stage with a bunch of A-listers like you.

Speaker 1:
[03:29] Yes, it was fun. I did a couple of panels. One of them has run on the show last week, John Favreau. We got another one coming this week. It was a good time. People were very nice. Craig got carted. It was a whole thing.

Speaker 2:
[03:40] Did you come away from the John Favreau conversation feeling more or less optimistic about Mandalorian and Grogu?

Speaker 1:
[03:48] More. He knows what he's doing. He showed me back in LA. I went and checked out his shooting area, where he shot a lot of the live-action stuff and the prop area and very cool stuff. The footage they showed, for me at least, was a big improvement over the trailer. It felt a lot more cinematic than the trailer did. Hopefully, they can communicate that to the audience. Yeah. You didn't go to Coachella second week.

Speaker 2:
[04:18] I did not. Yeah. I've had too many random New York trips.

Speaker 1:
[04:21] You got to go back there. My favorite moment from Coachella was when Sabrina Carpenter brought out Madonna. There were a lot of tweets and posts from Gen Z people asking who she was.

Speaker 2:
[04:32] Who is this?

Speaker 1:
[04:34] Who is this lady?

Speaker 3:
[04:36] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:37] Craig, do you know who Madonna is?

Speaker 3:
[04:39] I've heard of her, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:40] Yeah. Okay, good. Did you know that, do you know who directed the Vogue video, Craig?

Speaker 3:
[04:47] No, I don't.

Speaker 1:
[04:48] David Fincher.

Speaker 3:
[04:50] Oh, wow. There was a whole online thing about how when Madonna came out and they were doing like a prayer with Sabrina, everybody in the crowd, no one is dancing and everybody's just standing still with their phones out.

Speaker 2:
[05:01] Well, there was a whole strain of criticism of the Coachella crowds from people at home. But I will say having spoken to people who were there, the phone thing is a real issue where the crowds are just– everyone is just trying to capture everything, which is funny. Because all of the performances now are constructed for video. And that means you have these huge screens behind all the artists, but they're like looking at the screens and sometimes taking video of the screen. Because if you're far back in the crowd, which I've been– You can't see the singer. Well, also, but your video of the stage is going to be awful.

Speaker 3:
[05:38] It's an epidemic. They look like zombies. No one is moving and everybody's trying to get the perfect shot, even though you could just go on YouTube and watch it and you could have it at home.

Speaker 1:
[05:46] Yeah, I don't understand filming concerts because literally every single one of them is on YouTube.

Speaker 3:
[05:52] They should make it like The Masters, no phones.

Speaker 2:
[05:55] Well, that would be great.

Speaker 1:
[05:56] Although people would die. They would literally die.

Speaker 2:
[05:59] I get wanting to take photos with your friends or of the artwork that my friend puts together, but taking photos and video of live performance as an amateur almost never works.

Speaker 1:
[06:11] Just stick to getting photos and videos of yourself in a wellness tent. That's where the real value is.

Speaker 2:
[06:17] I like that you think there are a bunch of wellness tents at Coachella.

Speaker 1:
[06:19] There are. Courtney Kardashian had one and it blew over in the sandstorm. I saw a video of that. Okay, enough of that. Let's talk even sexier than Coachella. A TV station merger. We are going to talk antitrust today, but I want to start with this.

Speaker 2:
[06:39] You didn't want to transition into the music antitrust. You wanted to go into the TV antitrust.

Speaker 1:
[06:44] We're starting with the sexiest of all, Tegna-Nexstar.

Speaker 2:
[06:48] Tegna.

Speaker 1:
[06:48] Two companies that most people have never heard of. They own many TV stations around the country. The FCC, Trump's guy, Brendan Carr, he's very interested in allowing them to merge. He thinks that these more conservative-oriented companies are going to be a check on the lame stream media and the liberal bent of the networks. He wants them to merge and have stations in 60% of the market. This judge made a very interesting argument in blocking it, claiming not only that this was illegal from an antitrust perspective, but also that it would harm the news business and the news output of these companies. I think this is all kind of silly to still be talking in 2026 about the power of TV stations when most people get their news and information and entertainment over the Internet. So I don't quite understand the rationale here. I know the antitrust people love this and they see it as a influential potential harbinger for the Paramount-Warner merger, which we'll talk about. But am I crazy here that this is a big nothing burger merger?

Speaker 2:
[08:08] It's not a nothing burger. I understand the point you're making and I think macro, I agree that like sweating about consolidation among TV networks or even some of these media companies, Paramount and Warner Brothers, when Meta owns Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp or Alphabet owns Google and YouTube and whatever Gemini will grow into. All the things that Amazon and Apple and these tech companies have, they have so many touch points that if you really want to regulate power and control, you should worry about them. That being said, it does influence customers if you have one company owning so many local stations. To your point about news, one of the things that my colleague Kelsey Griffith reported was how they were going to be using, they want to use News Nation segments instead of the ABC-NBC news broadcasts.

Speaker 1:
[09:03] Because Nexstar owns News Nation, and then they will have stations to plug their product on.

Speaker 2:
[09:10] It is a little funny, sad, pick your word, when like Brendan Carr and the Trump administration rail on these media companies for being left-leaning, but then say it's like a good thing if a company is trying to actively put more conservative programming on the airwaves. So, yeah, I think it's...

Speaker 1:
[09:30] Wait, are you saying that the Trump administration is hypocritical? I'm sorry. Who would have thought? Get out. Episode over.

Speaker 2:
[09:37] Yeah. So, I guess, I think these deals all merit scrutiny. It doesn't mean that they need to be blocked, but I don't think that we should just like wave them through and celebrate them like the FCC seems to want us to.

Speaker 1:
[09:50] Yeah, they're definitely celebrating and 60% is a lot. And you and I talk about the news environment in a very sophisticated way with all the different digital outlets and everything. For a lot of Americans, their local TV station is their local news. And when you get one company owning a lot of the different options, it does make a difference. It does stifle that marketplace of ideas where you could have multiple networks or multiple stations in a market that might give you different perspectives.

Speaker 2:
[10:26] Yeah, or in an election year where people are still going to be watching a lot of their local news and most people, let's say over 65 or 70, are not consuming their news on Instagram if one station is telling them how to think it matters or if one company, I should say.

Speaker 1:
[10:42] So now this goes to the ninth circuit where they're going to have to evaluate whether this is an illegal merger, whether this is going to hurt the market for television and for news and it just depends, like all these antitrust cases, what they consider to be the market here. Because if you're looking at the market for television stations, it seems pretty clear it is illegal. They specifically wrote an exemption or a waiver to the rule that you can't own more than 39 percent to specifically benefit this merger. They didn't overturn the rule, which they could have tried to do. They just granted a waiver.

Speaker 2:
[11:26] They had made noise about overturning that rule. Then I think they realized that if they overturn that rule, like overturning the rule would be more of a headache, complicated and it could also invite deals that they don't want. Doing it this way, where they just grant waivers to the people that they like allows them to basically pick and choose who can merge.

Speaker 1:
[11:43] Right. But that smells bad if you are a federal judge on an appeals court when you're trying to evaluate whether a merger is fair or not, and the government is basically opening up the valve for one preferred merger to go through, and then closing it back up for everyone else. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:02] Well, it's like all these anti-trust cases, right? When we were talking about Netflix Warner Brothers, there was this big debate about what is the market, right? Is the market just streaming, in which case maybe this is anti-competitive? Is the market all of television, in which case that's a little fuzzier, or is it all of entertainment, in which case it's clearly not anti-competitive? Same with this one, are we talking about just local TV stations, which to your point, I think this would be seen as problematic. Are we talking about all of television, are we talking about all of entertainment, and there will be people making the arguments on both sides.

Speaker 1:
[12:32] They should get Ted Sarandos in there to make the argument that they're competing with sleep.

Speaker 2:
[12:37] That they're competing. That was a Reed Hastings one, but they could-

Speaker 1:
[12:40] No, I know, but Netflix could break the competitive environment to be everything.

Speaker 2:
[12:44] We're competing with TikTok, we're competing with Amazon, we're competing with-

Speaker 1:
[12:48] Yes, your local weather person is competing with TikTok, so it's true though these days. All right, let's move on to Live Nation because this is the second big antitrust ruling of the past week. The federal jury in New York found that Ticketmaster unlawfully maintained a monopoly in primary ticketing for the major concert venues. Live Nation had acquired monopoly power in large amphitheaters, although this is a somewhat narrower claim. And they said that Live Nation engaged in illegal tying in the amphitheaters, as the states have argued the company does not allow competitors to engage in promoting concerts at its venues. Pretty big deal, right?

Speaker 2:
[13:35] Yeah. Well, it's like with the Nexstar techno when we were talking about a case where sort of the federal government had a point of view and other people said, sorry, we don't agree, right? Where the DOJ decided to settle with Live Nation. It was very controversial. You know, it was right on the eve of this trial. I think the trial had just started.

Speaker 1:
[13:55] And Trump basically said, what's going on here? Right. Why is this not settled? Ari Emanuel guided his ear. Ari Emanuel, good friends with Michael Rapinoe, said, what are you doing here? Trump then goes and tells his DOJ, settle this thing and lo and behold, it's settled. Gail Slater quits, was fired.

Speaker 2:
[14:14] She was the antitrust chief of the DOJ. And some of the states, because most of the states had signed on to this lawsuit, some of the states agreed with Trump, but most of them said, you know what, we're going to continue with this. This is a winning political issue for us because this is a great or bipartisan thing. Nobody likes Ticketmaster.

Speaker 1:
[14:31] Yeah, not all Democratic states.

Speaker 2:
[14:33] No, no, no. It was a bipartisan effort against it. And the other unusual part of this is that it was a jury trial, which is one of the reasons why I think they lost is, I mean, setting aside whether you think they're a monopoly or not, like if you ask a bunch of jurors, what do you think of Live Nation and Ticketmaster? They're going to say, fuck those guys.

Speaker 1:
[14:51] Yes, exactly. I know. That's why it's so amazing because it was so obvious. You get Ticketmaster in front of a jury. It doesn't matter. You could say that they ran over a raccoon in front of your house, and they would say, yes, yes, Ticketmaster is guilty.

Speaker 2:
[15:05] Yeah. We do not like these people. They do not do right by us. I don't like how much I pay. I don't like fees. I don't like any of this. One of the most hated companies in America.

Speaker 1:
[15:16] We've talked about this. There's lots of different reasons why ticket prices are high. Some of them are, I believe, the way that the business has evolved and the fact that Live Nation owns a lot of parts of it. A bigger part is that the artists like to charge a lot and there's more demand than there are seats and the artists take advantage of that. If they don't do it, the secondary market will, so that's where you get high prices. But Ticketmaster is the boogeyman of the music business.

Speaker 2:
[15:44] It's a dominant player. This was a very embarrassing spectacle for Live Nation and Ticketmaster because you had all of these emails and comments paraded that made its executives look bad. You had Slack messages. Yeah, you had a lot. You had the executives who were laughing at the prices that they were getting people to pay.

Speaker 1:
[16:06] Those guys did not get fired, by the way.

Speaker 2:
[16:08] I think there's still an internal investigation happening and at least one of them will probably get fired in six months.

Speaker 1:
[16:16] They were celebrating, basically saying, how high can we go? These people are idiots.

Speaker 2:
[16:22] You had what seemed like the CEO, Michael Rapinoe, threatening Barclays, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, that if you break with Ticketmaster, we're going to shift concerts away from you from Live Nation, which is a lot of what this whole case centered on. Live Nation is obviously going to appeal, which is one of a few reasons I don't think there will be much immediate impact, because Live Nation is going to try to drag this out as long as they can, I would imagine, unless they get the sense that the judge isn't going to be especially punitive in whatever the remedies are.

Speaker 1:
[16:57] Well, that's the thing is, the remedies phase now, the judge has to decide whether to break these companies up, which I think seems unlikely, or whether to impose some enormous fine or other potential remedies. This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. Half Man, the new HBO original limited series from baby reindeer creator Richard Gadd, examines the tumultuous relationship between two estranged brothers, tracking the highs and lows of the pair over the course of 40 years, starring Emmy Award winner Richard Gadd and BAFTA Award winner Jamie Bell. Half Man premieres April 23 on HBO Max. Half Man premieres April 23 on HBO Max. I want to go to two things here. One, how do you think the appeal will go? And let's first start with what is the impact here on regular consumers, music fans? Because they only found that the overcharging was $1.72 per ticket.

Speaker 2:
[17:58] Yeah, so I think the public understanding of this trial and what the trial is actually about are different. In that, you know, a lot of the saber-rattling and political stunts over the last few years, when it comes to live music, have been inspired by ticket prices and like the Taylor Swift on sale is a mess and tickets are too expensive. The Bruce Springsteen on sale, tickets are too expensive. A lot of it is about the pricing and a lot of it is about the difficulty of accessing tickets. And despite that of the best efforts of Live Nation–Ticketmaster's rivals to say that breaking them up will solve that, I just don't think that's true, right? You talked about this a little bit. It may help certain areas on the margin and maybe it would lead to a dramatic overhaul of live music that I'm not anticipating. But ticket prices are high because there's limited supply and inexhaustible demand. And so like there's just that market as a whole has gone up. You look across the experience economy, it's not just live music. The tickets, the cost of sporting events, the cost of theme parks, like all this stuff is more and more expensive because people are willing to pay it. And of all of those experiences, music is kind of the most rare, right? You and I are both Dodger fans. You want to go to a Dodger game this year, you got 81 options. When Rosalia comes to town at the end of June, I think she's doing two shows. So it's just, I do not see this bringing the prices way down. If they have forced it to sell off Ticketmaster, or if they continue to break up this notion of exclusivity, there will be more competition among the different ticket sellers, and that may benefit customers. We just don't know exactly how.

Speaker 1:
[19:40] They make the argument that that might actually not benefit customers. That if given the choices here, most of the artists choose Live Nation because they are the most efficient and they have the best people and yada, yada, yada. So if you open this up, maybe it's going to actually lead to higher prices.

Speaker 2:
[19:59] Yeah. It's a very weird circular argument that you sometimes have because people definitely make the point that you just did, which is that Live Nation or Ticketmaster is the best product. And then the other ticketing companies say, well, we would be better products if it was more competitive, and thus we could get more money and we could invest in our product. And it's always hard to prove that kind of negative. So I don't fully know the answer. But we do know that there are four or five different ticketing companies in the marketplace, and their products are anywhere from equivalent to worse.

Speaker 1:
[20:32] I know. And it's the fees, though, right? People hate the fees. I saw the fees on the Olympics tickets, and I was just like, what? What in the world do they need to charge 20% for a fee?

Speaker 2:
[20:47] I did not get my Olympic tickets, so I'm jealous of you.

Speaker 1:
[20:50] You didn't buy them?

Speaker 2:
[20:52] I didn't get selected for that round of the lottery.

Speaker 1:
[20:54] Oh, I wonder if Casey Wasserman blackballed you.

Speaker 2:
[20:58] Could have been.

Speaker 1:
[21:00] Or he would have blackballed me too. I don't know. But the benefit of this to me is it brushes them back a little. Live Nation has such headwinds, confidence, arrogance, some might say, they just keep steamrolling ahead and they have engineered the company in a way that it's not technically, technically, technically a monopoly. But it pretty much is. And now they have a jury verdict that says it is and they will have to deal with that. And hopefully it will be a check on them and some of the things that they do. And they may think twice about that 20% fee because they know that everyone's watching and they did have to deal with this big trial, even if it gets overturned.

Speaker 2:
[21:45] Well, look, it would be a really interesting experiment if the US tried to kind of resemble Europe in its ticketing model where things were more open. And, you know, Live Nation and its allies say that these venues want the exclusivity with Ticketmaster, that it's better for them, but let's see what happens if they're given the choice, right? If they have the choice, do they end up partnering with Ticketmaster and Seed Geek and Access or whatever it may be?

Speaker 1:
[22:13] And there was a great story, I believe it was in The Times or the LA Times about Irvine, California, where they wanted to build a new music venue and the negotiations with Live Nation were just so difficult because they wanted the exclusivity. And that was the big reason why that venue didn't happen. So there are tangible results here. All right, so the big picture here, do either of these rulings, Live Nation, Tegna, do either of them impact what's currently going on with the Warner Brothers-Paramount merger? We saw the whole movement, the Block the Merger petition, 3,500 signatories. Now, you and I have been saying that this kind of doesn't matter. Like, it's all nice that people are coming out against this, but ultimately, they don't have much influence. But the government does and these juries do, and the state attorneys general are now looking at these two cases and seeing that there can be tangible results. Does this make a lawsuit against the Warner-Mount merger more likely?

Speaker 2:
[23:21] I think you'd need some Republicans to join the Democrats, because right now, it feels like one side of the political aisle raising concerns and questions about it, right? We had the Senate hearing that didn't even get to be a full Senate hearing because it was really only the Democrats pushing for it.

Speaker 1:
[23:36] So, it could, but I think it- Cory Booker is still chasing David Ellison. At some point, he's going to be outside of a Hooters in South Carolina someplace, and he's going to shove a microphone in his face.

Speaker 2:
[23:48] How was the- I know you and others wrote about it a little bit, but other than the Adam Aaron surprise, what was the general outlook on the merger at CinemaCon?

Speaker 1:
[23:59] They hate it. The Cinema United trade group did a whole speech about how they hate it, they're going to fight it. That's why the Adam Aaron statement, the Adam from AMC, our friend, he came out in favor of it. There was all sorts of conspiracy theories going around about maybe he cut a side deal with Paramount, maybe he sees that this merger is going through for sure. He's getting on David Ellison's good side because he knows they're going to be responsible for 25-30 percent of the theatrical releases. They both deny it, Paramount and AMC, but the theater owners are pissed at him because they're not united. They're cinema united, but they're not united on this.

Speaker 2:
[24:44] Yeah. Well, the best way to fight the merger would be you'd need everyone united. You'd need theater owners, talent agencies, labor unions. You'd need there to be a full court press against it.

Speaker 1:
[24:56] So far, we haven't seen that. The Writers Guild has come out against it, SAG-AFTRA has not, and the Directors Guild has not. The agencies have said nothing about this. We know that Ari Emanuel, who is not above WME anymore, but he is a big prominent agent. He is very much on the Ellison side and has been advising him. I don't think CAA or UTA want to poke that bear and get involved in a fight.

Speaker 2:
[25:24] At least not on their own.

Speaker 1:
[25:25] Yeah. Get involved in a fight with the biggest buyer in town, potentially one of them. And these stars, you know, good for Mark Ruffalo, but like, you know, what do they matter? They just, they're screaming without a remedy here. The only thing that could help is if these states see this and see it as a fundraising issue or something where they could get a win. And now there are two wins out there.

Speaker 2:
[25:52] Even if they may be overturned or changed in the future, they are significant.

Speaker 1:
[25:57] What did you think of David Ellison's pledge? Do you believe his word? He did not, you were not there, so you were not able to be looked in the eye. Like he said, he was looking at the theater owners in the eye and promising them that he will release 30 movies a year with significant windows. Do you want to take him at his word?

Speaker 2:
[26:15] Well, I generally, my general rule is I don't take any of these people at their word. They have to do the thing that they say they're gonna do.

Speaker 1:
[26:22] No, that's my take was that like why David Zaslav came to town and talked about how he's building Warner Brothers for the future and look where they are now.

Speaker 2:
[26:31] We could go back and look at what a lot of people have said pre and post merger and compare, you know, what did Bob Iger say about what he'd be doing with the Fox Studios before he bought them? These companies say what they need to do to get what they want accomplished and then they do whatever they want.

Speaker 1:
[26:48] But here's the thing. What is David Ellison supposed to do during this period? That's the question that nobody's answering. Like, okay, nobody believes him, but what is he supposed to do? Is he supposed to propose some kind of contract with each individual theater owners? They don't negotiate together. That would be an antitrust problem. But he could say, here, big three theater chains, here are contracts in which I promise over the next 10 years to release this amount of movies. I mean, I know why would he do that, but he could do that.

Speaker 2:
[27:19] He could, but why? And he's never going to.

Speaker 1:
[27:23] So you haven't answered the question. What is David Ellison supposed to do here?

Speaker 2:
[27:27] He's doing what he can. He's saying he's going to do it. There's nothing that he can act on right now. He has been a pretty consistent champion of movies and movie going, although he did have a strategy.

Speaker 1:
[27:41] Don't say he loves movies. Do not say that.

Speaker 2:
[27:44] Well, I was about to say, although he kind of lost in all of that is, he did have a stretch of making a lot of movies for streaming services, which I guess we're going to pretend never happened.

Speaker 1:
[27:53] I think most viewers are pretending it never happened.

Speaker 2:
[27:55] Well, they didn't watch them.

Speaker 1:
[27:56] But he needs to stop throwing parties for Donald Trump in Washington, DC if he wants the Hollywood people to be on board with him.

Speaker 2:
[28:03] I mean, he's not going to do that as long as he needs his deal approved.

Speaker 1:
[28:06] But this whole celebratory dinner for Donald Trump at the Correspondence Center weekend, like, come on, man.

Speaker 2:
[28:12] Well, he's now in private, but he's now deep in business with Dana White. So do we really think that that's going to stop? No.

Speaker 1:
[28:19] All right. I know that's a separate topic. Okay, Lucas, thanks very much.

Speaker 2:
[28:23] Thanks, Matt.

Speaker 1:
[28:26] We're back with the call sheet. Craig, did you get a chance to watch this trailer for the AI Val Kilmer movie?

Speaker 3:
[28:34] As deep as the grave.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] As deep as the grave. I did not get a chance to go to the screening that they had at Comic Con where the filmmakers disgusted. I did watch the trailer online and it's fine. They only show him for a second.

Speaker 3:
[28:49] Yeah. He's apparently in the movie a lot, but in the trailer, it's not a ton of him, but he's obviously much younger in this trailer, the AI version of him. It looks fine. You wouldn't really know that he's AI generated.

Speaker 1:
[29:01] It's very like Leia in Rise of Skywalker or Peter Cushing in the Star Wars in Rogue One where they recreated him. But this is a little different because they use AI, and because it is apparently like a lead performance in the movie, and it was done with his estate involved, and they were creatively involved in the performance, and obviously they were paid for the use of the likeness. He was supposed to do this movie before he was too sick to do it, passed away, and now they are recreating him. I don't think this movie is going to do a lot of business, and I don't think it's an awards type movie, but it does bring up the question that I heard a couple of people talking about over the weekend, which is how is the Academy going to deal with these AI-generated performances, especially as a lot of these boomer actors start dying and they've all been scanned, and their estates are very sophisticated and may want to exploit them in different movies. Are we going to start seeing AI-generated performances up for awards, including the Oscars?

Speaker 3:
[30:10] Right. So it's like basically if Quentin Tarantino's next movie has an AI– well, this would never happen, but has an AI performance of a deceased actor and it was fantastic, could that person be nominated?

Speaker 1:
[30:22] Currently, there is no rule that the Academy has against that. My prediction today is that the rules that come out later this summer, in a couple of weeks, they're going to put out their latest update and all the rules for the Oscars. I think they are going to address this and I think that AI-generated performances are going to be ruled ineligible for Oscars.

Speaker 3:
[30:43] I mean, to be honest, that's the easiest decision of all time.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] Well, not necessarily. Potentially, that could have excluded Adrian Brody in The Brutalist because that accent, they had some AI help on his accent. So they have to be very specific about what is allowed and what is not allowed in order to not throw out people who may be enhanced like this guy in the Michael Jackson movie, Jafar Jackson. He apparently had some help with the vocals on an AI-generated vocal. So does that rule him ineligible? I don't think so. I think it will be people whose likenesses have been recreated for the purposes of the movie.

Speaker 3:
[31:26] Vocals have been tweaked in movies long before AI has been around. So that's just a more efficient tool to tweak something like vocal.

Speaker 1:
[31:33] But it's a slippery slope. First of all, for the Academy's point of view, there needs to be a credit before they can honor someone. So you have to be credited on the movie. And lots of times when these AI-generated images are in movies, they're not credited. And the guilds have to deal with what an AI-generated performance credit is. And then they can determine what gets honored and what is eligible. And I have a feeling these new rules are going to say, if you are not alive and your performance has been digitally recreated, you are not eligible.

Speaker 3:
[32:07] And God help us if they don't make that decision.

Speaker 1:
[32:10] It would be great if they did. Or if they had another category, best AI performance.

Speaker 3:
[32:17] We're probably headed that way.

Speaker 1:
[32:18] Someday. Someday there will be. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horlbeck, artist John Jones. And I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.