What the Oscars tell us about streamers, studios, and Hollywood’s future with The Ankler's Janice Min
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Hey, everyone. Today we have a special rapid response, a post-Oscars episode featuring Janice Min. She's co-founder and CEO of The Ankler, the prestigious irreverent insider business media covering Hollywood. Janice and I talk through the Oscar night winners and losers.

not just among films, but also entertainment companies. From Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos to Conan O'Brien and Demi Moore, there was plenty of drama and keen lessons, too, about how low-budget players can outpace well-banked competitors,

the rising fear of political controversy, and more. The Oscars say as much about culture and the current marketplace as they do about the art of filmmaking. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. ♪

I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Janice Min of The Ankler to talk about Oscar night. Janice, great to see you. Good to see you. So do you have an Oscar night routine? Like, where do you do your viewing? Who are you with? What do you do after? Set the scene for us. How do you approach it? Bob, this is going to be very disappointing and really personal.

you know, burst any illusions about what it's like to work in Hollywood. I watched it on my sofa with my husband. I got dressed at around 7.30 my time and called an Uber and went over to, I know how to pick an Oscar party. I went to the one for Neon, which is the studio that swept the night with Onora. It was at Soho House in West Hollywood and it was definitely happening.

Yeah, it must have been packed and the spirit must have been good. I mean, it's the big winner of the night.

A slew of awards, including Best Picture. And for a film that's taken in only about $40 million at box offices worldwide, which means most of the people watching on TV last night had never seen the movie. Well, I saw on Instagram there were some people who had their status up or whatever you can put in your little avatar. One of them was, what's an aura? And so I think there were probably a few people watching who were feeling the same way. But I...

So I want to say I, Anora is a real triumph for certain quarters of the industry though. Like, and I think if you were following this Oscar campaign at all, which is a whole sport here, um, in town, um,

Uh, the Anora director, Sean Baker, the people associated with Anora and also the brutalist, um, a, another independent movie, they hammered home the fact that they were independent films over and over and over again. And you heard Sean Baker, the director who won also best director last night, making this point on stage as well. Like, uh,

$6 million budget. I will never make a studio film. This is the way I want to continue to make films. Tell the stories you want to tell. I think it was a real...

At least you can interpret it this year. Yes, Anora could have been best picture, but I felt like it was also a referendum on what's happened since the last Oscars in Hollywood, which has been, you know, a little doom and gloomy at the studios. Yeah. And just to clarify for our audience, like what independent film means, is it just that they don't raise a lot of money or they raise the money themselves without? Sure.

The answer is yes to both. So an independent film is small budget. I think typically the budget is under $35 million. And it means that you are sort of scrapping together money from here or there. You're not beholden to the distribution machine of the larger studios.

And by the larger studios, I mean like Warner Brothers, Disney, Paramount. And you are sort of MacGyvering together a story you want to tell. And it usually means there are no notes from a studio, no one telling you, can you insert this character so we can make a toy out of that character or so that we can have, you know, the Onora ride at Disneyland.

So it's creatively independent as well as being financially independent. Yes, that is exactly how you can think about it. And, you know, Bob, if your agent were to say to Disney, hey, I have this movie about a sex worker who gets married to the son of a Russian oligarch and then things go sideways. I mean, you will never even get into the pitch room. And same with The Brutalist. I have a three and a half hour movie about an...

a Hungarian architect who comes to America and has an intermission. I mean, these are just never going to happen in the system as it exists today.

Now, I don't know how you felt watching the Oscar night, but it felt like there was more tension than usual because kind of the best picture category seemed wide open, in part because of Amelia Perez kind of blowing up on the way through, right? Yeah, I mean, okay, the Amelia Perez story, like this is, it was sort of, I hate to say fun, but this is one of these old school Oscar movies

implosions, which we haven't seen in a long time. Everyone's become so disciplined and controlled. And oh my God, that went entirely off the rails. And I thought it was also sort of a great moment or great for Carla Sophia Gascon to, you know, kind of true to form.

She's like, nope, I'm coming. I'm showing up. Yeah. Conan O'Brien could give me a hard time, but I'm going to be here, right? I thought it was Conan O'Brien handled it really well. I had gone on Morning Joe last week and predicted Onora would be the Best Picture winner, so I'd like to just congratulate myself. But I think that, yes, it could have gone any which way. And I think, I mean, you had great movies. You had Wicked, The

you know, uh, I thought the surprises could have been if conclave had won, um, you know, the Pope's having a moment, uh, right now. Uh,

And then I thought, I'm still here. Could have been the Dark Horse candidate. And that movie is based on a true story from Brazil about life under authoritarianism. Is there buzz inside Hollywood, like, because of the blowup of Amelia Perez, that, like, we have to vet our actors and their social media feeds going back in a different kind of way than...

Bob, how many times have we learned this lesson, right? No one ever went into her social media and thought to search for Hitler and Islam and

And here we are. Like, it was one of those sort of stories Hollywood loves. First trans actress to be nominated for Best Actress. And then, you know, and I can't, I have to, we can't blame this all on Carla Sofia Gascon, the director Jacques Odiard, who's French. He said Spanish is the language of the poor, uneducated and migrants.

Probably didn't win any votes. There was also backlash against the brutalists for using AI, which I'm not sure I understand. Doesn't Hollywood love CGI and special effects? This is the ridiculous of that now. People are so eager to pounce on anything that even has a whiff of AI. I understand. They used Respeecher to make sure that Adrian Brody's Hungarian accent was...

like as good as it could be. I mean, you know, by the way, we needed re-speecher to cut down Adrian Brody's speech last night.

Yeah, he went a little bit off the rails there, didn't he? I mean, it's great to win an Oscar, but, you know, you didn't just, you know, create peace in the Middle East or something also. So the biggest loser of the night, I thought going in, I was like, is it going to be Amelia Perez or is it going to be Netflix? Like, which way? And then...

you know, they flash on Demi Moore when she loses out on the best actress to Mikey Madison. And I thought, oh, she just looks so crestfallen. And then Hulu cuts its Oscar stream, which is like...

In some ways, that's like the worst, like not a good moment for Disney, which owns Hulu, is advertising its shows all night. Like, how did they get that wrong? Boy, what we, you know, we've learned about live streams and our streaming platforms in the past year is that they're not necessarily so reliable. They are kind of winging it in the same way everyone else is. So, yes. And remember, Bob Iger is there in the audience, right? And he probably...

probably didn't really know until his phone started blowing up that that had happened. And okay, so I would say Netflix. This happens all the time to Netflix at the Oscars that they have come in with, they come in hot. They had the most nominations. And

And then there are still quarters of the Academy, the voting body, who can't forgive Netflix for not showing movies in theaters. And you heard Sean Baker make that a big part of one of his acceptance speeches, that we have to believe in the theatrical experience, the communal part of it. He got rapturous applause at that line. And there are going to be filmmakers and

craftspeople in Hollywood who will believe in that till the bitter end and not want to reward those who don't make that possible. And so they're just not going to reward those Netflix films even if they're doing... I mean, the ambition of Amelia Perez was quite high. It was so high. It was at Cannes, the Cannes Film Festival. It did show in theaters, but it didn't have the wide release that...

Top talent once. But what I do think this year was an interesting test case. If Amelia Press hadn't imploded on the campaign trail, could this have been its year? Could this have been the breakthrough? Yes. And I think that, you know, that day is coming. And Demi Moore? Boy, I felt so bad for her. I mean, you know, it's one of these things. You've been told you were anointed as the best actress ever.

winner months ago, right? And she gave a Golden Globe speech when she won there that was basically, you know, a warm-up to an acceptance speech at the Oscars. It had all the narrative. Narrative is such an important part of these campaigns. It had all the narrative people care about, a comeback, an actress who was mistreated back in the day, and

A story about, you know, Hollywood loves stories about Hollywood. It's about an aging actress who'll do anything to remain young. I mean, that had all the perfect elements except for the number of voters. And that to me, in a night of...

Not that many surprises was probably the biggest surprise. I mean, you use the word campaign, and I think for a lot of viewers of the Oscars, they don't really realize all of these things that are going on in the background to, you know, promote, you know, even though you're not supposed to promote, right? Like, that's kind of the myth about it. Yeah, I mean, so last year when people were saying,

When Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were campaigning for president, there's a whole other campaign going on in Hollywood where you are going out to events and festivals and you're talking about your film setting. Again, I'm going to use that word narrative about why you're sort of trying to subliminally or not so subliminally indicate why.

why your film and you should win. So you are there. It really is retail politics. You show up to these events if you want to be nominated or you are a nominee. It's shaking hands. It's everything but kissing babies. And well, there's also, I have to mention, there's also advertising, of which we are a beneficiary, right? One of the things that struck me with watching the show last night on TV, I was on my couch as well with the group. Okay.

But one of the things that struck me was it seemed less overtly political than some shows have been. Yeah, I think there was a memo, you know, both formal and informal that went out to presenters and just, you know, don't don't go there that there's no benefits. I mean, I think we've I think we've also people who work in Hollywood have internalized that. Yeah.

Hollywood is under attack. It's sort of this code word for certain quarters of MAGA. And I thought it was notable that two people who typically love the Oscars were not in the audience, Tim Cook from Apple and Jeff Bezos from Amazon. And those are two people who are not really beloved at the moment in the industry for their...

their sudden turn towards supporting the president. Um, and anyway, that it's, it stayed relatively politics free. I think, um,

The moment of no other land winning definitely was about as political as we would get. And I just want to note... The documentary. It's the best documentary. It's about the settlements in the West Bank. And I just want to note that in the sort of... The chilling effect of the political climate is such that...

Most documentaries are not getting bought presently unless they involve David Beckham and Victoria Beckham or a story about musicians. Anything political is not getting bought at the moment. And the best documentary winner last night does not have a buyer or distributor still, which is wild.

Zoe Saldana's acceptance speech for her Amelia Perez Best Supporting Actress point sort of struck out to me as something that was at least trying, you know, making a statement about First Dominican, talked about her parents as immigrants, the use of Spanish language in the film. There was a way to say it without saying it. And she did that. And everything she said was true.

Janice is both matter of fact and unsentimental about how Hollywood works without being unsympathetic. As she explains, the business and political environment have so much impact on the artistic output.

So how would she assess the future impact of each Netflix, Amazon and Disney on the film world? We'll talk about that after the break. Stay with us. The Lobatical is for any employees who have been with us for five years to take a vacation. They get a week of extra PTO. They get to pick anywhere in the world that they want to travel. And we allow that to happen for them.

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Before the break, Janice Min of The Ankler shared Hollywood's inside take on the winners and losers from Oscar night. Now we talk about the colliding world of film and TV, concern over Amazon's ownership of James Bond, and why Disney needs movies to fuel its engine. Plus, what keeps Netflix atop the Hollywood food chain despite its Amelia Perez disappointment. Let's dive back in. What did you think of Conan O'Brien's hosting?

Yeah.

always makes himself the butt of the joke as well. And there were the, he was sort of delightful. I thought the monologue was absolutely great. And I liked that. He acknowledged the Carla Sophia Gascon issue without destroying her in the audience. And the Adam Sandler bit was funny. And I, the head, the later on the headshots were funny. Um,

when they showed Timothee Chalamet's headshot as an ultrasound picture. I mean, he was sort of delightfully light and kept it moving. I don't know if he's going to go down as one of the top five greatest Oscar hosts of all time, but I think he will be invited back, which is a win.

I mean, in that opening, he poked fun at Netflix over price hikes. That was funny. He made fun of Amazon and Jeff Bezos. But then there was this, like, musical homage to James Bond, which was like a gift to Amazon, right? Which just bought the future rights to Bond. So I...

There are always a few moments in the Oscars where you kind of start, they start to lose the audience and you're zoning out. Like nobody asked for a James Bond segment, right? Nobody wanted that. Nobody cared. I mean, does Amazon pay for that? Like why would a Disney run show make a decision to. So, okay, this is what I think. I think, I think that the producers were probably viewing it as,

as more of like a rebuke against Amazon. I feel like they were saying like, "This is what it was and this is what made it great."

And say goodbye to that. That's a little bit what I felt. I mean, if you, you know, when you're in that room, so you're, you're trying to play to two audiences, which one of them is like the insiders of Hollywood. And then obviously the, the greater viewing audience. And I don't know that one. I felt like was maybe making a point to the insiders.

So Conan also did a bit around cinema streams for making a joke about watching movies in a theater versus on your phone or at home. And I guess what it brought up for me was

how separate, and this is, I guess, his point, but how separate is film from TV really these days? Like a four-part streaming series and a movie can sort of be indistinguishable. As we move to the future, the difference between a movie and a TV show? I...

I know. And I think this is this existential argument or existential crisis that's happening here, right? Like, what is the art form and what qualifies as art? And how does this, how is this art preserved in a way that still retains all of its audience? And like Bob, I would take it a step further. What differentiates

Your creators you watch on YouTube and your Instagram reels feed and TikTok with TV and film. I mean, it's all just kind of a continuous reel in people's lives. And so I think the fight is how do you make film real?

so special and something without being precious? How do you make it special and an event in a way that those other forms of media can't fulfill? And it's not necessarily about watching it in a theater, even though Sean Baker wants us to watch it in the theater. I mean, how many of the Oscar films did you watch in the theater? How do you decide which ones to watch in the theater versus otherwise? Oh, ouch. Don't ask me that question. Oh, ouch. Yeah, I mean, I think...

Going to a theater is great. I love going to a theater, but it requires a real commitment of time and of parking, figuring out a time, getting everyone together. And again, those things are special. Those things are things that we should do more of as a society, but it's,

We kind of don't. So if I'm going to give you four players and I play a game for you, ranking their power in the future of film. Ready? Okay. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, and China.

Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. And I go off the board. I realize China's bigger than the other companies. Okay. I can do this. Okay. Netflix, huge. The thing is, the person who controls the checkbook always wins. Netflix is the single biggest buyer of film in Hollywood. Hands down. They make the most films. That's why you see those big names still on there on the platform.

they win. And I don't care if you don't like Netflix because they don't release theatrically. They still had a Best Picture nominee in Amelia Perez for a kooky movie that many people would say is a kooky movie. They win. Okay, then Amazon. Amazon did...

Outside of Nickel Boys, which was part of MGM, which Amazon had acquired, Amazon did not really score here in the Oscars. They didn't have an Oscar movie. So you could see, I think you can see some trend lines, particularly in the actions of, you know, it's...

chairman of the board, I think that's Jeff Bezos, his current title, um, that they might not need this or want this, right? You're seeing them move into sports in a big way, acquiring sports rights that had began, you know, two years ago with Thursday night football. I think they're going to say like, why are we spending this money on, on these things? And what, how does this make sense for us? So, okay. So I would say Amazon, I would, uh, I, I'm saying trending down in film. Um,

Okay, Disney will always be in film. Disney's pipeline of how it creates its other extensions of its business require intellectual property being made great through film. And I mean, you can see that with Disney.

the Star Wars ride at Disneyland. And I mean, everything is IP. So it's almost like their films are a business, but they're also like a proving ground for the next business. It's like their incubator. Yeah, it's the greatest marketing platform for the Disney empire. And they make good films. So they will be in that business. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I asked about China because I saw that, you know, a Chinese animation film broke the animation box office record. Yeah. I mean, boy, like it wasn't that long ago when everyone thought China was going to save Hollywood. And, uh, turns out that wasn't the case. China is just making their own Hollywood. And it's, uh, I think in the sort of mounting tensions between China and the United States and the sort of on both sides, uh,

you know, a real nativist stance. There is just not, they just don't want to support American films. Like, why would you? And so you remember, or you might recall, there used to be these blowups about, you know, movies changing villains from Chinese to something else. You were doing all these things to kind of try to get an approval to be

distributed in China. It's like The Bachelor, right? You have to be given a rose. And if you're not given a rose, you just don't have a movie there. And at some point, I think the studios just decided you're just chasing good effort after bad. Everyone wants to be an international movie star, but you have the rest of the world to help you with that. But leave China out. Yeah.

All right, going from global to local, lots of L.A. pride on display at the Oscars, the opening pleas for fire recovery. But none of the 10 best picture nods were actually filmed in L.A. What does the future of the movie business look like as L.A.'s lifeblood? How does that match up? Well, so...

There's something that we say often at the Anchler, which is Hollywood is becoming more of an idea than a place. And the idea of Hollywood is now in Atlanta and in Vancouver and in Australia and the UK or in Vegas where people are vying to build production space. So there's a stay in L.A. campaign of people trying to get people to stay here. I think it all comes down to tax credits.

the governor, Gavin Newsom, has given a little in tax credits, but there's also real resistance. And this is, again, speaking to the kind of politics of today. I think for the 98 percent, no, how about 99 percent of people who don't work in Hollywood, who live in California, they're like, wait, why are we giving those people a break? And

I don't think there are a lot of political incentives to necessarily give more because I think when you start talking about it's good for the economy and the crates has all this job creation, that is an intangible issue.

discussion for most people. I think it looks more like, wait, they're getting a break and we're not? No. So this is going to be one of the big battles. And also, it's worth noting that for a political candidate like Gavin Newsom, you don't necessarily need to win Hollywood anymore. That's a nice to have, but you need to win Silicon Valley. And I have to believe they have a very different view of this. ISKRA

The balance of power has fallen differently. Yes, completely. Well, Janice, this was great. And thanks for doing it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I often think about how the business of Hollywood is itself a Hollywood-esque tale of drama and humor and intrigue. Janice brings that voyeur's perspective and an openness about where the plot might turn next.

The balance of power in every industry is under pressure these days from new technologies, new customer expectations, and our increasingly fractured culture. Entertainment is both a reflection of those shifts and a prism to better understand them. Sometimes a movie isn't just about what's on the screen. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

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Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Troh. Our producer is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashumaku Tonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lital Malad. For more, visit rapidresponseshow.com.