James Gunn’s Pre-Release Fumble Derails Superman Debut and DCEU Relaunch

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts Radio Network, kingo Podcasts dot Com.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Superman is out this weekend, and marketing and promotion was
doing so good until James Gunn opened his big mouth.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
The King of podcast Radio Network proudly presents to the
Broadcasters podcast Here is the King of Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
And welcome to Broadcasters Podcasts. This is King of Podcasts.
Here with you. My website is Kingopodcasts dot com. Easy right,
So James Gunn leading up to the debut of the
twenty twenty five incarnation of Superman, starting to divin Coren Sweat,
Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Holt. That's this weekend. I'll be

(00:51):
watching the movie tomorrow night Friday night. As I record
this episode, I've already started seeing some good reviews about
it from people that I will good and follow, nobody
that I know locally, but just the buzz around it
has been pretty well. I don't think anybody's really making
too much of a stick of anything about it at
the moment. The Rotten Tomatoes score as I look at

(01:13):
it eighty three percent on the critics side Tomato meter ninety,
so it's good. That's promising. Nine And from everything I've
seen of the trailers for this movie, me being the

(01:33):
avid moviegoer going to the movie theater to watch movies
every Friday night, I've seen the trailers for Superman for
over a year, and every time I saw them they
were impressive. I thought, who they picked for Superman has
a good look to him. If you haven't played the
whole story leading up to him becoming the Man of Steel,
you know now they get the dog in here, the

(01:55):
dog getting Crypto. They brought into the mix, a different
reinterpretation of it, but again the same story we've always
known about for years, going back to the post World
War Two character that was created. Now with this, I
have seen every incarnation of Superman, the George Reeves character

(02:16):
in the fifties. I've seen those episodes. I saw the
cartoon when they had it, when it was Max Fischer,
I think it wasn't had it, the super Friends. I
saw those when I was a kid. And then leading
up to the Christopher Reeve four part series. I am
glad they never show the fourth one because I can't
be able to watch that again. And then we get

(02:38):
into Superman Returns with Brandon Routh, which was a throwaway
to me. It was a throway. I mean, Gene Hackman
I thought was a great Legs to me, You're Gt.
Hackman was a great Legs Luthor. Kevin Spacey was a
very good Lexu thrower. I'll give that movie that, But
I wasn't big about the rest of the whole thing.
Like Suberman Returns. It was a bust to me. I
just never got into that. It never felt right. Henry

(03:01):
Cavell and the Man of Steel franchise, I was good
with that. He looked a part. It's fine, the movies
are great. I was, you know. It was also I
guess there one thing about the Justice League and the
whole setup of that where everybody was really not happy
with the whole setup of it. I mean, I get that.

(03:21):
I liked the first Man of Steel Batman for the
Superman that was taking some long time to get somewhere.
I wasn't big about Jesse Eisenberg being like Suthor, not really,
but I liked the idea of what they did with
this cast this time around, because you know, they didn't
give us any dialogue, very little at the very beginning
on the very first trailer and then seeing Rachel Brazahan

(03:45):
as Lois Slaant that makes sense. I mean he looks
the part. And from what I've seen to other things
that she's done. I never watched the Marvels Marvelous Business Mazil,
never gotten to that, but I remember seeing her on
what was the show those on WGN about the Manhattan Project.
I forget the name of that now, That's what I
remember seeing her first. And another things I've seen her

(04:08):
as well. Actually was also in the Amateur with I
mean male like earlier this year. So David cornswt absolute
unknown to me. I never seen him, but he looks
the part. I mean, if you need to go and
look make somebody look like the Christopher Reeve type, some
of the trailers, some of the TikTok about you see
out there talking about the fact that the Clark Kent

(04:28):
character that he portrays plays it like Christopher Reeve, where
it's a much different voice. So a little bit of
the campiness, the goofiness that remember of the Christopher Reeve character.
Which listen me, no matter what you can give me
the first two Superman movies in seventy eight and eighty

(04:50):
eighty one, I'll take those. I can still watch Superman
going after the the three from the Phantom Zone. I
mean I can and I can still say and sometimes
I still hear myself saying Superman like Sarah Douglass in
the second movie Superman. I can still remember the fight
scene up in the air where they're getting thrown like

(05:12):
what is the Superman getting thrown into the Coca Cola
sign and all that kind of stuff, Like there is
just so much there. And of course the first one
was to me, but like I said, the first two
really enjoyed. The third one a bit goofy, you know,
they went some routes with it, but still watchable, still watchable.

(05:32):
But there's something about how those movies were set up.
And then on top of that, when you had that
John Williams score, which the Superman theme from John Williams
gives me goosebumps. There's not many things, not many musical
scores that will give me goosebumps like that, but that
gives me goosebumps every time. The one other thing that

(05:53):
really does give me an emotional feel is round Ball
Rock by John Teshla the NB on NBC. It just does.
Also any football score, like for NFL, the Fox theme,
the CBS theme, the Sunday Night Football theme, Monday Night
Football team. Absolutely give me that kind of fil to it.

(06:14):
So overall, if I had to go and choose Superman,
which ones I like the best, of course read this
first Cavil, I would put well George Reas up for
the third, and then I'll put Randon Routh fourth. That's
just about I would really do that. And if I
had to go include the animated I would include the
Superman's character probably third behind Cavil, just saying, but to

(06:39):
the original point of why I'm on here today, Look,
I am not going the route of some politics that
other shows are going to use this out here, because
there's a lot of political content out there that wanted
to go and talk about Superman just because they want
to have something to go ahead and use as a
divining rod. I say, let's just got something to go
ahead and attack. But I want to fill because only

(07:00):
on James Gun and the fact that was it the
right time after everything was going so well for the
debut of this movie. Listen, you don't want to put
on July fourth, Fine, you got Jurassic Park that came out.
It kicked ass, made a lot of money. Great, you
wanted to go and wait till after f one? Fine,
after mission impossible. Fine. So we're here in middle of July,

(07:22):
July eleventh, ready to go. James gun directing gave us
Guardians of the Galaxy, him and Peter Saffron to lead
the DC Universe to get it forward because of everything
else that was going wrong, right when they had movies
like Blue Beetle and The Flash that just panned, and
then The Last Wonder Woman also not that good, passable,

(07:45):
but that's it. We know that they're gonna go and
retool the DC universe, and that's what they're gonna do,
and it starts with this Superman and James Gunn to
the credit Listen. I watched all the Guardians of the
Galaxy movies. I don't like them all, Like I was
surprised last Gardenians of the Galaxy I got through and
enjoyed because you know, you've seen everything you wanted to
see before. But then you give me the Rocket Story

(08:08):
and I'm like, okay, you gave me something there, so
I know James Gunn is more than capable to go
and put a good movie here together for superhero movies.
So let's see what happens. So I was already go
and watch. But the one thing that irked me is
that we already know that in the world of movies
right now, anything that's considered woke, or anything that's considered
you know, virtue signaling or anything those kind of things.

(08:31):
Like I mean, I've watched a lot of movies that
have been considered woke, and it's fine. I don't care.
Like if I had to go and worry about whatever
it's considered woke or any kind of things that are
you know, that don't really vibe with me, then I
would be, you know, watching Angel Studios movies all the time.
I'm not doing that. I just want movies that when
I've watched Superman, you know you want to reinterpret it.

(08:53):
You want to go and bring it back again. Okay, Fine,
you know the story. You want to do it today
with new cgi and new effects. Fine, you want to
give it a nice new spin to it, Go ahead. Look,
we've had others that try to do the same thing,
and you know, it's hard to live up the Richard
Daughner and what he did with Superman in the late

(09:13):
seventies to start that franchise off. Should have never made
the fourth one, just saying question for Peace. That's a throwaway,
that's like Godfather three bad to the point where I
remember Margo Margot Hemingway being in it, and I remember
that horrible villain they put on to go up against
Superman and Gehattanan was there for ex looser the gun

(09:37):
use this particular beast. It's like, no, it did not work,
and what was it. It was like some kind of
like Green Peace Earth kind of sticks something like that
in nineteen eighty six. It didn't work, and nobody talks
about it either. So let's just make that point clear too.
James Gunn decided to go and open his mouth. And
we've been hearing stories about how there were certain movies

(09:58):
that have come out in the lastlast year or so
that you know, the movies that are coming out of
the movie theaters. There's a bit of a change into
what hasn't been working, and so the things need to
be changed up, Like we're not gonna get so many
Madam webs anymore. Oh, like the women's empowerment and I
think Charlie's Angel's full throat, We're not gonna get that anymore.

(10:19):
We're not gonna get you know. It's like those kinds
of movies we don't need and I think of in
the Marvel route, like okay, Captain Marvel, No, the Marvels,
Oh my God, or eternals, like there are just certain
movies that he did as part of the systems. It's
not work. And they were trying to do this whole
like let's you know, check all the boxes kind of thing,

(10:40):
and like it doesn't work. Even the Disney stuff right now,
they're like they're making changes in some of the roles
that are going because Bob Baker came back, and it's like, listen,
there's other stuff that you're doing right now on Disney
Plus or what are you doing Like in the movie theaters,
we don't need it. Ilio is supposed to be a
different character and then they stripped all the different areas
of how the character is supposed to queer and now
it's more of a boy character, a conventional boy. I

(11:05):
could care less. But the thing is the big movie studios,
the big corporate media giants realize people are not going
to that man. They're not spending money on it. Superman
in this current incarnation there's no reason why this movie
should not make at least four or five hundred million

(11:26):
dollars domestic, no reason why this movie couldn't possibly get
to about six hundred and eight hundred million dollars worldwide.
And if it does really well close to a billion,
it should be. This is not almost everybody. And remember
you're talking about like all around the world, everybody knows
who Superman is. They know the story of different ages,

(11:49):
different generations, all across we've all been familiar with it.
So the week before the debut July fourth, James Gunn
speaks with the Times of London and the Times listen,
I bet those guys that adrenals over there, they decided
to go and get him in a gotcha because he's
over there for the premiere of the movie. And right

(12:09):
before the premiere of the movie, he goes on and
speaks with these journalists who decided to go and put
him in a spot. And I don't know if James
Gunn was actually being aware that he was going to
get himself so comfortable in the interview to sit down
for this long form interview and then get caught in
a quote which was of course, these leeches are gonna

(12:31):
go after the first thing that happens, and they're gonna
put James Gunn's quote in there right off the bat
some people will take offense at my new Superman. So
they got him to go on that route to talk
about it. So this writer, Jonathan Dean speaks with James
Gunn before the premiere. They referred to James Gunn as
the franchise overword of the DC Comics Universe. DCEU, charged

(12:55):
with creating an elaborate, interconnecting world for DC Comics to
challenge the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, by the way, the
Marble Cinematic Universe, it's I mean, it's at its low
point right now. I know they're going to start another
set up to go Avengers all out, but like what
they started with Thunderbolts did not work. I didn't have
a problem with thunderbol so I was fine. But you
know what, nobody went to watch it. Nobody was really

(13:17):
into it, and it wasn't that bad at all. You know,
it definitely wasn't a bad So we know the main
stays of the DC universe Batman, wonder Woman, Superman, Guns,
director who we know, who knows we have superhero fatigue
wants to wake us up again. And here's what James
Gunn said. There are three things I don't ever need
to see again in a Superhero movie. I don't need

(13:39):
to see pearls in a back alley when Batman's parents
are killed. I don't need to see the radioactive spider
biting Spider Man. And I don't need to see baby
col coming from Krypton and a little baby Rocket. We've
watched a million movies with characters who don't have their upbringing. Explain,
like when we see good night and good luck, all
that stuff, okay, but then Superman, we see him fully formed,

(14:02):
District for Action works on the Daily Planet, dates Lois Slain,
and the film starts with flinging a bloody Superman to
the ground after I struggle with the menus of Lex Luthor.
The movie is two hours long, not three. That's a
good thing. And Gunn says that my main goal was
to make parents spend less on babysitters, and then he says,

(14:24):
but I'll always try hard to cut away the fat,
and I've never worked as hard on the film as
it did on Superman. This is all good stuff right here.
So far we're doing just fine. So then Gunn talked
about how his Superman doesn't go the way of the
recent superhero films that have bombed at the box office.
So he says, well, it's different to how it used
to be. He says, up until Ironman, the only superheroes
that made money were Batman, Superman, Spider Man plus Xpin.

(14:46):
Then the visual effects improved and though people thought iron
Man was a s tier superhero of the Marvel universe,
he was one of the most complaining characters. Like the
look and the whole deal of him. Then it took
time to gun and really work with him too much,
but he looked cool with that. But now you have
going to do where those days are gone. It has
to be you make a movie that really grabs an audience.

(15:06):
And so they say that one way to do that
is with a ten minute scene of just Clark and
Lewis talking about geopolitics and whether Superman should have stopped
the war. Is exactly how to make a superhero movie
to engage adults adults. It's definitely the most unusual thing
we put in the movie. It's a film for the
age of endless discourse, for the difference of being that
people who disagree with each other here are willing to

(15:27):
discuss and even perhaps learn. So then he goes on
to say, yes, it's about politics, but on another level,
it's about morality. Do you ever kill no matter what,
which is what some man believes, or do you have
some balance? As Lewis believes, it's really about their relationship
and the way different opinions on basic moral beliefs can
tear to people apart. So the relationship that's gonna where

(15:48):
are they gonna go with it? Then he talks about
a couple of other things here, and then the reporter
here talks about President Trump, the immigrant situation and making
the point that Superman clearly is a refugee from another
place who came to the United States. So this writer
says that before you say Superman has gone woke, it's

(16:11):
all on Superman's lengthy history. So James Gunn says that
Superman is the story of America, an immigrant that comes
from other places and populated the country. But for me,
it's mostly a story about basic human kindness is of
value and it's something we have lost. And then it
asked if he considered how differently the film might play
in say New York or Kansas, where Kent grew up.

(16:32):
He says, it plays differently. Gun says, but it's all
about human kindness. And obviously there will be jerks out
there who are just not kind and will take it
as offensive just because it's about kindness. But screw them,
all right. And the reason he goes and this reporter
asks about Gun is because Gun and President Trump have
had words with each other. I guess it's on Twitter.

(16:53):
I'm not sure the whole thing was, but that shouldn't matter,
you know, Let's just get to the back to the
work of the movie. And so far everything was saying
before all this, and even when he talked about here
the politics here, about the fact that okay, being from
another place, it's where the question comes from from the reporter. Okay,

(17:16):
James Gun is not gonna be the one that decides,
you know what, maybe we don't have to go into
that round. We can use something like that. But of
course the question was asked the way it was asked.
So Jonathan Dean put James Gun in the spot so
he can go ahead and get a little political to
go in and start talking about immigrant families and all
that good stuff, because as far as I know, I

(17:37):
don't see where James Gunn in this particular interview was
going that route. It's because the reporter decided to go
ahead and pull this question out midway into the interview
Ala Matt Lauer, just to go ahead and get something
from James gun Because one of the things I guarantee
you that this Jonathan Newe had to do was like,
all right, you're not gonna do just the press j

(18:00):
at there, Jonathan, you know times of lund is saying, well, no,
you need to get something more out of him. We
need to sell some papers. God forbid, where AI is
going to go and just destroy us someday, So go
get something from him. So he holds that immigrant situation
question and uses Trump into the question as well, just

(18:21):
to get into something. That's what he wanted to do.
So this reporter, I blame him. He's the one that
decided to go and go this route because he wants
to go ahead and you know, make his publishers as
editor in chief happy, right, So that's what he did.
And James Gunn took debate and I'm sure he probably
didn't even think about it because he was in a
comfortable state. Talking about the movie. He talked about the door.

(18:42):
It was, this was and this interview is being crafted
and is kind of following the order of what questions
Jonathan Dean asked of James Gunn. Then I see where
this reporter was going, goes into the initial set and
then the political party mentioned with Lois and Clark. Okay,

(19:07):
that's fine. Again where James Gunn said it right there,
that's on his own, on his own accord, and I
was okay. So hearing that, Jonathan Deane thinks, okay, I
want to go ahead and then jump into this question.
After he talks about Crypto the dog. But we have
a dog in the movie, right, James Gunn changed the subject,
went talk about the dog an a fun, happy thing,

(19:28):
and then Jonathan Dean comes back to politics and drops
in Trump immigration, and James Gunn took debate. He did
understood why I get it. Okay, we know what was
going on there. And remember James Gunn has his own
past with certain things he has said that were very controversial.

(19:51):
You know, Disney was who was employer at the time,
fired him and then there was pressure to bring him back,
but then he left for DC and that was it.
It's like, that was all I was doing. But that's
the part where're like, hey, man, you know you've already
gotten yourself some backlash before on comments that you make,

(20:13):
So just tread lightly, man. I mean, this is where
you just come in and just like if somebody's gonna
have him go there and do this interview, just keep
it on what's going on here, and you know, find
the best way to answer it without you know, putting
foot in mouth. But you know, and I don't, And honestly,
I'll tell you, I don't think he took the question

(20:33):
and he put himself out there too badly. I think
that's the other part. He didn't go it's too crazy
on that's okay. And then he goes on and talk
about that Superman. This Suberman does seem to come at
a particular time when people are feeling a loss of
hope in other people's goodness. I'm telling a story about
a guy who's uniquely good and feels needed because there
is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures

(20:54):
being mean online. He goes on to say, and he's
laughing about this, saying that you know, and I included
myself in this. It is add infinatum. Millions of people
having tantrums online. How are we supposed to get anywhere
as a culture. We don't know what's real and that
is a really difficult place for the human brain to breathe.
If I could press a button to make the Internet disappear,
I consider it. And no, I don't make films to

(21:15):
change the world, but if a few people could just
be a bit nicer after this, it would make me happy.
I like that answer. I like what he's saying. I
agree with it. So I think he is trying to
go and turn it back around and make it where
this movie's constructive. Yeah, listen the way they set up
with the movie itself and certain things that Superman has

(21:35):
to do get involved into a war. I get it.
So it's part of the storyline. They brought it in
here understood, no problem there Again. I think this Jonathan
Dean caused James Gunn to say something that was gonna
get traction in the States because of the political clime
we got this divide. Do we still have Okay? And

(21:55):
you know the culturals like is changing. That just it's
not where we don't have, you know, freedom of speech.
It's just that we're realizing there were just certain things
that were going on with movies that if you decided
going to put the Kumbaya stuff, I call it, right,
check all the boxes kind of stuff. It's not a

(22:16):
matter of me saying, Okay, this should be in the movie.
It should not be in the movie. No, I'm just saying,
if people don't want in the movie, the dollars that
are going to spend on the movie is going to
tell you everything. And that's what happens. Stowe White for Disney.
You know, look at that. It took a hit because
Rachel Zegler said a lot of stuff out there, opened
her mouth, and that movie panned, and it was gonna

(22:40):
take a big hit anyway, because she said some certain
things when it comes to women and the creepiness of
Prince Charming and all that kind of stuff. You know,
when you're going to go that route the door certain
not even the dwarfs. It's like, all right, you're not
even these the real dwarves. You're using cgi like all
that right there just got people pretty upset and doesn't

(23:01):
do well for things. I mean, you know, you got
to think about, like what movies are you gonna have
that are gonna make money? They don't have certain things
like that, the kumbayak kind of stuff doesn't get in there.
And I mean, I think about all the movies that
we had, and look, there's certain movies that might have
certain components that you could talk about like you know,
but there's movies that had that all the time. And

(23:21):
like this year, I had more than my share of
movies that had a little bit of something that was
like all right, no whatever, but it didn't care Because
I'm still suspending this belief because like it's nothing like
all these movies are based on reality, but there is
a message sometimes of a narrative they want to get
and put out there. But I'm not worry about that.
I'm just enjoying a time of the movies. That's what
I want to do. But are you talking about internet

(23:42):
and social media? Yeah? I totally agree with that. And
he's old enough to remember what it was like not
having to deal with it. He also goes something to
say that I say, how in our divided world is
subman did actually turn up? We would argue against them,
shun him, call him a fraud, to kick him out.
And that's the thing too. You're gonna have this movie

(24:03):
come out a new generation of people watching it, and
are they gonna latch on because the other Supermans we
have have been a while. I mean, I'll put it
like this, to Henry Cavillman of Steel, it was like
a safe bet there was. They didn't really try to
chance it. They didn't do anything too extreme to it. Personally,

(24:26):
I don't think they did at all. It's just, you know,
it was like by the number Superman in my opinion
for a current day. But that's all it was. And
I do think that James Gunn did try to go
ahead and really put the great effort to go ahead
and make a really good Superman movie. And I think
he probably did a good job. And I heard people
talking about that it was so great. I can't wait

(24:48):
to watch it tomorrow. He goes another to say now
that when I was growing up, I thought of the
Big Three, Superman was the archetypal American superhero. That's what
Jonathan says, But then gun disagrees. His market research show
that people around the globe think of him more as
far more international, yet he has the homespun americanisms from

(25:08):
his Boycood in Kansas, but he remains an alien, just
like his creators felt like they were almost a century ago. Quote.
He is a hero for the world. The question is
how will the world take him? Well, I think it
is something to be said about him having an international
appeal that I agree with. But he has, but it's

(25:30):
more of something where there's an American kind of spirit
with the Superman character. That's what it comes down to.
But you know, it's open the interpretation. But what James
Gunn said was enough to get people all stirred up.
He goes on to NPR and talks about that, you know,
Superman wants to be us. We all want to be Superman.

(25:54):
The other thing talking about with the Superman movie is
that this Superman is very physically vulnerable. The movie starts
right off the bat with Superman losing a battle. He
looks really beat up, and it's not one of those
things where Kryptonized weakening him. He gets into a fight
and he can't win, and some Superman fans are we
gonna be like, what why is Superman losing a fight?

(26:15):
So the idea is where Superman is a superhero, but
you want to find out that people have very distinct
ideas of what these characters are supposed to be. A
lot of people want Superman to be able to punch
a planet and break in a half. Makes him being
in a world with other superheroes kind of irrelevant because
he's so powerful. I didn't want a Superman that can
make the Flash, Wonder Woman, Batman of Green Lantern irrelevant.
He's often portrayed as a god. I don't think our

(26:37):
Superman is a god. We want all to be Superman.
We want to fly, we want to shoot beams out
of our eyes, had super strength, to be able to
beat up anybody who comes at us. We go into
the movie wanted to be Superman, but at the end
of the movie realize that Superman wants to be us.
He wants to be a human being. That's his biggest desire.
A big difference from the Richard Donner one, because the

(26:57):
Superman character wanted to be human because of his love
for Lois Lane. Now I don't know if that translates
into this new or one, but we'll find out. There's
still spoilers. By the way, Like I said, I have
not watched this movie yet, but I will be watching
it tomorrow night. As I get to do this around
this time tomorrow, I will be in the theater and
after thirty minutes of promos, because the movie starts us

(27:18):
ten fifteen as I'm recording right now, almost eleven twenty,
the movie will party start and twenty four hours from
now I'll be in the theater watching. So there you go.
But after that time the interview, he has been staying
back from all that political talk. I noticed that too.
He has been talking about certain things when it comes to,

(27:39):
you know, what Superman bodies in this particular film. But
I noticed that after that times of the feature, everything
I'm trying to see so far, James Gunn has shied away.
So the last week he's kind of like kept himself
a distance from that. Here he is on the red
carpet at the premiere, and Variety decided to go and
ask him about it.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
You said, it's an immigrant story, it's a political movie.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Maga today is going nuts.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
What do you have to say to Mago? I have
anything else.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
I think this movie's for everybody. I don't have anything
to say to anybody, Like I'm not here to judge people,
you know, you know, I think this is a movie
about kindness, and I think that's something everyone can relate to.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
That's it. So he knew there was coming, and another
reporter decided to go the same route. Let's get James
Gun on the record one more time.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
But what.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
The reporters care about are selling their papers? Do they
care about promoting Superman? Probably not. They're not making a
dime off of it. So they wanted to go that
route and see they can get something for themselves. So
let's get James Gun, who's a bit of a lightning
rod and has said some things that have been controversial.
Let's get him on the record and say something else.
So after Times of London on the red carpet, let's

(28:55):
get James Gun one more time. He didn't take the bait,
but like I said, enough people were out there to
start talking about it, and you know, like the media
would do anyway, of course, they're gonna go ahead and
go dive into that. They're gonna go into that angle
of all places. They go after Dean Kane, who played

(29:16):
Superman and the Ventures a Little Superman. I never watched
that series, was never interested interested in it. And so
Dean Kine says, James coming in her mistake calling Torman
immigrant is going to hurt the box office. Well, he
should have not taken the bait of that particular. You

(29:36):
shouldn't have taken that bait, you know. So the backlash
is there. I'm not part of the backlash. Like I mean,
I heard about it. It stops. I bought my tickets
a month ago. Nothing's changing my mind from going away
from not watching that movie. I'm gonna go. I'm there,
I'm all in for it, and that's all I'm gonna

(29:58):
say about that apart from there. Now, As I said,
there have been good things to be said about the movie,
and I've seen good reviews and again Rotten Tomatoes has
a good score as I'm looking at once again ninety
five percent. Hey, it's fresh pretty much, so go for it.
I'm going for to go see it. I look forward

(30:19):
to it. And also, I mean, yeah, okay, I'm fine
with the fact you're gonna make him more vulnerable. Let
me see how they're gonna do with that. That's okay.
I'm not surprised by that. The Evening Standard in the
UK put a scathing review on Superman and in this
to give it two out of five stars. They call

(30:41):
Superman slight, nonsensical and only sporadically funny and without the
Marvel system. James Gunn has fluffed this movie. He's a
writer as well as a director. Presumably the level of
control says truly surprising how much of a message is.
With lazy plotting, weak character characterization, and little in the
way I spectacular action, the script's only the achievement is
to strip away any notion of Superman's formerly tumlins appeal

(31:03):
and make their character seem inconsequential. When they refer to
David corn Sweat, they say that he's like the James
Bond and in Your Majesty's Secret Service to George lazenbe character.
The one time James Bond character looks department brings little else.
Not that this is his fault. He has very little
to get his teeth into. Clark Kent is barely present.

(31:26):
I mean, there's no chance for corn Sweat to explort
an alter ego persona, and Superman is just to hell
of a lot dimmer than we are used to, merely
a well meaning jock type who doesn't want anyone to die,
yet try enough to also quite happily break off from
a battle with an never explained floating jellyfish monster in
the middle of the city to have a cup of

(31:46):
coffee and a light squabb with Lois. They say, he's
just a dude who like doesn't want any other dudes
to get hurt. He's the Joey of friends of superheroes,
which could have actually worked as an approach if this
were given full throtto. Super Bro a stonerish college dropout
who thinks he's punk rock and wants to scrap with
aliens and kiss some chicks. The Superman is so far

(32:09):
behind the machinations of everyone else that he almost almost
feels irrelevant. They say, well, they definitely did not like
this here at all. Now, what does this mean for
the DCU universe because DCEU. According to James Gunn, he
was asked about this by agn that each DCU movie,
from Superman to Clay Face to Sergeant Rock a clay

(32:30):
Face and Sergeant Rock the super Girl will be totally different,
just like how DC Comics does it. So when he
talks about the movie the influence of Superman, it's really
important to me that every project has its own stamp
on it. This movie is very different from the rated
R movie. We're making a bloody horror movie with Clay Face,
very different from the Sergeant Rocky Sergeant rock movie we're developing,

(32:51):
very different from the Supergirl, which is the space fantasy.
And he says what he lives about the DC comics
of the graphic novels is that they allowed the individual
artists writers to create their own projects, and they had
each their own voice, So we're always gonna get a
different feel. We're not gonna get the hoky, jokey Marvel

(33:12):
stuff with the good action at all. I guess that
kind of movie's not gonna happen anymore. I think the
days of how Marvel's done their their movies previously probably
not gonna be like that again. Who knows what they're
gonna do it now, but you know, hey, everything from
the First Ronment all the way the Avengers, you know,
Infinity War. I don't think we're gonna get another run

(33:32):
like that again, the dynasty of movies like that. I
don't know how they're gonna do, but we'll figure it out. Now.
There is a telling sign about what this DC universe
and what movies are gonna be putting out coming up
in the next couple of years. What it means about
Hollywood as a whole. Let's move on to a couple
of other stories that are coming up now that I
want to go and bring up before we go to
wrap things up, joeblow dot com talks about how to

(33:55):
fix Hollywood movie theaters into get with the program, and
end the story. They say that Hollywood studios have been
known over a decade. They've been competing for eyeballs with
professional sports, video games, and streaming services and entertainment experiences
cut into theatrical revenue without asking customers to venture into
a dark room with a bunch of strangers for two
to three hours. Their one hundred year old method of

(34:18):
the movie theater experience isn't going to succeed when the
gold posts have moved, they said. They're saying that movie
theaters don't understand their audience, so they pan the whole
thing and Nicole kidman sitting in the movie theater promoting
the AMC theaters and I never watched those ads, so
I don't get to see those regal We don't have
anything like that that to put those ads out there

(34:41):
for moviegoers to reassure their purchase of the film. Meanwhile,
they're not getting new people to come in, or other
people that wouldn't normally go to the movie theaters to
get them in the movie theater itself. To make the
point that saving Hollywood is not about getting butts in seats,
but delivering a curative visual event. Is no longer a

(35:01):
movie experience, a unique experience of the viewing public. Two
generations of potential moviegoers are now comfortable sitting on their
couch playing superior video games, watching YouTube TikTok. Out of
the creator economy has definitely make a dent on what
they're doing right now. Producers making a mistake to release

(35:21):
films on streaming services under the banner if you can't
beat them, join them. Talk about how the fact that
you know when you're trying to go and competing as Netflix.
They don't want to become Disney or Universe or Sony.
They just want to be like Amazon, where you just
visitor site regularly, knowing there must be something good there
if only the algorithm will unearth it. So they say
that Hollywood falls back on doing what it does best,

(35:43):
upping the spectacle. Come back to the cinema. You can
experience firsthand what it means to drive a F one
race car, witness the comical emotions of a teenage girl,
or Caryo de Pandora, or Cyberspace or Caribbean in the
seventeenth century, things like that. But the thing is that
whatevery movie is you going to put out there in
the theaters, it would just be better off if streaming

(36:04):
doesn't get the exclusive rights to them. I'll tell you.
Over the weekend, I didn't go see a movie because
I wasn't going to watch Jurassic Park and I didn't
gonna I'll actually know, I did watch Ballerina again. I
wanted to watch that a second time, so I had
last Friday night to go go there to watch that,
and I was fine, and then I saw I had
The State on Amazon Prime. You just say el but

(36:27):
John Cena pire Control Jonas. I thought it was a
very good movie, eighty million dollars a budget. I don't
know why that movie that shouldn't have gone out into
the theaters because I think it would have done really well.
I think it would have done really well in the theaters.
I mean, I don't know if people are gonna go
to see it, because there's just certain movies that a

(36:47):
certain budget, they're not gonna go see. But I think
there's something where of the middle ground of the movies
that you have out there, there's a lot of like
the foreign films, or there's a lot of independent films.
If you would put up and write for the right
in the front audience and give a chance, obviously people
will go see movies with the original feel to it. Okay,

(37:08):
Sinners with a very good movie earlier this year, and
people were all over The Amateur was a very good movie.
I mean, there's movies that don't have to be the
sequels or any of the kind of field to it,
but I'd mean they were very good. So I'm not
sure what people were thinking about it, but I get it.
Fifteen sixteen, seventeen dollars twenty dollars for a RPX ticket

(37:29):
over in a Miamivie theater or what thirty dollars forty
dollars or an IMAX ticket, Yeah, along with concession. That's
that's pricey. I get that part. And not a lot
of people are going to go buy into the subscription program.
I'm an. I mean, twenty six bucks is a little
bit up there, but I make the most of it
and also the time you go and do that and
not so much everybody else will do the same thing.

(37:50):
But that's okay. Speaking of streaming, we brought up the
fact of Netflix and Prime Video and Disney Plus and
all that. Well, HBO Max, we can call it HBO
Max again. Aha. That started today. A couple of things
you should know about. There was a story we talked
about a while back about the FTC looking to go

(38:11):
and do a change of rules called click to Cancel,
where businesses would have made it easy to cancel subscriptions
as it is to sign up, but an appeals court
has now struck them measured down. So that was originally
a planet was going to be done, and they took
it away. It was just good and get rid of

(38:31):
the septive subscription practices and all initiated from where there
was an agency that sued Amazon FTCC and Amazon Right
for do being customers for signing up for the Prime
service and then impeding them from canceling their enrollment. By
the way, I just had to get my Prime subscription
renewed one hundred and thirty nine bucks. But I use

(38:53):
it a lot, don't get me wrong. But right now,
nothing's going to happen, like you can find a way
to going cancer subscription, but you have to go through
a couple of shoots a ladder to get to that point.
From streaming, you go to cable. So now cable has
more cable channels that are gonna be put aside in
different companies or whatnot, or gonna be put up for sale.

(39:17):
It's very weird because what is it like the week
before the MTVu Music Video Video Music Awards, MTV is
gonna go back to being a music channel for a week.
I can't wait for that. They're gonna make it MTV
as it originally was with VJs, the whole nine for
a week. I can imagine how well that really plays out.
But they decide to go and do it like that,
even just it's just an event for just a week.

(39:39):
That's pretty cool to just check back in on that.
I think it'd be awesome because I don't watch the
MTV channels that are the music channels because they're all
on standard deaf. I don't have them in high deaf.
I don't think they even offer them a high deaf.
So to go back to MTV to watch it on
high def, I've finally go back to that channel. I
haven't been there in years. I mean, was pretty cool

(40:01):
for a while, but I'm not watching that over and
over and what are the eighty seasons in? No, I'm
not watching that lifetime a any And the History channels
are now considerably going up for sale. So even know
the Comcast is getting rid of most of their cable
TV channels, water Burgs, Discovery, we talk about how those
cable TV channels are all being put aside in their

(40:23):
own separate companies. So now there's a bank that's been
hired to shop the properties according to people familiar with
the companies, just like that, and who knows what they're
gonna be turned into and what will happen to that.
But then they can also be put where a private
equity firm could come in that might pick up these channels,
all these different cable channels, and then what will that

(40:44):
be What happens will be like radio, where less creativity
is brought in, less infrastructure, less effort, just milk as
much money as you can from it. That's what they're
gonna do pretty much. So I want to bring up
one radio store and a couple AI stories to wrap
things up a story from Ross on radio. Sean Ross

(41:06):
at radio inside dot com talking about how does radio
need more artists to overplay? So in country music you
have Morgan Wall, who has a lot of songs on
the charts right now after his new album which had
thirty seven songs on it.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
And.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
He asked the question about does radio need more artists
to overplay? Does having a Morgan Wall and Sabrina Carpenter
or Kendrick Lamar sung every twenty minutes, depending on your format,
convey the excitement of a hot artist or merely exposing
the lack of other hot artists. So he talk at
one radio station in San Jose, California, a country station

(41:46):
that has Morgan Wong and three other of his big
songs being played a lot, and the program director there
at Kabay in San Jose says that country radio has
not done enough to capitalize the event value of his
new album. On the pop radio side, the hit radio side,

(42:06):
researcher Matt Bailey talked about in his weekly Hit Moment
to report that one of the voices who thinks that
radio should be moving hits to the system faster is him.
He says that given the softness at the top of
the charts. It's sometimes surprising that these songs still need
to climb the charts symmetrically. So talk about how Somber,

(42:27):
who have some pretty good songs out there, put out
Undressed and Loving more and also back to friends to
get those songs out there more, because right now he's
a up andcoming artist, he's viral and there, he's got
some good songs out there and they're not getting played
on radio yet. I don't know it's that that it's
a ceiling that's in there. There's just certain people that

(42:48):
are no gun playball with radio, which is a bigor mistake.
And what Bailey does right now, he's trying to help
program directors differentiate between streaming phenomena and radio hits. And
that's the part where these program directors are, these regional
music directors. They're not willing to go ahead and take
a chance on songs that are doing very well on

(43:08):
streaming and try to make them radio hits because they
have to be absolutely positively bonifid hits before anything else.
So there's only certain artists are going to do that
with And then Ross also talked about that radio over
indulges an artist and gives you the sense that it
doesn't have anyone else to play. So when you had
Top forty music last year, a lot of different artists

(43:30):
that have come to play with with Sabritta Carpenter, Billie
Eilis Chapel Roone, all other albums coming out Top forty
to the right thing by making a first day event
of Benson Moon's American Heart. But you know his record
is not gonna go and get that much play because obviously,
besides beutle things, some many of the songs he's already
put out there, they're not getting that much traction. You know,

(43:51):
Sabrina Garbenter will have Man's Best Friend coming up. By
the way, I was thinking about this and I told
this to Luke Payton the other day after I talked
to him on the radio at WPHD in Philadelphia and
I talked about the movie stuff. Because after the fact
I actually brought up the question, I said, because we
brought up Sabrina Carvert. I forgot how that came up,
but I was curious what listeners would think about this.

(44:17):
You know, years ago we used to have the argument
about you know, which woman would you prefer to be with.
It's always like the choice of a blonde or brunette.
So you know, in the fifties you could have said,
was it Marilyn Monroe or her original persona as Norma Jean.

(44:37):
And then in the sixties, seventies and eighties we all
watched Gilgaz Island, So would you prefer Ginger or Marianne?
So I think that you can kind of play that
up once again, do you want Sabrina or Tape? Will
you prefer? Are you a suprenor are you more of
the Sabrina Carbet type, the blonde bombshell? Are you more

(44:59):
of the brunette?

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Right?

Speaker 2 (45:00):
You know, it's just a different look to her with
Tate mccrane, And that's a very hard question to ask
like that, that's a kind of a hard choice to
make personally, like both of them very much. So I
thought Sean Ross put a nice little point around there
about radio and the fact that they're not willing to
give chances to other artists and the other thing that
comes into play, which you haven't talked about much anyway,

(45:22):
But I've watched a lot of videos from Christian Robinson,
who writes for Billboard, especially about AI and certain areas
of music, because we're getting a lot of stories about
certain AI generated artists going on Spotify and other places
and getting them in any followers and songs that you
put up there, you know, just what you're getting on streaming.

(45:42):
You don't know if it's gonna be a human artist
or not. Some people are gonna get deceived by that
and that there are certain songs that go streaming that
you know. You look at the charts right now for
Spotify and or Apple Music and you see that there's
not much of a change in the top of the
charts in general because we're not they're at all. And
that's a big problem we have right now looking at

(46:04):
the top ten right now in music, which radio is
not gonna have the same kind of feel to it,
but you know, hey, it's what it is. Looking at
the difference right now of the charts currently, it's quite
off at the moment when it comes to what media
base is putting out there as the top forty, which
is what radio is kind of following along with right now,
and what is on the Spotify charts. We will always follow.

(46:27):
So in your top ten ten to one, don't say
you love Me from Gen one of the former BTS
members at number ten, Love Me not Raving Lnay at nine,
La plaina w sound over on the drums, eight, Your
Boy from the k Pop Demon soundtrack at seven, Birds
of a Feather at six BILLI olish that with a

(46:49):
spou Lady Got Got Bruder Mars at five Golden from
the K Pop Demon Hunters cast. This is about the
way the week of July third, so the new chart
hasn't come in yet. Manchild number three, Sabrinda Carpenter back
to Friends, Somber number two, Ordinary, Alex Warren number one,
and he's been sitting up there at number one for
a while, much like the chart in Top forty. So

(47:12):
in the top forty chart, Alex Warren is number one,
which is consistent with Spotify and Apple Music. I'm pretty sure.
Doci Anxiety is two, Benson Boom Sorry I'm here for
someone Else three, Rebulai and Lovina is four, Arena Gande
Twilight's On is five, Man Child, Subritta Carpenter is six,
Somber Undresses seven, AlSi zam At Sharon eight, Siza thirty

(47:34):
for thirty feature Kennick Lamar nine Drake Nokia ten. There
are some songs in there that shouldn't be in there
right now, should be recurring. But even in the stagnation
of the charts, which we can go back and talk
about it again then of the day, it's the same
thing as always where we're not getting new music out there.
I don't know what the record labels are not doing

(47:55):
anything about it. If we need to see a change
of how music gets promoted, something's gotta happen, because this
is really sad where at the end of the year
there's gonna be a lot of songs from twenty twenty four,
they're gonna be at the top of the charts. They're
gonna be in the year end list making it again
on the charts. Because there's nothing else why bar Song

(48:16):
or Lose Control or Beautiful Things are still charting today.
There's something wrong there. Those songs should not be in
the current rotation in streaming and radio altogether, the things
they shouldn't be anyways. Now, I missed this interview last
month with the Rap and Barrett Media brings us up

(48:38):
that Bob Pittman, you know, I like go and talk
about him, right. He was talking about AI and says
that with iHeartRadio, we're we remain committed to identifying opportunities
across our organization to operate more efficiently and take advantage
of new and evolowing technologies like programmatic and AI, which
you're critical to delivering short term results and long term
growth even in periods of economic uncertainty. And they're using

(49:03):
AI and technology to hit a target of one hundred
fifty million dollars in savings net savings in twenty twenty five, Well,
then the question is where are those savings are going
to be coming from? And according to Barrett Media, they're
you're saying, well, it's not going to be from software updates,
just through your repairs. A recent Axios article says that

(49:24):
AI can wipe out half of all white collar jobs.
So radio jobs might be going away, quite a few
of them. You don't know which ones are gonna be.
We'll figure it out. Y' also talk about the fact
of how since twenty twenty two, newspapers Washington Post, New
York Times, Wall Street Journal have lost fifty percent or
more of the traffic. An AD revenue also declines as well,

(49:46):
publishers being so upset with Google, the detech giant recently
launched a service called offer Wall to allow groups to
experiment with other means of monetization beyond traffic dependent options
like ads. It's the equivalent of, they say here of
putting a bandit on a wound that require surgery. And
also to talk about how AI tools are helping with
content creation. I know that for myself because when I

(50:07):
put out clips right, even put out the YouTube editions
of the program, like I get them out there really quick,
and I got captions, and I got certain ways to
get the programming all set together. It's just great stuff.
And also writing the descriptions of the program, because I
put a lot of input into what I put into
what is going to be written in there. So like

(50:28):
if you get a chance and you're reading on the
website for the episodes, put it like this, Okay, if
you're King of Podcasts dot com, if you click through
the logo, you go right to the program. And also
there's a menu right there where you can find broad podcasts.
Click through you'll see the full descriptions of what I
have and they're basically news stories you can also read
along with listening to the show every week. So they

(50:49):
make a point that a toos. AI tools are already
automating different parts of video production, broadcasts, roving, adding segments
based on trending topics, social media buzz, turning them around
for audiograms or videograms for social media are all done instantly.
And they make another point that says that anything that
has the power to steal your audience's time, attention, and

(51:09):
potentially your AD dollars is a competitive threat. So you
got to either work with it, understand how will disrupt
what you're doing, and stay ahead of the game. That's
one of the things you gotta also think about as well.
And speaking of AI, Perplexity, who has been getting a
lot of flag for you know, putting up other content
and allows lawsuits. Well, now they have their own AI

(51:29):
powered web browser called Comment, and they're going to go
up against Google Search as the primary avenue people will
use to find information online. Comment will be available to
subscribers of Perplexities two hundred dollars per month max plan,
as well as a small group of invitees or sign
up to a wait list. And also you'll see Comment

(51:50):
Assistant on that browser, a new AI agent for Perplexity
living in the web browser. Aimy of the road automate
routine tasks. Well, I will say this about that. And
I remember a gentleman I talk to from a Podcaster's
Rose series, Eric Ritter. He's the Digital Neighbor, he calls himself.
And one of the areas we talked about was the
fact that and he's an SEO expert. One of the

(52:14):
things we talked about specifically was the fact that with websites,
with search browsers, because of AI, the geminis at chativities
of the world, they're eventually, in about ten years going
to replace what Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge and all
these other web browsers are going to be. Just wait
for them. Come back next week for the Broadcasters podcast.

(52:37):
Because content is king, and the control of your content
is in your hands.

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