Apple’s ‘F1’ Win and Big Tech’s Streaming vs. Theaters Debate

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss the opening weekend box office performance of ‘F1,’ whether it should be considered a hit, and what this means for Apple’s interest in releasing movies in theaters. They also look at the rest of the tech streamers and discuss who is best positioned to release movies theatrically and, more importantly, who is most interested in doing so. Later, they discuss the disappointing opening weekend of 'Megan 2.0' and what this means for Blumhouse (02:20). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about what the most viewed show will be on Netflix this week (23:42). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠ Host: Matt BelloniGuest: Lucas Shaw Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie LopezTheme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you care about Hollywood, and I assume you do if you're listening to the town, you should really be getting the whole story about Hollywood.
0:06.2	That's what you get with Puck.
0:07.5	I'm a founding partner at Puck, and I write a newsletter called What I'm Hearing.
0:10.6	It's got exclusive news for insiders and analysis of the biggest stories.
0:14.9	Puck has a bunch of great journalists.
0:16.5	We just hired Kim Masters, who also covers Hollywood from the inside, plus media, sports, fashion,
0:21.7	politics, and finance. It's a must have for plugged-in people. Fans of the town get a
0:26.6	discount on the description page of this episode or at puck.news slash the town. Go further into
0:32.1	Hollywood by becoming a puck member today. It is Monday, June 30th.
0:38.9	On paper, this past weekend would have been an easy one to call in advance.
0:43.2	Big Budget star-driven car racing movie.
0:45.9	That's an original story and not a sequel or prequel or based on anything other than a
0:50.6	racing league that isn't very popular in this country versus a sequel to one of the
0:55.7	biggest and most well-received horror hits of a couple years ago yet the box office for f1
1:01.6	exceeded its low expectations with 55 million domestic and 144 million worldwide we'll get into
1:08.3	whether that's good or just so-so for Apple, which produced the
1:11.6	film and paid Warner Brothers to release it. But the number for Megan 2.0 was pretty clear.
1:17.5	10 million domestic way down from the 30 million opening weekend for the first Megan, a disaster
1:23.0	for Universal and Blumhouse, which thought they had a long-running franchise here.
1:27.4	So how did this happen?
1:28.5	And more importantly, what does it mean going forward?
1:31.5	Apple, obviously, the most interesting narrative here.
	...

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