Commercial Vs. Arthouse, Going Marvel, and Notes From Spielberg With ‘Hamnet’ Director Chloé Zhao

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Live from Los Angeles, Matt is joined by director Chloe Zhao ('Hamnet') to discuss what she learned from Steven Spielberg producing her movie, how she developed her visual style, directing a Marvel movie, casting ‘Hamnet’, the COVID Oscars, and her plans to work in anime (00:41). Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for ‘Zootopia 2’ (21:45). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetown@spotify.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Chloe Zhao Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It is Friday, November 28th. If you don't know Chloe Zhao, she's the Oscar-winning writer
0:05.3	director of Nomad Land. She also made The Writernal. She's working on a Buffy reboot. And she also
0:10.8	made Hamlet about William Shakespeare and his family and the tragedy that led him to write
0:15.2	Hamlet. It's very good. One of the front runners in this year's Oscar race. We recorded this
0:19.8	conversation at Puck's Stories of the Season Awards event earlier this month.
0:23.4	It was very fun.
0:24.5	We talked about her unique style, how she casts her movies,
0:27.5	the dance parties she has on set.
0:29.3	She called me spicy at one point.
0:31.2	It's a fun chat.
0:32.0	So today it's Chloe Zhao.
0:33.9	From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.
0:36.4	I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.
0:43.7	Okay, this is going to be fun.
0:45.3	I have heard you are fun.
0:50.8	You do very serious interviews and you make very serious movies, but I have heard that you are fun.
0:52.8	I have heard that Europe is spicy. You can say jerk. It's okay.
0:58.2	Spicy is great. Spice is okay, yes. Well, thank you for doing this. Thank you for coming. The film is
1:03.6	excellent. And I just wanted to start with getting a sense of some of your influences because
1:09.9	you have a very distinct visual style in your
1:12.2	filmmaking and you know when you are watching one of your movies if it's on TV and you're in the
1:18.2	room you can kind of tell so where did you develop that that sort of emotional and kind of contemplative
	...

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