Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film TV and awards lovers.

I'm David Canfield.

I'm Richard Lawson.

And I'm Rebecca Ford.

Today on the show, we are taking a trip to the world of theater with Richard Lawson, our steady New York City guide, and making some predictions ahead of next week's Tony nominations.

We're also going to get into new seasons of The Last of Us and Hacks as they reach pivotal turning points, and specifically with hacks.

You could stick around for a great interview that Rebecca did with Hannah Einder,

who plays Ava. But first, there were some big news items over the weekend. One had to do with the

Oscars and a slew of rules changes that were all fascinated by in parsing. We're going to talk

more about those next week, because in case it was not obvious, we have a pretty packed show.

But we wanted to open this show with Ryan Coogler's

Sinners, which was a tremendous success story in its opening weekend. It kept beating out

projections and estimates all weekend long, finishing at a domestic box office total north of

$48 million. That is the biggest opening for an original film since COVID, beating out Jordan Peel's Nope.

And it earned the first A-cinema score for a horror film in 35 years.

It's a big hit with critics, including Richard, and seems poised to have a great theatrical run all spring.

I think we should start with just the how did this happen, guys, because it's pretty

amazing news for those of us who care about good, big, original movies.

Yeah, it's weird. It's almost like if you give a good filmmaker money and support, they might

make a good movie that people want to watch. Is that how that works? That sounds odd to me,

but go on. That sounds like a risky bed, Richard. I just don't know.

And not just a good filmmaker, a good filmmaker with also a proven commercial sensibility.

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