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The Town with Matthew Belloni

Will Smith’s Comeback and the Butts-in-Seats Star Ranking

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3847 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss Will Smith’s return to box office stardom after the success of ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ and if this marks the official return for Will Smith as one of Hollywood's most dependable theatrical movie stars. They then discuss which movie stars can reliably open an original movie in theaters, and whether directors are more bankable than actors (03:01). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about the NBA Finals ratings (25:18). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click this link: puck.news/thetown Email us your thoughts! [email protected] Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Lucas Shaw 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

Hey everyone, it's Matt here. Before you skip ahead, I wanted to remind you that if you like this

0:04.6

podcast, you'll probably love Puck, where I write a newsletter twice a week called What I'm Hearing.

0:09.9

It's got tons of inside analysis, tidbits about what's really going on in Hollywood. It's where I

0:14.8

break news and I go deeper on the biggest topics, exclusive stuff that we don't get into on the town.

0:20.0

It's all part of Puck, which is like a

0:21.6

digital magazine for plugged in people. It's got about a dozen real insiders doing exclusive

0:26.8

reporting and entertainment, media, sports, fashion, politics, and finance. If you're interested,

0:32.7

listeners of the town get a discount, actually. Just go to the description page of this episode or you can go to

0:38.3

puck.news slash the town to join puck or start a free trial now let's get on to the show

0:44.7

it is monday june 10th will smith is back if you miss the weekend box office numbers, Bad Boys Ride or Die, open to 56 million domestic,

0:58.3

105 million worldwide.

1:00.8

That U.S. number is down slightly from the previous installment of Bad Boys, and the weekend

1:05.8

overall was down domestically, about 40% from last year when a Transformers movie open.

1:11.9

But Bad Boys beat the $50 million tracking, a big defeat for me because I took the under.

1:17.9

And the movie supposedly only has a $100 million budget on the low end for action sequels.

1:23.1

Though I'm a bit skeptical of that number.

1:25.0

But still a big win for Sony.

1:26.5

And since this was Will Smith's

1:27.9

first movie since the slap, it is indeed a big validation of his enduring star power, despite

1:34.1

torpedoing his personal image and standing in the industry. He now seems to be in that

1:39.3

Tom Cruise territory, where we're not sure if he's a good guy, but in the right movie, we still want to see

1:44.9

him be a movie star. Also, don't underestimate that the movie targeted diverse audiences.

...

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