Listen in as The Ankler team and industry insiders break down Hollywood’s latest business headlines, power struggles and trends shaping the future of entertainm...
Tales From the ’90s: Before ‘Wicked,’ Winnie Holzman’s ‘My So-Called Life’ Changed TV
Richard Rushfield sits down with Winnie Holzman, creator of the beloved but short-lived teen drama My So-Called Life, which ran for one 19-episode season from 1994-95 and later became a cross-generational cult hit. The show that launched Claire Danes and Jared Leto also captured adolescent angst onscreen in a totally new way — “School is a battlefield for your heart,” anyone? — that made ABC execs “deeply nervous,” says Holzman, though she was fiercely protected by her EPs and mentors, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick. A student of poetry and the Stanislavski system, Holzman, in a candid, hilarious and nostalgic conversation, unpacks the emotion and humor that propelled her through multiple 1990s TV successes to the Broadway hit Wicked (she wrote the book of the musical) and its two-part film adaptation, whose first installment is in the Oscar hunt.
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1:07:15
Joe Rogan Helped Trump Win. Now He’s Conquered Comedy
Pro-free speech, anti-trans, anti a lot of things, the standup comedians who made their bones on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast — from Theo Von to notorious Trump rally opener Tony Hinchcliffe — are rewriting how big comics can get without movies and TV. Ankler contributor Lachlan Cartwright joins Sean McNulty to discuss why Gen Z loves these guys and how these comics’ reps are building multi-million-dollar constellations around these dark stars. Plus, Elaine Low, Richard Rushfield and Sean explore WBD’s “enhanced strategic flexibility” as studios decide now is finally the time to “see what we can do with our cable networks.”
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37:45
Tales From the ’90s: ‘Last Action Hero’ Screenwriters Tell All
In this new Ankler series, Hollywood Stories, we are starting with wild untold showbiz tales from the '90s. For our debut episode, Richard Rushfield sits down with Adam Leff and Zak Penn, the original screenwriters behind one of film's most iconic flops, Last Action Hero. Speaking publicly together for the first time about the screenplay they sold when they were just out of college 30 years ago, they recall the highs — a heady bidding war, a yes from megastar Arnold Schwarzenegger — and the cascading humiliations of the misbegotten project, which became a superlatively excessive and lousy product of the bloated Hollywood machine it was originally meant to parody.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler or apply to The Ladder, a new members-only hub for early career entertainment professionals.
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1:21:46
HBO & the Harry Potter Gamble
What is HBO heading into 2025? A major prestige cabler that can attract any talent it wants? An empire in decline? A little bit of both? Series Business writer Manori Ravindran was at the intimate London gathering where HBO chief Casey Bloys revealed plans for a Harry Potter series, and joins Elaine Low and Richard Rushfield to talk the storied brand’s changed TV buying mandate, new frugality and if it needs a megahit to restore luster. Speaking of! Manori explains the new trick for selling series and getting them made: international co-productions, the kind of deal used on shows from The Day of the Jackal to The Night Manager.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler or apply to The Ladder, a new members-only hub for early career entertainment professionals.
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32:08
AI Stole My Scripts: Rage as Big Tech Takes Without Asking
When The Good Wife co-creator Robert King saw that 139,000 produced TV and movie scripts — including his — were used for AI training, it “personalized” the AI issue for him. “There’s something very offensive of someone just walking into your house, checking into your computer, grabbing everything and saying, Well, it’s for the better good of training,” says King, who joins Elaine Low to discuss writers’ reaction, why studios must take action and no one should believe Big Tech’s assurances. Plus: Katey Rich joins Sean McNulty, Richard Rushfield and Elaine to game the Oscars race as it now stands, post-#Glicked.
Transcript here. For more entertainment news, subscribe to The Ankler or apply to The Ladder, a new members-only hub for early career entertainment professionals.
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Listen in as The Ankler team and industry insiders break down Hollywood’s latest business headlines, power struggles and trends shaping the future of entertainment.
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