Meme Stock Surge Fizzles Out & Netflix Scores Massive NFL Deal

This episode focuses on the latest developments in financial markets and entertainment, particularly the fizzling of the meme stock rally and Netflix's new deal with the NFL.

1. Inflation rates showed slight improvement, offering a minor respite in economic pressures.
2. The meme stock phenomenon experienced a brief revival, driven by social media influences, before quickly dissipating.
3. Netflix has committed a substantial investment to stream NFL games, marking a significant strategy shift towards live sports.
4. The financial market remains cautiously optimistic, with potential rate cuts anticipated in the fall.
5. Consumer behaviors and media consumption are rapidly evolving, influencing major business strategies like those of Netflix and AMC.

1: Market Overview

Discussing recent economic indicators and their impact on consumer behavior. Briefly covers inflation and its effects on everyday expenses. Neil Freiman: "It's like when your flight is delayed, and just when you lose hope, they announce boarding."

2: Meme Stock Analysis

Exploration of the recent meme stock surge led by GameStop and AMC, and its impact on the stock market. Toby Howell: "A few Roaring Kitty posts are worth roughly $6.8 billion to GameStop."

3: Netflix and NFL Collaboration

Details on Netflix's new deal to broadcast NFL games, exploring the implications for streaming and live sports. Neil Freiman: "NFL is the biggest media property, and Netflix is catching the biggest fish in the streaming pond."

4: Broader Economic and Media Trends

Reflections on broader economic conditions and media consumption trends influencing market behaviors and business strategies. Toby Howell: "Netflix's move to live sports signifies a major shift in strategy, influenced by past successes with sports content."

1. Stay Informed: Regularly check financial news to understand market trends that could affect investments.
2. Diversify Investments: To mitigate risks during volatile market conditions, diversify your investment portfolio.
3. Explore New Media Options: With changing landscapes in media and entertainment, consider new content platforms for diverse entertainment choices.
4. Be Cautious with Trend-Based Investments: Be wary of investing based on social media trends as they are highly volatile.
5. Monitor Subscription Costs: As streaming services expand offerings, keep track of subscriptions to manage entertainment budgets effectively.

Episode 324: Neal and Toby recap the latest inflation report that shows its first promising sign of easing up but not quite time to celebrate. Then, AMC was able to leverage the meme stock rally to cut down its debt but sent its stock tumbling. Next, Netflix inks a deal to stream the coveted NFL Christmas Day games. Also, Neal runs through his numbers of overdose deaths, a study about the internet, and raw milk sales. Plus, a flood of fake science forces multiple scientific journals to retract its publications. Lastly, Francis Ford Coppola has been working on his latest film for the last 40 years and is ready to show it to the world at the Cannes Film Festival.

People

• Neil Freiman
• Toby Howell

Companies

• GameStop
• AMC
• Netflix
• NFL

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

• Dara Kasrashahi (interviewed in a related segment)

Content Warnings:

None

Robinhood
Is your money working as hard as it could be for your future? A decade ago, Robinhood changed the investment landscape when they pioneered commission free stock trading. Today, they continue to offer innovative products to help users build a better financial future, like iras, ETF's options for qualified traders, and much more. Take control of your financial future with Robinhood. Download the app or visit robinhood.com to learn more.

That's robinhood.com dot disclosures investing involves risk. Other fees may apply. Robinhood Financial, LLC member SIPC is a registered broker dealer. Good morning, brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman.

Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell. Today, bird flu is spreading through cattle, but sales of raw milk are soaring. What's up with that? Then inflation numbers came in yesterday. Are your trips to the grocery store and gas station getting more expensive?

We'll let you know. It's Thursday, May 16. Let's ride.

Neil Freiman
We had a special visitor in the studio yesterday, Toby. Yes, we did. Uber CEO Dara Kasrashahi was in town for Uber's big product event, and he stopped by Morning Brew Daily for an interview that will be released later this morning. I know it's cliche to say an interview was wide ranging, but this one really covered all the bases. We talked robo taxis and competition from Tesla, what it was like to clean up after Travis Kalanick.

His biggest regret while running Uber, and how they can get away with surge pricing while no one else can. Dara was a super insightful guy. I learned a lot from this episode, and I think you will, too. The episode drops at 10:00 a.m. Today eastern time.

Toby Howell
So after you're done with this one, have yourself a little coffee, respond to some emails, then toss on the bonus star episode wherever you listen or watch Morning Brew daily. Okay, new sponsor alert. Today's show is presented by Sage. Sage is not an herb, but a cloud accounting provider for small and medium sized businesses. They take all the annoying, time consuming manual processes that require time and money and automate them.

Neil Freiman
And they recently added AI into the mix to supercharge everything. Here's an example. You're a finance professional. You're staring down a mountain of invoices that need processing. It's gonna be annoying.

That's when Sage would come in. Sage AI automates routine tasks like that, and suddenly you're saving up to two days a month on closing your books. Two days. Sounds like 36 holes of golf to me. Of course that does, Toby.

But we're excited to partner up with Sage to help businesses flow. Visit sage.com morningbrew for more. You know that sound your dad makes when they sink down into your favorite chair? Kind of like a ugh. Well, that's the sound I imagine the economy is making right now after April's inflation numbers came in.

Toby Howell
I'm projecting that sound onto the economy because inflation actually eased up a little last month, providing us all with a slimmer of relief and hope that a cut in interest rates is coming sooner rather than later. The consumer price index, which is a closely watched basket of goods and services, rose on a monthly basis by 0.3% for March below SMH, which we like to see on a yearly basis. The CPI came in at 3.4%, which was in line with expectations. So, yeah, we're not doing victory laps, but I think my dad's hair sound is a little justified. Really?

Most people were just happy that this was the first reading in months that wasn't hotter than expected. You might have noticed a little relief rally yesterday in stocks as all three major indexes finished in the green. Neil, you're looking more relieved. Are you feeling more relieved? Oh, yeah.

Neil Freiman
So I have a different metaphor than your dad chair metaphor. It's like when your flight is delayed at the airport, 1 hour goes by, 2 hours go by, and you're like, I'm never getting on this plane, am I? And right when you lose all hope, they finally announced they're ready for boarding. And that wave of relief washes over you. And you did see that in the stock market yesterday, didn't just have a little relief rally.

All three stock indexes closed at a record high. The S and P rose over 1%. So this was investors breathing this sigh of relief because all three inflation reports, January, February, March, came in hotter than expected. And the question was, oh, my God, really? Like, are we not going to even get any interest rate cuts this year at all?

And is inflation going to be with us forever? And then finally, this was the first bit of good news of 2024. You first of all, you did steal my metaphor because you said, breathing a sigh of relief. So I'm saying there's only so many ways you can say relief. I know.

Toby Howell
But yes, there is still inflation around. So where is it coming from? A lot of the gains for the month were driven heavily by rises in the usual suspects, both shelter and energy. Rising rents, rising gas prices were partially offset, actually by falling prices for groceries. So mostly in those household staples like eggs and milk.

So that's generally where we're seeing still some of that price pressure, but then also some of that price relief. Yeah. So what is going to happen next? It looks like Fed chair Jerome Powell is not ready to cut rates at their next meeting this summer. It's going to take another few reports to make this trend into something that's more permanent because it could just be a blip on the radar.

Neil Freiman
Everything seems to be a blip on the radar, and the most important consumer price index inflation report is the next one. So that's what we're looking forward to is what's going to happen next month. It does appear like investors are piling in their bets that there will be a rate cut sometime in the fall, September or November. If you're Joe Biden, you're like, please let it be September because that's two months before the election and if they don't cut, then it'll be a little dicey. So that's what we're looking forward to this summer and the fall.

Toby Howell
Yeah, I guess the takeaway is that inflation still higher than normal, the Federal Reserve are very far away from, from declaring victory. Just to put it in perspective, this marks the 37th consecutive month with inflation above 3%. Remember, the Fed's goal is 2%, so we're clearly not there yet. Call it the last mile. That last percentage point is still something that the Fed is very concerned about.

So no victory lapse? No victory lapse. But it does appear that that soft landing is coming more into view. That soft landing means that bringing down inflation from its peak of 9.1% in 2022 back to normal levels without causing a major recession or major job losses does appear like we are perhaps on track. I know we've gone back and forth.

Neil Freiman
I have so much whiplash from saying, yes, we're going to have the soft landing. No, we're going to not going to have the soft landing. This report indicates that a soft landing is perhaps possible. So the major stock indexes all hit record highs yesterday. Could meme stocks extend their upward march after folk hero roaring kitty indicated he was back in action?

No. The meme stock rally fizzled out yesterday, with GameStop falling nearly 20% and AMC tumbling 16%. To be sure, these companies are still worth way more than they were before. Roaring Kitty posted his first tweet in three years on Sunday. AMC has risen 73% so far this week, and GameStop more than doubled its market cap from 5.3 billion on Friday to 12.1 billion currently.

So a few roaring kitty social media posts are worth roughly $6.8 billion to GameStop in case you were wondering, the question now is what comes next for these companies? At least for AMC, it's trying to capitalize on the stock surge by steadying its struggling business, which it's done before. During moments of meme stock mania, it reached a deal to swap about $164 million of its debt for new, newly issued stock, a move that will reduce its overall debt levels. Toby, has the dust settled on? This is the roaring kitty pop over.

Both companies are down big once again in pre market trading this morning. It's so interesting because AMC actually pulled the same strategy back in 2021 with the original meme stock rally. It is kind of a rescue that most companies in America can only dream of. Essentially what you're doing is injecting fresh cash into your company without really hurting your stock price too, too much. I mean, AMC's price did fall yesterday.

Toby Howell
And also the biggest thing is not adding more debt onto your balance sheet. So this is something that they sold. They, they did a debt for equity swap back in 2021. They're doing it again. And Bloomberg's Matt Levine wrote, I don't think this is a strategy you can really count on waiting for a meme stock rally to hit every time and then, and then offloading some of that debt.

But I will say that AMC is like their CEO has kind of maintained this relationship with retail investors. So it's not so much of an accident necessarily that it's always GameStop and AMC as the two meme stock. So even though, like, hope is not a strategy, as we like to say, they are capitalizing on the current moment, which I think is wise from them. Yeah. Do you think the CEO is just refreshing Twitter to see if roaring kitty tweets?

Neil Freiman
Because that's basically their financial strategy at this point, instead of getting people actually back in theaters. So how big was this meme stock mania of 2024? It may have been fleeting, but it does appear to have been somewhat sizable. Robinhood saw $5 billion in equities trading on volume on Tuesday, which was among the highest levels in the past twelve months. Still, this was nothing compared to January and February 2021.

GameStop reached a peak daily inflow of $88 million back then. And on Monday, which was maybe the peak of everything this week, after roaring Kitty tweeted just $16 million floated to GameStop. So much lower. But there was a considerable amount of fomo, and there was a lot of chatter on Wall street bets and other social media platforms about, you know, getting into this, getting into this rally before it fizzles, because inevitably, it does always fizzle. I think the biggest difference between this rally and 2021 was one.

Toby Howell
Yeah, you're right. The size, like GameStop, was up over 1000% in that rally in 2021. This time it's only up 100%. There felt to be more of a cultural movement behind the 2021 one. This was truly like a coming out party for retail investors.

Now, there's not same. There's not that same cultural oomph behind it. So it just felt different as well as, as you said, like the volumes were much smaller as well. Football is coming to yet another streaming platform because you know what they say, you can't spell Netflix without the NFL. Yep, the biggest league and the biggest streamer in America are teaming up to air the NFL's two Christmas day games this year.

Netflix is paying a pretty penny, about $75 million per game in a three year deal that will also include at least one holiday game in 2025 and 2026. You just have to laugh here a little, though, Neil. Netflix was the company that just a few years ago was staunchly against getting into live sports, saying it was too expensive and they'd be focusing more on sports adjacent content instead. But since then, they've sold out $5 billion to air the WWE and now have gone to the ratings altar that is the NFL. Do we like this move?

$75 million per game? Is it a good deal? I think they saw what happened with the Tom Brady roast and we're like, we just had football players talking on a random Sunday night, and people loved that and created this cultural moment. Maybe we should start showing NFL games themselves. But I do like the move.

Neil Freiman
I think you have to do it. NFL is the biggest media property by far, creates all those live moments that you can really sell advertisers on. And Netflix is obviously very bullish on their ad supported tier. And getting into the ad business, as you'll hear us talk later about today with Uber, every company eventually becomes an advertising company. Netflix is realizing this.

It's going after the NFL, which accounted for 93 of the top 100 tv broadcasts last year. There is no bigger fish in the entertainment pond than the NFL, and there's no bigger fish in the streaming pond than Netflix. So teaming up makes all too much sense. And it also feels like a good deal, because when you compare it to Peacock last year, remember, Peacock paid reportedly $110 million to air a single game, the exclusive rights to the AFC wildcard game on its service. That ended up being a pretty smashing success for them.

Toby Howell
Apparently it was the largest ever event for Internet usage in the US, it was responsible for 30% of all web traffic. So I do think they saw that. And, like, all right, it worked pretty well for them. Like, let's try it on our own services again. I said, I have to laugh in the intro because it's so funny.

Remember, Netflix's co CEO Ted Sarandos was literally last year saying, we aren't anti sports, we're pro profit. They were saying, the bidding war for these sporting properties are just insane. We could just make these sports adjacent content, which is like their drive to survive series and stuff like that. But now I think maybe they've seen the light, they've seen that other platforms can pull it off, and they want to get in on the action, too. One deal this may not be good for is consumers, because we're used to just flipping on the tv and watching the NFL on ABC, CB's, NBC, all these broadcasts, Fox, all these broadcast networks, and now this is.

Neil Freiman
The NFL is becoming, becoming a very splintered landscape. One person calculated that to watch every single NFL game next season, you are going to have to pay over $800. There's a game on Peacock. There's games on ESPN. Plus now there's games on Netflix.

Thursday night games are on Amazon Prime Video. This is becoming a very bifurcated market for the NFL and which. And it's very in opposition to what it used to be, which was throw it up on broadcast, get our. Get our product out to the masses. And now it's going to be splintered among all these streaming services.

And I think fans are quite upset about having to buy all these different streaming services to watch these games. And on the flip side, too, you add Netflix into the mix, means you have to take away something from someone else. So the media partners are also not happy. So there's definitely friction on both the fan side and on the media partner side. But $150 million?

Toby Howell
No, it's good for. Listen, the NFL wins. The NFL always wins. Now, hold on to whatever horse you're listening to this podcast with, because Neil's numbers is coming up next.

Hey, Neil, what's your favorite part of a road trip? Hmm, that's a tough one. Probably queuing up the perfect playlist before I hit the wide open road. What about you? Honestly, I like to kick back and play a video game.

As a passenger, of course. Really? Doesn't it get all glitchy and laggy? It can, but with at and t in car wifi, there's no worry about that. Basically, at and t hooks up your car with unlimited wifi so you can stay connected, stream video, blast that streaming playlist, or even catch up on work.

Neil Freiman
Oh, nice. Does it work in rural stretches? For sure. At and t actually covers more roads than any other carrier based on independent third party data. It even powers features like real time gps and voice assistant.

Toby Howell
And it works outside your car too, if you want to get a little tailgate action going or something. Sounds awesome. So where can I go to add some wi fi to my wheels? Head over to att.com incarwifi. That's att.com incar wifi.

Neil Freiman
Fun fact of the day according to Forbes, $84 trillion is expected to be transferred from the boomer generation to their adult children in the next two to three decades. The problem is, most people aren't having conversations around generational wealth to plan for the future. And another problem, a lot of people don't feel comfortable or equipped to talk about finances. Luckily, massmutual has been an industry leader in helping people secure their financial futures for over 170 years. Talk about legacy.

A massmutual financial professional can help you plan for both your short term and long term goals. This means planning for retirement and protection. Planning with life and disability insurance ready to ride? Start@massmutual.com planning that's massmutual.com planning.

Welcome back to Neil's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will hopefully expand your perspective on the world. My first number is a sign of hope in what has been a national nightmare. Overdose deaths in the US declined in 2023 for the first time in five years, according to preliminary data released yesterday, which is a step in the right direction toward combating the opioid crisis. Still, it's just a step. And the 107,500 overdose deaths last year mark the third year in a row that they've been over 100,000.

It's just a stunning number, considering that as recently as 2015, the tally was just half that. And in 1990, 8400 people died of a drug overdose. The main cause of overdoses now is fentanyl, which is made by mexican cartels and then trafficked over the border. Seven of every ten us overdose deaths in 2023 involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and their 2% decline last year brought down the overall numbers. Toby feels like progress, but a long way to go because this crisis is still raging.

Toby Howell
Yeah, I mean, it is progress because the last two declines came in 2018, and then the last one before that was 1990, when, yeah, you gave that number. It is just staggering how much it's growing from 8500 to over 100,000 opioid deaths state by state. It's a little all over the place still. Generally speaking, though, CDC data is showing that a lot more western states are dealing with rising deaths from overdoses while eastern states cool off. So it's almost like we're seeing this drug epidemic migrate across the country.

Yeah, we're seeing declines in some places. Alaska saw the highest increase. So there's no, there's no perfect through line, but that's generally, like, some of the trends that we're seeing. So what is anyone doing about this? Like, this is not good.

Neil Freiman
We need to fix this. So the Biden administration has pledged $167 billion to help this crisis. And they're buying all these opioid addiction medications and giving them to states to hand out to people. And then one of the biggest problems, obviously, is fentanyl coming across the border. The Senate passed this border, this bipartisan border bill to help stem the flow of fentanyl from Mexico to the United States.

That was blocked in the House. So that is one of the biggest, one of the biggest potential solutions that didn't get through Congress. So, you know, going to the border, because it does appear like this, drugs being trafficked from across the border is really fueling this crisis. So figuring that out will definitely help. Before revealing my second number, I'll pose the question.

Overall, do you think that going on the Internet is linked to positive well being or people feeling worse about their lives? The answer, which might surprise you, is that surfing the web might boost measures of well being. A huge global study carried out over 16 years found that Internet access and use is consistently associated with positive well being, which complicates the existing narrative that going online is bad for you. The study from the Oxford Internet Institute said that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences, and contentment with their social life compared to people who lacked Internet access. Why might this research be telling a different story than pretty much everything else you've heard about going on on the Internet?

There are three key differences. This study didn't focus on social media in particular, just the Internet. More broadly, it had participants from a 168, so very international in scope. Currently, more than 90% of data sets on the topic come from a handful of english speaking countries. And finally, this study looked at people aged 15 and up.

While most other Internet is the devil, research only cares about the impacts on young people. Toby, these scientists say the Internet could be good for you. Are you convinced? I think the main takeaway here is that it's more nuanced than you think, because you're right. Like a lot of people who are quoting a higher level of well being doesn't also mean that there are negative things that happen to them online.

Toby Howell
Like they're not mutually exclusive. It's not just your experience is entirely positive or entirely negative, it's somewhere in the middle of those. And then on the flip side, just because there's this documented rise in teen mental health crisis doesn't mean it's automatically, like, the Internet's fault. We've talked about this a lot on the show. You're right.

It's been more tied to social media. This is more the Internet broadly. So I do think this was a unique perspective, going more global, going more Internet based rather than social media based. And it was interesting to see, like, a new data point kind of entered in this conversation. Yeah, I mean, going on the Internet, I mean, you learn things.

Neil Freiman
You can meet people in communities that you never would have met before. I mean, I just feel like their conversation on the Internet always focuses on the harms. And of course we should talk about that. But I'm glad that the study injected, you know, into the conversation. The fact that the Internet has made our lives so much better in certain ways as well.

My final number has not been pasteurized. And that's because ever since bird flu was confirmed in us cattle on March 25, weekly sales of raw cow's milk has spiked up to 65%, compared with the same period a year ago. That jump comes despite advice from the FDA and CDC that raw milk is one of the riskiest foods people can consume because of the harmful germs it can contain. And that's not even factoring in bird flu, which has been found in 42 cattle herds in nine states. As of Monday, viral remnants of the flu have been detected in samples of milk sold in grocery stores.

But the FDA said this milk is safe to drink because it's been zapped by the hot pasteurization process. The same cannot be said for raw milk. And it's not yet clear whether the virus can be transmitted to people who consume milk that hasn't been treated with heat. So why are people drinking more raw milk? Scroll on social media, where there's been a ton of content circulating touting its benefits.

Health experts say these raw milk promoters have no evidence to back up their claims, but that only feeds the flames. Many people are gravitating to raw milk because it's a giant f you to. The experts, yeah, this is definitely fueled by wellness or conservative influencers. It's definitely not something where people don't understand the science, is that they do understand the science and are intentionally rejecting it because they've been told that they shouldn't do it. So it's definitely almost a center of a certain culture war at this point.

Toby Howell
I do just want to put it into perspective, though. Even though sales are on the rise, about 4100 units of raw cow's milk were sold the week of May 5, according to Nielsen IQ. Let's compare that to pasteurized milk. 66.5 million units of pasteurized cow's milk were sold. So this is still very much a niche product, although that niche product is growing.

Neil Freiman
It is crazy what pasteurization and milk regulation has done to overall public health, though. So in 1924, before milk standards were adopted, about 25% of all foodborne illnesses in the US were related to dairy consumption. And now it accounts for just 1% of such illnesses. So this milk regulation, pasteurization, treating milk and then, you know, having people drink it, has been one of the biggest public health successes over the last century. Remember, we ran a greatest invention of all time bracket earlier this year in conjunction with March Madison, and we put pasteurization in it and it made it to the elite eight, which was very surprising to me.

Toby Howell
But yes, it seems like in general, people are very much on board with pasteurization. There is a wave of fake studies flooding top scientific journals right now that is throwing the entire scientific community into a tizzy. This wide scale fraud is carried out by so called paper mills, which, for the right price, will list someone as an author of a fabricated paper. They submit the papers en masse, usually to a less prestigious journal, so they have a better chance of sneaking through their fake work. Why do these operations exist?

Citations are the currency in the world of academia because you gotta get your work into peer reviewed journals to win grants or promotions. So bad actors are incentivized to cheat the system, with paper mills happy to facilitate their deceit for a fee. The flood of fraud has already caused 1217 year old publisher from Hoboken to close 19 of its journals. And a Wall Street Journal investigation found countless other instances in the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry. Neil, this is a bad look for the science community as a whole.

Neil Freiman
It's an absolute crisis. Last year, the annual number of papers that were retracted by research journals top 10,000 for the first time. So this is a very widespread practice. These paper mills putting out these fraudulent papers messing with scientific research. You don't know what to trust.

You don't know what to trust. You don't. I don't know. I think we can trust the global Internet study that we just talked about. But it's really funny the way these guys do it, because they, I mean, it's not funny, but it is.

It's clever. What they do is they put these papers, these paper templates through synonym generators online. So you end up with these really goofy phrases like breast cancer becomes bosom peril, fluid dynamics becomes gooey stream. Artificial intelligence becomes counterfeit consciousness. So you can very much tell which are the fake papers and which aren't the fake papers.

But there's such a high flood of volume that you need to band together and fix and find. So it's just like the matter of volume. These paper mills are just flooding the market with these fraudulent papers with these really goofy languages. I never thought we'd heard the phrase gooey on the podcast again since our wendy's ad ended. But yes, fluid dynamics became GUI stream.

Toby Howell
Yes, AI and machine learning is kind of a double edged sword here because a lot of the community are coming together to leverage machine learning to spot these artificial papers, because it's happening in such wide, in such big swaths that you can actually run it through AI and say, like, where are these originating from? What patterns are you noticing? But on the other side, one publisher said generative AI has just handed paper mills a winning lottery ticket. You can just crank these fake papers out like, of course, chat GBT. I mean, students across America already are well aware of this, but you can use it to create very credible sounding studies and papers.

And so you can bet that these bad actors are leveraging AI to flood these journals with. With bogus papers. Finally, here's one of the most bizarre story about movies I can remember. Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary 85 year old director behind the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse now, is premiering a new film today at the Cannes Film Festival. And it's been a journey to get to this point.

Neil Freiman
And by that, I mean this movie has been in the works for more than 40 years and cost Coppola $120 million of his own money to make. The movie is called Megalopolis, and it's an ancient Rome inspired epic about an architect who hopes to rebuild a city following an apocalypse. But there's a mayor who stands in his way, and of course, this mayor has a daughter who falls in love with the architect. As you can imagine, the hype for a Coppola movie that took 40 years to make has reached obscene levels. And the anticipation has only grown because of the epic cast.

Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Lauren Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman. It's an a list. Still, whenever a couple of films movies, there's always behind the scene drama. And reports have emerged of absolute madness and mass resignations on the set of megalopolis. Toby, need a vibe check from you?

Is this going to be a masterpiece finale from an aging Hollywood giant or a monumental train wreck? I think it's going to be a train wreck, but I'm still happy that it got made. There should be train wrecks made. Still. One crew member did literally say it was like watching a train wreck unfold day after day, week after week, and knowing that everyone there had tried their hardest to help that train wreck be avoided.

Toby Howell
So there was definitely some tension here. Apparently, Coppola would sometimes disappear into his trailer for long stretches of the day, just smoking marijuana, just thinking it through. He's like, how can I tell you what Megalopolis looks like if I don't know what Megalopolis looks like? He is definitely a filmmaker cut from a different cloth and maybe a different era. He went big with this.

That's that. I'll just. You can't rush genius, I guess, after 40 years. I mean, this movie is so hyped. So the way he financed this is very interesting.

Neil Freiman
So he is making this movie with $120 million of his own money. I mean, he is rich, but that's a lot of money. So how did he get this movie? Well, apparently he built up a huge wine business that became the 13th largest wine business in the entire country. And then he sold that off and got a huge windfall and used that to make this passion project that he's been working on for more than four decades.

So who knew that your side hustle wine business would end up helping you make this movie that you've been dreamed of making for such a long time? Yeah, his dig was always, I don't want to make a Marvel movie. But a lot of people ended up comparing this to a Marvel movie just with, like, the level of special effects that needed to be applied. So. And early reactions have been a little mixed.

Toby Howell
Some people just call it the craziest movie they've ever seen. Others said, this is a coup de grace. This is his crowning achievement. So I will definitely be tuning in. But do you think he makes back his investment on this?

Neil Freiman
I do. I think it really depends on what happens today at the Cannes Film Festival? Like, what the reaction is? Because I think that'll create the word of mouth buzz that'll spread across the Internet. And I think that he just has to hope this is, this becomes a meme, and I think it might because the trailer is nuts.

Everyone should go watch the trailer, and I want them to make up their own mind. All right, let's wrap it up there. Hype for megalopolis myself. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful Thursday. If you want to leave any feedback on the show or share your picks for the PGA Championship, hit us up at our email.

Morning Brew Daily@morningbrew.com dot Toby, who's our sleeper pick this year? Okay, I'm going deep cut here. Dean Burmester. He is a South African who currently plays on the live tour, so maybe not a lot of people have heard of him. My master's pick was Corey Connors.

Toby Howell
This time it's all on Dean. And if he doesn't do well, you never heard this. All right. Yeah. The PJ's champion starts today, and we're pumped.

Neil Freiman
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Larissa Lamothe is our technical director.

Billy Menino is on audio, hair and makeup. Asked me to remind you to listen to the Dara interview later today. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

Toby Howell
Let's run it back tomorrow.