How would Matt Remick react to the industry-jolting news that Netflix is buying Warner Bros. and HBO Max?
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, executive producers of the Emmy-winning Apple TV comedy “The Studio,” told Variety that they believe their fictional studio executive, played by Rogen in the series, would react with his gut instinct of dread fear.
“He’d be scared of it,” Rogen told Variety. “He would be terrified of it. I think he assumes that if you do well, they’re not going to sell off your company, your studio, to a tech company. But I guess he’d be proven wrong in this instance.”
Rogen and Goldberg were at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday evening for the 18th annual National Arts and Entertainment Awards handed out by the Los Angeles Press Club. Rogen and his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, are receiving the club’s Visionary Award for their charitable work.
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When pressed by Variety as to their personal reactions to the $82.7 billion deal that will marry the world’s dominant streamer with Hollywood’s single-largest studio and the HBO Max platform, Rogen said with sincerity: “Absolutely not.”
But Goldberg was game. “I don’t know. Who knows if it even happens,” he told Variety. “I think AMC should buy it,” he said, referring to the world’s largest exhibition chain and the fear in the film business that Netflix will significantly shrink the exhibition windows for Warner Bros. film releases.
“That’s my personal opinion. AMC should buy it all. I don’t know how, but they should. No one will see that coming,” Goldberg said. “That would be antithetical to Netflix.”
Goldberg later presented the club’s Visonary Award to the Rogens. He noted his long friendship and partnership with Seth Rogen runs so deep that the two have compared notes and shared their most intimate secrets. They’ve even sized up each other’s penises, Goldberg noted. “Twin penises,” Goldberg assured. Rogen confirmed the same when he and Miller Rogen took the stage.
“We appreciate your very generous and flexible definition of visionary,” Rogen told the crowd. In all seriousness, the pair discussed the origins of Hilarity for Charity after they were overwhelmed when Miller Rogen’s mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 55.
The couple thanked the journalists in the audience for their efforts to amplify the work of Hilarity for Charity and awareness of Alzheimer’s disease in general. “You’ve helped us reach millions who now understand that brain health is as fundamental as heart health,” Rogen said.
Later in the evening, honoree Paul Anka, one-upped Rogen and Goldberg with some vintage penis talk. Anka recalled how he started out as a kid at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas during the heyday of the Rat Pack. He recalled being brought into a Sin City steam room where he encountered Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. — all sitting on a marble slab, buck naked.
Anka recalled struggling with where to “make eye contact.” And then he added, “Frank Sinatra at the time weighed 120 pounds — and 20 pounds of it was his dick.”
