The Big Picture

Paramount Wins Warner Bros. Now What? Plus: ‘Scream 7,’ Heat 2,’ and ‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ With Matt Johnson!

February 27, 2026

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  • The likely Paramount/Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. is viewed negatively by industry insiders as a move that favors corporate synergy over creative risk-taking, potentially leading to job losses and a less diverse American film landscape. 
  • The casting of Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio in Michael Mann's *Heat 2* sets an extremely high ceiling for the film's quality, despite the inherent difficulty of recasting iconic roles from the original. 
  • The new *Scream 7* is considered the least successful entry in the franchise by the hosts due to its flat filmmaking, overly serious tone, and perceived attempt to undermine the previous installment by centering Sidney Prescott's return. 
  • Matt Johnson intentionally structured *Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie* to be most effective for audiences completely unfamiliar with the preceding web series and television show. 
  • The film's comedy and emotional core stem from playing adult characters as if they are prepubescent boys, leading to an exploration of the creators' own past 'edgelordism' and the nature of cultural taboos. 
  • The production relied heavily on clever editing and utilizing pre-existing footage from the web series to construct complex narrative elements like time travel and self-referential moments. 
  • Filmmaker Matt Johnson attributes the unique, often guerrilla-style aesthetic of his Toronto-based productions to necessity born from limited Canadian budgets, contrasting sharply with the complexities of working within the US studio system on projects like the Anthony Bourdain biopic 'Tony'. 
  • Johnson believes that maintaining a strong alliance with the cast is crucial for a first-time studio director to successfully navigate the system, as the crew is less likely to turn against the director if the actors support the creative vision. 
  • The successful theatrical run of *Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie* is directly tied to the potential production of Season 3 of the original series, and the previously shot, scrapped version of the movie will be repurposed as a double episode for that season. 

Segments

Warner Bros. Merger Fallout
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(00:01:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Netflix’s withdrawal from the Warner Bros. acquisition clears the path for Paramount/Skydance, signaling a potential negative outcome for creative risk-taking in Hollywood mergers.
  • Summary: Netflix backed out of the Warner Bros. bid because it was no longer financially attractive, confirming the Paramount/Skydance offer is likely to succeed. Studio mergers historically result in creative roadkill, favoring corporate synergies over artistic endeavors. The successful merger will halt the current successful run of Warner Brothers Films under Mike DeLuca and Pam Mamby.
Heat 2 Casting Confirmation
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(00:07:36)
  • Key Takeaway: Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio are confirmed for Michael Mann’s Heat 2, likely playing Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley, respectively.
  • Summary: The casting of Bale and DiCaprio is seen as achieving the highest possible ceiling for the sequel’s ensemble. The film’s structure, based on the novel, involves sequel elements for Chris (Vincent’s story) and prequel elements featuring young Neil and Vincent. The challenge remains casting a younger actor to play Chris’s successor, as the film must navigate recasting iconic roles similar to Mad Max: Fury Road.
Scream 7 Controversy and Review
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(00:17:18)
  • Key Takeaway: Scream 7 is the least favorite installment because it functions as a self-serious vigilante justice movie rather than a fun slasher, exacerbated by the controversial firing of Melissa Barrera.
  • Summary: The franchise soft-rebooted after Melissa Barrera was reportedly fired for political speech and Jenna Ortega left due to creative shifts, losing the dynamic of the new leads. The film is criticized for being flat, self-serious, and lacking the fun, meta-commentary of earlier entries, instead focusing on maudlin sentimentality and explicit jabs at Scream 6. The killers are revealed to be Ethan Embry’s character and Anna Camp’s character, who was obsessed with Sidney Prescott’s memoir.
Nirvanna Movie Praise Begins
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(00:50:11)
  • Key Takeaway: Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is an immediate cult classic that generates infectious, compounding laughter in communal theater viewings.
  • Summary: The film, an expansion of Johnson and Jay McCarroll’s web/TV series, succeeds as a great buddy comedy rooted in familiar pop culture references, making it accessible even without prior knowledge of the lore. The movie successfully blends the real, the metafictional, and the fictional, creating an experiential quality similar to early viewings of The Hangover. Adam Nayman notes the film carries significant local pride as a Canadian export succeeding against the backdrop of US cinema dominance.
Nirvanna’s Cult Status and Lore
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(00:55:40)
  • Key Takeaway: The film’s success is attributed to its ability to be immediately loved by newcomers despite its deep lore.
  • Summary: The movie successfully merges the real, metafictional, and fictional elements, allowing viewers unfamiliar with the web series or TV show to understand and enjoy it within 30 seconds. The project evolved from a web series to a television series and finally a feature film, following Matt Johnson’s previous work like BlackBerry. Johnson and co-writer Jay McCarroll have a long history of working with a small team on these projects.
Toronto Filmmaking Context
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(00:57:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Toronto filmmaking often involves running around without permission, contrasting with Hollywood’s approach to success.
  • Summary: Toronto cinema historically features low-budget, often illegal filmmaking about the city’s alienating nature, exemplified by films like Nobody Wave Goodbye and Going Down the Road. Matt Johnson is aware of this local iconography, using landmarks like the Rivoli nightclub and the CN Tower as props, fusing Mission Impossible and Jackass aesthetics. The film is interpreted as being about aging, where the characters try to erase progress by replicating their past styles.
Technical Style and Soulfulness
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(01:00:03)
  • Key Takeaway: The movie blends 2008 cultural artifacts with sincere themes of aging friendships despite its silliness.
  • Summary: Technical elements like fourth-wall breaks, whiteboard brainstorming, and slowed black-and-white flashbacks reference early YouTube culture. The film functions as a soulful exploration of looking back at long-term friendships in one’s early 40s, feeling genuine while remaining very silly. It felt unshackled by irony, presenting the characters simply getting into trouble at scale.
Filmmaker Escalation and Time Travel
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(01:03:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Johnson’s crew mirrors the characters’ rule-breaking, with the CN Tower stunt symbolizing an escalation in their ambition.
  • Summary: In past projects like Operation Avalanche, the filmmakers mirrored the characters’ actions, such as breaking into NASA and filming a handshake with Stanley Kubrick. The CN Tower breach represents a ’leveling up’ from sneaking into smaller offices, symbolizing the vertical integration of their project. The time travel element allows the film to explore how social mores have changed since 2008, featuring visual gags about figures no longer welcome in acceptable society.
Jay McCarroll’s Role and Early Work
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(01:08:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Jay McCarroll is the true protagonist whose musical success in the film’s alternate reality is retroactively successful in reality.
  • Summary: McCarroll, a real-life musician and composer, retrofits music he wrote in the past to portray his character becoming a pop star in the alternate timeline, with one song gaining millions of streams. Matt Johnson views the movie as being about Jay’s dilemma of being yoked to the relentless Matt character. The earlier film The Dirties is noted as a troubling exploration of aggressive male cinephilia, contrasting with Nirvanna’s more nostalgic approach.
Johnson’s Hollywood Trajectory
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(01:11:52)
  • Key Takeaway: Johnson is now ascending the Hollywood ladder with upcoming projects like an Anthony Bourdain biopic and a Magic the Gathering adaptation.
  • Summary: Johnson is moving toward mainstream Hollywood projects, including an A24 biopic about Anthony Bourdain and directing the Magic the Gathering card game adaptation. This contrasts with his previous work where his persona was heavily integrated into the comedy, raising questions about how he will adapt to prestige drama. Canadian filmmakers often face temptation toward Hollywood, exemplified by figures like Norman Jewison and Denis Villeneuve.
Canadian Identity and Cult Success
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(01:15:48)
  • Key Takeaway: The film successfully navigates its Torontonian identity, finding its audience in niche theaters across the US.
  • Summary: The shared cultural experience of watching Canadian hockey games collectively is cited as a powerful bonding moment. The movie is designed to be an instant cult classic, finding its audience in local community theaters across the US, evidenced by high Letterboxd ratings. The raccoon encounter is highlighted as the most ‘Torontonian’ moment, drawing parallels to Scott Pilgrim as the last time Toronto was globally ‘shoved down the throat’ of audiences.
Why Johnson Made the Movie
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(01:21:23)
  • Key Takeaway: Johnson felt compelled to make the movie immediately due to ‘gate-closing panic’ regarding the opportunity to make a completely personal, low-resource film in Toronto.
  • Summary: After BlackBerry’s success, Johnson felt the fear of missing the last chance to make a film entirely with friends in Toronto under his own control. He felt no novelty in pursuing larger Canadian opportunities, prioritizing the personal project over waiting for Hollywood chances. The film took two years to make, longer than the anticipated two and a half months, and was financed entirely by Canadian sources.
Intellectualizing the Silly Process
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(01:27:30)
  • Key Takeaway: The writing process feels like remembering a shared dream rather than leading with clever intellectual constructs.
  • Summary: Johnson asserts that the writing process involves his friends trying to recall the same dream, where ideas like time travel to 2008 and Jay becoming famous feel inherently ‘right.’ He views movies as a new form of religious language, where characters quote film references like scripture, referencing the Star Trek episode ‘Dharmok and Jalat at Tanagra.’ The feeling of ‘That’s true’ when watching a film is the highest compliment, representing a synchronicity where the fictional world touches reality.
Filming Complex Stunts and Fair Use
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(01:41:46)
  • Key Takeaway: The complex time-looping sequences were achieved primarily through clever editing using pre-existing archival footage, not just special effects.
  • Summary: The editors built the entire story backward from a one-minute clip showing the characters seeing their younger selves, which resolved thematic questions about needing fuel for the time machine. Johnson’s lawyer specializes in fair use, requiring the team to create coherent arguments justifying every piece of copyrighted material before shooting. They have never received pushback from copyright holders for any of their films, including BlackBerry.
Street Casting and Scene Difficulty
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(01:52:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Shooting a specific scene involving climbing a tower and interacting with a background extra proved extremely difficult, requiring 20 takes with 20 different people before succeeding.
  • Summary: A scene involving the speaker covered in climbing ropes while pushing a wheelbarrow of extension cords was one of the hardest to shoot, taking 20 attempts to capture correctly. The successful extra, whom the speaker mistook for someone from Brazil, was found through street casting, leveraging Toronto’s population of travelers. The interaction needed to be completed within 30 seconds to maintain realism.
Comic Minds and Street Casting
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(01:53:48)
  • Key Takeaway: The ability to execute specific types of unscripted, experiential comedy, exemplified by figures like Tom Green and Sacha Baron Cohen, requires a rare breed of comic mind.
  • Summary: The discussion referenced Tom Green and the concept of ‘wonder shows’ as examples of a specific comedic style that relies on real-world interaction. This style is closely related to the expertise Sacha Baron Cohen demonstrates in his work. The success of these moments often hinges on finding the right person in the right place at the right time.
Hollywood System vs. Personal Vision
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(01:54:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Filmmaking success hinges on the creator’s genuine enthusiasm being transferable to others, and the process of pitching to strangers in Hollywood feels identical to pitching friends on a web series.
  • Summary: Filmmakers who achieve critical acclaim often face the system where studios try to funnel them into existing projects, regardless of fit. Johnson views filmmaking as a constant process of transferring enthusiasm, noting that pitching to strangers in Hollywood is fundamentally the same as pitching his collaborators on his web series. He has never had a pitch he deeply wanted to make fail, suggesting his focused approach self-selects for studios interested in his particular style.
Contrasting Production Environments
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(01:57:22)
  • Key Takeaway: Working on a US studio film without his usual Canadian crew felt like making a movie on another planet due to cultural differences, such as Americans not removing shoes indoors, and the sheer scale of the professional crew.
  • Summary: Making the Anthony Bourdain biopic ‘Tony’ with actor Dominic Sessa was an extremely personal project, but shooting outside of his established Canadian system was complicated and difficult. The difference between the two environments was stark, characterized by a lack of Canadian friends on set and working with a massive crew where every crew member knew more about filmmaking than he did. Johnson suggests that the cultural difference is partly explained by a perceived difference in politesse between Toronto residents and New Yorkers.
Director vs. Actor Influence on Set
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(02:02:01)
  • Key Takeaway: The cast’s belief in the director’s vision is more critical than the director’s own conviction when facing a large studio crew, because actors are viewed as the ‘magic people’ whom the crew will never turn against.
  • Summary: Actors are considered the ‘holy few’ on set, possessing a magic that the crew must support, meaning the director is ‘dead’ if the cast is uncomfortable with their differing approach. If the director and cast are aligned, they can force the production to operate at a specific pace, creating a supportive environment for unconventional methods. Conversely, if the cast resists, the director risks never making another movie.
Auteur Status and Visual Style
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(02:02:58)
  • Key Takeaway: Johnson rejects the label of ‘auteur’ despite his consistent visual style, crediting his recognizable cinematic ‘vibe’ to the shared worldview of his long-time cinematographer and editor.
  • Summary: Johnson does not see himself as an auteur, attributing his consistent look across different projects to the necessity of using ‘busted Canadian production techniques’ due to budget constraints. However, his films possess a recognizable visual connectivity, including cutting style and camera movement, which he credits to his cinematographer Jared Rabb and editor Kurt Lobb. This team shares the same worldview regarding humor and cinematic preferences, making their collaborative output instantly identifiable.
Future Projects and Past Attempts
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(02:04:38)
  • Key Takeaway: The next season of Nirvanna the Band the Show hinges on the current film’s theatrical success, and the movie audiences saw is actually the second draft, as the first attempt was shot in the US as a Confederacy of Dunces style narrative.
  • Summary: Season 3 of Nirvanna the Band the Show will be released if the movie continues its current theatrical performance, likely licensed by the network that picks up the first two seasons. The movie currently in theaters is the second draft; the first version, shot in the US with a Confederacy of Dunces approach, was deemed too much like television and will instead be adapted into a double episode for Season 3. Johnson is most excited about making the Magic: The Gathering movie, fulfilling a childhood dream.
Cinephilia and Documentary Influence
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(02:09:05)
  • Key Takeaway: Filmmaking often diminishes a director’s curiosity for new cinema, but Johnson found inspiration in the documentary Streetwise to steal its aesthetic for his own production.
  • Summary: Johnson admits that making movies makes it difficult to maintain the same curiosity for new cinema that he had as a child. The last film that profoundly impressed him was the documentary Streetwise, which he watched repeatedly to emulate its aesthetic. This aesthetic involved shooting wide shots from far away while action occurred over wireless microphones, essentially letting whatever happened in public be captured naturally.