On today's special episode of The Excerpt podcast: This year, at the biggest movie premiere of 2023, Hollywood rolled out the pink carpet instead of the red one. And while Marvel didn’t make its usual splash for Disney, maybe The Little Mermaid did? And what about the breakout indie hit of the year The Sound of Freedom. Is going viral the secret sauce behind its success? Ralphie Aversa, host of USA TODAY’s "Entertain This!" joins The Excerpt to discuss some of the most talked about movies of this past year.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, December 28th, 2023, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. This year at the biggest movie Premiere of 2023, Hollywood rolled out the pink carpet instead of the red one. And while Marvel didn't make its usual splash for Disney, maybe the little Mermaid did? And what about the breakout Indie hit of the Year, the Sound of Freedom. Is going viral the secret sauce behind its success? Here to talk about some of the most talked about movies of the year is Ralphie Aversa, host of USA TODAY's EntertainThis. Thanks for being on The Excerpt Ralphie.

Ralphie Aversa:

Oh, my pleasure.

Dana Taylor:

So in 2023, Greta Gerwig became the first female director to helm a billion dollar grossing movie. What were some of the other big takeaways from Barbie?

Ralphie Aversa:

Well, Dana, first of all, star power is never a bad thing, right? It was an all-star cast that Greta had for this Barbie movie, headlined, of course, by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Familiarity certainly helps too. Who doesn't know what Barbie is, who Barbie is, right? I think the other big takeaway though, besides again, that enormous global box office number, is the fact that you can have something as seemingly superficial as Barbie, an IP that is so well known, and yet, as Greta brilliantly did in this film, you can in fact interweave bits of humanity and feminism and other notes that don't push people away, but rather bring everyone in.

Dana Taylor:

Oppenheimer was released on the same weekend as Barbie, an event that morphed into what some referred to as Barbenheimer. The movie has not yet been shown in Japan, but it's slated for a theater release in 2024. What's been some of the controversy surrounding this movie?

Ralphie Aversa:

As far as the "controversy" in Japan, I think it was just more of a sensitivity to the subject. I mean, we're talking about the person that this film is centered on. He's called the Father of the Atomic Bomb. Of course, Oppenheimer working with the Manhattan Project during World War II, the bombs that directly led to what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So I think any reasonable person could understand some sensitivity in Japan about the subject matter. That said, it seems to have been worked through. There is an indie distributor that has picked up the film, and it'll be shown on the big screen in Japan coming up in 2024.

Dana Taylor:

And then Chris Pratt led two of the top five Global Box Office hits in 2023. Guardians of the Galaxy wrapped up its Run with Marvel with Volume 3. It came in at four globally, but for me, the surprise hit of the year had to be the video game adaptation Super Mario Brothers Movie, which came in second behind Barbie. Did anyone have this movie on their Bingo card?

Ralphie Aversa:

We might've had it on the Bingo card. We maybe didn't have it right behind Barbie as far as Global Box Office numbers, especially after that 1993 Super Mario movie that is widely panned. Again, talking about star power, Chris Pratt and all-star cast lending their voices to this film. Again, talking about familiarity, and that's a note that when we chatted with Seth Rogen about this film he brought up. He obviously knew of Donkey Kong, the character that he voiced in this movie, knew of it and had played the game, but also loved the part of this film where they worked in Mario Kart and the Rainbow Track and the Banana Peels and everything else, because he remembered playing Mario Kart as a kid. And I think a lot of people Seth's age and maybe a little older, maybe a little younger also can relate to that and enjoyed seeing that on the big screen. So it's that familiarity. I think that really helped propel it up the box office statistics.

Dana Taylor:

So despite the success of Guardians, it does feel like Marvel's lost its mojo, and DC hasn't really found theirs. What's your take on how the superhero franchises fared this year?

Ralphie Aversa:

Our Kelly Lawler came out with a very interesting piece about Marvel and their rather rough 2023. I mean, let's just start like this. When you have the Head of Disney, Bob Iger coming out and saying that the brand has diluted itself, and the brand he's talking about is Marvel, Dana, that's probably not what you want. But then Kelly, I mean, right from the start of her article has almost like a punch list of things that have gone wrong. I want to just read a couple of them to you real quick. First of all, The Marvels, the follow up to 2019's Captain Marvel with Brie Larson, the franchise's worst ever opening Weekend, 47 million domestically, episodes of the 2022 Series, She-Hulk, I know we're going back a year here, but they reportedly cost more to make than an installment of the final season of Game of Thrones. Any which way you slice it, it was a very rough year for Marvel.

Dana Taylor:

And then there was a racist backlash against the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid. Film ended up bringing in nearly 570 million worldwide though. Did Disney get the last laugh on that one?

Ralphie Aversa:

The short answer is yes, but I think regardless of the Box Office number, and this was something that we heard from Halle when we spoke with her for the film, but also something we heard from Halle as we saw her on a number of red carpets over these past two award seasons, this was more than just a movie. This was more than just a remake. This was more than just a casting. I mean, Halle talked about quite a bit the fact that, I mean, not only was she honored to play this role of Ariel, but the fact that there were so many other young black girls reaching out to her, whether it was in person or through social media to say, hey, it's so nice to see myself in that role on that screen. And they really looked up to her in that way. I think it's a generational role for Halle. And look, it's great that it did incredible at the Box Office. I certainly don't want to discount that, but this movie meant more than any number that we could put on it.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. Some of those Box Office successes came against the backdrop of the Hollywood actors strike. In fact, the stars of Oppenheimer walked the red carpet in London the same day the SAG-AFTRA strike was called, and so they left the premiere. How did the strike affect film promotion?

Ralphie Aversa:

That was quite the scene, by the way, overseas. For Barbie, if we want to talk about the other part of the Barbenheimer double feature, a lot of that movie's press was done prior to the strike, anticipating it was going to be coming on. So they kind of almost shoehorned it in before the strike began. When we interviewed somebody who was in SAG-AFTRA, for example, I interviewed Idina Menzel. She had a new album that came out over the summer. Not only could I not ask her about any future works that she had going on under the SAG-AFTRA agreement, i.e., the movie she had with Adam Sandler for Netflix. I couldn't ask about Frozen or any past stuff either. So it really brought things to a halt. I just spoke with Kevin Hart. That's an interview that'll come out in a few weeks. That's a movie Lift on Netflix, was supposed to come out in August. Now it's not coming out until January 12th. So yeah, definitely put a halt and a delay on things.

Dana Taylor:

Glad to see that behind us now. Okay, so I want to talk about a couple of legends. Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, teaming up again for Killers of the Flower Moon with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, set 1920s, Oklahoma. It's a movie based on true events, right?

Ralphie Aversa:

It is. And it's also a movie that's gaining a lot of Oscar Buzz. Of course, we have the Golden Globe nominations out, and both of the aforementioned actors there have received Golden Globe nominations for their roles. Our film critic, Brian Truitt called it one of Scorsese's Best. I mean, that's saying something. Scorsese already has two of my favorite films in Casino and Goodfellas. So this is a movie that right off the bat when you see the names you're going to be drawn in. But it seems like the critics also are really, really enjoying it.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, and then we also have to talk about the biggest Indie film of the year, that Sound of Freedom. It became a controversial hit. How did that movie break out the way it did?

Ralphie Aversa:

Dana, it broke for a couple of different reasons. First of all, the subject matter. It's not something that we typically see in a Hollywood film and certainly a Hollywood film that does the type of numbers that this indie film did. So I think that grabbed people's attention, but then also some of the players involved. The movie was based on the true story of Tim Ballard, who was a Homeland security officer that is credited with saving a lot of children from child trafficking. And there's been some controversy around Tim. There was a Vice News article that came out that was very critical of one of his organizations.

Since then, we've seen a sexual abuse allegation levied against him as well. And then the star of the film, Jim Caviezel, he's a guy who has been on Steve Bannon's podcast and talked about theories that are prevalent within the world of QAnon, and of course QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory organization, I guess, or wing of the internet, however, which way you'd like to classify them. So that became a talking point as well. That said, the number that they did over this summer while they were up against the way movies like Indiana Jones was really incredible.

Dana Taylor:

So Taylor Swift and Beyonce also deserve a mention on the movie list wrap up of the year. How did they do?

Ralphie Aversa:

Well, for starters, they certainly helped to set a new distribution model, that's for sure. And they also helped to reset the bar of what we thought a concert film could do when it received a broad release like these two did. But specifically, of course, with Taylor, because Beyonce then kind of followed that model. They were released through AMC, the theaters.

Now, typically what happens is when you have a concert film like this, you go to a major studio and then the major studio handles the release and the streaming and all that. Taylor went to the major studios, didn't like what she was hearing. And so in typical Taylor fashion, she's done this so many times throughout her career. She kind of forged her own path. Beyonce, same thing, went to the major studios, didn't like it, saw what Taylor did with AMC, and it's worked out very well for both of them. And we'll have to see now moving forward, if this is a new model for Hollywood.

Dana Taylor:

All right, Ralphie, what should we look out for in 2024?

Ralphie Aversa:

Well, first of all, we have a lot of sequels. We have Deadpool. We have a new Twister movie that's coming out. We have Beverly Hills Cop, pretty excited about the return of Axel Foley, not going to lie. And then we have Wicked, Ariana Grande, a lot of talk around the production of that movie overseas. That's coming out later next year. I think one of the other really big buzzworthy releases of 2024 is going to be Joker: Folie a Deux with Joaquin Phoenix and of course, Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. Perhaps you also just saw the trailer for IF. That's the John Krasinski movie, Ryan Reynolds, one of the stars in that one, John's wife, Emily in it too. So a lot to look forward to on the silver screen in 2024.

Dana Taylor:

All right, Ralphie, thanks for joining us on The Excerpt.

Ralphie Aversa:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson with back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.