The Week Unwrapped - with Olly Mann
398. Ageing Japan, UK debt, and the Mattel Cinematic Universe
What does Japan's ever-growing proportion of pensioners mean for the future? Why is the UK's national debt set to treble? And is Polly Pocket the next Barbie? Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Jamie Timson, Abdulwahab Tahhan and Leaf Arbuthnot.
It's the weekending Friday the 20th of September, and this is the Week Unwrapped. In the past seven days, we've seen exploding pagers and walkie talkies killing more than 30 people in Lebanon, the US Security Service preventing a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the death of the Jackson 5's Tito Jackson at the age of 70. You can read all you need to know about everything that matters in the Week magazine, but we're here to bring you some stories that passed under the radar this week. Big news, not making headlines right now, but with repercussions for all our lives. I'm Oli Mann, and let's unwrap the week. And joining me today from the week's digital team is Jamie Timson from the Week magazine, Leaf Our Buff Nut, and from Hong Kong refugee podcaster turned lecturer, Abdul Wahab. Tahan is back. Hello, everybody. Hi. Hello. You are uniquely, I would say, Leaf, excited for Autumn. You were just telling me. Yeah. I'm really excited. I'm trying to embrace the seasons because I find the approach of winter quite depressing. And in order to kind of reverse this, I'm trying to embrace Autumn, and so I'm hosting an Autumn festival tomorrow at home with some of my friends. That's the opposite of nominative determinism, isn't it, because Autumn is where leafs die. Yeah, it's true. And I do get a lot of tedious autumn jokes as well. I mean, a few years ago by, because people, I guess, seem to have reaction, but I'm looking forward to eating autumnal food and watching an autumnal film tomorrow. Oh, what's your go-to, what's your go-to autumnal film? Well, I actually, we haven't actually fully decided, but we were thinking maybe like the social network, you want maybe something that's set in New England, that's quite autumnally. Can I suggest when Harry met Sally, that's my go-to autumn film? That's my go-to autumn. I think that's autumnal. Yeah. Does autumn feel the same in Hong Kong? Oh, it feels awesome because we have the mid-autumn day, which is a public holiday, where people just eat a lot of moon cakes, which is a cake with kind of egg yolk inside it and lots of different varieties. So I've been having a lot of moon cakes recently. Amazing. The pumpkin spice latte of Hong Kong, evidently. Abdul, you're up first. What do you think this week should be remembered for? There is a great power surge in Japan. At work in their confectionery store, Masayuki and his son, Shidouki Kineta, are the third and fourth generations of a family business that's been in the village of Nanmoku for 140 years. There used to be about 40 shops along the street. Now there are only four businesses left, everything else closed, and there are no young people or children. Al Jazeera reporting from the kitchen of Masayuki, reflecting on how population has been shrinking in his village, Abdul. What's the story? The story is that this Monday, Japan celebrated respect for the aged day, which is a time for people to reflect upon the contribution of elder generation that have made to society and family. But this time, the government has also released statistics of the number of elderly people in Japan. And it's really shocking because Japan's elderly population has reached a record of our $36 million, which is according for over 29% of the total population, 29% of the population are now over 65 years old. And the population is in decline since 2008, which means by the end of 2050, it is projected that one in three Japanese citizens will be over 65 years old. Now compare that to the fertility rate, currently standing at 1.3 children per woman, which is below the 2.1 replacement rate. So the future doesn't look very bright. Yeah. And just, I mean, we have talked about aging populations across the world before, but for those who are new to this conversation, just outline for us, Abdul, why that's a problem. I mean, it's not just a case of there aren't younger people to replenish jobs or that there aren't people to care for the elderly. There's a whole range of issues that come with it. There are a number of issues, but merely it's economical issues. Japan spent around 12% of its GDP on health care and welfare. And this is expected to go up nearly 60% by the end of 2050. By 2040, for example, Japan expected to have only 1.5 workers per retiree is also the challenges that's faced the workplace. But currently in Japan, the number of people working over 65 is over 9 million people. While in the UK, just to compare, it's less than 1.5 million people. So these people are going to retire and no one's going to replace them. And Leaf, we have discussed this before. If the trajectory is getting worse, how come? I mean, how come nothing's being done about this? Well, there are increasing attempts in Japan and also in other countries, not all other countries, but some other countries that are facing this population issue to basically throw money at the problem in the hope that maybe if you support particularly women and families financially, then they'll be more incentivized to have more children. But the evidence is really patchy on the success of those schemes. So Hungary has had some success with it. But then I'm not sure that all countries would want to emulate Hungary, because even though it's been throwing money at mothers and families, it's also been very rigid in its conception of what a good family is, namely excluding gay people from that picture. And so it looks like in a lot of countries, Norway, Sweden, even when you put a lot of money into the system for family creation, the fertility rate doesn't necessarily climb. And it ends up being a very, very expensive, per child way of trying to address this problem. So my view is that there's something deeper than financial going on here and that it's a cultural question, and that's a massive conversation to have. And it's quite a difficult one. And culture change is really difficult. I mean, the money bundling is an interesting concept, isn't it, Jamie? You were sharing just before we recorded that you're about to become a dad yourself. Congratulations. Would you have got on it any sooner if the government had bunged you 50 grand? You'd have to speak to my lawyers about that first, I think. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one. I think basically there are two ways that you deal with this. Any country deals with it is that you either keep your population healthier and working for longer or you have large-scale immigration, but it's a difficult one to discuss. I think what's interesting is, as Elise says about the cultural aspect of it, it doesn't look like it's going to be reversed really any time soon. A kind of better education and independence mean women have lost their obligation to reproduce. That's what Sarah Harpoo's professor of gerontology at Oxford University said. We have an entire regional block and she's talking about Europe that for quite a long time has had a very good health and economics and education. And that's causing this cultural shift. So really, from my perspective, the answers are people working longer or we get more people into the country. Or just suffering the economic consequences, but maybe that's good for the planet. I mean, we talk all the time as well, Jamie, about how we are all using too many resources. I mean, is it such a terrible thing just because it's bad for your national economy? It might be good for the world to have fewer people. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly, I guess, a Malthusian argument there to be made about whether a population can continue to increase. I do think if we're talking about immigration or if we're talking about lower birth rates in the UK and then looking at immigration from other countries, it is interesting that even the places where working-age populations will increase massively. So places like Indonesia and the Philippines, their median age is going up. So the median age in the Philippines is now 25 and it'll be 32 in 2050. The argument is in 2050 that there'll be no Southeast Asian country will have a median age below 30 by 2050. So really, what we're looking at is a kind of worldwide thing. You can argue that, yes, maybe fewer people and people dying off, but it is about productivity at some point. And actually, having fewer people in their 20s and 30s will mean the whole world suffers from a productivity standpoint. Absolutely. Yeah, this is one aspect to look at it, but the other aspect that is really worrying in Japan is that elderly are living alone, so they will be living in isolation. This is kind of a phenomenon in Japan, known as kudukushi, which means dying alone, where a lot of people live and die and they're not really found out until a period of time because they're living in isolation. A lot of people have moved from the countryside from the suburbs into the city closer to where they can get health care, which is created another phenomenon, which is a trend now on TikTok called a kia, which means empty houses or something like this. And now in Japan, there's almost 8.5 million vacant empty houses on the market to be sold. And there's a lot of trend for people from the United States, go to Japan and they start to buy in these houses and refurbish in them. And you can also, Japan has also looked into this problem because they have a lot of vacant houses and what the market needs and they started issuing visas for people to come. So there's like by 2024, I think this year is almost 2 million foreign workers in Japan, but still the number is very, very low compared to other countries in Asia. And the emotional impact of being left alone leave is something that I know you've written about in your novel, looking for a license, which was set in the UK, but it's about someone in that situation, right? No grandchildren widowed and forgotten about. And that's something that's not an economic thing, it's something that can affect whole generations of people in a different way. Yeah, and actually it was inspired by Japan, my book, because in Japan there's this phenomenon where you can hire family members or a girlfriend or a friend if you're feeling lonely. And so I wanted to imagine what would happen if a woman in England hired herself out as a grandmother. And one of the things that's striking about the population numbers that are coming out of Japan is quite how many more old women there are than men. Women tend to live longer than men, but when you have loads and loads of old people, that becomes even more stark. Like there are like something like 5 million more old women than men in Japan, and I'm sure that the situation is similar in other countries that have the same crisis. I also think it's, we talk a lot about economics, and that's really, it's vital. But another thing which is slightly harder to get your arms around is culture loss, like I really celebrate Japanese culture and South Korean culture, two countries that are having major population crunches. And the idea that the people creating that culture, aka South Koreans and Japanese people, will dwindle in number is for me quite depressing. You've got to be careful when you're going into that sort of conversation because you don't necessarily want to say, I prefer Japanese culture to say Nigerian culture where they don't have the same kind of crunch going on. But I do think it's relevant. We've got to know that it's not just about, oh God, who's going to feed the old? It's also about the loss of art and history and generally a culture that we should value. Yes, but the fact that those cultures are value, Jamie, perhaps is part of the problem when it comes to immigration, right? I mean, this is particularly in the case of Japan, where there is a kind of monoculture and they do celebrate what they have created from the nation of Japan itself. There's a hostility to immigration even more than in Western Europe for the very reason that people coming to their country will not have the same culture and will not have the same values as them. But as Leaf says, if you don't do it, it's ending anyway and that culture being depleted. Yeah, I think Japan is slowly but surely opening up to immigration. I think Japan is at the very far end of the scale in terms of monoculture and that pressure to keep things the way that they always have been. I can't see another option for Europe and Western cultures other than immigration. You've got to bring in more working-age people to be able to afford to pay for the care and particularly in sectors like Social Care, which has seen a massive change even since Brexit in terms of the number of people who are working there and where they come from. So, I think what's interesting is that the responses broadly from in Europe have been the same across the board, increasing in retirement ages, so Italy, Portugal and Greece have both done that. I think that's something that will happen over here as I certainly get older, which is an exciting prospect. Yeah, and that's another thing, isn't it, after La Bad Japan, in that clip that you chose, we're hearing from an octogenarian baker. There are some positives to be had, obviously, from people working longer if they're able to do so, you know, being traditional skills and knowledge and experience into the workplace can be a good thing. It can be a good thing, of course, but if that is the case of being voluntarily basis, not forced to do that, Japan is also famous for its heavily investment in robot robotics. They work in a lot of different industries, including physiotherapy, including fast food, and even including emotional companion. I think a lot of people, a lot of us, have seen, especially those who are into Japanese culture, I think, like Leif, you've seen the robot called Pepper, which was programmed to read the emotions of people, and it's now popular in a lot of nursery houses and a lot of places, so it gives people companionship. Yeah, I mean, the robots thing is fascinating, isn't it, Leif, but plays into, I guess, how we see Japan as an advanced technological nation, which, of course, in itself might be different because of this. By 2030, it's only six years away. They're saying they need to turn it around by then, or they're in economic trouble. The world could start to see Japan in a very different way to how they've been perceived for the past few decades. Yeah, and, you know, the Japanese economy is already valued extremely low, which is partly why people go to Japan on holiday at the moment. There's been a great push for more tourism to Japan, but also people are finding that their pounds and their dollars can go quite far. An odd and slightly sad benefit to come out of this situation is that because Japan is in this situation before the UK, I mean, we are getting there, but it's worse, obviously, in Japan than it is in the UK. We might benefit from a lot of the investment that Japan makes in robotics and in trying to deal with the elderly because we will also need a lot of those same robots and innovations that hopefully will come out of Japan and other Asian countries that are dealing with this problem at the moment. Jamie? I mean, I think, yeah, what Lee's pointing out is a kind of benefit to Japan's economy through robots, and actually I was reading about South Korea, who's also facing a similar demographic crisis. One of, they've created a pioneering care call system by one of their health conglomerates basically to ease the burden on health workers, and it was like an AI call just designed to do the job of bringing up people to monitor whether they can, they're taking their pills and elderly people and things like that. It does stray into a topic that I mean, I think we talked about probably one of my first episodes, for the first episodes of the podcast itself about whether way back when, about whether or not people will accept robots in that scenario caring for our elderly and however long, I think we came to a decision back then that it was a little bit too creepy, but now we're getting to a stage where perhaps we'd be more willing to accept it. Yeah, well, that was back when we were all in the same room as each other, and here we are just staring into our monitors pretending we're having a conversation. Up next, we're all in debt and it's about to get worse. That's after this. Is UK debt about to explode? One of the biggest drivers of the rise in debt over the next 50 years of our projection is just the fact you've got an aging society, fewer people in work, more people claiming the state pension, more people putting pressure over health service, and so that means that the demographics are going against you, but there are things which governments can do. I mean, one of the things we look at in the report is if you can change the trajectory of the health of the population and keep people healthier for longer, that means they're more likely to stay in employment, they're more likely to earn more, pay more in tax, claim less in welfare, and also put less pressure over health service as they age. The aging population again, it will not go away, will it? Richard Hughes there, chair of the Office of Budget Responsibility talking to Bloomberg on Friday. What's the story, Leaf? So this week people have started to analyse a quite frightening report from the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is the government's official forecaster, and this report says that UK debt is on course to treble over the next half century, and that there are various factors pushing this debt higher, but the numbers are pretty scary, so it says on its base scenario, national debt is going to be 274% of GDP in 2071, right now it's under 100%, just under 100%. And so we're going to basically outspend what the government takes from the population in terms of taxes, and this causes, it's not a prediction, but it's a forecast and everyone is getting quite worried about it. Yeah, and interestingly when you say it's not a prediction, it's a forecast, it's worth underlining isn't it, before people reach for the, well this is what you get in a labour government more borrowing argument. This is a forecast based on the amount that the Conservatives were borrowing, and labour have basically matched that in their manifesto. Yeah, and it also goes back also to Tony Blair's Labour government and the amount that the state was spending then, so I don't want to just say that it's just all the Tories' fault, but it's also linked to the amount that the state is borrowing, it's also linked to the fact that we've had the financial crash and also the Covid pandemic have both contributed massively to the amount of debt that the UK is sitting on. And when I say it's a forecast, not a prediction, it's quite a subtle difference, and some people will find it annoying, but basically the OBR says it's a forecast because it's not likely that this is actually going to be allowed to happen by the UK government, and a lot of people are pointing out that the actual markets won't allow this to happen either, so it's not going to happen at all, but if we carry on spending as we are, then that's what would happen. So what was your reaction to this from the OBR? It's a conversation that I feel like we've been having for quite a long time, particularly from the austerity days. David Cameron said about Gordon Brown's administration that the government has maxed out our nation's credit card. Keir Starmer, when he was previous to becoming prime minister, said that after the march budget that the national credit card was maxed out. Rishi Tsunach and Rachel Reeves have also talked using this household analogy, and it's just wrong. I think it's a way that people are using to describe the economy for people who don't quite understand economics, but there's a massive difference between the UK economy and our household, or a household. Households have a limit on how much they can borrow because basically we rely on banks and other lenders and the caps that they allow us to borrow, but there's lots of ways in which a government can get income and out with what a household can do, and also an economy can print money. We've done it during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bank of England bought £450 billion of bonds created by the government in what's known as quantitative easing. So I do have that thing of it is obviously scary when you talk about this forecast, but our current debt to GDP ratio is 97%, and it has been much higher in the past. It was 270% just after the Second World War, and a lot of people talk about COVID and the war has been quite similar analogies really, and certainly if we want to raise the standard of living, I'm of the opinion that borrowing more is a way of doing that, and shouldn't be as scary as perhaps it appears. But where the analogy does work is that you have to pay it back and you have to pay it back with interest, right? I mean, that's why it's become such a talking point, is that the more interest you're paying, the less you have money to spend on the things you want to do, which is why you're borrowing. I mean, interest is obviously an issue, but they pay much lower levels of interest than households do, for example, but I think also there's a kind of element of particularly after Liz Truss that people wouldn't be wanting to lend money to the government, and that doesn't appear to be the case at all. Just this June illustrating the stability of the government's finances, the UK attracted £110 billion worth of bids on bonds worth £8 billion. This was considered the first big test of the Labour government's reputation with foreign investors, and basically everyone was ready to lend to the UK. So I actually think our economy is in a much stronger place than perhaps things like the OBR forecast suggest or worries about it suggest. And also, I guess, after all those interest rates can come down as well, can't they, like they do for the interest rates that we all pay? The interest rates can come up and down, but the inflation keeps going up. It doesn't go down pretty much. So if you look at whenever the Bank of England raises the interest rates, it means the increase in the amount of borrowing has to increase as well because you need to borrow more in order to spend on the necessary items. For example, Lee said that by now the amount of debt has increased to $100 billion compared to 2019 when it was only $40 billion. And that is in case of just, what, five years, almost five years. So the government faces a lot of sinking in here, that the more they borrow, the more they have to pay more later. And this is increasing. And this is the trend, that the trend is not going down. The problem is that because of our aging population as well, less people are paying taxes and receiving money, right? So in 2020, UK received 240,000 net migration. That was in 2021, right? And again, because of our aging population, the number of old people, pensioners are going to get more money, not pay taxes. One of the things that immigration can help in here and bring this down is by allowing, which is very controversial topic, I know, allowing immigrant or allowing asylum seekers to work. It's currently asylum seekers and one of the problems that a lot of far-right people fighting and writing in the street saying that these people are taking a lot of money, allowing them to work would mean allowing them to pay taxes because a lot of them cannot work. And I know some of asylum seekers have been in the country for 11 years, waiting for a decision from the home office. Imagine all the money they can pay and the taxes they can contribute during these 11 years. So this is one way to bring it down. Of course, the argument against that, Leaf, is that you then create a magnet for more people to come when you're trying not to encourage legal roots. I mean, how do you react to Jamie being kind of relaxed about borrowing more money? You don't look very relaxed. I don't feel relaxed. I mean, I'm really happy to hear what Jamie says because I'm looking for sources of comfort. And so that sounds good to me. But I also think that just the sort of brute factors are un-ignorable, which is that we are very unhealthy as a population and that we're getting older and that these two things basically increase the pressures on the state to support that population. And also one of the things that the OBR report says is that that would transform these figures and massively bring national debt down would be an increase in productivity. That is the thing above all that would make national debt come down. A healthier population would also help, but it's really about productivity. And it's really difficult for the government to actually sort this. I was reading an interview with Margaret Thatcher. I think it was in the 70s or 80s. And she was talking about how unproductive UK workers were. So this has been an issue that's been kicking around for a very long time. And government is bad at increasing that. And so my optimism is really limited because I just don't know, we're basically going to have to keep on, we're going to have to run quicker and quicker and quicker in order to keep up with the situation in the UK. And there are several things that are comforting, some of the ones that Jamie mentioned. Another one is that a lot of other peer countries are in a really similar situation, if not a worse situation. Our national debt is lower than that of Italy and that of the US and obviously that of Japan. So we're in good company, but I do worry about it. And it just doesn't feel like I'm ever going to retire with a decent pension in the way that my parents and people of that generation will. And I don't say that that's necessarily unfair, I already feel like I'm in a lucky position by comparison with lots of other people. But I think it's just, I think it's going to get really, really dicey and that the politics of this will be super challenging because not everyone will want immigration to fix this issue. But although it's interesting that discussing debt at all is part of the political conversation, I suppose that's what you were getting at Jamie earlier when you're talking about a house with Post Gordon Brown, it's become a thing people talk about, the debt deficit. But in the US, as Leave suggests, their debt is currently more than $30 trillion, 128% of GDP. And I watched the entire presidential debate and it didn't come up. And I mean, when we talk about productivity, the economy in the US is actually doing pretty well in terms of productivity, right? I think, I mean, it's not to go back to like Keynes 101 because that's not this podcast. I do have that feeling where it's like, how are we going to increase productivity in the economy? Or it's by investing in primarily young people, I would say, and investing where we have the kind of natural lead over other economies. And at the moment, I think the way that we're shying away from the green transition is mad. And I think also the way that we're shying away from universities, we have some of the best universities in the world, much higher than in other places, places where people can learn skills, where research is important, where all of this stuff that actually could be a massive benefit to our productivity and could see our economy grow. But we seem to be not so keen to invest in those places. And public investment is quite difficult, even for a Labour government. But I mean, from what the question that you're pointing about, why people are discussing it, it's been the dominant economic agenda about the importance of a small state ever since George Osborne and David Cameron came in. And that was the way that they wanted to fix the financial crisis. And you can argue whether that worked or it didn't. But that has been the dominant economic discourse, I think. On Jamie's point, there is a worry that the worries about national debt will actually stop the government, this government, the next government, from making really important investments that will pay off in the sort of five to 10 to 20 to 30 year period. We do need capital investment for sure. And as Jamie says, we need to invest in the young, make sure that they're skilling up, as it were, because that stuff really does lead to productivity gains. The issue is that our governments in general are looking for quicker returns. And that's a problem. So my worry about this report is also that it will discourage Labour from making really important investments that will actually pay off in the long run. I mean, this conversation, I presume, is absent from where you are, Abdul in Hong Kong. I mean, we talk about China investing in other countries, right, helping them in Africa and so on big infrastructure projects. Is there any conversation in China about borrowing money or what the deficit is? Do people know? Not publicly. No. I don't see that publicly. But if you watch a lot of our media and here in Hong Kong and in mainland China, you'll see a lot of their CCTV channels, a lot of documentaries about the work they're doing, the Belt and Road. There are a lot of conferences and universities about that. And you see a lot of, they bring in a lot of students from these countries, especially from Africa, and giving them free scholarships to do undergrad and master and PhDs there. And then they're writing a lot of papers and stuff about what China is doing, but pretty much about the inflation or GDP or these things pretty much not really there. One of the big topics in here also slightly related to this with the youth employment and unemployment, which was a big topic in the data was released, I think, last year. The topic was that unemployment was around less than 30%. But then the figures were changed according to the definition of unemployment. So they said everyone who's over 18, but still at university is not considered into the workforce. So we're going to delete these numbers from, and then the unemployment rate went down because these are college students, they're not supposed to be working. But the argument is that what university students need to support themselves. So it depends on how do you define it. And so the public discourse is not as loud as it is in the UK. Yeah. And here in the UK leave, I mean, this forecast, just to get gloomy for a second, was based on these unforeseen things, COVID, Ukraine, financial crash, having happened. Which suggests that actually, especially given the way the world is now, they'll probably be more unforeseen things rather than fewer of them. Yeah. It does seem that we've had a series of once in a generation of shocks all crammed into a small number of years. I mean, it does, the report does say that rising geopolitical tensions are also going to contribute to national debt. But I think it's mainly saying that these rising tensions will mean that we have to spend more on defense of what if there's a world war that would completely blow up everything. So yeah, it's not exactly best case scenario and the OBR is extremely clear that this is not an easy science. It's not saying this is definitely going to happen, saying that all these loads of factors are undecidable. So maybe take comfort in the fact that a lot of forecasts are wrong. Let's just hope this one is too. Okay. I'll take that. It's up from Toybox to Box Office. Jamie, you are finishing the show. What do you think this week should be remembered for? Gentlemen, start your tiny engines. If you were in a flea market and you saw this cuda, would you say, "Oh, I've got to get me some matchbox." I bet you wouldn't. I certainly didn't. That's where I was a flea market and I was scouring this guy's table and he says, "What I have to make." So they sat in Australia. "What I have to make." I said, "Oh, just look for this matchbox." I didn't mind. And I was about to walk off and he goes, "Oh, here you are, here you are, mate." And I said, "No, I think you'll find there not matchbox." And he flipped it over. The power. Matchbox. The current state of Matchbox related audio-visual media there, that's YouTuber building the ultimate matchbox car collection in a video he posted on Saturday. So Matchbox Mini Car Dinky Toys, right, Jamie? Obviously, favored by collectors, but that audio-visual picture is about to change. Absolutely, yeah. This week, Apple Original Films announced that they'd landed Matchbox, a new live-action feature film from Skydance and Mattel Films that will be directed by Sam Hargrave and star wrestler-turned-actor John Cena. The film is the latest from Mattel, who obviously had the huge hit last year with Barbie, and just one of 45 films based on their intellectual property or IP that they are set to have in the works. 45, which is amazing. That's about 45 toys. Have they got 45 toys? Have they got 45 toys? We could go through them, but I'm not sure how interesting that would be for the listeners. But there's a grounded and gritty take on Hot Wheels from J.J. Abrams to Lily Collins's Polly Pocket to a rock and sock 'em robots film starring Vin Diesel. So yeah, it's the new Marvel basically, Mattel and Hasbro actually this week, jumped on the bandwagon with an announcement that Margot Robbie was behind a new Monopoly film based on the board game. It's all happening, and I guess the question really is, is this a good thing? It feels like some of the success of Barbie last year was about giving someone like Greta Goig, who was the director, the ability to do what she likes with a franchise that everyone knows and loves. But I can't imagine that this film with John Cena and about matchbox cars is going to be the same thing. Obviously, we don't know very much about it, but it feels like this is more of the kind of earnest, toy action film rather than a kind of ironic take on, I don't know, tiny cars. Well, even if it was the same thing, Leaf, even if they do manage to pull off a post-feminist ironized version of matchbox, you can't keep doing that with every toy. You can't do everything on the slate. So you're left with the earnest version. Does it matter if it makes money? I think it probably does matter, and I hope that it doesn't make money because then it might spell the death of all of these pretty cynical, sounding films. I think, basically, Marvel is a good example of how a drum can be banged over and over and over again. So we might see that if this film returns the money that was put into it with a bit extra, that it releases a whole new load of similar films that are all being talked about, some of them are at different stages of planning, some of them seem like they're legit going to happen, but a lot of them feel like, eh, are they actually going to? But we've seen with Marvel that once they realized that they could make money by exploiting this very, very committed fan base and lots of other people besides, that they were just going to keep on doing the same thing over and over. So I find the whole idea depressing, and I really hope that the films crash and burn. How's a popular cinema always done this, Abdul? You know, I mean, what Disney did in the first place is take the source material of brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen and turn that into a series of essentially character universes. It's what Bollywood does all the time, isn't it, with popular novels and tropes, turn them into films that people go and see because they know what they're going to get? I mean, that's just, that's populism, that's what puts bombs on seats. That's exactly why Sarbox, McDonald's, KFC are very popular because you know what you're getting out of them, wherever you go, it doesn't matter. And if you look at the stats, for example, in 2020, about 53% of the top grossing, of the top hundred grossing films were a sequel or a prequels or adaptation of something that the audience already know. So it's easy because people know that this is familiar, we're going to watch this. And it's the same, the same concept applies when it comes to nostalgia, especially for millennials and Gen Z. They want something to go back to from their childhood, especially during global instability. We were just talking now about GDP, about Asian societies and the borrowing, war, pandemic. These are really heavy topics. So sometimes people want to go back to what they know. So they go back to their favorite toys, whether it is a Toy Story or Barbie Barbie. If you look at it, during the first week alone, it made over $155 million. Also very interesting because they used this Barbie as a childhood icon in order to critique modern day or a trend of how women should live and apply new concepts to it. So if these new films are going to do this, they're going to critique something or make us look differently or think differently about a certain topic, that would be really something I'm interested in. But also these films make money, Jamie, by people going to the cinema in the first instance, right? There's then the whole on-demand thing afterwards, but actually it's been increasingly harder to get kids in particular to go to the cinema. And you just understand, don't you, that if it's IP they know and they play with? They'd be more likely to give it a go. Yeah, I think that ultimately, from Mattel Films perspective, why would you not do this? I think my answer is that there's space for both these types of films and other films are potentially more worthy films, shall we say, in the oeuvre of Hollywood. But I do also think there's a lot to be said for the fact that we are kind of ignoring that, like I think you were saying earlier, Ollie, about, there's a kind of pre-awareness based on genre. That's what they're tapping into. If you go and see a western, you know what kind of film you're going to go and see. Even like a John Cena film, you would be aware of what kind of film you're going to see before you go and see it. And that's all they're trading on anyway, is this idea that, yeah, if you like Matchbox Toys, you're going to see it. I think the only thing that slightly makes me a bit sad is that it's never going to be as good as the imagination that a kid has when they're playing with the toys. And it does slightly dictate to them what their Matchbox Toys is going to be like or what their Barney Toys is going to be like if they've got to play with them after the movie takes place. I mean, Jamie mentioned streaming there, Leaf. The reality is, isn't it, that it's not that independent or creative or daring or envelope pushing voices have been completely marginalised in Hollywood, it's just they're making stuff for Telly. They don't make films anymore. That era has gone, films are big box office, big budget aimed at kids, fantasies for teenagers, that's what sells. And then anything interesting for grownups goes on streaming and that's fine, both audiences are there. Yeah, I mean, I would slightly push back at the idea that streaming is full of really interesting stuff. Like I find, I'm sure lots of other people have the kind of struggle with the sort of Netflix homepage and trying to find something interesting to watch, trying to find an actually funny comedy that makes you laugh. We recently had the Emmys and I was struck by how little, you know, was given prizes that I actually was excited to watch. So I mean, it's worth saying that the death of cinema has been predicted many times before. It's actually been a kind of a part of the form in a way that people have always been predicting that it's the end of cinema. Jean-Luc Godard talked about la founde d'ucinima and like it's just part of it. It's a whole thing. So I don't want to necessarily say that these toy movies are finally going to kill cinema for good. One of the things that streaming has done is that it taps into our natural laziness. It's much easier to watch a film that's not very good at home than it is to leave the house, pay money, potentially be reigned on while you're walking back or taking the tube or whatever, spend loads of money in my case, like my cinema is really expensive and then be disappointed. So I think people have a bit of a higher tolerance for watching "Dross" from streamers because they've basically stayed on the sofa and that's like a cozy place to be. Adam, do you think Hollywood is going to become too dependent on these franchises? Or actually is this in itself a fad as Leaf was saying, these are perennial issues in a way. Maybe in 20 years time they'll be onto the next thing and it won't be about cinematic universes any movie, something else just to ensure that there's a business there. There is a business element even in Hollywood, even if you look at, for example, Disney builds a whole lot of culture around its films. So when you're watching a film, it's not just a film. So it's a film you watch with your kids and then you want to go to Disneyland and you want to stay in the resort and you want to pay extra money to meet the characters and spend a lot of money there. So Disney does it and then Marvel Studios and Universal Studios do the same things. They build theme parks with a lower price in order to hook you up. So maybe Mattel's going to do pretty much the same thing, after all we've seen a lot of shows that are started from independent studios and got bought by either Netflix or by different studios. So even if you're an independent studio producing films, most likely if you're successful and you make very big hits, you're going to be bought at the end of the day and they're going to take your project either to kill it because they don't want the competition that good for them or because there's a lot of money to be made and that's how they acquire it. Also, Jamie, I must say, as the only parent to a six-year-old here, I should make you aware, Hot Wheels Let's Race is an extant series at the moment. It's not as if because Mattel's licensing this for films that they're suddenly creating content. It exists and it's bad and I've had to watch all of it. I'd much rather there was a movie. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's always going to be content related to toys. I guess the problem is is when it takes up, like Leaf was saying, four hours out of your day and you're shelling out a hell of a lot of money for hot dogs and popcorn alongside it. I think there's also an interesting argument about how the films are marketed these days. A lot of the films that haven't done so well in the movie theatres, I think the full guy was one that didn't do as well as everyone was expecting, is because there's a thing now where it doesn't feel like you have to go and see it in the cinema in order to stay relevant. People are much more likely to wait and wait for it to be a part of streaming platforms et cetera. Whereas like Barbie and obviously Oppenheimer at the same time, that did feel like something you needed to go and see in the cinema to be relevant to the kind of cultural conversation and I doubt that Matchbox is going to be that film, but you never know. So the toy from your childhood to reboot into a cinematic franchise, what would it be? Leaf. I did love Playmabelle, so maybe a Playmabelle movie. There is a Playmabelle movie and it's good. Oh, great. I'm sorry, I missed that. Again, I've had to sit through good back quite a few times. It's got some great songs, amazing performance by Adam Lambert as the villain. Abdul? I would have said Slan Dunk, but there was a new film adaptation of it. It was the basketball set in Japan, basketball at high school, and that was really, really bad. The original cartoon was much better. My favorite toy as a kid was Biker Mice from Mars, which was actually based on a TV series anyway. Nothing new under the sun. I think it's time they did the origin story of Ronald McDonald and the Happy Meal toy. That's good idea. Well, Sylvanian families would be quite good. Yeah, a lot of drama there. Sylvanian families would be good. We'll see you back up to behind closed doors. My thanks to Jamie Leaf and Abdul. You can follow this show for free. You can get every episode as soon as it's released by searching for the weekend wrapped wherever you get your podcasts. And then tapping follow. You can also get six free issues of The Week magazine with a trial subscription if you go to theweek.com/subscriptions. In the meantime, I've been Oli Mann. Our music is by Tom Moby, the producer, Oli Piot at Rethink Audio. And until we meet again, to unwrap next week, bye-bye. [MUSIC]