Sean Fennessy and Amanda Dobbins host this episode of The Big Picture, featuring their annual summer movie preview game and an interview with filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber. They're preparing for their 900th episode celebration and heading to CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

The main segment involves predicting box office numbers and Metacritic scores for major summer releases, including Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and dozens of other films from horror movies to animated sequels.

Daniel Goldhaber returns to discuss his new film Faces of Death, a reboot of the 1978 cult horror film. Goldhaber previously appeared on the show to discuss How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and brings insights about content moderation, social media culture, and the challenges of independent filmmaking in the current studio system.

Summer Movie Predictions: The Big Bets and Bold Guesses

The Devil Wears Prada 2 emerges as a major test case, with Sean predicting $184 million and Amanda going bigger at $210 million domestic, based on the film's $66 million opening weekend tracking.

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey generates the highest predictions, with Amanda at $350 million and Sean at $412 million, comparing it to American Prometheus themes in Oppenheimer but noting the epic action appeal.

Horror movies dominate the release calendar with films every two weeks, including Hocum ($10-18 million predictions), Obsession ($15-42 million), and Backrooms ($16-67 million from A24).

The scoring system awards 1 point for Metacritic guesses within 5 points, 5 points for exact matches, and escalating points for box office accuracy within $50 million down to $5 million.

Faces of Death: From Content Moderation to Horror Commentary

Goldhaber's experience as a content moderator in the early 2010s involved removing child porn and violence from a social media startup, watching everything posted and taking down illegal content as quickly as possible.

"The most disturbing thing that I honestly felt about the footage was this question of like, who's posting this stuff?" - Daniel, explaining how the anonymity of violent content creators became more frightening than the content itself.

The original Faces of Death director was an ABC nature documentary filmmaker who approached it as "a weird art project" and didn't want credit to protect his day job, creating the film's unsettling anonymous quality.

Goldhaber's film explores how centralized corporate media platforms control human speech, with very few corporations determining what billions of people can say, see, and share online.

The Attention Economy and Violence as Performance

"We live in an attention economy. And in that, we've said the more attention that you have, the more value you have. And simultaneously, we've gone and said, do you know how to generate a lot of attention very quickly? Go commit an act of mass violence" - Daniel.

The killer character Arthur represents someone rationally analyzing the system to feel seen and matter, with Dacre Montgomery drawing on his personal OCD experiences and texture obsessions to build the character.

Arthur's media literacy drives his performance - "he's very clearly an extremely media literate person" who consciously references horror films like Manhunter in his methods and appearance.

The film questions why remake Faces of Death at all, with the protagonist literally remaking the cursed film for personal gain, mirroring Hollywood's IP exploitation practices.

Modern Filmmaking and the Meme Economy

"Up until 10 years ago, we never as humans used images to communicate directly one-on-one with each other... now all of a sudden, like the legacy of cinematic imagery has become language" - Daniel on how GIFs transformed cinema.

Goldhaber admits considering meme potential while filming: "I'm definitely aware now when I'm making a movie. I'm like, this image, this shot, I hope that could be a good meme."

The shift from valuing grand, physically difficult shots to memorable still images or GIFs has "dramatically changed our cinematic expectations of what we think is good, what we think is memorable."

Studios increasingly rely on data models over executive instinct, with private equity mentality replacing the old "I got a good feeling about this" approach to greenlight decisions.

Independent Film Distribution Challenges

Faces of Death took years to release after completion, with one major studio marketing head calling it "morally despicable" and studios reluctant to distribute content critical of corporate media culture.

The 2023 writers' strike complicated production, preventing Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei from doing writing work or ADR recording during post-production hiatus periods.

Legendary's business model relies on studio distribution partnerships, but when major studios rejected the film, finding alternative distribution through IFC took additional months of deal-making.

Goldhaber's strategy for future studio projects involves understanding "valuation mechanisms" early, asking detailed questions about cast requirements, set pieces, and target demographics before developing scripts.