Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins host The Big Picture, a film conversation podcast from The Ringer. In this episode, they cover two new theatrical releases — Toy Story 5, directed by Andrew Stanton, and The Death of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Sarnoski — alongside a ranking of all five Toy Story films and a survey of the best cinematic Robin Hoods.

The episode opens with a flurry of movie news: Luca Guadagnino's AI biopic Artificial loses its Amazon MGM distribution deal under murky corporate circumstances, Keke Palmer's next film lands at Universal/Blumhouse/Atomic Monster, Wagner Moura joins the Bradley Cooper and Margot Robbie Ocean's prequel as the villain, Daniel Kaluuya reunites with Judas and the Black Messiah director Shaka King on a crime thriller called The Parlay, and Sean Penn announces a January 6th film for Warner Brothers. Sean and Amanda then dig into both new releases, debating the merits of Toy Story 5's tech-skeptic messaging and the fundamental identity problem at the heart of The Death of Robin Hood.

Luca Guadagnino's 'Artificial' Loses Amazon MGM

Amazon MGM is offloading Artificial — Guadagnino's Social Network-style biopic of Sam Altman starring Andrew Garfield — presumably due to an OpenAI corporate partnership conflict, though that has not been officially confirmed.

The film was written by Simon Rich, whose typically humorous style reportedly shifted darker in the final product than what Amazon originally greenlit, per Matt Bellamy's reporting.

"It does seem like these decisions are being made at a corporate partnership synergistic Jeff Bezos and various other Silicon Valley people calling each other level rather than at a creative level." — Amanda

Potential distributors discussed include Focus Features, Neon, and MUBI, though Sean notes each has complications — Focus has a crowded awards slate, and most major studios have their own AI entanglements.

Sony already has The Social Reckoning in a similar vein.

Netflix and Disney are ruled out immediately.

The right distributor could market it as an anti-OpenAI, anti-Sam Altman film.

The cast includes Andrew Garfield as Altman, Yura Borisov, and Monica Barbaro — a young, marketable ensemble that Sean says could attract the right independent buyer.

Sean notes this follows a rough stretch for Guadagnino: Bones and All was COVID-muted, Challengers succeeded, After the Hunt underperformed, and now Artificial is in limbo.

Movie News Roundup: Ocean's, Kaluuya, Sean Penn

Wagner Moura is in talks to play the main villain in the Bradley Cooper-directed and starring Ocean's prequel alongside Margot Robbie, in which Cooper and Robbie play Danny Ocean's parents.

Keke Palmer's next film lands at Universal, Blumhouse, and Atomic Monster in an eight-figure deal — the project's subject matter was not disclosed.

Daniel Kaluuya reunites with Shaka King — director of Judas and the Black Messiah — on a crime thriller called The Parlay, heading to Amazon MGM, with Teyonah Parris circling to star.

Sean and Amanda note Shaka King had been frustratingly absent from feature filmmaking since Judas and the Black Messiah.

Judas and the Black Messiah won Kaluuya an Academy Award but was released during an awkward COVID window.

Sean Penn has written and plans to direct a January 6th film for Warner Brothers, with Bradley Cooper attached to star as a police officer present during the Capitol insurrection.

The Death of Robin Hood: A Medieval Regret Drama in Disguise

The Death of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Sarnoski and starring Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, and Bill Skarsgård, is set in 1247 and follows an aging, gravely injured Robin Hood grappling with his violent past — dispensing entirely with the Robin Hood mythology.

"If the name of the movie was The Death of Steve McGillicuddy and Hugh Jackman said, hello, young squire, my name is Steve McGillicuddy, we'd just be like, this is a weird movie about a really angry old man who keeps killing people and has some regrets at the end of his life." — Amanda

Sean argues the film's core flaw is structural: the first 30 minutes are intensely violent and savage, then the film downshifts into slow, contemplative territory for the remaining 75 minutes, creating a lumpen, uneven shape.

Both hosts agree the film's overarching conceit — distrust the myth, question how we remember people — is intellectually valid but never actually engages with the Robin Hood legend it claims to deconstruct.

"To dispel the myth, you have to, if not portray it, then at least communicate it." — Sean

No Sheriff of Nottingham, no Maid Marian, no rob-from-the-rich framework, no iconic hat or bow-and-arrow heroics.

Amanda observes that Jackman has two modes — showman and anguished violent male id — and this film puts him firmly in the second gear, which he has executed better in Prisoners and Logan.

Cinematographer Pat Scola (Sing Sing) gives the film a beautiful, period-gritty visual texture, but Sean questions whether historical accuracy makes the film more valuable as a Robin Hood story.

Robin Hood on Film: A Surprisingly Thin Cinematic Legacy

Sean traces the Robin Hood film lineage from the 1922 Douglas Fairbanks silent film (available on Tubi, directed by Allan Dwan) through the 1938 Errol Flynn/Michael Curtiz Technicolor classic, which he identifies as the foundational text all subsequent adaptations riff on.

The 1973 Disney animated Robin Hood — the version that codified the myth for multiple generations at a young age — draws directly from the Curtiz visual and narrative framework.

Robin and Marian (1976, Richard Lester, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn), Robin Hood (1991, Patrick Bergin), and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, Kevin Costner) all maintain the core framework — green costume, bow and arrow, Maid Marian, Sheriff of Nottingham.

Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves is described as featuring "the worst accent in the history of movies."

The two major 21st-century attempts — Ridley Scott's 2010 version ("Robin Hood: Gladiator") and Taron Egerton's 2018 adaptation — are both deemed unsuccessful, leaving the franchise with a surprisingly weak overall cinematic record.

Amanda argues charisma is the essential ingredient: "You want just what's on the label, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. You want the Hot Fox from Disney." The character functions as cultural shorthand for anti-authority sentiment, and dismantling that shorthand leaves audiences with nothing to hold onto.

Sean draws a Batman parallel: just as Batman cannot lose his bat ears without losing the character, Robin Hood stripped of his iconographic elements ceases to function as Robin Hood regardless of thematic ambition.

Amanda is currently reading the Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey ahead of Christopher Nolan's adaptation, noting that oral-tradition mythologies like The Odyssey and Robin Hood work better as direct adaptations or as loose inspiration rather than deconstructive reimaginings.

Toy Story 5: Female Friendship, Screen Addiction, and Pixar's Formula

Toy Story 5, directed by Andrew Stanton and co-written with Kenna Harris, centers on Jessie as the new leader of Bonnie's room while an 8-year-old Bonnie becomes absorbed by a frog-like AI tablet named Lily Pad, voiced by Greta Lee.

Amanda: "I thought this movie was beautiful. I loved it so much... I thought this was a fascinating movie about female friendship, and I'm not afraid to say it."

Sean found the film emotionally resonant as a parent watching his daughter navigate friendship: "I have not seen a lot of movies that do this this well, that really allow Bonnie to be sad in the way that she's sad."

The film's central conflict — analog toys vs. screen-based connection — is communicated through Bonnie's social isolation and her parents' panic-buying of a LilyPad after she asks why she has no friends.

A new character, Blaze, a horse-girl living on a ranch, serves as Bonnie's kindred spirit — a child still rooted in physical play and imagination.

Jessie has Blaze's address written inside her boot from her original owner, connecting the two storylines.

Amanda's primary criticism: the film oversimplifies its tech critique by equating screen use with moral corruption — "bad tech equals bad people" — while ignoring that mean girls have existed since long before smartphones.

The film also ignores parental controls, internet safety, and the implausibility of toys jailbreaking devices and inviting strangers to GPS coordinates.

"There's a level of scam and internet danger that is completely unexamined and unbelievable in this movie." — Amanda

The film's imagination sequences — showing Bonnie's vision of her toys in a different animation style — are praised by both hosts as top-shelf animated storytelling.

Amanda nearly walked out when the climax hinges on Buzz Lightyear receiving an iOS software update to unlock the ability to fly: "I can't, I can't be updating all the time. Fucking figure it out. Get stuff right at the beginning."

The HAL 9000-like Lily Pad eventually has an existential crisis and shuts herself down — a moment Sean found effective as AI-consciousness sci-fi, while Amanda found it narratively convenient corporate messaging.

Toy Story Franchise Ranking and Pixar's Current Trajectory

Sean's ranking: Toy Story (1995) → Toy Story 3 → Toy Story 2 → Toy Story 5 → Toy Story 4, calling Toy Story 3 "a masterpiece" and acknowledging Toy Story 2 may be undervalued by him personally.

Toy Story 5 is tracking toward $180 million opening weekend after $17.5 million in Thursday previews, putting it on pace to be one of the biggest films of 2025 and a likely billion-dollar earner.

Inside Out 2, Toy Story 4, and Incredibles 2 are the billion-dollar Pixar films of the last decade.

Hoppers came in just under $400 million — the highest-grossing Pixar original since Coco nearly 10 years ago.

Sean draws a parallel between Pixar's current situation and Marvel circa 5-6 years ago: established IP (Toy Story, Incredibles) still performs at the highest level, while original films (Hoppers, the upcoming Gato) face much steeper challenges.

Incredibles 3 is scheduled for 2028, directed by Peter Sohn (Elemental, The Good Dinosaur) rather than Brad Bird, who is instead releasing Ray Gun — an animated noir detective film developed at Pixar — via Netflix later this year.

Taylor Swift's end-credits song I Knew It, I Knew You — a collaboration with Randy Newman — was praised by Sean as genuinely good, while Amanda left before it played.