Seth Rogen Is Menacing Studio Executives at the Venice Film Festival

“In each one of those episodes, there is a kernel of brilliant, blinding truth, and that’s what makes great satire. The show is wonderfully satiric. Besides that kernel, everything else is horses—t. Maybe some days, but most days we’re not morons.” That’s what Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman recently said about The Studio in an interview with Letterboxd. He did praise Seth Rogen’s hit Apple TV+ show about inept Hollywood executives, but it’s never a good sign if you have to declare “[you’re] not morons.”

If anything, it speaks to The Studio’s effectiveness. The show is clearly getting under the skin of the people it’s lampooning, and, hilariously, they mostly have to grin and bear it. The show will probably earn a slew of Emmys so executives can pretend they have a sense of humor about themselves, which they do not, even if they claim otherwise. What’s even better is that Rogen is leaning into all the attention and is openly scouting for stories.

Rogen attended the Venice premiere of The Rock’s new shirt-pocketless Oscar bait, The Smashing Machine, with a portable camera. He was snapping pictures while walking the red carpet. The Take This Waltz actor then explained to the Italian website Adnkronos that he was “scouting locations” for the second season of his smash show. Doing it out in the open, in the faces of people who think he thinks they’re morons, is pretty diabolical in a way I can get behind.

This all doesn’t work if The Studio wasn’t a great show. It is a proper satire, but also a gripping and darkly comedic drama. The cinematography is stunning. Every actor is bringing their A game, whether or not they’re playing themselves, and, again, it takes the piss out of the same people who caused a Writers’ Strike because they’d rather pay machines instead of humans. As MovieWeb points out, Rothman is the same executive who re-released Morbius, thinking it would be successful.

If I were a movie executive, I’d sit this whole conversation out. I’d sit back, let Rogen make his show, and even if I knew he was referencing me specifically, in a good or bad light, I wouldn’t say a goddamn thing. It just opens you up to scrutiny. Executives hold all the power, and speaking out about The Studio will sound like sour grapes or damage control. That being said, maybe try to avoid ending up on Rogen’s roll of film from the festival circuit. He can claim he’s scouting locations all he wants, but he could just as easily be getting behind-the-scenes moments that he can recreate next year. You don’t want no part of that sh**.