LA Bluesky comedian just posted the most honest thing I've read about the movie business today.
CWhich is...
LMichael Spicer wrote: "I'm trying to make a living in an industry that spent 160 million dollars on an Ali G movie."
CThat's... he's not wrong. Hollywood will throw a fortune at a twenty-year-old British comedy character but claim there's no money for mid-budget films.
LAnd an Ali G movie! The accent, the tracksuit, the whole bit. I remember when that was a five-minute HBO sketch.
CHere's the thing though. Sacha Baron Cohen's characters made studios a fortune. Borat was a phenomenon.
LBorat was fresh. Ali G in 2026 feels like explaining dial-up internet to a teenager.
CMaybe that's the audience. Nostalgia for people who peaked in 2004.
LBut Spicer's point stands: you can't plead poverty on original ideas when you greenlight stuff like that.
CI'm with him on the hypocrisy. Studios cry about risk, then bet the farm on a joke that was edgy in the Bush era.
LWhat's the lesson? Brands you can pre-sell are the only thing that matters now?
CThat's been the lesson for a decade. IP over everything. It's why we get a fourth Toy Story and no new comedy classics.
LI'd take one good, original comedy over ten franchise sequels. Spicer should star in one.
CHe'd probably have to fund it himself. That's his point.
LMoney is being spent somewhere though. Cata Paul crunched Spotify numbers and the most-streamed album ever is...
CIt's Bad Bunny, isn't it.
LUn Verano Sin Ti. Twenty-four and a half billion streams. Then The Weeknd's Starboy at twenty billion.
CI checked this one. Spotify's own twentieth-anniversary list confirms it. Bad Bunny really is the king of streaming.
LIt's a genuinely great album. The run from Moscow Mule to Tití Me Preguntó is relentless, track after track.
CAnd he did it mostly in Spanish. That's the story the music industry never expected to tell.
LYou want to pick a fight? Olivia Rodrigo's SOUR made the top five, and it's a debut album.
CBecause she's a generational talent. Driver's License hit like a grenade.
LMy problem with the list: it rewards albums people put on repeat while they do dishes. Not necessarily the best albums.
CMost-streamed isn't best. It's most-played. Those are two different arguments.
LAnd artists now make albums specifically for that. Long track lists, short songs, designed to farm streams.
COkay, but should we punish Bad Bunny for making music people actually want to hear more than once?
LNo, but the metric is hollow. Put SZA's SOS up there— I love it. But I've had it on as background music for months. Does that make it a classic?
CA classic is what people remember. Streaming shows what people touch. Those aren't the same.
LRight. It measures habit almost more than love.
CAnd still, Un Verano beats everything else by four and a half billion streams. That's not passive. That's devotion.
LHe also has the advantage of being huge in Latin America and the States. Global in a way few pop stars are.
CI'll give you that. If he were only big in one market, he wouldn't be number one.
LSpeaking of fake charts, some data account is claiming Taylor Swift released an album called The Life of a Showgirl that won global album of 2025.
CThat didn't happen. I can't find a Showgirl album on any chart, and nothing like that shows up anywhere I look.
LSo it's fabricated. Some fan account or engagement farm pretending there's a chart that crowned it.
CIt's engagement bait. Put Taylor's name on a fake ranking and watch the retweets roll in.
LShe doesn't need fake charts. She has real ones. That's what makes it pointless.
CAnd it gives people something to be outraged about, which is the whole game.