Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson reports that 2025 was the best box office year for movies since the pandemic. With the new Avatar still #1, #2 is The Housemaid, a psychological thriller with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried which is thoroughly entertaining, as long as you don't think too carefully about the plot. #3 is Marty Supreme, loosely based on a true story. Timothée Chalamet is a supremely-confident hustler turned table tennis player in a movie that, despite being two and a half hours long, flies by, helped by a great supporting cast of non-actors. Not so #6, Anaconda, in which Paul Rudd and Jack Black want to remake the forgettable 1997 monster movie of the same name. It's hard to combine comedy and horror successfully. This film fails. #7 is Song Sung Blue, based on a documentary, with Hugh Jackman as an unsympathetic Neil Diamond interpreter. In a film about second chances, Kate Hudson has never been better.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
After a quick rundown of what's leading the UK box office in the run-up to Christmas, James Cameron-Wilson takes Simon Rose through the films that made the most at the country's cinemas in 2025. A Minecraft Movie topped the chart, followed by Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, Wicked For Good, Lilo & Stitch and Jurassic World Rebirth. Very different was James's own top ten. 1: Ocean. 2: Flow. 3: Superman. 4: Christy. 5: Materialists. 6: I Swear. 7: Alpha. 8: The Ballad of Wallis Island. 9: Brides. 10: We Live in Time. James explains why you'd want to catch up with each every one of these.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says that box office is down 40% again, even though #1 Zootropolis 2 has become the biggest film of the year worldwide. #18 Ella McCay is from James L. Brooks, who brought us such movies as Broadcast News. It stars Emma Mackey as an aspiring politician, backed by a raft of great actors such as Jamie Lee Curtis and Albert Brooks. Full of terrific dialogue, it reminds James of the great screwball comedies of old. He loved every minute. He was also impressed by Netflix’s Train Dreams, with Joel Edgerton as a logger and railroad worker. This is film as art and does require a degree of patience. He was bewitched by a film which reminded him of Days of Heaven. Also on Netflix is the third Knives Out movie, Dead Man Wake Up. Despite a great cast supporting Daniel Craig, James thought the murder plot was forced and, while there were some great moments, he was ultimately disappointed.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says that box office, despite a WoW drop of 17%, is still very healthy. #5 Eternity depicts an afterlife where souls must pick their preferred eternity. Although a comic parable where a woman must choose with which man to spend the afterlife, it fails to work on several levels. James, disappointed by the ending, was not moved. He found the Blu-Ray release of 1954's Apache, directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Burt Lancaster to be a fascinating insight into attitudes of the time. Although at the forefront of those films more sympathetically depicting Native Americans, Lancaster is an unpleasant and hugely misogynistic character while the movie is highly patronising by current standards. James was much keener on Netflix's Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach's film of a film actor not hugely dissimilar to George Clooney, played by George Clooney, only more unpleasant and egotistical. It has many wonderful scenes, should resonate with many and James loved it.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
For this episode, James Cameron-Wilson is joined by Chad Kennerk, our occasional American correspondent, to discuss the news that Netflix has made an agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Following the separation of Discovery Global for a total enterprise value of $82.7 billion (equity value $72 billion). James covers Disney’s 64th animated feature, 'Zootropolis 2', an entertaining sprint through a world of zoological delights. He raves about awards contender 'Christy', the extraordinary true story of a female boxer in 1990s’ America starring Sydney Sweeney. James was also pleased with the Disney+ release of 'Swiped', in which a tech entrepreneur played by Lily James has her idea for the dating app Tinder swiped.
Guests: Chad Kennerk,James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says #1 Wicked: For Good's £18.9m take has boosted box office 123% but at the expense of all other movies. However, James enjoyed it muich more than the first half. It has gobsmacking costumes and sets, great songs and is surprisingly touching and funny. It is clearly set for Oscar attention. He thought Russell Crowe superb as the bombastic Gõring in #4 Nuremberg. With a great supporting cast, it is long but holds the attention throughout. And he admires Tom Hardy playing both Kray twins in the 10th anniversary 4K UHD release of the very violent Legend. It comes with lots of great extras.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson likes #1 Now You See Me: Now You Don't as much as the first in the trilogy. Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson are joined by younger actors as magicians mounting a heist. He particularly cares for the details and the allusions. #2 is Edgar Wright's take on The Running Man with Glen Powell. But despite the big budget, the main character is unsympathetic, the plot makes little sense and the product placement is appallingly blatant. As a fan of French horror, he likes #27 Alpha from Julia Ducournau. It deserves two viewings before the pieces will fall into place.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson's dislike of the Predator franchise isn't changed by the 9th in the series #1 Predator: Badlands which, with no human characters, bored him. He loved #2 The Choral, another film from the Nicholas Hytner/Alan Bennett partnership. Set in World War 1, Roger Allam and Ralph Fiennes star in a tale of a local choral society short of men. It's full of compassion, drama and humour and is timeless and uplifting. #24 Anemone is a first-time film from Ronan Day-Lewis who gets his father Daniel to return to the screen as a remote-living hermit. Also starring Sean Bean, it's self-indulgent and leaves the audience too often in the dark.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson laments that no film grossed more than £1m last weekend. He found #1 Bugonia, directed by The Favourite's Yorgos Lanthimos with Emma Stone to be beautiful cinema. The story, about conspiracy theorists convinced a CEO is an alien, is a tad pretentious but you have no idea where it's going. At #11 is Shelby Oaks, a low-budget horror film from film critic Chris Stuckmann. Sadly, this slim tale is full of the usual horror tropes: James couldn't remember when he'd last been so bored. No boredom in Netflix's A House of Dynamite, though. Kathryn Bigelow directs Idris Elba in a thriller about the US facing a defence emergency. If you're short of time, just watch the first 39 minutes.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
Steve Caplin is surprised that, despite AWS's massive internet failure, OpenAI will pay it $38bn for computing power. Robot dogs are to be used to deal with Sellafield's nuclear waste. A humanoid housekeeper apparently has to have a human operator. An Australian company has devised a way of skiing indoors in something resembling a giant hamster wheel. Tesla's Cybertrucks are losing their headlights, because mechanics used the wrong glue. China has built the world's first wind-powered underwater data centre. And a solar powered backpack has been devised for homeless people in California.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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