The Studio wrapped up its first season in epic fashion on Apple TV+, taking two episodes to explore the insanity of CinemaCon, a real-life event for the film industry that occurs in Las Vegas. Now that the series has finished, audiences wonder what stories might be next for the show, which has thankfully been renewed for a second Season.
The Direct's Russ Milheim sat down with The Studio writers Peter Huyck and Frida Perez to discuss what ideas they want to tackle next and how they brought CinemaCon to life.
The Studio Season 2 Could Have an International Film Festival Episode
"That Would Be a Dream to Do an Episode Set There."
- The Direct: "What are some concepts in the film industry that, hypothetically, you would really want to tackle in new episodes?"
Peter Huyck: I think one thing we want to do is the big international film festival. That would be a dream to do an episode set there. We talked about it a lot last season, and we didn't get there, so that could be a good area for [a possible] Season 2 is the big International Film Festival episode.
Frida Perez: That kind of dovetails with, just like, releasing a movie and the excitement that comes from actually releasing, going to theaters, like the day of, watching box office. But I do think we want to, in a way, we want to hit everything for sure...
Hopefully, however long we go, it'll be a cool catalog of what it's like to make movies today. And we'll hit everything. We'll hit every festival, release, development, just, yeah, this will be the definitive guide to movie making,
The Studio co-showrunner Alex Gregory actually shared a sentiment similar to that of The Direct in a previous interview.
Creating an Authentic CinemaCon for The Studio
"We Did a Group Trip for Research the Year Before."
- The Direct: "CinemaCon, those last two episodes in the show, were great. And I had actually just been to Cinema Con prior to watching those, I was like, wow, this is close to home. What avenues did you go to make sure you were mimicking the event as well as you could? And just also how studios present their slates."
Peter Huyck: Well, we did a group trip for research the year before. That was super fun.
Frida Perez: It was the best. Like is the best work event trip I've ever been on, right?
Huyck: In that green room with heads of studios, and I feel like it was Rihanna and Martin Scorsese were talking, and we're like, this is surreal. It's amazing that all these people get together in these little rooms to present their slate of films to all the cinema owners. So that was our funnest trip.
We actually went and we hung, because it's Seth and Evan, we had access to these amazing backstage rooms where everything is happening, and we got to witness it all firsthand, so we could really kind of latch on to the verisimilitude of it all.
Perez: You hear about CinemaCon, the presentations, but like, you don't really get it until you're in that giant theater and Caesars you're walking around all these casinos knows, like the weird mix of like this giant presentation level press event mixed with like this, like Vegas was so funny.
Huyck: The other thing that was so funny and we didn't really get enough into it, Is how important the concessions are at CinemaCon. These written sections of episodes that we were going to have them go through, where they have like, 100 new chairs for theaters, and there's the one that shakes, and there's one that jiggles, the one that puts smell next to your face.
And we were like, Oh God, we just ran out of real estate for the episodes because we wanted—there was, like, 100 kinds of hot dogs where they've injected the nacho cheese, where the hot dogs in the middle of the cheese you like, you can't imagine they're doing every kind of popcorn... Endless candy. So we went into that section for a while...
We kind of got sick because we kept saying, like everyone, the cheese stuffed in the hot dog with the popcorn coat, yeah, we're gonna eat everything. And that was funny. That was an area of research we didn't actually get into the episode, just we ran out of time.
- The Direct: "Well, CinemaCon is a yearly occurrence. So you know, if the studio becomes a yearly show, there you go. You have a repeat visit."
Peter Huyck: What if every season ends at CinemaCon? What happens? You know, the final episode, good or bad, and David Franco is always there with us.
Letting Actors Go Crazy In The Studio for CinemaCon
"All of the Guest Stars Basically Came Really Down to Clown."
- The Direct: "What was it like crafting those crazy scenarios for actors like Dave Franco, Bryan Cranston, Zoe Kravitz, and basically just being like, getting them to do whatever you guys thought was the most wild, funniest thing to do was?"
Peter Huyck: Dave is like a friend of the group, and he's old friends with Seth and everything. They've obviously worked together, and he was basically open. He said, Hey, we had a few scenes. And he said, I'm gonna be there.
And like, I'm obviously there for the teams, but if you have extra stuff, you just throw me the stuff. And the more he showed up in scenes, the funnier he was. He has the most upbeat energy, and he just made us laugh so much. So over and over, we kept saying, We gotta have more David Franco, we have writing more material from because he was in Vegas with us at the casino. We're like he kills.
And Bryan Cranston, I don't know, in all the years of comedy and Frida, this is her first show. For me, I've done this for a long time. I've never seen anyone come more ready to play than Bryan Cranston in that CinemaCon episode where he—his outfits were unbelievable. His physical comedy. He is falling out of fountains. He is falling into a gondolas. It was the single most impressive spectacle physical comedy I've ever seen.
Frida Perez: And I would say all of the guest stars basically came really down to clown. They all were like, it's cool, because they're playing themselves, so they obviously know themselves better than anybody else. We didn't have to write the characters of them.
So, then they had kind of a base level themselves, and then from there, they were just super excited to, I think, express different funny, goofy sides of themselves. Bryan, he's been Walter White for so long. And, I mean, he does so much for it. He's always working. But I feel like it was a fun chance for them all to really let loose.
Peter Huyck: And Zoe Kravitz in the world of comedy. She's so funny. She just crushes these episodes. She is in the Golden Globes episode. She's so funny in that, but then for the finale, we decided we have to bring her back because she's in the world now.
It kind of goes back almost to my first job in LA was Larry Sanders, and once you have someone in in the universe of the show, you can always bring them back.
That's when I'm in my hometown of Connecticut now, and I just ran into Ron Howard, I said the supermarket, and he and I and his wife, I got for half an hour, and he said, This is the most fun I've had in years. I was like, you're in the world, Ron, you gotta come back.
The Studio Writers on the Kool-Aid Man
They Got Lucky That the Idea Was Crazy Enough, No One Was Developing It Yet
- The Direct: "The first topic I want to talk about is the Kool-Aid Man, I gotta pick your guys' brains about what were those alternate pretentious ideas, or four quadrant story angles that you guys were playing around with when fleshing those ideas out?"
Frida Perez: Kool-Aid was one of the rare first ideas that we kind of stuck with, right?
Peter Huyck: I think so many things the industry had been joked about or had actually come close, like Hungry, Hungry Hippos. There actually is a Jenga movie that's in development, so it was almost hard to find an idea like so stupid that it was funny that wasn't actually in development and active development.
And we're like, I think they're doing Monopoly. In fact, I think Seth and Evan had an amazing meeting with Scott Rudin, who had the rights to Monopoly, or he had a great pitch and a take. A lot of these things actually are very deep in development.
The Kool-Aid man was kind of the one we landed on when we thought, I don't think anyone is currently developing a Kool-Aid man. This could be ours.
Perez: It was one of the rare ones where it's like just stupid enough that no one's doing it now, which is good, but also just realistic enough that it has a character. There's a character there. Like... And we all know what he does. So, yeah, pretty cinematic. That was, like a rare that one we kind of like stuck with once we land on that early on.
- The Direct: "Did you guys see the news yesterday that Bill Hader is developing a Jonestown series for HBO?"
Peter Huyck: That was the thing we thought, the more we talked about it, we thought Mark Scorsese should make a Jonestown. It could be one of the best movies anyone's ever made, and it made it feel more real I think for the show that you would hear that idea, and think absolutely. So, the idea that Bill Hader is doing it for HBO, I'm thrilled. Hader's amazing. Like, I think it's gonna be a good story.
Be sure to check out The Direct's other interviews with the talent behind The Studio.
