New Apple TV+ Trailer: The Studio — DUHPOCALYPSE (Seth Rogan new zombie comedy thriller)
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Seth Rogen’s Graphic ‘The Studio’ Trailer Is Sure to Make a Splash During Super Bowl
The big game teaser — complete with a... wait for it... diarrhea zombie explosion — comes ahead of the series' March 26 launch on Apple TV+.
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‘The Studio’ Review: Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ Hollywood Comedy Is So Hilarious It Hurts
Kathryn Hahn and Ike Barinholtz also star in the series about a beleaguered film executive, co-created and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
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Nah...
Seth Rogen Says Sony Wouldn’t Allow Jonah Hill to Use a PlayStation in ‘Superbad’: He Can’t ‘Interact With Our Products. It’s Too Vile a Character’
Seth Rogen shares that Sony objected to Jonah Hill's character using a PlayStation in 'Superbad': "It's too vile of a character."
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Meet the Breakout Star of Seth Rogen’s ‘The Studio’
Chase Sui Wonders came of age watching the actor’s movies. Now the 28-year-old finds herself starring in his buzzy, Hollywood-spoofing comedy.
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‘The Studio’ Review: Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ Hollywood Comedy Is So Hilarious It Hurts
Kathryn Hahn and Ike Barinholtz also star in the series about a beleaguered film executive, co-created and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
Seth Rogen’s Star-Studded Showbiz Satire ‘The Studio’ Is a Shrewd Send-Up of Modern Hollywood: TV Review
Seth Rogen's star-studded showbiz satire 'The Studio', for Apple TV+, is a shrewd send-up of modern Hollywood's many indignities.
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Seth Rogen Torches Hollywood: How the Sony Hack, ‘The Green Hornet’ and Virtue Signaling Inspired His Showbiz Satire ‘The Studio’
Seth Rogen, Catherine O'Hara, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz and Chase Sui Wonders explain how they made their Apple TV+ comedy 'The Studio.'
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'The Studio' co-creator Seth Rogen reveals how David Zaslav inspired Bryan Cranston's character
Seth Rogen says that controversial executive David Zaslav helped inspire Bryan Cranston's character in 'The Studio': 'He knows his reputation, so he wants to present himself as kind of cool and loose.'
Seth Rogen reveals how David Zaslav inspired Bryan Cranston's executive in The Studio: 'He knows his reputation'
Rogen also discusses directing Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard as actors on the series.By Wesley Stenzel
Published on March 26, 2025 09:00AM EDT
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Bryan Cranston on 'The Studio'.Credit:
Apple TV+
The Studio is Seth Rogen's most ambitious project yet as a director — and if shooting every scene as a single unbroken take wasn't a big enough challenge, he also enlisted some intimidating talent in supporting roles.
In his showbiz satire, Rogen plays conflicted Hollywood executive Matt Remick, and also co-directs every episode with longtime creative partner Evan Goldberg. As his protagonist oversees a number of shaky movie productions, he crosses paths with a murderers' row of familiar faces — some of whom are playing themselves, while others portray heightened characters inspired by megalomaniacs and oddballs who Rogen has encountered over the years.
One of the funniest supporting performances comes from Bryan Cranston, who portrays Griffin Mill, the unpredictable executive above Matt in the corporate food chain. Griffin maintains a surprisingly laid-back demeanor, but also urges Matt to be as vicious and unfeeling as possible, essentially encouraging Rogen's character to overpower directors and actors in the name of fiscal responsibility.
"What's funny is the role was originally written much more straight," Rogen tells Entertainment Weekly. "It was written more like a Michael Lynton–type guy — a boring, scary suit kind of guy."
Lynton was a key executive at Sony from 2004 to 2017 — the period when Rogen made films like This Is the End, The Green Hornet, and The Interview for the studio. But Rogen and his collaborators eventually realized that a stuffy, old-school businessman might not be the right take for Cranston's character, so they turned to another inspiration.
"It's funny, because I've met David Zaslav, for example," Rogen says, invoking the Warner Bros. Discovery president who has courted controversy by permanently shelving near-complete projects like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme for tax write-offs. "He's much more like Bryan in this. He's kinda like a mover and a shaker, and he's like a fun guy, and he knows his reputation, so he wants to present himself as kind of cool and loose. But the things he's saying are anything but!"
Seth Rogen censored in raunchy Golden Globes presentation with Catherine O'Hara
Seth Rogen in 'The Studio'.
Apple TV+
Rogen says that the contradiction between the executive's chilled-out disposition and his actual business tactics became a cornerstone of the character. "That dichotomy of being a cool Hollywood guy who is spewing the most commercial, anti-creative words you could possibly be saying at any given moment — that actually rang much more true to our experiences in Hollywood, and made the character much less like a caricature and more like what these guys are actually like," he explains. "They're social, they go to parties, they are friends with billionaires and movie stars, and they're kind of cool when you first meet them. But at the end of the day, they will f---ing destroy you to make one dollar more than they would if they could."
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Griffin's combination of lighthearted comedy and threatening drama made Cranston the perfect fit for the role. "His ability to be both funny and intimidating was very important," Rogen says. "Someone who is kind of silly and goofy but then on a dime locks in and you're like, 'Oh no, this man might kill me.' And that became a very important part of the character."
Another Hollywood legend who kept Rogen on his toes was Martin Scorsese, who plays himself in the series' first episode. "It was very scary working with Martin Scorsese until it happened, and then it was very fun," Rogen says. "I had barely ever met him. We sent him the script and we just heard, 'He loves it. He's in.'"
Ike Barinholtz, Seth Rogen, and Martin Scorsese in 'The Studio'.
Apple TV+
Rogen's nerves inspired him to hire a redundant camera crew so the Goodfellas filmmaker wouldn't question his judgment. "I was so petrified he would show up and say, 'You're only shooting this with one camera? You're doing oners?' that I actually had a second camera crew sequestered away in another room," Rogen says. "They were actually the camera crew from Killers of the Flower Moon, so if he got cagey with me, I knew I could just bring in these familiar faces."
Rogen notes that Scorsese didn't actually disapprove of his creative decisions. "It was purely based in my own fear that he would be critical of our directing choices, but he wasn't," he recalls, laughing. "I was like, 'We do everything in one shot.' As soon as he saw it, he's like, 'Great. It's like French New Wave. I love it. It's perfect.'"
Scorsese's presence on set ultimately proved extremely reassuring. "He was so funny and great, and honestly, as soon as he came in the room, his energy was just so good that everyone just relaxed," Rogen says. "But my mom called me that morning and was like, 'You have to direct Martin Scorsese today. That must be terrifying. Oh my God, how nervous are you?' I was like, 'Very! None of this is helping!'"
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The show's second episode features a similarly iconic filmmaker playing a version of himself: Ron Howard. At first, the Apollo 13 director seems like the unflappably nice guy we're all familiar with, but as the episode progresses and he comes to creative blows with Matt, Howard devolves into a laughably cruel, emotionally volatile jerk that couldn't be further from his public persona.
"We just thought, 'Who's the funniest person that is secretly a terrible asshole?'" Rogen recalls. "And we sent him the script and he really responded to it. And he was just like, 'Honestly, I do have these moments. It's never quite like this, but things are very heated, and it's a side of me that exists in some ways.'"
Seth Rogen and Ron Howard on 'The Studio'.
Apple TV+
Rogen clarifies that Howard doesn't think he ever goes to such extremes as the Studio version of him. "He said, 'I would never be as malicious as the version of me in this show, but I definitely have been in these positions where the studio just doesn't get what I'm trying to do, and it's incredibly frustrating,'" Rogen remembers.
The former Happy Days star dove headfirst into a complex, wide-ranging performance despite his limited performing experience in this phase of his career. "He was saying he hadn't acted that much in a long time — he's done little things here and there, but this was a real performance," Rogen says. "He has to get emotional, he has to cry, and he has to get angry and all this stuff. And he just really wanted to do a good job. And he was so funny, and he nailed it."
Seth Rogen says it 'wasn't on my radar' when James Franco revealed their friendship was over
Rogen continues, "That last scene with him was one of the hardest scenes to shoot in the whole show — it's long, it's one take, and there's a stunt. And so that was honestly one of the most fun days because it was so challenging. But as soon as we started to get it, everyone was so excited about it, and Ron felt really great at the end of the episode, which was really validating."
The first two episodes of The Studio are now streaming on AppleTV+. New episodes will premiere every Wednesday through May 21.
Part 1: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Wild Stories From the Set of ‘The Studio’ - The Ringer
Matt is joined by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the writer-director duo behind ‘The Studio,’ to discuss how the show came together, what the show gets right and wrong about Hollywood, which characters are based on real people, and why the show presented a different challenge than anything they...
theringer.com
Part 2: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg on Rejecting Tim Cook, Pitching Ice Cube, and Plans for More ‘The Studio’ - The Ringer
Matt is joined by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to discuss what they learned from industry executives before writing the show, choosing Netflix’s Ted Sarandos over Apple CEO Tim Cook for a cameo, desperately pitching Ice Cube, how they shot in a real Las Vegas casino, and which scenes were cut...
theringer.com
The Town With Matthew Belloni
Puck founding partner Matthew Belloni takes you inside Hollywood, using exclusive reporting and insight to explain the backstories on everything from Marvel movies to streaming wars. Multiple times each week, Matt will touch on what is…
theringer.com
