On today’s episode of the “Daily Variety” podcast, in our Cover Story segment, Variety’Brent Lang details the full report he delivered with Rebecca Rubin on the summer box office rebound and what Hollywood and exhibitors need to do to keep it moving forward.

Lang, who is VarietyThe executive editor who oversees all film coverage, emphasizes that it was good for a change to report on some good news for the film world. The story features insights and observations from leading actors in theatrical cinema, including Sony Pictures head Tom Rothman, Disney’s Alan Bergman, and Paramount’s Josh Greenstein.

“The most surprising thing was the sense of optimism we heard from people because it’s really been absent since COVID,” Lang says. “There’s been a lot of pessimism about the health of Hollywood in general, but particularly about the movie theater business. And you can feel the fact that the volume of movies has picked up again, finally after the strike and after COVID really made a big impact on production, and that a lot of the movies that have resonated with audiences are less conventional or unexpected hits. They’re not just the same old superhero movies. They’re things like ‘Michael’ and ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Hail Mary Project.’ There’s just this idea that, after being relegated to a corner of the cultural conversation, the movies are defining the zeitgeist again.”

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The film industry is eager to see the reception this weekend of “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan’s latest epic for Universal Pictures. Lang predicts that the momentum generated this summer will encourage studios to make bets with more modest budgets on a broader range of genres, including adult dramas and comedies.

“I think comedy is going to come back. I’m not really sure why it hasn’t yet, but I think the success of ‘Scary Movie’ shows that there’s still an audience for it,” Lang says. “We like to be scared together. We like to laugh together. I wouldn’t be surprised if comedy stars also came from YouTube, from TikTok, from social media and not from comedy clubs like they did when I was a kid.”

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