Jessica Mendoza

And this is a win for movies being like a place that people can really enjoy themselves and feel good.

It depends how you measure it.

I mean, we're going to have probably certainly the best box office here since the pandemic, but we're still not at the levels that we were pre-pandemic.

I mean, the best case scenario for the domestic box office this year is it gets close to $10 billion.

In 2019, it was a little over $11 billion.

Like, it's still really hard to get people into theaters when there's so many other entertainment options.

You know, that is just a fact of life, right?

So it's still an uphill climb, but at least it's moving in the right direction for the first time this decade, really.

Yeah, I mean, it's always a bad idea to say a certain thing is over and a certain thing is everything in Hollywood, right?

But it is definitely true that...

Low budget horror born out of digital culture is something that we're going to see more and more of, and that clearly can be massively successful.

And that's really meaningful to the industry.

Oh, it's hugely important.

I mean, I would describe the mood in Hollywood for the past few years as really depressed.

You know, people just felt like they were sort of like the last survivors, you know, in a dying industry in some ways.

And this has spawned a lot of optimism, that Hollywood can make things that are commercially successful and culturally impactful.

So people now feel like there's a promising path forward for the movie business for the first time in a long time.

In the months since the Justice Department released the so-called Epstein files, some powerful people have lost their jobs and their credibility as a result of their relationships with him.

But for a long while, it seemed that one important person who was not tarnished was Bill Gates.

Bill Gates is one of the wealthiest people in the world.