Seth Rogen S The Studio Is The First Must See Show Of 2025

Leo Migdal

-Dec 11, 2025, 1:46 PM

seth rogen s the studio is the first must see show of 2025

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the duo that brought us Superbad, Pineapple Express, Invincible, and many other great movies and TV shows, is back with The Studio, a comedic series about Hollywood. Led by Rogen and featuring an all-star supporting cast plus many industry cameos, the Apple TV+ original is garnering unanimously positive reviews following its premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. Based on these initial praises, The Studio should be a big hit.Here’s what critics are saying about The Studio: It’s 2025’s best new show to date.— Judy Berman, TIME Magazine [It’s] one of the best TV shows that can be found on streaming today.— Jacob Fisher, Discussing Film For those willing to get on its frazzled wavelength, this is a strong contender for the best new comedy of 2025.— Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter

You’re going to want to green light this one yourself.— Tyler Doster, AwardsWatch This tongue-in-cheek takedown of the showbiz world is the funniest thing to come out of 2025 so far Winning where streaming, strikes, pandemics and AI have all tried and failed, there’s nothing Tinseltown likes doing more than tearing down its own tinsel. Babylon, La La Land, Tropic Thunder and plenty of others have all had a decent pop in recent years ‘cos no one takes on Hollywood quite like Hollywood. The latest barbed attack comes from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Alongside an impressively starry cast of A-listers, they deliver a 10-part self-loathing love letter to the biz that just might be the sharpest, funniest show of 2025 so far.

Rogen stars as unlikely new studio head Matt Remick, a nice guy who loves movies but has none of the other skills or personality traits needed for the job. Over-anxious, indecisive, and terrified of confrontation, he leans on his team more than he probably should. With Ike Barinholtz’s second-string suit, Kathryn Hahn’s bulldog marketing exec and Chase Sui Wonders’ ladder-climbing wannabe in his corner, he spends the whole series at the point of total collapse. Episode one sees Remick take the chair after the old studio head (Catherine O’Hara) slips up. It’s a decision he instantly regrets as he soon realises he can’t actually make any of the films he wants to. Hired to develop The Kool-Aid Movie because the higher-ups are desperate to cash in on the Barbie brand craze, he tries nabbing Martin Scorsese but only ends up making him cry.

An outstanding new Apple TV+ comedy series sends up Hollywood's movie-making machine. You don't have to be a movie lover to appreciate The Studio, but the more you know, the more you'll laugh. : [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: This story incorrectly states that James Franco appears in The Studio. In fact, the actor's name is Dave Franco.] This is FRESH AIR. In a new 10-part Apple TV+ comedy series, Seth Rogen stars as the newly appointed head of a long-running Hollywood movie studio.

Last week, I spoke with Rogen about the new series, which is called "The Studio." And today, our TV critic David Bianculli offers his review. Bianculli says the more you love movies, the more you'll love this ambitious, entertaining new comedy. DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: "The Studio" is a comedy about people who make movies, made by people who make and love movies, with a target audience of people who also love movies. You don't need to get all the inside jokes and references or even recognize all the cameos and guest stars to enjoy this new Apple TV+ series. But the more you know about films like "Chinatown" and "Goodfellas" and "Barbie" and "Birdman," the more you'll laugh. Among the five creators of "The Studio" are Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who also serve as co-directors.

Rogen is in front of the camera, too, as the lead character. He plays Matt Remick, a midlevel executive at a century-old Hollywood institution called Continental Studios. In the opening episode, Matt is pulled aside by the big boss played by Bryan Cranston, who offers him a promotion. "Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." IN DIRECTOR ROBERT Altman's 1992 film The Player, Tim Robbins plays an upcoming Hollywood movie studio executive who finds himself in a tricky situation just as his career starts to really take off. It's a dark comedy, a thriller, and a very funny satire making light of what were some very real conversations happening in the world of movies at the time; it also came together brilliantly,...

The Player was ultimately nominated for three Oscars, including Best Director for Altman, and remains one of the best movies (or shows) about movies ever made. Now, more than 30 years after The Player hit theaters, it finally has a spiritual sequel in the form of Apple TV+'s brilliant new series The Studio. While The Studio, which comes from the power team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who are behind Superbad, This Is The End, and countless more modern comedy classics), doesn't get quite as dark... You'll be cackling at one joke so much that you might miss a sly reference to that movie you saw a year ago or a quick cameo from this actor or that director. Rogen plays the lead role of Matt Remick, a rising film executive who, in the first episode, is named the new head of Continental Studios. Leading a studio to make great movies is Matt's dream job, and he's excited to do it—but with one reservation.

His boss, Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston, playing a character with the same name as Robbins in The Player in a clear homage), has one key objective for him: make lots of money. And so the push and pull between art and commerce, as always, continues on. The show evolves into a sort of cross between The Player and Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Matt and his team (which include his former boss and mentor, Cathy, as played by Catherine O'Hara, and... What does it mean for a television show to be cinematic? It certainly doesn’t have to mean that the series in question is about the movie business, though that happens to be the case with The Studio, the new Apple TV+ comedy starring Seth Rogen... In the first episode, Rogen’s Matt Remick becomes the new president of the venerable century-old Continental Studios when its previous head, industry legend and Matt’s onetime mentor Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara), is forced out...

Matt got into the business out of a love for classic cinema—he’s forever dropping references to everything from Goodfellas to Fight Club to I Am Cuba. But the realities of the 21st-century box office mean that his workdays revolve around meetings about acquiring the rights to the Kool-Aid brand name for a franchise that will star Ice Cube as the... The 10 episodes of The Studio’s first season periodically return to the state of this big-budget adaptation of the drink mix, but as a whole, the show’s shape is less serial than episodic—that is... That’s only a part of what makes The Studio feel like TV created by filmmakers (Rogen and Goldberg, who co-directed all the episodes). The series is also directed with a level of attention to framing, editing, and camera movement that’s refreshing in the context of weekly television. Episode 2, “The Oner,” chronicles the attempt of filmmaker Sarah Polley—playing herself, in a hilariously cranky turn—to finish a long take before losing the magic-hour light, while a starstruck Matt disrupts the tricky shoot...

That the episode itself is filmed in a single take (or what appears to be one—I won’t quibble with whatever digital or practical work-arounds were used to create that impression) not only pays tribute... It’s a lovely example of form suiting function, a match between style and content that recurs in Episode 4, “The Missing Reel,” which pays homage to film noir as it chronicles Olivia Wilde’s attempt... The Studio is not casual second-screen watching: The episodes move fast and demand close attention from the viewer, with throwaway visual jokes crammed into corners of the frame, Simpsons-style. (Rogen and Goldberg are huge fans of The Simpsons and, in the kind of cross-platform deal that’s easy to imagine happening at Continental Studios, once talked co-creator James L. Brooks into letting them write an episode after learning he was a fan of Superbad.) Most scenes are set at the studio’s L.A. headquarters, a sprawling campus designed in warm earth tones that give The Studio a cozier look than your average showbiz satire.

In these burnt-ocher halls, Matt spends his days careering from one crisis to the next with his creative team: right-hand-man exec Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz), ambitious protégée Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders), and trendspeak-spouting marketing... Except for the final two episodes of the season, which form an arc chronicling the team’s ill-fated trip to Las Vegas CinemaCon, each half hour takes on a separate fictional project connected to a... In addition to the films from Polley and Wilde, there’s Martin Scorsese’s long-dreamed-of epic about the Jonestown cult, Johnny Knoxville’s scatological zombie comedy, and Ron Howard’s self-indulgently long autobiographical drama. These creators who appear as themselves are not doing mere walk-on cameos but playing significant roles in their respective episodes, and to that end, the showrunners smartly went with filmmakers who have already proved... I won’t soon forget Scorsese breaking down in sobs when his pet project falls through, or the moment when Ron Howard, known throughout the industry as an impossibly nice man to work with, brutally... (Physical comedy comes into play again in that Vegas-set season finale, with Bryan Cranston as a hedonistic CEO on an epic psychedelic trip: Not since Leonardo DiCaprio’s Quaalude bender in The Wolf of Wall...

What sets The Studio apart from the many other recent sitcoms that attempt to skewer the entertainment industry is not just its attention to craft and its uniformly strong ensemble cast (Rogen in particular,... While the show’s satire of contemporary Hollywood can be biting, with Matt’s artistic ambitions regularly crashing on the shoals of his company’s bottom line, The Studio never completely sheds its protagonist’s fundamental idealism. “I got into all of this because, you know, I love movies,” Matt tells his industry-veteran mentor after a soul-crushing first few days as the head of Continental. “But now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.” O’Hara’s Patty—yet another of the great comedienne’s indelible creations—replies with a maxim that could serve, with a slight tweak, as a... In a world where reality itself seems more and more changeable, where boundaries between art business blur into an undiscriminating mist, a new show bursts out from the artistic whirlwind of Hollywood to reflect... Seth Rogen’s ambitious foray into the behind-the-scenes operations of a classic movie studio, “The Studio,” is more than just a TV show.

This philosophical treatise, disguised as a satiric, is a profound, hilarious, meticulously crafted treatise on the human condition. The quest for the intangible magic of art in a world obsessed with quantifiable success is a bold question to pose. “The Studio” is nothing short of a masterclass in storytelling, a rarity that effortlessly blends razor-sharp wit with an underlying current of poignant observation. Here, Rogen not only acts but also contributes to the creation of this world alongside Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez. The series’ core is Matt Remick, a character Rogen plays. As the head of Continental Studios, Remick assumes a position that can be both devoted and uncomfortable.

Rogen’s portrayal of lived-in sincerity and obvious passion for movies makes “The Studio” much more than just an industry satire. He faces the existential dread of maintaining a massive business in a sector that is becoming more and more dominated by algorithmic demands, franchise weariness, and the constant search for the next big, lucrative... The unflinching commitment to accurately nail each detail is what sets this show apart, derived from Rogen and Goldberg’s extensive experience within the Hollywood machine. Rogen’s tame frustration and the executives’ somber mood are the ingredients for the hilarious cringe-comedy in the ‘Kool-Aid Movie’ pitch, highlighted by long takes and sterile cinematography that underscores absurd corporate demands. The smart wiring of the show becomes evident in how it seamlessly interweaves genuine cinematic passion with the soul-crushing realities of corporate mandates. It’s a dance between the artistic ideal and the commercial imperative, often resulting in moments of exquisite cringe-comedy that leave you laughing with genuine discomfort.

Meanwhile, the writing in “The Studio” is nothing short of brilliant—fresh, creative, remarkably real. It doesn’t rely on cheap gags or fleeting internet trends. Instead, it banks on character-driven humor derived from deeply flawed, relatable individuals caught in an insane system. The dialogue is sharp, often on-the-nose in a ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’-esque fashion, allowing characters to blurt out their unfiltered thoughts anxieties, leading to anticipated, often uproarious, confrontations. This smart humor isn’t just for laughs; it’s also a crucial tool for exposing the underlying anxieties and absurdities of the industry. The narrative perspective is consistently fresh, moving beyond a simple “Hollywood is bad” trope to explore the genuine struggles of those who love cinema but are forced to navigate its increasingly treacherous landscape.

In 2024, HBO attempted to satirize the inner workings of Hollywood and big-budget superhero movies in the now-canceled series The Franchise. Too broad and seemingly uninterested in the very genre it was trying to critique, The Franchise simply never cut deep enough to offer any meaningful insight into the blockbuster machine. A shame, given the parade of massive egos and money-hungry execs the show could have drawn from. So when Apple TV+ announced a Hollywood satire of its own with The Studio, I was skeptical. Would this just be another half-hearted attempt at poking fun at Hollywood? Or would it actually deliver a biting look into the studio system?

Thankfully, The Studio is everything The Franchise was not. Created by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez, the series is as likely to take a fine scalpel to specific Hollywood issues as it is to bludgeon the studio... Both methods work — and elicit belly laughs galore — because The Studio's love of film shines through in every episode. It's as much an ode to movies as it is a frustrated scream about what the cinematic landscape has become, and that tension propels The Studio to full-on comedy gold. The Studio's love of movies starts with its main character, Matt Remick (Rogen), who's just been appointed head of the storied Continental Studios. A film geek who's devoted his entire life to movies, Matt sees this promotion as a chance to green-light prestige films.

Seth Rogen S The Studio Is The First Must See Show Of 2025

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