
Matt Brittin arrives on day one at the BBC. Image: Carl Court/Getty
New BBC Director General Matt Brittin is not wasting any time on day one, telling staff early Monday morning that the nation’s 100-year-old public broadcaster needs to “experiment more bravely” and that he wants to “reinvent public service broadcasting for the 21st century.”
In a note to staff, seen by Deadline, the former Google EMEA chief said “we must be where audiences are, and experiment more bravely: test ideas, learn quickly and back what works.”
He also swiftly addressed the mega savings plan he is walking into that will see around 2,000 BBC staff laid off, equating to about 10%. “I know change will not be easy. Tough choices are unavoidable as we make savings,” he said.
These savings comprise one of Brittin’s three main areas of focus, he wrote, which are charter renewal, editorial excellence and “increased velocity – making the savings we must and the choices we should, simplifying the BBC for staff and audiences alike.”
“That means moving with velocity and clarity,” he said. “Excellence at the BBC has always been founded on great, creative storytelling and brilliant, independent journalism. Today it also means making sure we get the right stories in the right formats on the right platforms.”
Intriguingly, and off the back of several big BBC scandals, he noted: “I want to make sure we are always backing the right people to make decisions with clear accountability. We must never allow our duty to take risks and deliver quality to be undermined by unnecessary process or misplaced caution.”
Met by protests
Brittin was met at the front of the BBC’s New Broadcasting House HQ by a small group of protesters holding National Union of Journalists placards, taking umbrage with the layoffs in the BBC News division.

Matt Brittin arrives on day one at the BBC. Image: Carl Court/Getty
He is now gearing up to lead his first all-staff call tomorrow at 11 a.m. GMT (3 a.m. PT).
Meanwhile, in a video posted on the BBC’s social media that felt reflective of his past life working for a giant U.S. tech firm, Brittin said that as a “first time insider” he has spent time over the past few weeks traveling around the country seeing “first hand” the work the BBC teams put in.
He said his goal as director general is to “reinvent public service broadcasting for the 21st century.” “What would the pioneers of the BBC have done if they’d had today’s technology and reach in their hands?,” he questioned.
The 60 second vid revealed the current BBC show Brittin is enjoying is dark crime thriller Mint.
When faced with the big question about the BBC’s biggest show of all, Brittin said he is a “faithful” not a traitor.
Brittin’s note in full
Hello everyone,
It’s an honour to join you as Director-General and to be asked to lead this incredible organisation.
In the last few weeks, I’ve met teams in each of the four Nations, internationally and across genres and formats, to listen and to learn. As a lifelong fan of the BBC, it’s been a special privilege to witness the world-class expertise and teamwork behind the output first-hand.
I’ve seen production from Ambridge to Shetland, met legends of local radio, delivered tea to galleries deep in election coverage and celebrated teams collecting BAFTAs by the armful – to name but a few.
It has all underlined just what an extraordinary, priceless asset the BBC is for all of us. It has shaped who we are as a country and how the world sees us. It has shaped me too. In an accelerating world of limitless choice, its trust, reach and creative strength are unrivalled.
I’m struck by how far the BBC’s impact goes beyond our own output and shores. So many people trained or inspired by the BBC go on to contribute brilliantly elsewhere, and I’ve seen how critical that creative investment is for the UK at home and worldwide. If you travel internationally, you know how often people share, unprompted, their love for and trust in the BBC.
Today, the BBC has never been more needed – on the side of the audience as their most trusted news provider, the cornerstone of our creative economy, and a force that brings people together. I know we face very real challenges, but at a time of flux and uncertainty, people here and around the world need us to meet the moment with courage and vision.
I’ve already seen our brilliant creative, editorial and technical people coming together to meet the moment every day. The BBC has proved throughout its history how quickly it can reinvent itself to serve the needs of audiences – from restructuring for World War II to repurposing during Covid to spinning up services in conflict zones. We need, collectively, to call on that sense of urgency now.
That means moving with velocity and clarity. Excellence at the BBC has always been founded on great, creative storytelling and brilliant, independent journalism. Today it also means making sure we get the right stories in the right formats on the right platforms.
We must be where audiences are, and experiment more bravely: test ideas, learn quickly and back what works. Audiences will value the fact we are listening, innovating and working hard to serve them better.
I know change will not be easy. Tough choices are unavoidable as we make savings. We should ask ourselves, honestly: if we were inventing the BBC today, what would we do? Then respond with clarity, pace and purpose.
As I get underway, my focus will be on three priorities:
Editorial excellence is the very foundation on which the BBC’s reputation has been built. I have asked the Executive Committee to begin looking at this immediately, working with colleagues across the BBC, and will be appointing a Deputy to ensure this ambition is addressed and sustained.
I want to make sure we are always backing the right people to make decisions with clear accountability. We must never allow our duty to take risks and deliver quality to be undermined by unnecessary process or misplaced caution.
My goal is yours: a thriving BBC. Enduring public service values realised with creative and editorial excellence, innovation and courage. To do this we must be simpler, faster and more connected with audiences than ever. I look forward to meeting more of you over the coming weeks, and to getting started together.
Thanks for making me so welcome already, and please join me for my first all‑staff call tomorrow at 11.00 BST.
Matt
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As Larry David‘s comedic trip through U.S. history comes to an end, he took credit for one of the nation’s more recent presidential scandals.
On Friday’s season finale of the HBO sketch comedy miniseries Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance as himself in a sketch set in 2014, as David advised him to wear the now-infamous, outrage-inducing tan suit during his live press conference on military response to ISIS.
Following some banter on how the POTUS avoids stains, David accidentally spills juice on Obama’s suit jacket when he leaves the room. When the 44th president returns, the comedian recommends he wear the tan suit that Obama planned on taking it to Turin for NATO Summit, for “a daytime event, it’s outdoors, a little more casual.”
“First of all, it’s a gorgeous suit,” David declared. “And this is casual Friday!”
“It is a great suit,” admitted Obama, as David told him, “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move. … Old lips won’t let you down. You’ll thank me!”
As Obama models the look, David gives him his signature, “Pretty good! Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.”
“You sure about this?” asks Obama, as David assures him, “Never been more sure about anything in my life. People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”
Obama’s cameo in the finale comes as David marks the United States Semiquencentennial with the seven-part sketch comedy limited series, which recounts major events in U.S. history through the comedian’s signature observational humor.
David’s longtime Curb Your Enthusiasm partner Jeff Schaffer, who serves as an executive producer on Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, previously told Deadline that Obama, who produced under his Higher Ground banner, reached out to his buddy David to ask if he’d be interested in making the show to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
“When you’re doing a show about American history, you want to do it warts and right now we have this orange saggy wart that we wish would go away,” said Schaffer. “But the nice thing about having President Obama produce this and be a part of it is that this country’s had a lot of fuck ups, we’ve seemed to have learned very little, but we’re still moving forward sometimes, and then we move back a little bit, but we always move forward again. While Larry’s pointing out a lot of the steps back, the President is telling us we can still step forward.”
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Matthew McConaughey shows off his vocal skills (and some hidden banjo talents) with his latest role in The Rivals of Amziah King.
On Friday, Lakeshore Records released the single and music video for “Quill” from the original motion picture soundtrack, performed by the Oscar-winning and co-star Ben Hardesty, also featuring Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.
Set in the backwoods of Oklahoma, The Rivals of Amziah King follows the musically gifted Amaziah King (McConaughey) and his bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amaziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the chance to reconnect and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amaziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.
Premiering Aug. 14 in theaters, the Andrew Patterson-written-and-directed drama also stars Angelina LookingGlass, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell.
Producers are David Heyman, Teddy Schwarzman, Jeffrey Clifford, Michael Heimler, James Montague and Will Greenfield.
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With their latest directorial outing, Jane Schoenbrun used subtle pieces of nostalgia to deconstruct the slasher genre.
The Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma writer/director explained to Deadline that they wanted to create “a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary,” noting the frequent symbolism of candy and junk food as providing an atmosphere “that’s actually safe” while diving into a horror movie or exploring sexuality after trauma.
“There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe,” said Schoenbrun, who is non-binary. “Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, ‘Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.’”
In Schoenbrun’s latest film, Hannah Einbinder stars as queer director Kris, who is tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. While courting Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, to reprise her role, the pair spirals into a psychosexual frenzy as the slasher’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), comes to life.
Acknowledging the problematic trans representation of horror films like Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995), Schoenbrun admitted the genre has been “catnip to me since I was 10 years old,” and they jumped at the chance to direct their own.

“So many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals … And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy,” they explained.
“But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants,” said Schoenbrun. “It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.”
Read on about Jane Schoenbrun’s love letter to the slasher genre with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, now playing in theaters.
DEADLINE: It was really fun to see the slasher genre through your eyes. Tell me about finding inspiration in that genre and “final girls.”
JANE SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it was the easiest thing in the world because it’s just one of those genres that has been catnip to me since I was 10 years old. I just raided the horror section of the video store as a kid from an age when I really shouldn’t have been doing that, like in 5th grade, I watched in the span of about one week, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I think that I was always drawn to movies and really anything entertainment where it felt forbidden in some way, like the thing on the tape, how is that even allowed? And that’s the thing that I love about a lot of my favorite slashers. Don’t get me wrong, I love like brutal ones, like I love Texas Chainsaw, that’s a nasty movie at its core, and that’s what’s so special about it. But so many slashers do have this sense of humor, and even if they’re not overtly meta like the Scream movies are, they’re so aware of their own tropes and the sort of rituals of, OK, what’s the most outrageous way that like these like dumb kids can get killed? But watching it, it’s not about fear a lot of the time, it’s about joy and celebration. And I just loved that from a young age and loved all of the little rituals within it, and so, getting to make my own is just like play and joy. But it also felt like the perfect way to talk about sex and to talk about my experience as a trans person post-transition, learning how to come into a sexual identity that I could feel comfortable within, because so many of these movies are obviously deeply engaged in gender and sexual roles, and these movies have so much to say for better or for worse about deviants, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Sleepway Camp or Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface in drag. It is there in the DNA of the slasher genre that these movies are talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance. And that’s all swimming in the toxic soup of the genre, so I wanted to remake it in my own language.

DEADLINE: I’m curious about the symbolism of all the processed junk food and the chandelier of wrappers.
SCHOENBRUN: The junk food in the movie, I forget when it found its way in there. It’s like so much of the movie is about, like I said, ritual, about being in a mindset where you can really enjoy something scary, whether that be Kris [Hannah Einbinder] in bed, with, you know, with Raisinets and the popcorn, watching a schlocky horror movie, or the two characters learning how to be present and enjoy sex after a lot of trauma. There is this idea that if it gets too real, you can turn it off, that you’re exploring something dangerous, doing it in a way that’s actually safe. Which in my experience of coming into my sexual identity post-transition, kind of required some gummy candy on hand. What I mean by that is, even if we’re going to be exploring scary and vulnerable and potentially embarrassing, triggering parts of ourselves, we trust each other well enough to know that at any moment, we can be like, “Let’s stop, we gotta just eat some fucking gummies.”
DEADLINE: And one thing I really love—I just feel like it’s a theme in your work—is how it depicts the way media and entertainment influence us. Why does that inspire you?
SCHOENBRUN: I think it comes from a fascination and sensitivity to the complex relationship between what we think of as fiction and what we think of as reality, which we tend to, as a society, think of as pointing in one direction. Like, reality dictates fiction, not vice-versa, but when you actually look at the way the world works, it’s like one echoes off the other. And I think a complicated, sometimes terrifying and sometimes beautiful way, where the fiction, the cultural norms, the things we grow up looking at on our screens, the roles that we’re told people play, they kind of inspire us to create reality. There’s something liberating when you start thinking in that way. I think it’s a way of thinking that we as a culture, could do a lot more of. To think about the idea of fiction inspiring reality just as much as reality is inspiring fiction, is a potential path to liberating us from this hellscape that they’re telling us is the only way the world can be.

DEADLINE: And I know you have the Secretary reading. Tell me what it’s been like prepping for that and why you all chose that movie.
SCHOENBRUN: I mean, that was such a huge influence on on Miasma. There just aren’t that many fun and funny movies about deviant sex. And just the way that movie is like feather light while talking about really raw and taboo things, it is just really inspiring to me. And the dynamic between those two main characters is definitely one that had a lot of influence on on Kris and Billy’s [Gillian Anderson] relationship in Miasma. And it’s already to me a very queer movie in its way, but having Gillian reading the James Spader part and Hannah reading the Maggie Gyllenhaal part, I think it’s just gonna be like a very unique joy. Honestly, we’ve been prepping a little bit, but I think it’s just gonna be about getting up there and feeling the chemistry of it all, and just letting these folks who we have all gotten to know each other really, really well, but we haven’t actually done anything wacky and creative like that in a while, like as a reunion, it’s gonna be a real blast, I think.
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