Zak Penn on 'Free Guy,' Writing Villains, and the Fate of 'PCU'

Very excited to have on Zak Penn this week, who, in addition to being one of the writers of Free Guy, is also a credited writer on a series of HBO classics from my younger days: Last Action Hero, PCU, and Behind Enemy Lines, among others. On this episode we talked a lot about Free Guy and the state of Hollywood’s internal struggle between IP-branded ventures and original films, but we also dove into some of his other work: What happened with the writing of Last Action Hero, the first script Penn sold; the gratifying legacy of PCU as a cult classic and the oddity of its unavailability now; and why X-Men: The Last Stand gets a bad rap. It’s a super-sized episode because we had a ton of ground to cover; if you enjoy what you hear, please share it with a friend! If this episode does well maybe we can convince the studio swells to put out that 4K Blu-ray collector’s set of PCU we’ve all been clamoring for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices