The Studio is a satirical cringe comedy created by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez, released on Apple TV with its first two episodes on March 26, 2025, and directed in its entirety by Rogen and Goldberg. Rogen plays Matt Remick, the newly appointed head of Continental Studios, a man who loves movies and has just been handed the job that will make him destroy them. It has been renewed for a second season. It is this paper’s highest-scored comedy, and that score is our own.
Trailer, via Apple TV.
Matt Remick
Rogen has never been better. Matt is desperate for the approval of the artists he now employs and terrified of the executives above him, and the show’s comedy comes from watching him try to serve both and fail both, usually within the same scene. He wants to be the studio head who makes great films. He is the studio head who greenlights the Kool-Aid movie. Rogen plays the gap between those two men with a panic that is genuinely painful and genuinely funny.
The Team
Catherine O’Hara plays Patty Leigh, the head Matt replaced, and it is her final performance. It is a great one, a woman who has seen every version of this story and has advice for none of it. Ike Barinholtz plays Sal Saperstein, Matt’s deputy and the show’s id. Chase Sui Wonders plays Quinn Hackett, the young executive who understands the business better than her boss. Kathryn Hahn plays Maya Mason, the marketing chief, and Hahn’s volume is a weapon the show deploys with precision.
The Style
Rogen and Goldberg shoot in long, unbroken takes that follow the characters through offices, sets and parties without cutting, and the technique is the comedy. Every scene is a tightrope. A single take means a single chance, and the anxiety of that is the anxiety of the people on screen. It is the best use of form in a comedy series in years.
Why It Earns the Score
Because it is about something. The Studio is a love letter to movies written by people who know exactly how movies get ruined, and it is honest that the ruin is usually done by people who love them. The satire has teeth. The guest performers, playing themselves, are used with real wit rather than as decoration. And the show is short: ten episodes, no filler, every one of them built.
What Others Will Hold Against It
It is inside baseball. A viewer who does not care how a studio works will find some of the jokes closed to them. The cringe, which is the point, is relentless, and there are stretches where the discomfort outweighs the laughs. And Matt’s incompetence, funny as it is, can strain the show’s insistence that he is also good at his job.
The Verdict
We do not hold any of that against it. The Studio is a precise, ambitious, beautifully made comedy about the people who decide what you get to see, and it is the rare show that understands both the art and the business well enough to mock both. The score is ours, and we stand by it.
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