From the Oscars mixup to the Disney-Fox deal, and from Netflix’s continuing inability to launch major movie hits to the seemingly endless stream of sexual misconduct revelations, 2017 was a big year for entertainment news, arguably the biggest in decades. Every new week brought a new story with the potential to alter the industry in incalculable ways. 

It was such a big year that a near-strike by the Writers Guild of America ended up being a footnote.

Covering all of it was Richard Rushfield, a veteran entertainment journalist whose new newsletter, The Ankler, launched in 2017 and instantly became a must-read for anybody hoping to understand the business of show. Rushfield’s open, chatty publication broke major stories (like the existence of a group of powerful Hollywood women looking for a way to force the industry to deal with its sexual misconduct issues) and offered an often iconoclastic take on the biggest stories of the year.

Richard and Todd got together shortly before the year’s end to talk about all of the biggest stories from 2017, where all of this might be heading in 2018, and (of course) Star Wars.