Who Is Matt Belloni in ‘The Studio’ Episode 9? Real-Life Hollywood Insider Behind the Vegas Cameo, Explained
With a myriad of celebrities in cameo roles, it might have been pretty hard to recognise one person in The Studio’s latest episode. Here’s what you need to know about Matt Balloni and why he’s out there in Las Vegas for Continental Studios’ upcoming presentation at CinemaCon.
Seth Rogen’s chaotic Hollywood satire The Studio is about to get to its climax with the first season’s finale coming next week, but the whole mess occurring in the latest episode might still need some explanation.
In the episode titled “CinemaCon”, Matt and his team are off to Las Vegas to present their film slate to cinema exhibitors at CinemaCon. The excitement surrounding the Continental’s potential success is soon over when the news about the studio’s possible sale to Amazon arrives.
Things get way worse at the pre-presentation party where Matt and his colleagues desperately try to locate their missing and pretty high boss Mill Griffin, repeatedly bumping into a Matt Belloni.
A name that might be unknown to many of the show’s fans so far, Belloni is actually one of the most prominent figures in the industry, even though he isn’t present on shooting sites that much.
Who Is Matt Belloni and Why Is He in Las Vegas for CinemaCon?
Coming from the journalistic side of the movie industry, Matt Belloni is an entertainment journalist and podcaster, as well as the former editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter.
Having left the position back in 2020, Belloni went on to become one of the founders of a digital media Puck created back in 2021.
As one of the industry’s most reliable insiders, Belloni regularly shares updates about upcoming movies and shows in his twice-weekly newsletter called What I'm Hearing.
He can also be frequently seen as a regular guest at shows like NBC Nightly News, CBS This Morning, CNN, CNBC and others. Apart from that, Belloni is also the host of his own Hollywood insider podcast titled The Town.
In The Studio’s episode 9, there’s not much revealed about his purpose of visiting CinemaCon in Vegas, though it’s safe to say Belloni was there to cover the event’s updates for his numerous media.
“CinemaCon” Is Currently One of ‘The Studio’ Highest-Rated Episodes on IMDb
With lots of celebrities getting high thanks to mushrooms hidden in the Hollywood buffet’s chocolate, the episode’s ratings went pretty high too, now boasting of 8.6/10 on IMDb, surpassed only by episode 2 titled “The Oner”.
Now that the first part of the season’s finale has become one of the messiest problems Seth Rogen’s Matt has had to deal with so far, Kathryn Hahn, who in the show portrays Continental's head of marketing Maya Mason, teases an even bigger chaos in the instalment’s ending.
“It was a dream to spend two weeks in a beautiful Las Vegas casino with Bryan Cranston, and a lot of those incredible background artists were just people at the casinos who were so patient and sweet with us. [The two-part finale is like] Weekend at Bernie’s — and it goes full farce. It just pulls out all the stops. As a group going through that together, it doesn’t get any better than that. It’s just so stupid fun, and the stakes being so life or death again is where the comedy is”, the actress revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter recently.
When Is ‘The Studio’ Season 1 Finale Being Released?
The show’s season 1 episode 10 will arrive on Apple TV+ on May 21.
