Famous films, messy productions, two hosts comparing notes.
Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer pick one movie per episode, from Lawrence of Arabia to Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and reconstruct how it reached the screen. The research gets granular, down to screen-test budgets and discarded drafts, but the talk stays quick, warm and full of jokes.
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The subject is never only the movie. It is everything that happened on the way to making it. Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer build each episode around a single film, and one of them usually arrives having chosen it. Chris brings Jim Henson's Labyrinth; Lizzie brings American History X. In the Labyrinth episode, the first question to Lizzie is whether she had seen it before and what she thought on rewatching it. Even the welcome is a bit, a stock opening line that ends on a punchline written for the film at hand. The Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) episode goes further and starts with an Oompa Loompa parody about missing scripts, slipped deadlines and a composer who is told not to sleep. The research underneath is serious. That conversation lingers on Roald Dahl as a screenwriter who preferred working alone to working in a writers' room and did not take notes well. It follows the book back through its drafts to an unnamed first version from as early as 1961 and to early versions with ten children and ten golden tickets. In those drafts Charlie was Black, until he was changed to white at the urging of Dahl's agent and others. Lawrence of Arabia opens on a joke about its length and then settles into casting. In August 1960, David Lean spent four days and a rumored 100,000 pounds screen-testing Albert Finney. The hosts study an image of Finney in the role, find him surly, and compare his face with Peter O'Toole's and with photos of T.E. Lawrence. A recasting game follows, with Spike Jonze and early 90s Edward Norton floated as better physical fits. Studio politics are fair game as well. An episode titled 'WWW' on 'No Such Thing': Why Are There so Many Twin Films? covers Frank Wells's death in a helicopter crash, the arrival of Michael Ovitz, and Jeffrey Katzenberg leaving and suing over an unpaid bonus of well over $100 million. It also gets to the accusation that Katzenberg lifted an ant-movie idea after sounding-board conversations with Lasseter. Not everything stays light: Chris introduces American History X as controversial, oddly prescient and maybe weirdly relevant today. There are bonus entries too, among them one titled James McAvoy on California Schemin', which starts with a confession about a drawing of the guest in Atonement army gear made back in college. The pace is brisk and the cross-talk constant, with corrections and quick fact checks worked into the flow. Opinions arrive fast, and the reasons arrive right behind them. For a first listen, Lawrence of Arabia shows the research at full stretch, and Labyrinth shows the looser, joke-first side of the partnership.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants the making-of story behind well-known films, including casting near-misses, rewrites and studio feuds, and would rather hear it told with jokes and cross-talk than as a lecture. It also suits someone comfortable with frank talk about race and casting when a film calls for it.
What sets it apart: It treats the production itself as the story, following a film from one host's first reaction out to its drafts, screen tests and executive lawsuits. The detail goes as far as rumored screen-test costs, but the two hosts keep it quick, conversational and funny.
What Went Wrong covers Hollywood’s most notoriously disastrous movie productions, digging into the behind-the-scenes insanity of everything from massive flops to record-breaking blockbusters. In each episode, hosts Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer dive into a new film to explore the mind-blowing (and sometimes numbing) reasons why making a movie is nearly impossible (especially a good one). Produced by David Boman.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon for monthly bonus episodes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It turns production history into lively criticism, showing how scripts, casting, contracts, and studio decisions remain visible in the finished film.
WHAT WENT WRONG treats a finished movie as the last surviving piece of a much messier process. Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer reconstruct how films were made, moving from screenplay revisions and casting decisions to contract disputes and difficult shoots.
A five-year contract costs Albert Finney Lawrence of Arabia; your movie gossip comes with paperwork.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A desert epic becomes a casting-and-craft detective story.
Lawrence of Arabia comes across as a film about scale, and this discussion is strongest when it stays with the machinery behind that scale: the marathon runtime, the desert shoot, and the casting process that kept shifting before cameras rolled.
A lively studio-history discussion about why Hollywood keeps making nearly the same movie twice.
This episode tracks twin films and the odd way Hollywood can land on almost the same idea twice, with Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks giving the pattern enough shape to feel real.
A sharp Oscars conversation that uses Sinners to test what the Academy still rewards.
Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett use Sinners to frame Oscars season, moving from what the film does well to the Academy's long habit of rewarding race stories that feel safer or more externally framed.
A comedy about a bad movie that ends up feeling uncomfortably close to reality.
What Went Wrong makes The Interview feel less like a one-off comedy than a strange artifact of its moment, with the Sony hack hanging over it and the film's biggest absurdities circling back into reality.
Multi-part dramatized retellings of scandals like OceanGate's Titan and the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas argue their way through terrible movies.
What Went Wrong examines how Mel Stuart, David Wolper, and Quaker Oats turned Roald Dahl's 1964 book into the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Hosts discuss disastrous movie productions, using a humorous and analytical approach to explore behind-the-scenes chaos.
The hosts dive deep into the making of David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia, exploring both the complex real-life figure of T.E.
Hosts Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer discuss the chaotic production of Jim Henson's Labyrinth, exploring why making movies is nearly impossible.
The hosts discuss a movie where actors went full white supremacist for Oscar glory, exploring the chaotic production.
Hollywood's twin film phenomenon - where nearly identical movies release within a year of each other - might seem like constant idea theft, but the reality is more complex.
Hosts Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer discuss the notoriously difficult production of Akira Kurosawa's classic film Seven Samurai.
Warner Brothers faces a potential Netflix acquisition while having their best awards season in over a decade with two major Oscar contenders.
The Interview, Seth Rogen's 2014 comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-un, was both a critically panned movie and the center of an international incident.
Hosts discuss the notoriously troubled production of the Game of Thrones pilot episode.
This episode explores the life, death, and final film of River Phoenix, with guests from Last Podcast on the Left.
Hosts discuss the film Memento and the challenges of movie production, relating it to personal memory lapses.