Is the Next Big Thing in Hollywood… Ben Shapiro?

Somehow, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, famous for his mousy voice and debating students on college campuses on matters of abortion, has been making headlines for his penmanship for the silver screen.

The trailer for one of his new films, Confession, about an imprisoned Soviet literature professor in 1938 Moscow who gets interrogated by one of his students, features a star-studded cast including Rob Lowe, James Franco, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Nolte. Another one of Shapiro’s films, Pawn Shop, about a young ICE officer who is chased down by a mob after making an arrest and hides in a neighborhood pawn shop, has been gaining a swirl of attention around Danny Trejo’s role as the shop owner. According to Trejo’s son, he signed up for the film unaware of who Shapiro was or his conservative, anti-immigration politics, but is contractually bound to keep silent about his feelings.

Shapiro’s media company, The Daily Wire, has been in the moviemaking business for some time now, coming off the heels of Run Hide Fight: Infidels, starring Jonathan Majors as an ex-Delta Force member who must defend the “wacky libs” of a college campus from an attack by ISIS.

I know the film industry is struggling, but is everyone really that broke that they have to act in Daily Wire productions? Is Jennifer Jason Leigh still paying off the divorce fees from Noah Baumbach? My fear is that these aren’t one-offs, and in David Ellison’s consolidated Hollywood, more and more people will do whatever it takes to cash a check. I’m dreading the idea of a future where Ben Shapiro does a press run to promote his latest picture.

Minh Tran

Minh Tran began his career in the literary department at ICM Partners before transitioning into late night television at Desus and Mero on Showtime. He now produces the podcast Victory Light with The Kid Mero, and writes the Substack “coulda been at the club.”