Wealth & Money Quote by Thomas Lennon

There is a particular kind of Hollywood pride that only makes sense if you came up through comedy: the brag that sounds like a shrug. Thomas Lennon’s line treats career advancement less like a triumphant ladder and more like a scavenger hunt through the pop-culture attic, where the prize is getting trusted with someone else’s cherished toy.

The intent is affectionate inside-baseball. “Our reward” frames the work as a merit badge system: do a solid job on Starsky and Hutch, earn the right to touch another reboot property, The Six Million Dollar Man, with a specific star attached. Mentioning “Todd” (likely Todd Phillips, Lennon’s frequent collaborator) tightens the circle into a wink. This isn’t a public-relations flex; it’s a story told for people who understand how projects actually get made - through relationships, reputations, and the quiet currency of “they can handle it.”

The subtext is more complicated than simple nostalgia. Lennon is signaling that adaptation is labor, not just fandom: you prove you can update an old brand without breaking it, then you’re invited to the next one. At the same time, the phrasing carries a sly awareness of how creatively strange that system is. The “reward” for making one retro-cop movie is not artistic freedom, but another corporate resurrection, this time with a high-stakes lead. It’s funny because it’s true: in franchise culture, even success can look like being handed a new assignment.

Contextually, the quote lands as a compact snapshot of 2000s-and-beyond entertainment economics, where the biggest opportunities often arrive packaged as familiar IP - and the real achievement is being allowed in the room.