Exclusive: Chris Jericho Parlays Pro Wrestling Experience Into New Film, Opens Up On AEW TV Deal

Dark Match

Jericho's new film project, Dark Match, hits the Shudder streaming platform on January 31 and is about a small-time wrestling company taking a gig in a backwoods town only to learn, too late,
that the community is run by a mysterious cult leader with devious plans for their match. Jericho plays the role of Prophet in the movie.

"They're not the same characters, or even close," Jericho says of Prophet and the Learning Tree character he plays in AEW each week. "And as a matter of fact, when this movie first was pitched to me, I had some hesitations about taking the part, because I am a wrestler. But, this was so much deeper than that -- kind of playing this multi-layered character with all of these different issues and problems, and his whole overall plan to take over the world, and unleash Satan from hell.

"I think my biggest mission was to make people forget that it's Chris Jericho on screen, which I think as the movie goes on, we did a really good job of that. I'm so connected with wrestling, but this is not really so much a wrestling movie as it is just a great horror movie with wrestling as a background."

Chris Jericho on the business of the AEW business

Even as the new movie comes out, Jericho still talks about AEW as his "A" priority and openly discusses some key business elements about the company as 2025 kicks into gear.

"Well, it's kind of the way, the way of the future," Jericho said about AEW content now being available on Max. "I think cable television as a whole will pretty much go away at some point, because there is so much emphasis on streaming. Just the quality of the picture, the fact you can watch it whenever you want to. All of those things are such a positive. So even though we have such a great relationship with with with Warner Brothers and TNT and TBS, I think it's very important that we were able to move on to Max."

Jericho also spoke about how important signing a new television deal with Warner Brothers was for AEW.

"The whole business is based on television revenue nowadays," Jericho said. "Before it was pay per view and it was live attendance, and it was all that sort of thing, and now it solely rests on the television deal you can get. We've had ups and downs as far as ratings and demos go, but we still always do really, really well on cable. If we're not number one or two, we're in the top five, and at the very least the top 10, and that's out of 1000s of shows.

"So, it's a very valuable property and I think we all knew that within AEW and anybody Tony surrounds himself with, but there's a lot of pundits and critics that still to this day don't see how valuable AEW is and how much it's growing. The television deal is $185 million a year. I mean, that's next level. That's pretty much four times that we were getting. So, I think that there was a sigh of relief, not that we didn't know we could get it, but just now that it's locked in, now we can get to work and really concentrate on the things that we need to concentrate on, both to continue upward ascension in some areas and to improve in others."

Chris Jericho was the first world champion in AEW history. He now leads a faction called The Learning Tree with Big Bill and Bryan Keith. Jericho is the current ROH World Champion.

Jericho's new movie Dark Match comes out on January 31 and is available on Shudder.