Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Entertainment Series 13: Ben Fritz / Movie / Theater Industry / Disney News / Paramount & HBO

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Entertainment Series 13: Ben Fritz / Movie / Theater Industry / Disney News / Paramount & HBO · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
• 0:15
  Ben Fritz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming.
• 0:19
  I'm so excited to have you here. How are you?
• 0:21
  It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
• 0:23
  Yeah, I, I want to thank you more than just for coming now.
• 0:26
  But I reached out to you a couple of years ago after I read
• 0:28
  your book, The Big Picture. And, and before you know, I, I
• 0:32
  at the time I wanted to start a different podcast called All
• 0:35
  things Entertainment, just about the entertainment world.
• 0:38
  And one of my fears eventually was that I cut it would take me
• 0:42
  too long to succeed before getting burnt out of the topic
• 0:47
  of entertainment and exclusively talking entertainment guests.
• 0:49
  And so I figured I had to widen my scope a little bit, but 2-3
• 0:53
  years later where I really appreciate you coming back.
• 0:56
  So thank you very much again. It means a lot.
• 0:58
  Sure. Yeah, it's my pleasure.
• 0:59
  So there's a lot going on in entertainment world and I know
• 1:03
  that I've been following your reporting and it's been a ton of
• 1:06
  fun and I really appreciate it. And and I also know that you've
• 1:10
  been back and forth in the AI world a little bit and obviously
• 1:13
  AI and Hollywood are going to be blending.
• 1:15
  So I'd like to try to touch on a little bit of both of those
• 1:18
  topics that the conversation if possible.
• 1:21
  But the state of movies in general actually feels like it's
• 1:23
  been kind of getting better, right?
• 1:25
  Like, you know, project to hell, Mary's doing well.
• 1:28
  A lot of studios are making originals.
• 1:31
  It looks like we're willing to take a little bit more creative
• 1:33
  chances. What have you observed?
• 1:35
  What are your thoughts on that? Yeah.
• 1:37
  I mean, I think the if you care about creativity in movies, it's
• 1:42
  definitely a good trend. I mean, the, a lot of the in the
• 1:46
  20 tens, the mega franchises were just dominating the
• 1:50
  business and it seemed like they couldn't seem like they couldn't
• 1:52
  lose, right? Like a good Marvel movie, a bad
• 1:55
  Marvel movie, a good Fast and Furious movie, a bad Fast and
• 1:57
  Furious movie, like they were all making a billion dollars,
• 2:00
  right? So understandably the studios
• 2:02
  were pumping them out and not making much of anything else.
• 2:05
  Who could blame them? But a lot of those franchises
• 2:07
  have lost steam and they're not making as much money as they
• 2:13
  used to. And so they're and partly maybe
• 2:17
  that was studio missteps, partly that was a lot of momentum lost
• 2:20
  when the pandemic. Partly I think young people now
• 2:22
  are a little cynic, more cynical about those franchises, which if
• 2:25
  you'd like to see original stuff in the movies is is a good sign.
• 2:29
  And yeah, so people are responding some better to, you
• 2:34
  know, holy original, let's say, you know, things that have not
• 2:36
  been film franchises before. Be a product, Hail Mary, be at
• 2:39
  the house maid. You know, Hoppers is done
• 2:44
  reasonably well for Pixar. I think those are all good
• 2:48
  signs. Sinners, Jesus Christ, of
• 2:50
  course, sinners was, you know, sinners was huge last year.
• 2:53
  I mean, they proved a lot of doubt was wrong with that film,
• 2:55
  obviously. And I think that is a that's a
• 3:00
  good sign for Pete for people being open to new stuff and
• 3:05
  positive things in Hollywood. That said, like this year, the
• 3:07
  box office is up, but we cannot forget that attendance is down
• 3:10
  like 1/3 from before the pandemic.
• 3:12
  So the long term trend, it's a still tough time for the movie
• 3:15
  business. Yeah, totally, totally.
• 3:18
  I mean, I would, I guess that since the pandemic, I think that
• 3:22
  like you said, there were a bunch of factors that kind of
• 3:25
  kind of led to the big franchises kind of being slowed
• 3:28
  down a little bit. And we'll kind of get into a
• 3:31
  little bit more of those details.
• 3:34
  I mean, it could have also, I, I mean, post pandemic, I think
• 3:38
  that the studio's probably tried for three or four years, maybe
• 3:40
  even more to continue this whole franchise model.
• 3:43
  And so I mean, I guess you can, even though it's not necessarily
• 3:46
  as good as say, you know, pre pre pandemic levels as far as
• 3:50
  intendants is concerned, I think we have more of a reason now to
• 3:54
  go to movies than we've had in a couple of years since the
• 3:56
  pandemic even, you know, kind of came to an end.
• 3:58
  What do you want to call it 202223, whatever you want to
• 4:01
  call it, But I mean, it'll only the last year and a half I feel
• 4:05
  like or two years really since I think the Oppenheimer Barbie
• 4:08
  kind of spectacle. Did you know things really pick
• 4:12
  up? And even then, it probably took
• 4:13
  another six months to a year for more originalist to get laid
• 4:15
  out. Rolled out rather.
• 4:17
  Yeah, I think that the business is getting back to the levels of
• 4:21
  releases, at least that it was at.
• 4:23
  We're getting more big releases, 20.
• 4:25
  There's a lot of interesting movies coming out this year and
• 4:30
  there was a pandemic and then there were the strikes.
• 4:31
  So those really both damaged production in the big way was
• 4:34
  hard for Hollywood to get back on its on its footing to as far
• 4:37
  as how many movies they were going to make.
• 4:40
  So, yeah, as a film fan, I think you we're, we're at least as far
• 4:44
  as the releases we're getting, we're we're as close to the
• 4:47
  levels pre pandemic as we as we as we've been this decade.
• 4:49
  It's the best it's been this decade.
• 4:51
  That's what I would say. Yeah, yeah.
• 4:52
  And I think that's great. I think it's exciting.
• 4:54
  I wanted actually, because I, I until I started following Matt
• 4:57
  Bellamy's podcast The Town, I, I didn't know how big of a market
• 5:03
  horror was. And I didn't know, you know,
• 5:06
  especially I wouldn't associate it with being so big in theaters
• 5:10
  and being so popular in theaters.
• 5:11
  And, you know, your, your previous book, the Big Picture
• 5:14
  had talked about franchise movies as making a ton of money.
• 5:17
  And your main argument, I think, if I recall correctly, was that
• 5:21
  globally, you know, like you had to have something that could
• 5:23
  convert globally that across different cultures that people
• 5:26
  could, could still relate to by the millions, you know, and, and
• 5:31
  there's certain genres that lend themselves to that, like
• 5:33
  superhero movies or, or Mission Impossible or.
• 5:37
  Big, big spectacle action, yeah. Right.
• 5:39
  Exactly. But horrors kind of always been
• 5:42
  in the back of, but always been even through COVID and
• 5:44
  everything like it. It, it feels like that genre has
• 5:47
  always been a movie genre. Can you maybe elaborate on the
• 5:50
  business end or the entertainment and why that?
• 5:51
  Yeah, horrors been one of the few genres that have survived
• 5:54
  sort of the rise of of precedes TV and streaming.
• 5:57
  You know, there's a lot of genres that like movies used to
• 6:01
  do that TV didn't do well. And an obvious 1 is like these
• 6:04
  drama, like back when they were just four networks, people who
• 6:08
  wanted to see like high quality drama, you had to go to the
• 6:11
  movies because you wouldn't you weren't going to get anything,
• 6:15
  you know, sort of let's save like a Meryl Streep kind of
• 6:17
  movie. You weren't going to get
• 6:18
  anything remotely that quality on CBSABCNBC, Fox, right.
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  But then as like HBOS are doing original programming and
• 6:24
  effects. And then Netflix, Netflix got
• 6:26
  into it and some Prime. There's a lot of good stuff to
• 6:28
  watch at home. And the same thing happened with
• 6:31
  comedy to a large extent, but also because of all that, so, so
• 6:34
  much great comedy on YouTube, frankly.
• 6:36
  And people didn't have to go to the movies for it.
• 6:38
  And those genres have really struggled to stay relevant at
• 6:41
  the box office. And you see very few adult
• 6:43
  dramas, comedies doing well anymore.
• 6:46
  Horror is something that people really like to go out and see
• 6:50
  together, you know, And it makes sense because people like to be
• 6:53
  scared together and they and being in a dark room lends
• 6:56
  itself really well to that genre, right?
• 6:57
  And horror just doesn't work that well at home to watch
• 7:01
  alone, certainly doesn't work well to like, you know, watch on
• 7:03
  your phone with half attention the way some entertainment does.
• 7:06
  So horror has really, really been set up as any other thing
• 7:09
  Hollywood loves about horror is you can make a good horror movie
• 7:12
  cheap. You can spend a few $1,000,000
• 7:15
  and have a horror movie that can be really, really successful.
• 7:18
  And that's not true of many other genres.
• 7:20
  Yeah, definitely. I remember hearing, you know,
• 7:23
  projected or at least reading articles on opening weekends for
• 7:27
  horror movies and thinking, you know, made 25 million or
• 7:29
  something like that. And everyone's raving about it
• 7:31
  and like, what's the, what's the big deal?
• 7:33
  And then I found out the budget was two and a half million
• 7:35
  dollars or something like that. And I'm like, oh man, that's
• 7:37
  awesome. But case in point.
• 7:39
  And I don't even, I think this movie ended up on Netflix
• 7:42
  somewhere and obscurity, relative obscurity.
• 7:44
  But there was a movie, I think missing, and it was this
• 7:48
  thriller movie about a girl whose mom dates a sketchy guy
• 7:51
  and then she basically uses her social media presence to help
• 7:54
  find her mom in South America or something crazy or, or, or
• 7:57
  across the border or something like that.
• 7:59
  And I mean, just from a speculative place or just a
• 8:03
  rather anecdotal place. It was an incredible experience
• 8:06
  in the theater, you know, I mean, you know, yeah, for sure.
• 8:09
  And, and, and, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a thriller or a
• 8:12
  horror kind of person, but I think that that, that like you
• 8:15
  were saying, like you were mentioned at least, so much of
• 8:19
  that is psychological. So much of that is dependent on
• 8:21
  the environment, is dependent on whether or not you're zoned into
• 8:25
  the music that is slowly like making your heartbeat, you know,
• 8:27
  heart rate slow down a little bit right before a big jump.
• 8:30
  And I, you know, so, so it almost is its own a little world
• 8:36
  in and of itself within the movie world that like just
• 8:39
  exists on its own in theaters. Yeah, and horrors really
• 8:42
  recently expanded, frankly, beyond the sort of just cheap
• 8:46
  thrills of it or the gore. I mean, look at weapons.
• 8:49
  A lot of people would say that was one of just the highest
• 8:51
  quality films last year. It's certainly one of the most
• 8:53
  original movies. I think you sort of can't can't
• 8:57
  argue against that. And or there's, you know,
• 9:02
  there's really like if you saw the the Nosferatu film a couple
• 9:06
  of years ago, which I loved that was like that that was released
• 9:09
  by Focus features. I mean, that was like a, that
• 9:12
  was like kind of half European art house movie and a half like
• 9:15
  really, really scary monster movie.
• 9:18
  So you people are finding ways to like do horror in all these
• 9:21
  different in many different from many different angles that we
• 9:25
  ever seen before. There's a lot of creativity
• 9:27
  happening in the horror zone genre right now.
• 9:29
  Yeah, it's fun. I'm a I'm a big fan of it.
• 9:31
  I really, I think it's great. I read your article, I think
• 9:34
  today or yesterday about Regal's $50 ticket and coming out to
• 9:39
  Dune 3. And there's a couple of places I
• 9:41
  want to go with Dune, especially comparing, especially just
• 9:45
  talking about or observing the fact that they're taking all the
• 9:47
  IMAX screens, which is, which is a pretty big deal, especially
• 9:51
  compared to the competition, who I'll talk about in a minute.
• 9:55
  You know, movie. How, how do you think they, how
• 9:59
  do you think they came up with this game plan?
• 10:01
  How do you think they justify a $50 ticket?
• 10:03
  If the, if the problem is getting people's butts and seats
• 10:05
  and you know, and, and, and attended to stole, let's say 1/3
• 10:09
  down from or whatever you said it was down from pre pandemic
• 10:12
  levels, then I mean, you're, you're obviously, you know, de
• 10:15
  incentivizing the audience. And that's aside from whatever
• 10:19
  advertising or new advertising that's been happening in
• 10:21
  theaters recently. I only just recently saw that
• 10:23
  with Saving Private Ryan, but I I was blown away by how many ads
• 10:27
  there were. Yeah, right.
• 10:29
  So there's a ton of things there like there's there's sort of
• 10:33
  two, but because we're fewer people are going to theaters and
• 10:37
  this year box office is up a bit.
• 10:38
  But overall is, you know, definitely not at the levels it
• 10:41
  was at in the 20 tens. Theaters are like, well, we need
• 10:43
  to make more money. How can we make more money?
• 10:45
  Say one way is more pre show ads, which you can say degrades
• 10:49
  the experience, but the theaters would say, well, we've done the
• 10:51
  research and when we put it, we put in more ads more.
• 10:54
  It's not like fewer people come. That's what they would say.
• 10:57
  And this $50 ticket is part of this broader trend I'm running
• 11:00
  about where the theaters are saying, look, we need to make
• 11:02
  more money. Well, one way to make money is
• 11:04
  to sort of take the approach like airlines do, which is that
• 11:07
  if you, if you're willing to sit in like a middle seat in the
• 11:09
  back, then you can pay a lot less than the person who wants
• 11:12
  like first class treatment, right?
• 11:13
  Even though you all get to the same place.
• 11:15
  So some people who love movies and have discretionary income,
• 11:19
  they need to be in the IMAX theater watching a 70mm film on
• 11:23
  opening night. That's really important to them.
• 11:26
  Those people will spend 50 bucks and, and I think the theaters
• 11:29
  would say, well, why not charge them what they're willing to pay
• 11:31
  and charge the person who's happy to see it on a matinee on
• 11:34
  Tuesday, 10 bucks and everybody gets to go.
• 11:39
  But you pay a different price depending on who you are.
• 11:41
  That's what they would. And it's a way for them to make
• 11:43
  more revenue and keep their business going.
• 11:45
  That's what they would say. And I think there's some
• 11:46
  validity to that. And the flip side of it is,
• 11:49
  yeah, But the more people see it as like a premium, expensive
• 11:52
  experience, the less movies, the movies become just this casual,
• 11:56
  cheap date, you know, just like, what are you going to do
• 11:58
  Saturday night? Oh, we'll go see a movie, right.
• 11:59
  That's what it was like when you when we were kids.
• 12:01
  And sometimes you didn't even know what you were going to see
• 12:03
  until you got there. And it was common for people to
• 12:06
  see a movie every week or two. And now it's coming for people
• 12:09
  to see like, one or two movies a year.
• 12:12
  And the more people think of it, it's there's this bad cycle
• 12:15
  where the prices go up and that causes people to see it as like
• 12:19
  a premium experience that this is special night out.
• 12:21
  They don't do as much. And then the more they don't go,
• 12:23
  the more the theaters are like, well, we'll we'll have to check
• 12:25
  out the prices more to comp. And then it then it's going in
• 12:28
  the wrong direction that that's the problem with it.
• 12:31
  Yeah, yeah. And I hear I think you did a
• 12:34
  great job explaining the theaters side of it or that you
• 12:37
  know the business perspective of it because they've been really
• 12:40
  hurting for a long time. So I mean, especially as all Hey
• 12:44
  everyone, real quick, if you're enjoying the show, click
• 12:47
  subscribe and rate the show 5 stars helps a ton.
• 12:50
  Thanks so much. At least streaming platforms,
• 12:53
  Amazon Prime making that switch earlier, maybe a year or two
• 12:56
  ago, I don't remember to everyone that's signed up for
• 12:58
  prime automatically being the ad tier, you know, which was a big,
• 13:02
  which is a big business decision and a very ballsy move on their
• 13:05
  part to, you know, to Netflix really pushing people to.
• 13:08
  I mean, you could see all the all the stream, all the
• 13:11
  mainstreaming platforms look like they're pushing people to
• 13:14
  the to the ad tier because they're making the premium tier
• 13:17
  so much more expensive in the jacket.
• 13:18
  The prices every, you know, three to six months.
• 13:20
  I feel like it almost makes sense that that that that that
• 13:24
  studios will follow suite. Yeah, it's the same approach.
• 13:27
  You're right, which is that some people are willing, some people
• 13:30
  are willing to pay a lot to have a more creamy experience, be it
• 13:33
  an IMAX green, be it, you know, Amazon with no ads.
• 13:36
  And some people you just literally don't have the money
• 13:39
  or don't think it's worth as much.
• 13:40
  And so they find ways to charge them less, which is you got to
• 13:43
  watch a bunch more ads when you watch your streaming video, or
• 13:46
  you have to see the movie at an inconvenient time in a smaller
• 13:48
  theater. Right, right, right, right.
• 13:53
  I was thinking. I was thinking about your
• 13:58
  writing in particular and your journalism in particular, that
• 14:01
  you're in a very polarized political world.
• 14:04
  And one thing I've noticed from consuming a lot of your content,
• 14:07
  your podcast, the book, and then, you know, whatever your
• 14:09
  posts are, you do an incredible job at maintain at maintaining
• 14:14
  an apolitical completely, you know, just on the fence,
• 14:19
  observing the facts as they are and making it as clear as
• 14:22
  possible that there's no personal opinions behind that.
• 14:25
  I want to compliment you on that because it's incredibly rare to
• 14:28
  find, but how do you find that balance?
• 14:29
  Is that your personality in general?
• 14:31
  What's that? What's that been like?
• 14:33
  Thanks for noticing that. I do take that very seriously
• 14:35
  and I work hard at it. I mean, it is first of all, it's
• 14:40
  it's my job. Where were the Wall Street
• 14:42
  Journal newsroom is very much like we are apolitical like that
• 14:46
  is our approach is that. And you know, I take pride the
• 14:48
  Wall Street Journal of urban surveys.
• 14:49
  It's the only news outlet in America that a majority of
• 14:52
  Democrats and a majority of Republicans trust.
• 14:55
  And, you know, that's unique. And I'm proud of that.
• 14:57
  And to do that, we have to keep our political opinions to
• 14:59
  ourselves. So it does take a lot of work
• 15:04
  to, like, parse. And my editors often point out,
• 15:06
  hey, we could phrase that differently to make sure it
• 15:08
  doesn't, you know, come across as biased.
• 15:11
  But it does it. I will say, like some people
• 15:13
  would be like, I can't do that. I kept to, you know, I have to
• 15:15
  express myself. And it does suit my personality.
• 15:18
  We're like a very analytical person and I tend not to want to
• 15:24
  share my opinions unless I really feel very confident in
• 15:28
  them and feel it's important that I say them.
• 15:31
  You know, and frankly, when it comes to politics, like there's
• 15:37
  enough political opinions out there, you know, there's more
• 15:39
  than a political opinions. You can stop the work.
• 15:41
  The Internet is not is not. And the Internet and news
• 15:43
  outlets are not short of political opinions.
• 15:45
  Coverage of the entertainment media is not short of people
• 15:48
  opining on what the political agenda behind this film may or
• 15:52
  may not be and how it intersects with this kind of American
• 15:55
  culture. So I think that's out there and
• 15:57
  that's great if you want that. You know, I think the value add
• 16:00
  that I hopefully bring is like fact is like deeply reported,
• 16:04
  extremely reliable, fact based, fact based journalism.
• 16:08
  That's that's what I focus on. Yeah.
• 16:10
  Well, it's really commendable and, and I, I appreciate, I
• 16:13
  think that anyone that I think that is something that we should
• 16:15
  all strive for. Thank you even.
• 16:17
  You know, and even if you say it, I think that I've been
• 16:20
  watching and I think that recently I've seen a couple of
• 16:23
  debates or conversations that have happened recently that
• 16:26
  people like, I've seen more stabilized debates in a, in a,
• 16:29
  in a, in a long time than I've seen a long.
• 16:31
  And I'm very happy about that. I hope that that's considered.
• 16:34
  That's a trend that's continuing.
• 16:35
  I hope so too. Yeah, because we could really,
• 16:38
  you know, use it for sure. So, so you mentioned earlier
• 16:45
  that that that, that that Doom 3 is taking up all the IMAX
• 16:48
  theater, all the IMAX screens and, and that is a massive deal
• 16:52
  because Avengers is opening the same day or weekend.
• 16:57
  Is that correct? The same.
• 16:59
  The same weekend, yeah. Yeah, Marvel's been trying to
• 17:06
  get their grip back, I think on the audience and I think they're
• 17:10
  trying to, I think they're, I think they have to reclaim their
• 17:16
  storytelling narrative. I maybe, I guess and this and
• 17:23
  this seems like a really competitive move from another
• 17:29
  big player that directly. How big of a deal do you think
• 17:32
  this is for Marvel that they have to that they have to
• 17:35
  compete with this? It is it's definitely like a
• 17:40
  problem for them to not have the IMAX screenings.
• 17:42
  It's not just that they're going to lose a bit of revenue because
• 17:45
  you can make, you know, IMAX tickets the most expensive.
• 17:47
  It's not just that, but the IMAX brand at this point has almost
• 17:50
  come to signify like date event movie.
• 17:52
  Like when the Billboard says see it in IMAX, then you know it's a
• 17:55
  big movie, right? So the fact that the Dune is
• 17:58
  going to Dune Chapter 3 Part 3, sorry, will advertise that way
• 18:02
  and Avengers can't is is a bit of a blow to them.
• 18:07
  But you know, Disney could have picked a different date and when
• 18:10
  they could get IMAX screens, but they're stay stuck.
• 18:13
  The Dune is getting the IMAX screens because because Denise
• 18:16
  has a long standing relationship with IMAX and he shoots his
• 18:19
  movies with IMAX cameras. And as soon as he said he was
• 18:22
  going to use the IMAX cameras for Doom Pro 3, IMAX committed,
• 18:24
  they would give him older screens and that's that.
• 18:27
  And so it's sort of too bad for for Disney and Avengers, but
• 18:31
  Disney wants to stay because it's because 11 week before
• 18:35
  Christmas is historically like a great date for big event movies.
• 18:38
  And then it's going to play all through Christmas break.
• 18:41
  A lot of people are at school and work, obviously.
• 18:42
  And there's definitely room for two movies to succeed.
• 18:45
  That's happened many times in history that the price doesn't
• 18:49
  even have to pay to get the IMS greens would be to have a much
• 18:51
  less desirable date. So that's, that's the trade off
• 18:55
  that they've that they're facing.
• 18:57
  Do you think that five years ago just the presence of a Marvel
• 19:03
  movie would have scared Dune off of that date?
• 19:07
  And then like this statement right now, like this is almost a
• 19:09
  statement by saying, hey, you know, we don't we don't like
• 19:12
  like Disney could change. You said Disney could change
• 19:13
  their mind, But Disney is not usually in the position to have
• 19:16
  to back away from from that kind of head to head confrontation.
• 19:19
  No, that's a great point that yes, I think I think in the 20
• 19:22
  tens by the late 20 tens. I mean I have to check my
• 19:25
  calendar but no other big movie with their opening at some more.
• 19:29
  Because they. All worked and they were all
• 19:31
  huge and everybody who tried it in the early 20 tens got their
• 19:34
  asses handed to them. Excuse my language.
• 19:36
  And I think that yeah, I think Warner Brothers looks at it and
• 19:40
  it's like, look, his Avengers going to flop unlikely, but his
• 19:43
  Avengers going to not offenders are not going to so dominate the
• 19:46
  conversation. It's no room for anything else.
• 19:48
  You know, and I it is completely conceivable that Dune could open
• 19:53
  bigger than Avengers. I mean, it's not it is not
• 19:56
  impossible. You know, like people are super
• 19:59
  people are super excited that didn't even know there's like an
• 20:01
  acclaimed filmmaker that franchises a lot of love.
• 20:03
  It is one of the biggest stars in the world.
• 20:05
  The footage they showed at Cinemacon was fantastic.
• 20:08
  I will say I want to hear about that the room.
• 20:09
  I'd be happy to tell you about it.
• 20:10
  The room. I would say that footage and the
• 20:13
  odyssey were like some and and this little Disney movie, Fox
• 20:16
  movie called whale fall. We're sort of we're some of the
• 20:18
  biggest. Some of the biggest reactions in
• 20:20
  the room. So I think one of others is
• 20:22
  completely confident that yeah, I did that.
• 20:25
  You're right. It says something that somebody
• 20:26
  feels confident that they can at least compete with Marvel, which
• 20:29
  didn't used to be possible. Yeah.
• 20:31
  And I think it's a good thing, by the way, because I think that
• 20:32
  a little bit of competition is just what you need.
• 20:36
  Yeah. And, and I want to talk more
• 20:38
  about Disney after. I do want to hear more about
• 20:40
  cinema, about Cinemacon, because I saw a lot, I heard a lot of
• 20:42
  reporting and I watched a good amount on the Internet.
• 20:46
  So you. So I want to hear about that 3rd
• 20:49
  movie that you mentioned. Disney Fox, you said.
• 20:52
  Yeah, yeah. It's called Whale Fall.
• 20:53
  It's a Fox 20. So starts to say Fox.
• 20:55
  You know Disney, when Disney bought Fox, they shrunk the
• 20:57
  studio. They still still label called
• 20:59
  20th Century Studios that makes smaller movies for adults
• 21:04
  mostly. They're doing the devil with
• 21:05
  Prada too, because they own that IP.
• 21:07
  But they're they have this literary adaptation book called
• 21:09
  Whale Fall and it's most of the movie is a boy who is a teenage
• 21:13
  boy alive in the stomach of a whale who was remember who was
• 21:17
  like remembering who he had gone to find the whale because that
• 21:21
  whale killed his father. It's a bit of a booby Dick thing
• 21:23
  and he's flashing back to his dad.
• 21:25
  But the scene they showed is when the whale swallows the kid
• 21:28
  alive, which seems like how could that not seem ridiculous?
• 21:31
  But it's it was riveting and completely believable.
• 21:34
  It happens in this way. I won't ruin for you, but it was
• 21:37
  the footage was like that kind of like edge of your seat, like
• 21:40
  this is really scary and I didn't and I didn't know what
• 21:43
  was coming, you know, so it it that was one of the biggest
• 21:46
  surprises of cinema con in a good way.
• 21:48
  That's awesome. Yeah, that sounds great.
• 21:49
  And again, that's another that sounds like another win for the
• 21:52
  for the new movie, The Risky Original.
• 21:54
  Movie, Yeah, yeah, I hope. I hope it works.
• 21:56
  But I think it's I, I was definitely excited for it.
• 21:58
  Yeah, yeah. And Devil Wears Prada too.
• 22:01
  Is, is up there. I mean, I'm seeing on the slate
• 22:05
  with Avengers and like, you know, like Disney's marketing
• 22:08
  The Devil Wears Prada too, with some of the biggest franchises
• 22:11
  and biggest movies coming out with Toy Story and Avengers and
• 22:14
  all the other movies. Yeah, it's going to be big.
• 22:16
  It's going to be big. And it that's goes to show
• 22:17
  another. At the same time, their
• 22:19
  originality is doing better than it has for a while.
• 22:21
  So is nostalgia. Nostalgia is a really powerful
• 22:24
  force of the box office. And like 20 years is a pretty
• 22:27
  sweet spot for people are like, it's been long enough that I
• 22:29
  have fond memories for that movie and I want to go back
• 22:31
  again. And maybe I was a teenager when
• 22:33
  I saw it and now I'm middle ager, you know, I was 25 now in
• 22:36
  my 40s, whatever. So that's what it's been for
• 22:38
  that movie. Millennial women are just like,
• 22:42
  so are going to be turning out into, if it's an event movie for
• 22:44
  millennial women, right, who don't give a crap about like
• 22:47
  action adventure films. You know, that's what Disney's
• 22:50
  got, Disney's 20th has got with this film.
• 22:52
  And it's like looking like it's going to open really, really
• 22:54
  well. And yeah, it's it is as much an
• 22:56
  event movie for a certain segment of the audience as like
• 22:59
  the Michael Jackson film was for fans of him who have great
• 23:03
  nostalgia for him. Yeah, definitely and and and and
• 23:07
  it feels so hard to. It feels so hard to for like to
• 23:12
  not say like, listen, there's such, there's, there's obviously
• 23:15
  such a thing as overdoing it. And there's such a thing as,
• 23:17
  like, leaving something, you know, be for a while and then
• 23:20
  and then until everyone misses it just a little bit, you know?
• 23:22
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 23:23
  So you have to find that balance where you're like, you know, you
• 23:26
  keep, you know, you, you give people something that they love
• 23:30
  and they're happy to see more of, but you don't, People don't
• 23:32
  feel if people, if you're overdoing it, people start to
• 23:35
  feel like it's cynical, you know, and it's not coming from
• 23:37
  like a creatively inspired place.
• 23:39
  And I've not seen the devil with Prada too, but it sounds like
• 23:42
  something that at least the fans are going to feel comes from a
• 23:45
  place of love and not a place of like cheap cheap cash grab.
• 23:48
  Yeah, and I, I was actually going to ask you this, but I'm,
• 23:51
  I think I'm going to answer the question myself, which is I
• 23:55
  just, I was going to ask if you think you could be fresh a
• 23:56
  franchise. But I was really impressed.
• 23:59
  I, I didn't watch it in theaters, but with the James
• 24:01
  Gunn Superman and I, I, I didn't, I didn't dream that
• 24:04
  after all the Superman movies that there were and all the
• 24:06
  different variations that that I'd be particularly interested
• 24:09
  in, in. I was actually confused why DC
• 24:12
  would be making a bet another bet like, you know, and, and,
• 24:16
  and yeah, James Gunn is great in Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 24:19
  He's a ton of fun and and he does an amazing job for sure,
• 24:23
  But I, I, I'm pretty surprised. I, I, I think that I think I, I,
• 24:29
  I'm excited. I'm more excited about the
• 24:31
  upcoming upcoming DC freshness and and the new vigor that's
• 24:36
  coming into their into their into the slate.
• 24:40
  I'm hoping that that Avengers could kind of re spark reignite
• 24:44
  that and Kevin Feige almost seems to hint at that happening
• 24:47
  by saying we should be release Avengers end game beforehand
• 24:51
  because like we kind of want to just rebrand.
• 24:54
  We associate it. He didn't say that obviously,
• 24:56
  but I mean that it sounds like the implication to me.
• 24:58
  What do you think about that? There's a lot of stuff there.
• 25:01
  I think that where DC has learned some lessons from Marvel
• 25:04
  and like DC wanted to be successful as Marvel in the 20
• 25:07
  tens and they failed, right? Those are no question about it.
• 25:09
  But now they have the benefit of seeing Marvel's rise and
• 25:13
  Marvel's, Marvel's downturn recently and knowing just like
• 25:18
  creating a movies that feel like homework that are all the same
• 25:21
  and all part of the same universe, people have lost
• 25:25
  interest in that. It feels overwhelming and they
• 25:26
  don't. They want to see the movie they
• 25:28
  want to see and not see the movie they don't want to see and
• 25:30
  the streaming show. So D CS approach has been like
• 25:32
  very light. They're doing very light
• 25:34
  connections between stuff and each movie and TV shows meant
• 25:36
  really to stand on its own and even do different genres.
• 25:39
  So like, you know, Supergirl is like sort of a buddy action, you
• 25:46
  know, with two women buddy act like buddy sci-fi quest, right,
• 25:50
  And Clayface is going to be a horror movie.
• 25:52
  I just heard about that this weekend.
• 25:54
  Yeah, Clayton, yeah, if you've seen the teaser trailer, that's
• 25:56
  out. I mean, it looks, if you if you
• 25:57
  didn't know it's ADC movie, you would just say it looks like a
• 26:00
  really box scary body horror film.
• 26:03
  And you can do that within DC, you know, and that's their
• 26:05
  approach is you can do any kind of movie, any kind of genre
• 26:09
  within our universe of characters.
• 26:11
  So it's an interesting approach. It definitely, I think allows
• 26:13
  more creativity, which is cool. It's you know, that's never been
• 26:17
  Marvel's brand. It's been like Marvel is a
• 26:20
  little bit Marvel's more everything is connected and we
• 26:24
  we there's some variations, but still you kind of know the kind
• 26:27
  of the kind of box in a Marvel movie sits in generally.
• 26:30
  So it's it's interesting, interesting going forward to see
• 26:34
  if they're willing to push out of that more.
• 26:35
  I think with with Avengers and with Avengers Doomsday, they're
• 26:39
  basically trying to recapture the magic of what they had with
• 26:42
  end game. You know, they're bringing back
• 26:43
  Downey and they're bringing back Chris Evans and Captain
• 26:45
  America's alive again directors again, the Russo brothers.
• 26:49
  They're literally like pretty much every character who's still
• 26:53
  justifiable to include. They're bringing back even.
• 26:56
  Though you like personally, and again, this is like, I know you,
• 26:59
  you're, you know, generally like to be reporting it and
• 27:02
  objective, but like that doesn't even excite me as much anymore,
• 27:06
  you know? Here, here's I'll keep my I'll
• 27:08
  keep my opinion myself on this one, but I'll tell you what I
• 27:10
  think are like the cost and like the risks and the possible
• 27:13
  rewards, right. The risks are that it it could
• 27:16
  feel desperate. It could feel like they're just
• 27:17
  like, hey, do you like this before?
• 27:18
  We'll give it to you again, but bigger and more and more and
• 27:21
  more because like throwing everything they've got at you
• 27:25
  and it could feel on on. On the other hand, you could
• 27:28
  say, well, I think they've wisely.
• 27:31
  They have definitely learned their lesson that they overdid
• 27:33
  it with too many streaming shows and movies.
• 27:36
  And because Fayou is paying attention to all the shows, the
• 27:39
  movies kind of like reduced quality like stuff like Ant Man
• 27:42
  3 and the marvels. I mean, those were not up to the
• 27:44
  caliber of what you expect from Marvel from Marvel Studios.
• 27:47
  And I think they definitely are paying more attention.
• 27:51
  They are. You know, they're only releasing
• 27:53
  one movie, this one movie this year, if you don't count Spider
• 27:55
  Man Sony is there's only one Marvel Studios movie from Disney
• 27:59
  coming this year. And they're, you know, they and
• 28:03
  they understand that movies can't be like homework anymore.
• 28:05
  And they're basically doing a reset.
• 28:07
  All this stuff that was all the kind of continuity from the past
• 28:10
  five years is kind of being put to the side and they're going
• 28:13
  back and they're connecting back to end game and going from
• 28:16
  there. So they've also learned their
• 28:18
  lesson and they're trying to say, Hey, we know that you
• 28:21
  didn't like some of the past few years and we're going and we're
• 28:24
  trying to give you what you like and create a new springboard to
• 28:27
  go forward more successfully. I would love for that to be the
• 28:30
  case. I hope that I I hope that is the
• 28:32
  case. Right.
• 28:33
  That, that that's what the fans, and I will say, like the fan,
• 28:36
  Marvel fans love Downey. They love Downey, and there's a
• 28:39
  lot of excitement for him to come back.
• 28:40
  And I think it's actually smart to put him in a different role
• 28:44
  to be like, hey, we respect that Iron Man is over, you know, But
• 28:47
  we that's what. Was fun about Chris Evans and
• 28:48
  Deadpool 2, right? I mean, yeah.
• 28:50
  Yeah, yeah, true. So blown away and that and.
• 28:53
  That was really fun, I agree. You know, what he was doing to
• 28:54
  the budget was absolutely hysterical.
• 28:56
  I thought that was too great. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 29:00
  Right. Yeah, That was it's it's, it's
• 29:06
  too great. Yeah.
• 29:07
  I, I, I hope they, I hope they're right.
• 29:09
  I hope it succeeds. And I think that they are
• 29:12
  compelling enough storytellers that that if they are, I believe
• 29:17
  in their talent. I believe that I, I, I, I, I, I,
• 29:21
  I like to hope that corporate bureaucracy kind of got in the
• 29:24
  way of, of the, of the creative output and, you know, kind of
• 29:29
  forced a lot of decisions that people probably would have,
• 29:32
  should have had more time to make.
• 29:33
  And I hope that, you know, if like with time again and you
• 29:36
  like like you mentioned, they're slowing down one or two movies a
• 29:39
  year, if that that that that you could come back to really great
• 29:43
  storytelling in addition to lovable characters.
• 29:46
  Yeah, yeah, they absolutely, they, they made, you know, they
• 29:50
  were basically ordered by Disney to make a ton of streaming shows
• 29:52
  for Disney Plus and everybody realizes that was a mistake.
• 29:57
  OK, well, we're on the Disney topic.
• 29:58
  We're going to keep on going then.
• 30:00
  OK, we'll keep on going. Josh tomorrow and Dana Walden,
• 30:05
  who were competing for the CEO spot.
• 30:07
  Josh one out. This is the second parks parks
• 30:13
  guy to run to take, to try to take over from Bob Iger and
• 30:17
  Michael Eisner. I've read in James Stewart's
• 30:20
  Disney Disney war said that he was going to be the last of the
• 30:23
  creative CE OS and, and, and I I have no doubt.
• 30:27
  I don't think that that that that he's wrong.
• 30:30
  I think he's correct in that. What do you think?
• 30:32
  What's your what was your reporting on this decision
• 30:35
  making or what do you think about it?
• 30:36
  And what's Dana's new role? And what's Josh?
• 30:39
  What's Josh's plan? Even though he's a second parts
• 30:44
  guy, tomorrow's very different than Bob Chapeck, who was.
• 30:47
  You know. Chapeck is was a real kind of
• 30:51
  operational number cruncher guy. Chapeck was a guy you bring in
• 30:54
  to be like, hey, we need to get this budget under control.
• 30:57
  We need to make this division that's not profitable,
• 30:59
  profitable again. We need to figure out a process.
• 31:02
  And Chapic didn't was not a creative person, didn't pretend
• 31:05
  to be a creative person, didn't really know how to work with
• 31:07
  creative people. He was, he was a process guy and
• 31:10
  he was very good at that. But it turned out that like when
• 31:13
  you're leading a creative company, that was a real problem
• 31:16
  because he clashed. He didn't know how to manage
• 31:18
  creative people effectively. And he's really lost their
• 31:21
  respect. And there were just a ton
• 31:24
  missteps along the way. And that's why Eiger kind of had
• 31:27
  to come back Josh tomorrow, although he does come from parks
• 31:33
  and he definitely is more in the Eiger mode where he has spent a
• 31:38
  lot of time getting to know creative people.
• 31:40
  He he knows how he knows how to work with them.
• 31:43
  He's much more people person. He's not so much of like, I'm
• 31:46
  going to grind down the numbers as much as possible just to get
• 31:49
  profits out. I mean, he cares about profits
• 31:51
  for sure, but he is, he doesn't really rebel in the budget
• 31:55
  crunching the way that Bob Chapic did.
• 31:57
  I would say he's he's incredibly charismatic, which is an
• 32:00
  important trait for a Disney CEO because it's a very public
• 32:03
  facing role, because Disney is a company that people have such a
• 32:06
  strong feelings for. And I will say, as far as what
• 32:10
  we expect from him, you know, he is, he's really bet a lot on
• 32:16
  trying to use digital technology to make the company move faster.
• 32:19
  Disney's a very slow moving company.
• 32:21
  They make big movies that take years, they build theme parks
• 32:24
  that take 5 or a little more years.
• 32:26
  You know, and everything they've tried to do online, frankly, has
• 32:29
  been pretty weak. And he's wants to use digital
• 32:35
  technology, video game engine technology, stuff like that to
• 32:38
  make the company's production processes move faster so they
• 32:41
  can go from idea to moving and from movie to theme park ride
• 32:44
  and from theme park ride to consumer product faster than
• 32:47
  they've moved before and less more efficiently, less
• 32:49
  expensively. That's what he hopes to do to
• 32:52
  like, keep the company as creative as it's ever been, but
• 32:54
  use tech to make it faster and cheaper.
• 32:57
  And then look, they created this.
• 32:59
  Yeah, that's that's the goal, right?
• 33:00
  Much easier said than done, but that's, that's that's his
• 33:03
  general goal. And you know, Dana, the company
• 33:06
  wants to keep Dana Walden, who was the other top contender for
• 33:09
  the job. And to keep her, they gave her
• 33:11
  this newly created elevated role, president and chief
• 33:14
  creative officer, basically. I mean, she's in charge of the
• 33:16
  movie studio and the TV streaming operation.
• 33:18
  So all the all creative content production goes goes through
• 33:24
  her. And she's a veteran TV
• 33:25
  executive. She's all respected and you
• 33:28
  know, we'll see whether Josh and Dana can can get along and run
• 33:32
  things effectively. Hollywood can often be a place
• 33:35
  of vicious corporate infighting. You know so.
• 33:37
  Michael Ovitz and Michael Eisner.
• 33:39
  And Michael Eisner, of course, at Disney War.
• 33:41
  You know about that really well. Yeah.
• 33:42
  That's the, that's the bad version, Yeah.
• 33:44
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it gets a good version
• 33:47
  is something like DreamWorks where those, you know, the
• 33:50
  superstars came together and made a studio.
• 33:52
  Yes, one 100% there. There are positive examples of
• 33:56
  it. It definitely can be done, but
• 33:58
  it requires a lot of ego checking and it requires, you
• 34:02
  know, it requires people being them being able to balance like
• 34:07
  their business responsibilities and making sure the company's
• 34:10
  create creativity is still at the you know, at the at the top
• 34:13
  of its game. Right, right.
• 34:15
  I was, I mean, I was thinking to myself and I was reading about
• 34:18
  this, I was kind of, I was kind of rooting for Dana.
• 34:22
  But the reason why is because I, I, I, I value the, the film and
• 34:28
  the, and the, and the, and the streaming side.
• 34:30
  I've added the creative side. So I was, I was hoping that
• 34:32
  she'd win that out and, but I, but I couldn't like, I wasn't
• 34:37
  surprised because the parks is really Disney's, you know,
• 34:40
  money. It's it's a money printing
• 34:42
  factory, you know. Yeah, you're right.
• 34:43
  I didn't even mention that. But of course, like one of the
• 34:45
  main, I mean, then picking tomorrow also, you know, signals
• 34:50
  of facts that like, even though Disney's everything at Disney
• 34:54
  starts with the creativity, it starts with the with, you know,
• 34:57
  animated movies, right? Especially at its core, you
• 35:00
  could say. But on the other hand, most of
• 35:02
  the money that was made by theme parks and consumer products,
• 35:05
  especially the theme parks and the cruise ships, which is the
• 35:07
  businesses that Tomorrow came up in and that he oversaw.
• 35:10
  Those have grown tremendously in the past few years.
• 35:12
  Whereas movie business has been kind of stagnant as we've
• 35:14
  discussed. And streaming makes a lot less
• 35:16
  profit than TV used to. So the company really the
• 35:20
  creative stuff, the movies and TV and you know, to some extent
• 35:23
  they exist in order to drive the theme parks and to sell toys and
• 35:26
  get people, inspire rides, to get people into theme parks
• 35:29
  where the profits are are huge. And it's important for Disney
• 35:33
  CEO to understand those businesses and Josh Tomorrow
• 35:35
  understands them very well. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:38
  And and that, and that really is really what I guess what I would
• 35:41
  imagine it came down to, because, I mean, especially at a
• 35:43
  public company, a company under as much scrutiny as they've been
• 35:46
  under and they've been under a ton of pressure.
• 35:49
  I mean, listen, the other, the other streaming services have,
• 35:52
  you know, people could trash Netflix all they want.
• 35:55
  They put it, they put out great content and, and they get a lot
• 35:59
  of eyeballs on them and people could trash Paramount.
• 36:03
  They've been I, I mean David and, and we'll talk about them.
• 36:06
  David Ellison has been buying everything and, and like it
• 36:09
  almost I, I, I've been feeling recently like Paramount is the
• 36:13
  is the conservative dad's Netflix. 100% there's, there's a
• 36:17
  lot of, there's a lot of dad shows, right?
• 36:20
  Paramount Plus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:21
  And especially with the UFC now being integrated and like this
• 36:24
  whole and Taylor Sheridan basically having a Blink check
• 36:27
  to just do whatever he wants and, and and succeeding every
• 36:30
  single time too, you know, I mean, it's really awesome.
• 36:32
  What amazing traffic. Yeah, it, it puts, I'm sure it
• 36:35
  puts a lot of pressure on Disney in a lot of ways.
• 36:37
  And, and it doesn't leave you. I, I mean, I guess Dana didn't
• 36:40
  really stay like from a business perspective and as a public
• 36:43
  company perspective, I, I guess she didn't stand much of a
• 36:45
  chance in that way. Yeah, she was always the
• 36:47
  underdog because, yeah, because this like Disney Plus is doing
• 36:50
  fine, but not great. It's just it is not, you know,
• 36:54
  it's nowhere close to Netflix, it's nowhere close to Amazon
• 36:56
  Prime. And although it has more
• 36:58
  subscribers, I mean, when you look at like who's making the
• 37:01
  most buzz talk about talk about shows?
• 37:03
  I mean, Paramount Plus, like you said, HTO Max, like they they
• 37:07
  have, they have that, they have that prestige in a way that
• 37:10
  Disney Plus and Hulu they have, I mean, you know, they have
• 37:14
  Shogun, I mean, they have stuff. But I would say they're not,
• 37:16
  they're not, they're not, they just don't have as much buzz and
• 37:22
  they're not have as they don't have as high of a track record
• 37:24
  of hits. And yeah, if you're, if you're
• 37:27
  thinking of who should run Disney, who understands what
• 37:29
  makes this company run right now when where the profits come from
• 37:32
  you for the first time in its history, you wouldn't say a, you
• 37:35
  know, a film or TV person. That's just not where the heart
• 37:39
  of the company is anymore. It's really interesting to think
• 37:42
  about it really is. And I'm reading because I'm
• 37:46
  reading a biography right now and it's, it's been by a
• 37:49
  gentleman named Mark Elliott, who I, who, who told me he's the
• 37:52
  only other person, one of the few other people that wrote a
• 37:55
  biography on Disney, I think Bob Thomas's other big one.
• 37:59
  And and he, and he told me he did a podcast together that
• 38:05
  Disney and he, you know, he wrote this book, I guess the
• 38:07
  late 90s and early 2000s. And he Disney basically offered
• 38:12
  to cooperate with him and give him complete access to the
• 38:15
  archives as long as he would give them final cut, I guess of
• 38:20
  what his version of what the book is going to end up being.
• 38:23
  And he pushed back in it. I mean, they gave him, they gave
• 38:25
  him a lot of grief and they gave him a very, very hard time
• 38:30
  reporting on them. Huh.
• 38:32
  I'm not surprised you hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:34
  And, and, and, and, but, so I'm reading this biography and, and
• 38:38
  one of the things that he made a, that I, I found consistent
• 38:42
  all across the board is that, you know, when Disney himself is
• 38:45
  making these movies, he would often use the funding from the
• 38:49
  park, I guess, merchandising to continue funding movies and to
• 38:53
  break ground technologically and, and, and have the studio
• 38:56
  focus on the film. And that would inevitably kind
• 38:58
  of maintain their reputation, which allowed more selling, more
• 39:02
  merchandising, more parking. And then, and then you expand
• 39:05
  into greater forms of, of storytelling.
• 39:07
  And now it's, and now they have a different type of corporate
• 39:09
  responsibility to be conservative and risk averse,
• 39:13
  which they're fine, which comes down to this type of
• 39:15
  conversation that we're having now and how they're making
• 39:17
  decisions. Yeah, and Disney was very risk
• 39:19
  averse in the movie making in the 20 tens.
• 39:21
  I mean, they didn't make. It was all franchise movies in
• 39:23
  the 20 tens. If you recall, it was all
• 39:25
  Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and those live action remakes of the
• 39:28
  fairy tales. Like that's pretty much all they
• 39:30
  did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was.
• 39:33
  They had a couple of, they had a couple of good stuff in the
• 39:36
  earlier with Frozen Entangled. I think those were like real
• 39:38
  home runs and those were like cultural home runs too.
• 39:41
  And like a really. Yeah, yeah, that was the only
• 39:43
  place they were making. 90s for sure.
• 39:45
  Yeah, the only time they were making original, the only
• 39:47
  original movies Disney was making then was an animation.
• 39:50
  That's it. And you're right, they
• 39:51
  absolutely had like Frozen was a monster hit.
• 39:54
  Coco was a monster hit. I mean, they they made some very
• 39:56
  good original movies. Zootopia.
• 39:58
  Yeah. Do you have, can you maybe
• 40:01
  explain, I don't know if you have more information because
• 40:03
  you've also been on the AI side as well as entertainment side.
• 40:06
  What happened with the Sora AI deal with Disney and what was
• 40:09
  going on? Yeah, I'll tell you what I know,
• 40:11
  which is, you know, so Sora, the Sora app, especially the
• 40:15
  consumer app like launched in I think September and it had a lot
• 40:19
  of heat at 1st and people in Hollywood are like, what are we
• 40:21
  going to do about this? It was really good, right?
• 40:24
  It was good. I mean, it's good.
• 40:25
  The video generation was high quality and the app at first was
• 40:28
  getting a lot of attention and people were making also, you
• 40:30
  know, the first step Hollywood took was to get open AI to to
• 40:33
  not allow blatant copyright infringement on there.
• 40:35
  And then Disney Bob Iger, to his credit, has often said like we
• 40:39
  need to embrace technology, not like not not only try to like,
• 40:43
  you know, keep it at Bay. This was like a very classic.
• 40:46
  I can move to say, well, we'll make a partnership with them.
• 40:50
  So, you know, we'll allow them to use some of our care.
• 40:54
  And in exchange for that and instead of them paying us,
• 40:57
  they'll give us a billion dollars worth of equity in open
• 41:00
  AI, which is a tiny piece of it, which could be worth more.
• 41:03
  And they they could use some of the sort videos on Disney Plus.
• 41:06
  And it kind of reminded me of, you know, when, when Steve Jobs
• 41:09
  launched the video iPod, Disney was the first company to put his
• 41:13
  TV shows and movies available to watch on there.
• 41:17
  So that was all great. The the thing they didn't
• 41:19
  anticipate was that open AI, you know, is a loses a lot of money
• 41:24
  because AI is a very expensive to develop.
• 41:26
  And they were sort of starting to lose some momentum to like
• 41:31
  Google, Gemini and Anthropic. And they realized that they need
• 41:35
  to, they have a limited amount of really what it is, is they
• 41:38
  call the compute limited amount of like server chips, a lot of
• 41:43
  of chips in in, in data centers to develop AI and run AI and
• 41:47
  they can't make. So they decided that we need to
• 41:51
  focus on the things that are most important to us.
• 41:53
  And they realized that like being involved in video is not
• 41:57
  core was not the most important thing they're doing.
• 41:59
  And actually, so after a huge launch, so it was kind of
• 42:02
  starting to lose interest in people.
• 42:04
  So they did, openly. I decided this is not worth our
• 42:06
  time and our limited amount of of compute that we can devote to
• 42:10
  projects. When you want to, that's what.
• 42:11
  Happened that's. What happened?
• 42:13
  They were like, we need, we want to devote it all to making
• 42:15
  chachi PT great to competing with, with Claude for like
• 42:19
  enterprise coding stuff. And we're going to sacrifice the
• 42:22
  sword team. It's just not worth our energy.
• 42:24
  We'll just and they cut it and they got rid of it and, and
• 42:26
  literally Disney found out like a few hours before it was
• 42:29
  announced in the world. Wow, and that's a big deal to
• 42:36
  Disney's such a huge player to not tell them something like
• 42:39
  that a couple hours before is considered is considered a
• 42:42
  massive. Well, it goes to show you where
• 42:44
  the. Power.
• 42:45
  It goes to show you where the power is in the world right now.
• 42:47
  You know, like Disney needed open AIA lot more than open AI
• 42:50
  needed Disney, right? Yeah.
• 42:51
  So yeah. And now, now Disney needs to
• 42:54
  figure out what their AI strategy is going to be.
• 42:56
  They were going to try tonicate to Sora, so now they need to
• 42:58
  figure something else out. Yeah, the whole the, the I've
• 43:01
  been learning. I I just read a great book by a
• 43:04
  woman named Karen Howe who's a tech journalist.
• 43:07
  And the empire of AI. That's right.
• 43:10
  And and she and she really broke down.
• 43:12
  I I didn't even realize everything.
• 43:14
  You just explained. She, she had just elaborated on
• 43:17
  and explained in her book and I didn't realize how expensive it
• 43:21
  is. And it really got me thinking as
• 43:24
  to the question of the efficiency in the trade off.
• 43:25
  And So what, you know, whether or not the, what they're, what
• 43:28
  they're providing, what, what a open AI or what most of these
• 43:32
  LLMS are providing are worth the expense of, you know, what, what
• 43:36
  it takes to actually generate it and create it for sure.
• 43:42
  And, and at the, and on top of it all, Entropic I heard this
• 43:46
  week is, is valued at a trillion dollars and, and almost
• 43:51
  certainly going to IPO this year.
• 43:52
  So it looks like more trouble for open AI, even in the
• 43:55
  competitive front. Yes, absolutely.
• 43:58
  Open AI seem like they were the dominant player and now they are
• 44:03
  absolute and minimum in a very tight race with Anthropic and
• 44:05
  Google. Yeah.
• 44:07
  And how do you know how this works?
• 44:09
  And I don't know if you know how this works.
• 44:11
  I just saw within a couple of days Amazon invested I think 5
• 44:14
  billion into Anthropic. And then Google announced a
• 44:16
  couple of days later, they're also investing 5 billion into
• 44:20
  who does it. So I know that one thing that
• 44:22
  happened with Open AI is that there was a inherent competition
• 44:25
  in the company with between the safety team and the commercial
• 44:28
  team that was that that had to raise enough money to be
• 44:30
  competitive in the safety research is the way that they
• 44:33
  raise it to the public, right. And and they would get the money
• 44:38
  from Microsoft, who would give you initially ejected them with
• 44:41
  a billion dollars and I think 10 and and more since then, but
• 44:44
  they were now held respond. They had to answer to Microsoft
• 44:49
  for saying, Hey, you know, we we got a billion dollars from you.
• 44:51
  We have to give you access to XYZ.
• 44:53
  We're working on this. These two enormous
• 44:56
  conglomerates, Amazon and Google are both investing in anthropic.
• 44:59
  Doesn't that put them in a very precarious position when when
• 45:04
  all when all the competition is investing together in one
• 45:07
  industry in one company? Some you mean just open AI in a
• 45:10
  very position a bit, but I would say that you know, the reason
• 45:15
  Google and and Amazon are investing is is remember they
• 45:18
  are the two big they are two of the three biggest cloud
• 45:21
  computing companies. So ran you know, regular mid mid
• 45:26
  sized companies. You know, they get all their
• 45:28
  cloud computing from Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud or
• 45:32
  Microsoft and Microsoft Azure. And when they sign up for that,
• 45:35
  you often buy software through it.
• 45:37
  So Claw Infravic wants to offer clawed enterprise through
• 45:44
  through AWS and through Google Cloud and Google and Amazon want
• 45:47
  to have it on there because it brings people in.
• 45:49
  So that that that's why that investment kind of kind of
• 45:52
  benefits everybody. So previously Open AI had an
• 45:57
  exclusive relationship with Microsoft because Microsoft
• 45:59
  invested early in them. But just recently they their
• 46:02
  deal has changed where Open AI is allowed to take investment
• 46:07
  and do cloud work with other companies.
• 46:08
  And the you know, this deal with Anthropic is not exclusive and
• 46:12
  it would not shock me to see Google more and or Amazon make
• 46:16
  make a similar kind of a deal with Open AI as well.
• 46:19
  Really. So you could see them spending
• 46:21
  spending the money around and just trying to integrate both.
• 46:23
  Absolutely, yeah, they want it. They want to, if they think like
• 46:26
  enough of their customers want to have access to it and they
• 46:29
  want to make sure that they are, you know, that they, that they
• 46:33
  have a tight relationship to make sure that open AI will be
• 46:35
  on say, AWS for a long time to come.
• 46:38
  You could completely see that, see that coming.
• 46:41
  I think that the, the, the, the stock, the tech giants like
• 46:45
  Microsoft, Google, Amazon, they can spread their money very
• 46:49
  widely. They have, they have.
• 46:51
  It's $5 billion is not a lot of money for them, you know.
• 46:53
  Yeah, certainly, certainly, certainly.
• 46:55
  Yeah. And I get, you know, the way I
• 46:57
  was thinking about it was that you had to be beholden to
• 46:59
  someone and who would it be? But you're saying there's enough
• 47:01
  like it's just the software they're buying and like, oh,
• 47:03
  they need to just access permission to use it.
• 47:05
  So like. It's just a, it's a partnership.
• 47:07
  They're just basically making aligning themselves more closely
• 47:10
  as partners is what they're doing.
• 47:13
  They're not getting in a $5 billion in a company that's
• 47:16
  worth will probably be worth, you know, because you said
• 47:18
  potentially a trillion by the end of the year is not very much
• 47:21
  equity actually, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
• 47:26
  Not at all. Back to Disney real quick, Josh
• 47:30
  tomorrow just posted today that he plans on hanging on to ESPN
• 47:35
  Now sports and streaming has been a whole mess and I'm going
• 47:40
  to hold myself back from using the word cluster.
• 47:42
  But you know, that really feels more like what it's like.
• 47:45
  But but I feel like this is so antithetical to everything we've
• 47:51
  been hearing about ESPN for a decade.
• 47:53
  You know, that like it, that it's losing their money and
• 47:56
  they're not sure what to do with it.
• 47:57
  And they're not sure whether to spin it off or just sell it or
• 47:59
  to like, what what, what's going on over here?
• 48:03
  Yeah, sport. I mean, Disney's real sure with
• 48:05
  these pans. Always been weird because the
• 48:07
  rest of Disney is kind of what they call a flywheel where
• 48:09
  everything is connected, right? Like the the entertainment
• 48:12
  content. They make shows, they sell toys
• 48:14
  and they shows up in the theme parks and so on and by and vice
• 48:17
  versa. Sports is just its own thing and
• 48:20
  it was a very profitable business for a long time because
• 48:23
  every cable system had to have ESPN and every, so they paid a
• 48:26
  lot of money. Everybody had cable, but
• 48:28
  everybody got ESPN in their package.
• 48:30
  Cable companies paid 5 bucks a month for every one of their
• 48:33
  subscribers to Disney, ESPN. It was hugely profitable.
• 48:35
  Now obviously cable, you know, was withering because of cord
• 48:39
  cutting. ESPN makes a lot less money.
• 48:41
  So I, I don't know for sure why Disney decided to hold on to it.
• 48:47
  It could be, you know, the sensible reason is, and this
• 48:50
  some truth to this, that in Disney's looking for a
• 48:53
  competitive advantage, you know, they want to a lot of people
• 48:56
  sign up for Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN together, right?
• 48:59
  And that's sort of a lot of people who want sports will be
• 49:02
  like, well, I'll just spend a few more bucks to add on Disney
• 49:04
  Plus and Hulu with it, right? And so it brings them more
• 49:07
  customers that way. So that's sort of like that.
• 49:10
  That's their best argument for why they want to have it.
• 49:13
  That's entirely a great argument as far as like you sports are
• 49:17
  all over the place. Like, I mean someone and and I
• 49:20
  could imagine they'd probably piss off more customers than it
• 49:22
  would be than than it would actually.
• 49:23
  Be well, it pisses people off, but if you're a sports fan, you
• 49:25
  have to have ESPN. If you're a sports fan and
• 49:28
  you've if you're a sports fan and you've cut the cord, you
• 49:30
  don't, you don't use like, you know, Comcast Cable or DIRECTV
• 49:34
  or YouTube TV. You have to subscribe to the
• 49:36
  ESPN streaming service. I mean, it doesn't have close to
• 49:39
  everything, but it has a lot, right?
• 49:41
  I mean, most obviously, like Monday Night Football and they
• 49:45
  have a playoffs and they have a ton of important college
• 49:47
  football games, for example. And they have some of the NBA.
• 49:51
  You have to have it. That's that, you know, the
• 49:55
  sports streaming is worth something to people.
• 49:58
  And the more people cut the cord, the more valuable it's
• 50:00
  going to be. But it's also possible to see
• 50:03
  that Disney may have said, I'm sure there's a price in which
• 50:05
  Disney would be willing to sell ESPN.
• 50:07
  And maybe they looked around and we're like, we're not going to
• 50:09
  get that price, frankly, You know, it's all about how how
• 50:12
  much value does it bring us? How much money could we get for
• 50:14
  selling it? You know, and does any like
• 50:17
  maybe a lot of people don't want to buy ESPN right now, at least
• 50:20
  at a big price, given the problems, you know, that are,
• 50:23
  that are happening in the sports market?
• 50:25
  Do you think I don't, I don't know the answer to this
• 50:28
  question, but just from a strictly financial perspective,
• 50:30
  are they are they even in the like the realm of competing for
• 50:35
  sports rights to kind of put a bunch of big sports on, on, on
• 50:38
  or, or bigger sports or more sports on ESPN to make it worth
• 50:41
  keeping and to try to kind of like, listen, we have the brand.
• 50:44
  Everyone knows the everyone knows ESPN like, you know, let's
• 50:48
  just try to get a couple more NFL games, a couple of different
• 50:51
  sports rights that that you know, other that haven't spread
• 50:54
  throughout these other streaming services and try to make a blitz
• 50:57
  for it. They're never going to get even
• 51:00
  the majority of stuff. Partly like nobody has no, they
• 51:03
  don't have that much money, but also the the leagues don't want
• 51:06
  that. Like for the leagues, the
• 51:08
  leagues make more money by having a bunch of bidders, you
• 51:10
  know, and they want to have as many different media and tech
• 51:13
  companies as possible having some sports because that's
• 51:16
  health, that's healthy ecosystem in the long run for for the NFL
• 51:20
  in the NBA and MLB, because then they always have more buyers,
• 51:23
  right? The last thing they want if ESPN
• 51:25
  dominated the market, then the next time the rights come up,
• 51:28
  maybe ESP NS the only bidder. And that would be terrible for
• 51:30
  the sports week. So that's why what they want,
• 51:33
  they want Monday Night Football on ESPN and Sunday Night
• 51:35
  Football on NBC and Thursday Night Football on Amazon and the
• 51:38
  Sunday day games on CBS and on Fox.
• 51:41
  Like that's perfect for them because everybody's doing well.
• 51:44
  And but I you do point to an issue where on the one hand,
• 51:47
  ESPN needs to keep a certain amount of key sports or else
• 51:51
  nobody does. The network has no more
• 51:52
  relevance. But you know, the tech companies
• 51:55
  are getting into sports in a big, big way.
• 51:57
  Amazon is into sports in a big way right now.
• 52:00
  I predict you are going Yeah, Apple TVI believe he doesn't
• 52:03
  have a lot, but they. They they you can see that with
• 52:06
  desire to start getting. You can see they do it.
• 52:08
  Here's what's really the danger is that YouTube could start
• 52:11
  buying more games for its free service.
• 52:13
  Like yes, there YouTube has already a Sunday ticket.
• 52:15
  You got to pay a lot of money for it.
• 52:16
  But YouTube put one NFL game last year on for free on AT
• 52:20
  supported YouTube. Then they have some soccer
• 52:22
  games. I believe in Latin America.
• 52:24
  They could easily decide to buy more sports rights for free.
• 52:27
  And because they can make so much money with advertising on
• 52:29
  YouTube. You know, Amazon and Google have
• 52:33
  more money than you know Disney has ever had in its in its
• 52:37
  entire existence. You know, available if Amazon
• 52:40
  and app and and or Google YouTube really want to write a
• 52:44
  big check. Disney, ESPN can't compete.
• 52:48
  That is the danger that that ESPN is going to be facing in
• 52:51
  the years to count as they're up against much bigger and richer
• 52:54
  tech companies. Yeah.
• 52:56
  And I I I don't know much about any of their content, but
• 53:01
  historically their non sports content hasn't done as well,
• 53:06
  right? I don't know, ESPNSESPN.
• 53:09
  Yeah, yeah. The original content that you'd
• 53:12
  call it. Yeah, they've done a little bit,
• 53:13
  and it's never really caught on, frankly.
• 53:17
  If anything, ESPN is more reliant than ever on the games
• 53:20
  like they used to, you know, like Sports Center doesn't get
• 53:23
  anything close to the readings that used to.
• 53:24
  Because people who want, if you want to like, get your Sports
• 53:27
  News and information, you can get that in a million places
• 53:29
  online. If you want to see clips of
• 53:31
  sports, you're better off getting those on like, Instagram
• 53:34
  and YouTube, right? And if you want to hear like,
• 53:37
  you know, ex players and commentators talking about
• 53:40
  sports, there's a million Twitter, there's a million party
• 53:42
  Twitter or podcasts, right? So that's that's all the stuff
• 53:46
  ESPN used to wrap around the games.
• 53:48
  And people are getting that a ton of other places now, right?
• 53:50
  The only thing ESPN has that nobody else has is certain
• 53:54
  games. Wow.
• 53:59
  Oh man, I don't know. It doesn't sound like a winning
• 54:02
  strategy to me, but. I think it is, it is a very
• 54:05
  challenge. It's a very, it is a more and
• 54:06
  more challenging business every year, that's for sure.
• 54:09
  Yeah, and and poor Josh tomorrow we just kind of given the
• 54:12
  problem and I'm sure he knew it existed beforehand.
• 54:14
  But like, this is, this is between this and lay and having
• 54:17
  to lay people off like within the first couple of weeks of his
• 54:20
  being ACEO. I, I, I, I hope that he gets
• 54:24
  through this well and know that a lot of every company's doing
• 54:27
  it. Nike's doing it, Meta's doing
• 54:28
  it, you know, like, you know, there are cuts everywhere.
• 54:31
  I, I, I, I, I want the company to do well.
• 54:34
  You know, I, I hope he, I hope he settles in nicely.
• 54:37
  Yeah, if you care about, you know, if you care about like
• 54:39
  movies and TV and entertainment, then you should, you should want
• 54:43
  these companies to be, to be healthy, you know.
• 54:46
  Yeah, definitely. OK.
• 54:48
  I would love to hear a little bit of the inside of what
• 54:51
  Cinemacon is like and what the energy was like this year.
• 54:55
  What's the what's the usual schedule like?
• 54:57
  You, you go, you go to Vegas, there's a bajillion people that
• 55:02
  everyone knows all around. Are there particular hotels that
• 55:06
  are assigned to like different like groups?
• 55:08
  Is everyone meeting up in one place?
• 55:09
  What's what's? What's the environment like?
• 55:10
  So Cinemacon all takes place at Caesar's Palace.
• 55:14
  So every, everybody's, most people are staying there and all
• 55:18
  the presentations are in the, the, the Coliseum, which is
• 55:23
  usually where like, you know, big, big singers perform.
• 55:26
  So for the week of Cinemacon from Monday through Thursday,
• 55:28
  there's no performances. It's just booked for these
• 55:31
  studio presentations and and then Caesar's has like a
• 55:36
  Conference Center that is and that's taken over by Cinemacon.
• 55:39
  And there's tons of companies that like sell different movie
• 55:42
  theater chairs and projectors and new kinds of popcorn and
• 55:46
  whatever. And they take over all these
• 55:47
  rooms and you can like check it out.
• 55:49
  And they're trying to convince theaters to, you know, buy their
• 55:51
  stuff and people are having meetings all the time.
• 55:54
  And you, and there's tons of ads for every, there's like a poster
• 55:57
  for every movie coming out in the next year.
• 55:58
  If you walk down the halls. And I will say, you know, it's
• 56:03
  all built around the studio presentations.
• 56:05
  And there's the first one is Monday is month.
• 56:08
  The 1st 2 actually are on Monday and they go through until
• 56:11
  Thursday afternoon. There's like pretty much 2:00
• 56:13
  every day. And then in between those, you
• 56:16
  for myself, like I try to meet with different sources who might
• 56:20
  work like people who work for different movie theaters around
• 56:22
  the country. It's a good opportunity that for
• 56:23
  me to meet them, interview them, talk about what they're going on
• 56:26
  with their businesses, what their challenges are, what they
• 56:28
  think's interesting happening in the business.
• 56:30
  So I have a bunch of like meetings, sit downs, lunches,
• 56:33
  drinks, etcetera with people and I go to the presentations and,
• 56:38
  and then sometimes like different studios or, or theater
• 56:42
  companies will have like a drinks about drinks before a
• 56:44
  presentation or a party afterwards and can have some
• 56:47
  time to go to those and meet some people and, and talk more.
• 56:49
  And for a reporter like me, it's just a great opportunity to just
• 56:54
  to get a sense of all the movies coming out the next year and to
• 56:56
  meet a lot of people who are useful for me to know.
• 56:59
  Totally, totally. And what was the, were you there
• 57:02
  the last couple of years? How, how was this, how this year
• 57:04
  feel especially with that like there's a lot of movement going
• 57:07
  on in the industry now. So how does how environment?
• 57:09
  Like this is the second year in a row.
• 57:11
  The year before that I was in the AI field.
• 57:13
  So I didn't go in 2024. But this year I will say it was
• 57:16
  definitely more optimistic. One reason is there's always
• 57:18
  been a lot of fight over windows over how you know how long from
• 57:23
  when the movie opens in a theater to when it's on
• 57:25
  available to watch online for VOD.
• 57:27
  Everybody's kind of agreed finally on 45 days, which is
• 57:30
  actually what the theaters wanted.
• 57:31
  The studios have pretty much all all agreed to that.
• 57:35
  So there was no arguing over windows, which was so that
• 57:38
  people are positive about that and people were feeling very
• 57:41
  great. Good that so far the box office
• 57:43
  is up this year and it's been down so many years in a row that
• 57:47
  does having any positive momentum make made made people
• 57:50
  feel good. So in that sense it was a much
• 57:52
  more optimistic Cinemacon with more positive energy than I saw
• 57:57
  last year. So much fun, so cool.
• 57:59
  What were what were some of your favorite presentations?
• 58:03
  Well I mentioned whale fall was a big surprise.
• 58:06
  I also I will say the the Dune they showed the 1st 7 minutes or
• 58:10
  so of or so of Dune and I liked the first two Dune movies.
• 58:14
  I wasn't like the biggest fan. I liked them but this was my
• 58:18
  opinion. I will just say was at a whole
• 58:21
  other level. It was basically without getting
• 58:24
  too much with the 1st 7 minutes, it was like imagine the D-Day
• 58:26
  scene of stating Private Ryan, but I'm like an alien planet
• 58:29
  with like sci-fi tech like that. But it was that level of like
• 58:33
  it's felt like documentary kind of filmmaking and it'll really
• 58:36
  get close with the soldiers. I didn't expect that in a dude
• 58:40
  movie. And I really was really was
• 58:42
  extremely well done. And I would say like the room
• 58:45
  was really, really impressed by that.
• 58:47
  So it was it's also another reason why I think they can feel
• 58:50
  very good going up against Avengers.
• 58:51
  Like they showed great, they showed a great scene that people
• 58:54
  were really, really impressed by.
• 58:55
  I'm. So happy to hear that.
• 58:57
  I love that I have cried. The truth is, I tried to I I
• 59:00
  tried to watch Dune one probably 4 times.
• 59:03
  Really not your, not your thing. You know what, I wanted it to be
• 59:06
  my thing more than I think it was.
• 59:09
  But I also particularly because I, I, I remember Dude 2 came
• 59:12
  out, everyone was raving about it and I was like, you know
• 59:14
  what? Even if I have to push through
• 59:15
  Dude 1 to get to watch Dude 2 in theaters, I'll do it.
• 59:18
  You think I try to watch 22 to watch?
• 59:20
  Do you want to get to 2 and three in theaters?
• 59:22
  I don't know. I don't know the spot of dude.
• 59:23
  I mean, here's what I would say. I always say this to people
• 59:25
  like, don't you don't have to watch a movie anymore.
• 59:28
  Like frankly, you can just read like the Wikipedia summary of
• 59:30
  the plot or ask like sometimes if I'm like seeing a movie and I
• 59:34
  haven't or TV show I haven't watched the prior season in a
• 59:37
  long time, I'll just ask, you know, I'll ask an AI to dislike,
• 59:42
  hey, hey, hey, remind me of everything I need to know, you
• 59:44
  know, before I watch the sequel. Yeah, I hope I What do you did
• 59:50
  you see the Toy Story 5? I thought that looked awesome.
• 59:54
  I did. I'd actually seen it earlier
• 59:56
  because I did a story in Pixar in March and I went up, I went
• 59:59
  up to Emeryville, where the headquarters is for the store
• 1:00:01
  and they showed me some of the footage.
• 1:00:03
  So yes, I saw it and it's definitely like I.
• 1:00:08
  I would comfortably predict that movie and it's going to be one
• 1:00:12
  of the biggest movies of the year, quite possibly the biggest
• 1:00:14
  movie of the year. I mean, it looks like it has all
• 1:00:17
  the elements people love about Toy Story.
• 1:00:18
  And you know, it's dealing, it's it's dealing with a tablet,
• 1:00:23
  right? Which is obviously like whatever
• 1:00:25
  what every parent of a kid is, you know, it's like their
• 1:00:28
  biggest, their biggest crisis, right, is like, how do I deal
• 1:00:31
  with technology for my kids? And wouldn't it be nice if they
• 1:00:33
  just played with dolls and action figures the way that we
• 1:00:35
  used to do 20 years ago? So it's feels very current,
• 1:00:40
  simultaneously feels current and yet also captures the nostalgia
• 1:00:44
  a lot of people have for those characters.
• 1:00:46
  So that's so, which is why I think it will get like
• 1:00:49
  middle-aged adults and if people can very feel very happy
• 1:00:52
  bringing their seven-year olds to see it also.
• 1:00:54
  I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to it and I and I you
• 1:00:57
  know, I, I was definitely hesitant about Toy Story 4I
• 1:01:00
  remember liking it, but I, I, I I did this trailer really was
• 1:01:05
  was really impressed on me. I it it stuck with me for sure.
• 1:01:08
  Yeah, it's a good trail. Yeah, I mean, I hope for I'm,
• 1:01:13
  I'm really hoping for a big year.
• 1:01:14
  It just, it feels exciting and it does.
• 1:01:17
  Yeah, yeah. Look, there's a lot of like
• 1:01:19
  people are saying this to me, like, look, if you just look at
• 1:01:21
  the cadence of the next few months, like Devil Wears Prada
• 1:01:25
  is almost certainly going to do really well and The Mandalorian
• 1:01:29
  and Grogu, we'll see. But it's a big movie coming on
• 1:01:31
  Memorial Day. Like there's a shot we'll see.
• 1:01:33
  And then you like Toy Story in June, which is like guaranteed
• 1:01:36
  to be massive in July. You have a new Minions movie
• 1:01:41
  that they showed some of it in Cinemacon.
• 1:01:42
  Like it looks kind of like cool. Like they're not.
• 1:01:44
  They're definitely trying some new stuff.
• 1:01:46
  I'll give them and we'll see. And then that month also has has
• 1:01:50
  the Odyssey, which is almost certainly going to be massive,
• 1:01:53
  and it has a new Spider Man movie that's almost certainly
• 1:01:55
  going. To be massive.
• 1:01:56
  So we have like the next few months, there's a lot of
• 1:01:58
  opportunities for a lot of success.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah, it might. It might even.
• 1:02:02
  It might even encourage me to get my stubs passed for the
• 1:02:05
  first time since myself. Yeah.
• 1:02:07
  You know, yeah, yeah, I could see that that might, that might
• 1:02:09
  be a good value if you're going to see them all.
• 1:02:11
  I've been, yeah. I, I, I keep on making very
• 1:02:14
  brave attempts at renewing them. And I'll, and I'll keep them for
• 1:02:16
  like, I'll be like, you know what?
• 1:02:18
  My kid is finally old enough that he's sleeping through the
• 1:02:20
  night. I can go to a movie even by
• 1:02:22
  myself for a couple hours. And then I, I keep it for a
• 1:02:25
  month. I'm like, it's not happening.
• 1:02:26
  You're not actually seeing enough to be worth the money,
• 1:02:28
  Yeah. Yeah, No, no, but I hope so.
• 1:02:31
  And then I, I, I appreciate your time.
• 1:02:32
  I, I want to let you go in a couple of minutes.
• 1:02:34
  I want to just ask real quickly about some of your thoughts on
• 1:02:37
  this Warner Brothers Paramount merger, because it'd be, I'd be
• 1:02:41
  awfully remiss if I if we didn't talk about it at all.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah. First of all, I don't know
• 1:02:46
  whether there's a Twitter big deal or Twitter thing or not a
• 1:02:49
  big thing or anything. I heard that like 48 or or 49%
• 1:02:53
  of the funding from the deal is coming from the Middle East.
• 1:02:56
  Do you know about that? What does that mean?
• 1:02:58
  What does that? Mean 49% of the equity.
• 1:03:00
  There's also a lot of debt, I will say, but of the the actual
• 1:03:03
  equity portion of it is coming from the Middle East because
• 1:03:07
  frankly, if you want to get 10s of billions of dollars these
• 1:03:09
  days, one of the best sources is Middle Eastern money.
• 1:03:14
  It's you know, they're because they're a minority.
• 1:03:16
  You can know how how not people would say, well, they're not
• 1:03:18
  going to have any influence like David Ellison.
• 1:03:20
  This will still have control of this company.
• 1:03:22
  But you know, they're going to have a voice that he has to talk
• 1:03:25
  to them because they're big investors of his.
• 1:03:28
  And you know, this he's paramount is going to own if
• 1:03:33
  this deal closes like 2 news networks and here's Middle
• 1:03:36
  Eastern money controlling two major news networks.
• 1:03:39
  I understand why people are concerned about it.
• 1:03:42
  I would say but yeah, they're going to own, you know, they're,
• 1:03:45
  they're going to be, they're going to be major investors.
• 1:03:46
  That's absolutely true. So you made the difference, but
• 1:03:49
  you, you made the the distinction between the debt and
• 1:03:52
  the and the funding or the equity rather.
• 1:03:54
  Can you can you just explain that if in case anyone doesn't?
• 1:03:56
  Sure. So Paramount is paying, I
• 1:03:58
  believe $110 billion. That's how much this deal is
• 1:04:01
  worth in total. So where does that money come
• 1:04:06
  from? Like I and I don't have all
• 1:04:08
  this. I don't have the split in front
• 1:04:09
  of me, but some portion of it, some portion of it is equity,
• 1:04:12
  meaning like they're just writing a check, right?
• 1:04:14
  What they're like, hey, wonder bro, Hey, you know, here's cash
• 1:04:16
  that we have, right? It's from some of it's from
• 1:04:19
  Larry Ellison, some of it's from other investors, some of it's
• 1:04:21
  from cash Paramount already has and a big chunk of it's from the
• 1:04:24
  Middle East. But some of it is debt, right?
• 1:04:27
  Which is like a bank is loan essentially loaning Paramount
• 1:04:30
  10s of billions of dollars. And then and then Paramount's
• 1:04:34
  going to have to pay that back in the coming years, right?
• 1:04:36
  They don't have to pay back their the equity investors.
• 1:04:39
  The equity investors want to own Paramount going forward and they
• 1:04:42
  think eventually hopefully Paramount will be worth more in
• 1:04:45
  the future. And you know, but the debt
• 1:04:46
  holders like expect to get paid back with interest over the next
• 1:04:49
  several years. Right.
• 1:04:51
  Do you think there's going to be, I, I just thought of this
• 1:04:55
  right now, just because I asked you about the Netflix, you know,
• 1:04:57
  and I rather the Paramount being the dad's conservative station.
• 1:05:01
  Do you think there's going to be any kind of tension with the HBO
• 1:05:05
  crowd? Because the the HBOHBO crowd has
• 1:05:08
  always been looking to push the envelope in in a lot of
• 1:05:11
  different ways. Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I
• 1:05:13
  think actually Casey Cloys on the HBO team are going to be
• 1:05:20
  left alone to do what they do because they do it well, what's
• 1:05:23
  right. Absolutely.
• 1:05:24
  I think basically pound out right now.
• 1:05:27
  What are they succeeding with? They're succeeding with the dad
• 1:05:29
  shows and you know, and they have the they have some key big
• 1:05:32
  NFL games, of course, in the UFC.
• 1:05:34
  They have a lot of they're basically succeeding with men
• 1:05:36
  and they they don't do very well with non sports fans with women
• 1:05:42
  with and they don't have a lot of like prestige shows, right.
• 1:05:45
  They won't have a lot of like the kind of shows that win Emmys
• 1:05:47
  and that the kind of more affluent college educated
• 1:05:50
  audiences really love high class entertainment.
• 1:05:53
  One that's obviously what HBO is great at, right?
• 1:05:55
  So they're very complimentary actually.
• 1:05:57
  And what you're going to do some other random stuff on HBO, like
• 1:06:00
  on HBO Max, like the Max programming, you're going to see
• 1:06:04
  that kind of shed away because Paramount's already doing some
• 1:06:07
  of that, I think. But the HBO part of HBO Max is
• 1:06:10
  absolutely going to be preserved.
• 1:06:11
  That's a really valuable brand, has a lot of cachet with
• 1:06:15
  consumers. And I think, I don't know
• 1:06:17
  whether when they merged them, it's going to be called
• 1:06:19
  Paramount Plus, it's going to be called HBO Plus.
• 1:06:21
  Who knows what it's going to be. But no, I hope not.
• 1:06:24
  I have no idea what they're going to call it, how they're
• 1:06:26
  going to do it, but within that, so within that streaming bundle,
• 1:06:29
  whatever it is, HBO will absolutely remain A distinct
• 1:06:32
  brand because that brand just one of the most powerful brands
• 1:06:34
  in entertainment and you would be a fool to swander it.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah, yeah, I hope so, because I mean the HBO of Euphoria and
• 1:06:43
  White Lotus and Rooster and I, I don't know if you've seen
• 1:06:46
  Rooster. I'm I'm a big fan.
• 1:06:48
  I actually the reviews were not that great so I haven't watched
• 1:06:50
  it. Is it good?
• 1:06:51
  Yeah, I think you know what I think it's it's a really good
• 1:06:55
  it's a really good HBO vibe show.
• 1:06:58
  And you know, like it really feels authentic and it really
• 1:07:00
  feels true to like the to HBO self.
• 1:07:03
  And also it's, it's, it's the quirkier comedy that's kind of
• 1:07:06
  been more in I, I, I like this new phase of quirky TV, whether
• 1:07:11
  you want to call it plebeis or severance or white loadance or I
• 1:07:14
  think like this kind of falls into not having a particular
• 1:07:18
  genre. And so you don't really know
• 1:07:20
  quite how to consume it except to just trust the brand and
• 1:07:22
  understand the that you know the makers and like they're going to
• 1:07:26
  do a good job with it. Yeah, I mean, there's no TV
• 1:07:30
  brand, let's call them, that takes more creative risks than
• 1:07:32
  HBO, you know? So if you'd like creativity, you
• 1:07:34
  go. You can.
• 1:07:35
  You have to have it. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:07:37
  I also I and and I. I hope that the Penguin
• 1:07:40
  continues because I was a huge fan of the Penguin.
• 1:07:43
  I like the Penguin too, but there's there's no that was like
• 1:07:45
  a mini series unfortunately. Really.
• 1:07:47
  You don't think there's there's no more?
• 1:07:48
  There's no more. Plans, no, I've heard them say,
• 1:07:50
  you know, there's no there's no plans to do another season,
• 1:07:52
  unfortunately. I mean that story was
• 1:07:54
  self-contained. I also think like, you know,
• 1:07:56
  getting a movie star like Colin Farrell to do multiple, multiple
• 1:07:58
  seasons may be a challenge. But what it did show and you
• 1:08:01
  will see more of is that you can take random characters from the
• 1:08:05
  DC universe, like villains or supporting characters.
• 1:08:07
  And if you if you put like high class writers and actors and
• 1:08:11
  directors around them, you can make like a really good show out
• 1:08:14
  of it. It doesn't like not every show.
• 1:08:16
  It just has to be like Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman.
• 1:08:18
  You know, you can take all lots of other characters.
• 1:08:20
  So I think you will see other character like actually, you
• 1:08:25
  know, the Green Lantern show coming to summer.
• 1:08:27
  I think this is called Lanterns is an HBO show.
• 1:08:30
  Like it's, it's between this, which means it's like HBO
• 1:08:32
  quality, even though it's, you know, from DC.
• 1:08:35
  So I think you definitely will see more HBODC shows going
• 1:08:38
  forward like the Penguin. Yeah, and what's and what I what
• 1:08:41
  it's cool and I hope it remains consistent.
• 1:08:43
  Is that like you said with DC, that they don't mind having
• 1:08:46
  different genres? HBO is almost its own genre.
• 1:08:49
  Like this felt like an off the HBO show that kind of had with
• 1:08:52
  DC adjacent, you know? But yeah, 100% and even though,
• 1:08:55
  you know, it was Colin Farrell who was in the last Batman
• 1:08:58
  movie, like you did not not have to see that Batman movie to
• 1:09:00
  fully enjoy them. Put no no, in fact, I didn't put
• 1:09:02
  them together and I saw the previous Batman movie I never
• 1:09:05
  put together until you just mentioned that to me right now.
• 1:09:08
  Wow, OK, this covered a lot of fun information then.
• 1:09:13
  I really appreciate your time. 01 thing One last thing.
• 1:09:18
  I'm so sorry. Last last question.
• 1:09:19
  Last question is Netflix buying Matt Damon's a sorry Ben
• 1:09:24
  Affleck's BI company? Yeah, not a big deal PR move it
• 1:09:32
  or or indication of what the future of what the future is
• 1:09:35
  going to be like. What do you think?
• 1:09:36
  Or all three maybe? Actually, I would say not much
• 1:09:39
  of APR move. Like I've talked to them about
• 1:09:40
  it and it's I think it was a savvy move.
• 1:09:44
  Like Affleck has actually developed to some AI tech that
• 1:09:46
  does something useful. Like what this company basically
• 1:09:50
  does is it's it it's an AI model that is trained on the material
• 1:09:57
  from your movie. So say you've shot a movie, you
• 1:09:59
  put everything you've done into that movie in on that movie into
• 1:10:02
  the I I system, like every frame you've shot all the scripts,
• 1:10:04
  etcetera. And then what often happens in a
• 1:10:07
  movie is you're like, shoot, there was like and 1 angle on
• 1:10:10
  this scene that we should have, we should have gotten and we
• 1:10:12
  didn't right. Like and going getting all the
• 1:10:16
  actors together, getting back on location is really expensive.
• 1:10:19
  This AI is really good at just helping you to reconstruct like
• 1:10:22
  a few one shot or, you know, one line of dialogue, which is not a
• 1:10:27
  problem. Austin for movies and TV shows.
• 1:10:29
  They either it cost millions of dollars to reshoot stuff or they
• 1:10:33
  can't do it. And then there's like a flaw in
• 1:10:35
  the movie where you're like, why do they not have this shot that
• 1:10:39
  they need? Or why is this scene seem to be
• 1:10:40
  missing? And it's because because you
• 1:10:42
  know, it did it either they forgot to do it or they it
• 1:10:45
  didn't come out the well they expected for some reason.
• 1:10:47
  So it lets them just kind of do a little bit of like reshooting
• 1:10:51
  or touching up in in post production for a lot less money.
• 1:10:54
  So that's why they bought it. I think it makes a lot of makes
• 1:10:58
  a lot of sense. It's kind of a shame that
• 1:11:00
  Netflix now controls it and nobody else will be able to use
• 1:11:02
  it. Yeah, I, I you don't think
• 1:11:06
  that's similar to search engine or chat bots that other
• 1:11:09
  variations of this of this idea are going to just start popping
• 1:11:12
  up and trying to sell themselves?
• 1:11:14
  Yeah, absolutely. Other people will do it, but
• 1:11:16
  it's just, you know, obviously Netflix is now in the lead,
• 1:11:18
  right? They bought the to my knowledge
• 1:11:20
  is the first success. Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan Meynolds
• 1:11:22
  might be the next next one to try.
• 1:11:24
  To sell. Yeah, sure, I'm sure.
• 1:11:25
  Yeah, after his alcohol brands. Anyway, Ben, thank you so much
• 1:11:31
  for the time. If you don't mind hanging out, I
• 1:11:33
  just want to ask you a quick question after you finish.
• 1:11:34
  But thank you so much and this is really such a pleasure.
• 1:11:37
  Yeah, it's my pleasure. Good.
• 1:11:38
  To talk to you.