Entertainment Series 13: Ben Fritz / Movie / Theater Industry / Disney News / Paramount & HBO

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together. Ben Fritz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming. I'm so excited to have you here. How are you? It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I, I want to thank you more than just for coming now. But I reached out to you a couple of years ago after I read your book, The Big Picture. And, and before you know, I, I at the time I wanted to start a different podcast called All things Entertainment, just about the entertainment world. And one of my fears eventually was that I cut it would take me too long to succeed before getting burnt out of the topic 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 years later where I really appreciate you coming back. So thank you very much again. It means a lot. Sure. Yeah, it's my pleasure. So there's a lot going on in entertainment world and I know that I've been following your reporting and it's been a ton of fun and I really appreciate it. And and I also know that you've been back and forth in the AI world a little bit and obviously AI and Hollywood are going to be blending. So I'd like to try to touch on a little bit of both of those topics that the conversation if possible. But the state of movies in general actually feels like it's been kind of getting better, right? Like, you know, project to hell, Mary's doing well. A lot of studios are making originals.

1:31 It looks like we're willing to take a little bit more creative chances. What have you observed? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, I think the if you care about creativity in movies, it's definitely a good trend. I mean, the, a lot of the in the 20 tens, the mega franchises were just dominating the business and it seemed like they couldn't seem like they couldn't lose, right? Like a good Marvel movie, a bad Marvel movie, a good Fast and Furious movie, a bad Fast and Furious movie, like they were all making a billion dollars, right? So understandably the studios were pumping them out and not making much of anything else. Who could blame them? But a lot of those franchises have lost steam and they're not making as much money as they used to. And so they're and partly maybe that was studio missteps, partly that was a lot of momentum lost when the pandemic. Partly I think young people now are a little cynic, more cynical about those franchises, which if 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 know, holy original, let's say, you know, things that have not been film franchises before. Be a product, Hail Mary, be at the house maid. You know, Hoppers is done reasonably well for Pixar. I think those are all good signs. Sinners, Jesus Christ, of course, sinners was, you know, sinners was huge last year. I mean, they proved a lot of doubt was wrong with that film, obviously. And I think that is a that's a good sign for Pete for people being open to new stuff and positive things in Hollywood. That said, like this year, the box office is up, but we cannot forget that attendance is down like 1/3 from before the pandemic.

3:12 So the long term trend, it's a still tough time for the movie business. Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, I would, I guess that since the pandemic, I think that like you said, there were a bunch of factors that kind of kind of led to the big franchises kind of being slowed down a little bit. And we'll kind of get into a little bit more of those details. I mean, it could have also, I, I mean, post pandemic, I think that the studio's probably tried for three or four years, maybe even more to continue this whole franchise model. And so I mean, I guess you can, even though it's not necessarily as good as say, you know, pre pre pandemic levels as far as intendants is concerned, I think we have more of a reason now to go to movies than we've had in a couple of years since the pandemic even, you know, kind of came to an end.

3:58 What do you want to call it 202223, whatever you want to call it, But I mean, it'll only the last year and a half I feel like or two years really since I think the Oppenheimer Barbie kind of spectacle. Did you know things really pick up? And even then, it probably took another six months to a year for more originalist to get laid out. Rolled out rather. Yeah, I think that the business is getting back to the levels of releases, at least that it was at. We're getting more big releases, 20. There's a lot of interesting movies coming out this year and there was a pandemic and then there were the strikes. So those really both damaged production in the big way was hard for Hollywood to get back on its on its footing to as far 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 as the releases we're getting, we're we're as close to the levels pre pandemic as we as we as we've been this decade. It's the best it's been this decade. That's what I would say. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's great. I think it's exciting. I wanted actually, because I, I until I started following Matt Bellamy's podcast The Town, I, I didn't know how big of a market horror was. And I didn't know, you know, especially I wouldn't associate it with being so big in theaters and being so popular in theaters. And, you know, your, your previous book, the Big Picture had talked about franchise movies as making a ton of money. And your main argument, I think, if I recall correctly, was that globally, you know, like you had to have something that could convert globally that across different cultures that people could, could still relate to by the millions, you know, and, and there's certain genres that lend themselves to that, like superhero movies or, or Mission Impossible or.

5:37 Big, big spectacle action, yeah. Right. Exactly. But horrors kind of always been in the back of, but always been even through COVID and everything like it. It, it feels like that genre has always been a movie genre. Can you maybe elaborate on the business end or the entertainment and why that? Yeah, horrors been one of the few genres that have survived sort of the rise of of precedes TV and streaming. You know, there's a lot of genres that like movies used to do that TV didn't do well. And an obvious 1 is like these drama, like back when they were just four networks, people who wanted to see like high quality drama, you had to go to the movies because you wouldn't you weren't going to get anything, you know, sort of let's save like a Meryl Streep kind of movie. You weren't going to get anything remotely that quality on CBSABCNBC, Fox, right.

6:21 But then as like HBOS are doing original programming and effects. And then Netflix, Netflix got into it and some Prime. There's a lot of good stuff to watch at home. And the same thing happened with comedy to a large extent, but also because of all that, so, so much great comedy on YouTube, frankly. And people didn't have to go to the movies for it. And those genres have really struggled to stay relevant at the box office. And you see very few adult dramas, comedies doing well anymore. Horror is something that people really like to go out and see together, you know, And it makes sense because people like to be scared together and they and being in a dark room lends itself really well to that genre, right? And horror just doesn't work that well at home to watch alone, certainly doesn't work well to like, you know, watch on your phone with half attention the way some entertainment does.

7:06 So horror has really, really been set up as any other thing Hollywood loves about horror is you can make a good horror movie cheap. You can spend a few $1,000,000 and have a horror movie that can be really, really successful. And that's not true of many other genres. Yeah, definitely. I remember hearing, you know, projected or at least reading articles on opening weekends for horror movies and thinking, you know, made 25 million or something like that. And everyone's raving about it and like, what's the, what's the big deal? And then I found out the budget was two and a half million dollars or something like that. And I'm like, oh man, that's awesome. But case in point. And I don't even, I think this movie ended up on Netflix somewhere and obscurity, relative obscurity. But there was a movie, I think missing, and it was this thriller movie about a girl whose mom dates a sketchy guy and then she basically uses her social media presence to help find her mom in South America or something crazy or, or, or across the border or something like that.

7:59 And I mean, just from a speculative place or just a rather anecdotal place. It was an incredible experience in the theater, you know, I mean, you know, yeah, for sure. And, and, and, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a thriller or a horror kind of person, but I think that that, that like you were saying, like you were mentioned at least, so much of that is psychological. So much of that is dependent on the environment, is dependent on whether or not you're zoned into the music that is slowly like making your heartbeat, you know, heart rate slow down a little bit right before a big jump. And I, you know, so, so it almost is its own a little world in and of itself within the movie world that like just exists on its own in theaters. Yeah, and horrors really recently expanded, frankly, beyond the sort of just cheap 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 quality films last year. It's certainly one of the most original movies. I think you sort of can't can't argue against that. And or there's, you know, there's really like if you saw the the Nosferatu film a couple of years ago, which I loved that was like that that was released by Focus features. I mean, that was like a, that was like kind of half European art house movie and a half like really, really scary monster movie. So you people are finding ways to like do horror in all these different in many different from many different angles that we ever seen before. There's a lot of creativity happening in the horror zone genre right now.

9:29 Yeah, it's fun. I'm a I'm a big fan of it. I really, I think it's great. I read your article, I think today or yesterday about Regal's $50 ticket and coming out to Dune 3. And there's a couple of places I want to go with Dune, especially comparing, especially just talking about or observing the fact that they're taking all the IMAX screens, which is, which is a pretty big deal, especially compared to the competition, who I'll talk about in a minute. You know, movie. How, how do you think they, how do you think they came up with this game plan? How do you think they justify a $50 ticket? If the, if the problem is getting people's butts and seats and you know, and, and, and attended to stole, let's say 1/3 down from or whatever you said it was down from pre pandemic levels, then I mean, you're, you're obviously, you know, de incentivizing the audience. And that's aside from whatever advertising or new advertising that's been happening in theaters recently. I only just recently saw that with Saving Private Ryan, but I I was blown away by how many ads there were. Yeah, right.

10:29 So there's a ton of things there like there's there's sort of two, but because we're fewer people are going to theaters and this year box office is up a bit. But overall is, you know, definitely not at the levels it was at in the 20 tens. Theaters are like, well, we need to make more money. How can we make more money? Say one way is more pre show ads, which you can say degrades the experience, but the theaters would say, well, we've done the research and when we put it, we put in more ads more. It's not like fewer people come. That's what they would say. And this $50 ticket is part of this broader trend I'm running about where the theaters are saying, look, we need to make more money. Well, one way to make money is to sort of take the approach like airlines do, which is that if you, if you're willing to sit in like a middle seat in the back, then you can pay a lot less than the person who wants like first class treatment, right?

11:13 Even though you all get to the same place. So some people who love movies and have discretionary income, they need to be in the IMAX theater watching a 70mm film on opening night. That's really important to them. Those people will spend 50 bucks and, and I think the theaters would say, well, why not charge them what they're willing to pay and charge the person who's happy to see it on a matinee on Tuesday, 10 bucks and everybody gets to go. But you pay a different price depending on who you are. That's what they would. And it's a way for them to make more revenue and keep their business going. That's what they would say. And I think there's some validity to that. And the flip side of it is, yeah, But the more people see it as like a premium, expensive experience, the less movies, the movies become just this casual, cheap date, you know, just like, what are you going to do Saturday night? Oh, we'll go see a movie, right.

11:59 That's what it was like when you when we were kids. And sometimes you didn't even know what you were going to see until you got there. And it was common for people to see a movie every week or two. And now it's coming for people to see like, one or two movies a year. And the more people think of it, it's there's this bad cycle where the prices go up and that causes people to see it as like a premium experience that this is special night out. They don't do as much. And then the more they don't go, the more the theaters are like, well, we'll we'll have to check out the prices more to comp. And then it then it's going in the wrong direction that that's the problem with it. Yeah, yeah. And I hear I think you did a great job explaining the theaters side of it or that you know the business perspective of it because they've been really hurting for a long time. So I mean, especially as all Hey everyone, real quick, if you're enjoying the show, click subscribe and rate the show 5 stars helps a ton.

12:50 Thanks so much. At least streaming platforms, Amazon Prime making that switch earlier, maybe a year or two ago, I don't remember to everyone that's signed up for prime automatically being the ad tier, you know, which was a big, which is a big business decision and a very ballsy move on their part to, you know, to Netflix really pushing people to. I mean, you could see all the all the stream, all the mainstreaming platforms look like they're pushing people to the to the ad tier because they're making the premium tier so much more expensive in the jacket. The prices every, you know, three to six months. I feel like it almost makes sense that that that that that studios will follow suite. Yeah, it's the same approach. You're right, which is that some people are willing, some people are willing to pay a lot to have a more creamy experience, be it an IMAX green, be it, you know, Amazon with no ads.

13:36 And some people you just literally don't have the money or don't think it's worth as much. And so they find ways to charge them less, which is you got to watch a bunch more ads when you watch your streaming video, or you have to see the movie at an inconvenient time in a smaller theater. Right, right, right, right. I was thinking. I was thinking about your writing in particular and your journalism in particular, that you're in a very polarized political world. And one thing I've noticed from consuming a lot of your content, your podcast, the book, and then, you know, whatever your posts are, you do an incredible job at maintain at maintaining an apolitical completely, you know, just on the fence, observing the facts as they are and making it as clear as possible that there's no personal opinions behind that.

14:25 I want to compliment you on that because it's incredibly rare to find, but how do you find that balance? Is that your personality in general? What's that? What's that been like? Thanks for noticing that. I do take that very seriously and I work hard at it. I mean, it is first of all, it's it's my job. Where were the Wall Street Journal newsroom is very much like we are apolitical like that is our approach is that. And you know, I take pride the Wall Street Journal of urban surveys. It's the only news outlet in America that a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans trust. And, you know, that's unique. And I'm proud of that. And to do that, we have to keep our political opinions to ourselves. So it does take a lot of work to, like, parse. And my editors often point out, hey, we could phrase that differently to make sure it doesn't, you know, come across as biased.

15:11 But it does it. I will say, like some people would be like, I can't do that. I kept to, you know, I have to express myself. And it does suit my personality. We're like a very analytical person and I tend not to want to share my opinions unless I really feel very confident in them and feel it's important that I say them. You know, and frankly, when it comes to politics, like there's enough political opinions out there, you know, there's more than a political opinions. You can stop the work. The Internet is not is not. And the Internet and news outlets are not short of political opinions. Coverage of the entertainment media is not short of people opining on what the political agenda behind this film may or may not be and how it intersects with this kind of American culture. So I think that's out there and that's great if you want that. You know, I think the value add that I hopefully bring is like fact is like deeply reported, extremely reliable, fact based, fact based journalism.

16:08 That's that's what I focus on. Yeah. Well, it's really commendable and, and I, I appreciate, I think that anyone that I think that is something that we should all strive for. Thank you even. You know, and even if you say it, I think that I've been watching and I think that recently I've seen a couple of debates or conversations that have happened recently that people like, I've seen more stabilized debates in a, in a, in a, in a long time than I've seen a long. And I'm very happy about that. I hope that that's considered. That's a trend that's continuing. I hope so too. Yeah, because we could really, you know, use it for sure. So, so you mentioned earlier that that that, that that Doom 3 is taking up all the IMAX theater, all the IMAX screens and, and that is a massive deal because Avengers is opening the same day or weekend.

16:57 Is that correct? The same. The same weekend, yeah. Yeah, Marvel's been trying to get their grip back, I think on the audience and I think they're trying to, I think they're, I think they have to reclaim their storytelling narrative. I maybe, I guess and this and this seems like a really competitive move from another big player that directly. How big of a deal do you think this is for Marvel that they have to that they have to compete with this? It is it's definitely like a 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 you can make, you know, IMAX tickets the most expensive. It's not just that, but the IMAX brand at this point has almost come to signify like date event movie. Like when the Billboard says see it in IMAX, then you know it's a big movie, right? So the fact that the Dune is going to Dune Chapter 3 Part 3, sorry, will advertise that way and Avengers can't is is a bit of a blow to them. But you know, Disney could have picked a different date and when they could get IMAX screens, but they're stay stuck. The Dune is getting the IMAX screens because because Denise has a long standing relationship with IMAX and he shoots his movies with IMAX cameras. And as soon as he said he was going to use the IMAX cameras for Doom Pro 3, IMAX committed, 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 Disney wants to stay because it's because 11 week before Christmas is historically like a great date for big event movies. And then it's going to play all through Christmas break. A lot of people are at school and work, obviously. And there's definitely room for two movies to succeed. That's happened many times in history that the price doesn't even have to pay to get the IMS greens would be to have a much less desirable date. So that's, that's the trade off that they've that they're facing. Do you think that five years ago just the presence of a Marvel movie would have scared Dune off of that date? And then like this statement right now, like this is almost a statement by saying, hey, you know, we don't we don't like like Disney could change. You said Disney could change their mind, But Disney is not usually in the position to have 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 tens by the late 20 tens. I mean I have to check my calendar but no other big movie with their opening at some more. Because they. All worked and they were all huge and everybody who tried it in the early 20 tens got their asses handed to them. Excuse my language. And I think that yeah, I think Warner Brothers looks at it and it's like, look, his Avengers going to flop unlikely, but his Avengers going to not offenders are not going to so dominate the conversation. It's no room for anything else. You know, and I it is completely conceivable that Dune could open bigger than Avengers. I mean, it's not it is not impossible. You know, like people are super people are super excited that didn't even know there's like an acclaimed filmmaker that franchises a lot of love.

20:03 It is one of the biggest stars in the world. The footage they showed at Cinemacon was fantastic. I will say I want to hear about that the room. I'd be happy to tell you about it. The room. I would say that footage and the odyssey were like some and and this little Disney movie, Fox movie called whale fall. We're sort of we're some of the biggest. Some of the biggest reactions in the room. So I think one of others is completely confident that yeah, I did that. You're right. It says something that somebody feels confident that they can at least compete with Marvel, which didn't used to be possible. Yeah. And I think it's a good thing, by the way, because I think that a little bit of competition is just what you need. Yeah. And, and I want to talk more about Disney after. I do want to hear more about cinema, about Cinemacon, because I saw a lot, I heard a lot of reporting and I watched a good amount on the Internet.

20:46 So you. So I want to hear about that 3rd movie that you mentioned. Disney Fox, you said. Yeah, yeah. It's called Whale Fall. It's a Fox 20. So starts to say Fox. You know Disney, when Disney bought Fox, they shrunk the studio. They still still label called 20th Century Studios that makes smaller movies for adults mostly. They're doing the devil with Prada too, because they own that IP. But they're they have this literary adaptation book called Whale Fall and it's most of the movie is a boy who is a teenage boy alive in the stomach of a whale who was remember who was like remembering who he had gone to find the whale because that whale killed his father. It's a bit of a booby Dick thing and he's flashing back to his dad. But the scene they showed is when the whale swallows the kid alive, which seems like how could that not seem ridiculous?

21:31 But it's it was riveting and completely believable. It happens in this way. I won't ruin for you, but it was the footage was like that kind of like edge of your seat, like this is really scary and I didn't and I didn't know what was coming, you know, so it it that was one of the biggest surprises of cinema con in a good way. That's awesome. Yeah, that sounds great. And again, that's another that sounds like another win for the for the new movie, The Risky Original. Movie, Yeah, yeah, I hope. I hope it works. But I think it's I, I was definitely excited for it. Yeah, yeah. And Devil Wears Prada too. Is, is up there. I mean, I'm seeing on the slate with Avengers and like, you know, like Disney's marketing The Devil Wears Prada too, with some of the biggest franchises and biggest movies coming out with Toy Story and Avengers and 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 another. At the same time, their originality is doing better than it has for a while. So is nostalgia. Nostalgia is a really powerful force of the box office. And like 20 years is a pretty sweet spot for people are like, it's been long enough that I have fond memories for that movie and I want to go back again. And maybe I was a teenager when I saw it and now I'm middle ager, you know, I was 25 now in my 40s, whatever. So that's what it's been for that movie. Millennial women are just like, so are going to be turning out into, if it's an event movie for millennial women, right, who don't give a crap about like action adventure films. You know, that's what Disney's got, Disney's 20th has got with this film. And it's like looking like it's going to open really, really well. And yeah, it's it is as much an event movie for a certain segment of the audience as like the Michael Jackson film was for fans of him who have great nostalgia for him. Yeah, definitely and and and and it feels so hard to. It feels so hard to for like to not say like, listen, there's such, there's, there's obviously such a thing as overdoing it. And there's such a thing as, like, leaving something, you know, be for a while and then and then until everyone misses it just a little bit, you know?

23:22 Yeah. Exactly. So you have to find that balance where you're like, you know, you keep, you know, you, you give people something that they love and they're happy to see more of, but you don't, People don't feel if people, if you're overdoing it, people start to feel like it's cynical, you know, and it's not coming from like a creatively inspired place. And I've not seen the devil with Prada too, but it sounds like something that at least the fans are going to feel comes from a place of love and not a place of like cheap cheap cash grab. Yeah, and I, I was actually going to ask you this, but I'm, I think I'm going to answer the question myself, which is I just, I was going to ask if you think you could be fresh a franchise. But I was really impressed. I, I didn't watch it in theaters, but with the James Gunn Superman and I, I, I didn't, I didn't dream that after all the Superman movies that there were and all the different variations that that I'd be particularly interested in, in. I was actually confused why DC would be making a bet another bet like, you know, and, and, 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, But I, I, I'm pretty surprised. I, I, I think that I think I, I, I'm excited. I'm more excited about the upcoming upcoming DC freshness and and the new vigor that's coming into their into their into the slate. I'm hoping that that Avengers could kind of re spark reignite that and Kevin Feige almost seems to hint at that happening by saying we should be release Avengers end game beforehand because like we kind of want to just rebrand. We associate it. He didn't say that obviously, but I mean that it sounds like the implication to me. 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 and like DC wanted to be successful as Marvel in the 20 tens and they failed, right? Those are no question about it. But now they have the benefit of seeing Marvel's rise and Marvel's, Marvel's downturn recently and knowing just like creating a movies that feel like homework that are all the same and all part of the same universe, people have lost interest in that. It feels overwhelming and they don't. They want to see the movie they want to see and not see the movie they don't want to see and the streaming show. So D CS approach has been like very light. They're doing very light connections between stuff and each movie and TV shows meant really to stand on its own and even do different genres. So like, you know, Supergirl is like sort of a buddy action, you know, with two women buddy act like buddy sci-fi quest, right, And Clayface is going to be a horror movie.

25:52 I just heard about that this weekend. Yeah, Clayton, yeah, if you've seen the teaser trailer, that's out. I mean, it looks, if you if you didn't know it's ADC movie, you would just say it looks like a really box scary body horror film. And you can do that within DC, you know, and that's their approach is you can do any kind of movie, any kind of genre within our universe of characters. So it's an interesting approach. It definitely, I think allows more creativity, which is cool. It's you know, that's never been Marvel's brand. It's been like Marvel is a little bit Marvel's more everything is connected and we we there's some variations, but still you kind of know the kind of the kind of box in a Marvel movie sits in generally. So it's it's interesting, interesting going forward to see if they're willing to push out of that more.

26:35 I think with with Avengers and with Avengers Doomsday, they're basically trying to recapture the magic of what they had with end game. You know, they're bringing back Downey and they're bringing back Chris Evans and Captain America's alive again directors again, the Russo brothers. They're literally like pretty much every character who's still justifiable to include. They're bringing back even. Though you like personally, and again, this is like, I know you, you're, you know, generally like to be reporting it and objective, but like that doesn't even excite me as much anymore, you know? Here, here's I'll keep my I'll keep my opinion myself on this one, but I'll tell you what I think are like the cost and like the risks and the possible rewards, right. The risks are that it it could feel desperate. It could feel like they're just like, hey, do you like this before?

27:18 We'll give it to you again, but bigger and more and more and more because like throwing everything they've got at you and it could feel on on. On the other hand, you could say, well, I think they've wisely. They have definitely learned their lesson that they overdid it with too many streaming shows and movies. And because Fayou is paying attention to all the shows, the movies kind of like reduced quality like stuff like Ant Man 3 and the marvels. I mean, those were not up to the caliber of what you expect from Marvel from Marvel Studios. And I think they definitely are paying more attention. They are. You know, they're only releasing one movie, this one movie this year, if you don't count Spider Man Sony is there's only one Marvel Studios movie from Disney coming this year. And they're, you know, they and they understand that movies can't be like homework anymore.

28:05 And they're basically doing a reset. All this stuff that was all the kind of continuity from the past five years is kind of being put to the side and they're going back and they're connecting back to end game and going from there. So they've also learned their lesson and they're trying to say, Hey, we know that you didn't like some of the past few years and we're going and we're trying to give you what you like and create a new springboard to go forward more successfully. I would love for that to be the case. I hope that I I hope that is the case. Right. That, that that's what the fans, and I will say, like the fan, Marvel fans love Downey. They love Downey, and there's a lot of excitement for him to come back. And I think it's actually smart to put him in a different role to be like, hey, we respect that Iron Man is over, you know, But we that's what. Was fun about Chris Evans and Deadpool 2, right? I mean, yeah.

28:50 Yeah, yeah, true. So blown away and that and. That was really fun, I agree. You know, what he was doing to the budget was absolutely hysterical. I thought that was too great. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Right. Yeah, That was it's it's, it's too great. Yeah. I, I, I hope they, I hope they're right. I hope it succeeds. And I think that they are compelling enough storytellers that that if they are, I believe in their talent. I believe that I, I, I, I, I, I, I like to hope that corporate bureaucracy kind of got in the way of, of the, of the creative output and, you know, kind of forced a lot of decisions that people probably would have, should have had more time to make.

29:33 And I hope that, you know, if like with time again and you like like you mentioned, they're slowing down one or two movies a year, if that that that that you could come back to really great storytelling in addition to lovable characters. Yeah, yeah, they absolutely, they, they made, you know, they were basically ordered by Disney to make a ton of streaming shows for Disney Plus and everybody realizes that was a mistake. OK, well, we're on the Disney topic. We're going to keep on going then. OK, we'll keep on going. Josh tomorrow and Dana Walden, who were competing for the CEO spot. Josh one out. This is the second parks parks guy to run to take, to try to take over from Bob Iger and Michael Eisner. I've read in James Stewart's Disney Disney war said that he was going to be the last of the creative CE OS and, and, and I I have no doubt.

30:27 I don't think that that that that he's wrong. I think he's correct in that. What do you think? What's your what was your reporting on this decision making or what do you think about it? And what's Dana's new role? And what's Josh? What's Josh's plan? Even though he's a second parts guy, tomorrow's very different than Bob Chapeck, who was. You know. Chapeck is was a real kind of operational number cruncher guy. Chapeck was a guy you bring in to be like, hey, we need to get this budget under control. We need to make this division that's not profitable, profitable again. We need to figure out a process. And Chapic didn't was not a creative person, didn't pretend to be a creative person, didn't really know how to work with creative people. He was, he was a process guy and he was very good at that. But it turned out that like when you're leading a creative company, that was a real problem because he clashed. He didn't know how to manage creative people effectively. And he's really lost their respect. And there were just a ton missteps along the way. And that's why Eiger kind of had to come back Josh tomorrow, although he does come from parks and he definitely is more in the Eiger mode where he has spent a lot of time getting to know creative people.

31:40 He he knows how he knows how to work with them. He's much more people person. He's not so much of like, I'm going to grind down the numbers as much as possible just to get profits out. I mean, he cares about profits for sure, but he is, he doesn't really rebel in the budget crunching the way that Bob Chapic did. I would say he's he's incredibly charismatic, which is an important trait for a Disney CEO because it's a very public facing role, because Disney is a company that people have such a strong feelings for. And I will say, as far as what we expect from him, you know, he is, he's really bet a lot on trying to use digital technology to make the company move faster. Disney's a very slow moving company.

32:21 They make big movies that take years, they build theme parks that take 5 or a little more years. You know, and everything they've tried to do online, frankly, has been pretty weak. And he's wants to use digital technology, video game engine technology, stuff like that to make the company's production processes move faster so they can go from idea to moving and from movie to theme park ride and from theme park ride to consumer product faster than they've moved before and less more efficiently, less expensively. That's what he hopes to do to like, keep the company as creative as it's ever been, but use tech to make it faster and cheaper. And then look, they created this. Yeah, that's that's the goal, right? Much easier said than done, but that's, that's that's his general goal. And you know, Dana, the company wants to keep Dana Walden, who was the other top contender for the job. And to keep her, they gave her this newly created elevated role, president and chief creative officer, basically. I mean, she's in charge of the movie studio and the TV streaming operation.

33:18 So all the all creative content production goes goes through her. And she's a veteran TV executive. She's all respected and you know, we'll see whether Josh and Dana can can get along and run things effectively. Hollywood can often be a place of vicious corporate infighting. You know so. Michael Ovitz and Michael Eisner. And Michael Eisner, of course, at Disney War. You know about that really well. Yeah. That's the, that's the bad version, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it gets a good version is something like DreamWorks where those, you know, the superstars came together and made a studio. Yes, one 100% there. There are positive examples of it. It definitely can be done, but it requires a lot of ego checking and it requires, you know, it requires people being them being able to balance like their business responsibilities and making sure the company's create creativity is still at the you know, at the at the top of its game. Right, right.

34:15 I was, I mean, I was thinking to myself and I was reading about this, I was kind of, I was kind of rooting for Dana. But the reason why is because I, I, I, I value the, the film and the, and the, and the, and the streaming side. I've added the creative side. So I was, I was hoping that she'd win that out and, but I, but I couldn't like, I wasn't surprised because the parks is really Disney's, you know, money. It's it's a money printing factory, you know. Yeah, you're right. I didn't even mention that. But of course, like one of the main, I mean, then picking tomorrow also, you know, signals of facts that like, even though Disney's everything at Disney starts with the creativity, it starts with the with, you know, animated movies, right? Especially at its core, you could say. But on the other hand, most of the money that was made by theme parks and consumer products, especially the theme parks and the cruise ships, which is the businesses that Tomorrow came up in and that he oversaw.

35:10 Those have grown tremendously in the past few years. Whereas movie business has been kind of stagnant as we've discussed. And streaming makes a lot less profit than TV used to. So the company really the creative stuff, the movies and TV and you know, to some extent they exist in order to drive the theme parks and to sell toys and get people, inspire rides, to get people into theme parks where the profits are are huge. And it's important for Disney CEO to understand those businesses and Josh Tomorrow understands them very well. Yeah, yeah. And and that, and that really is really what I guess what I would imagine it came down to, because, I mean, especially at a public company, a company under as much scrutiny as they've been under and they've been under a ton of pressure. I mean, listen, the other, the other streaming services have, 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 of eyeballs on them and people could trash Paramount. They've been I, I mean David and, and we'll talk about them. David Ellison has been buying everything and, and like it almost I, I, I've been feeling recently like Paramount is the is the conservative dad's Netflix. 100% there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of dad shows, right? Paramount Plus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And especially with the UFC now being integrated and like this whole and Taylor Sheridan basically having a Blink check to just do whatever he wants and, and and succeeding every single time too, you know, I mean, it's really awesome. What amazing traffic. Yeah, it, it puts, I'm sure it 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 really stay like from a business perspective and as a public company perspective, I, I guess she didn't stand much of a chance in that way. Yeah, she was always the underdog because, yeah, because this like Disney Plus is doing fine, but not great. It's just it is not, you know, it's nowhere close to Netflix, it's nowhere close to Amazon Prime. And although it has more subscribers, I mean, when you look at like who's making the most buzz talk about talk about shows? I mean, Paramount Plus, like you said, HTO Max, like they they have, they have that, they have that prestige in a way that Disney Plus and Hulu they have, I mean, you know, they have Shogun, I mean, they have stuff. But I would say they're not, they're not, they're not, they just don't have as much buzz and they're not have as they don't have as high of a track record of hits. And yeah, if you're, if you're thinking of who should run Disney, who understands what makes this company run right now when where the profits come from you for the first time in its history, you wouldn't say a, you know, a film or TV person. That's just not where the heart of the company is anymore. It's really interesting to think about it really is. And I'm reading because I'm reading a biography right now and it's, it's been by a gentleman named Mark Elliott, who I, who, who told me he's the only other person, one of the few other people that wrote a 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 Disney and he, you know, he wrote this book, I guess the late 90s and early 2000s. And he Disney basically offered to cooperate with him and give him complete access to the archives as long as he would give them final cut, I guess of what his version of what the book is going to end up being. And he pushed back in it. I mean, they gave him, they gave him a lot of grief and they gave him a very, very hard time reporting on them. Huh. I'm not surprised you hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and, but, so I'm reading this biography and, and one of the things that he made a, that I, I found consistent all across the board is that, you know, when Disney himself is making these movies, he would often use the funding from the park, I guess, merchandising to continue funding movies and to break ground technologically and, and, and have the studio focus on the film. And that would inevitably kind of maintain their reputation, which allowed more selling, more merchandising, more parking. And then, and then you expand into greater forms of, of storytelling.

39:07 And now it's, and now they have a different type of corporate responsibility to be conservative and risk averse, which they're fine, which comes down to this type of conversation that we're having now and how they're making decisions. Yeah, and Disney was very risk averse in the movie making in the 20 tens. I mean, they didn't make. It was all franchise movies in the 20 tens. If you recall, it was all Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and those live action remakes of the fairy tales. Like that's pretty much all they did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. They had a couple of, they had a couple of good stuff in the earlier with Frozen Entangled. I think those were like real home runs and those were like cultural home runs too. And like a really. Yeah, yeah, that was the only place they were making. 90s for sure. Yeah, the only time they were making original, the only original movies Disney was making then was an animation.

39:50 That's it. And you're right, they absolutely had like Frozen was a monster hit. Coco was a monster hit. I mean, they they made some very good original movies. Zootopia. Yeah. Do you have, can you maybe explain, I don't know if you have more information because you've also been on the AI side as well as entertainment side. What happened with the Sora AI deal with Disney and what was going on? Yeah, I'll tell you what I know, which is, you know, so Sora, the Sora app, especially the consumer app like launched in I think September and it had a lot of heat at 1st and people in Hollywood are like, what are we going to do about this? It was really good, right? It was good. I mean, it's good. The video generation was high quality and the app at first was getting a lot of attention and people were making also, you know, the first step Hollywood took was to get open AI to to not allow blatant copyright infringement on there.

40:35 And then Disney Bob Iger, to his credit, has often said like we need to embrace technology, not like not not only try to like, you know, keep it at Bay. This was like a very classic. I can move to say, well, we'll make a partnership with them. So, you know, we'll allow them to use some of our care. And in exchange for that and instead of them paying us, they'll give us a billion dollars worth of equity in open AI, which is a tiny piece of it, which could be worth more. And they they could use some of the sort videos on Disney Plus. And it kind of reminded me of, you know, when, when Steve Jobs launched the video iPod, Disney was the first company to put his TV shows and movies available to watch on there.

41:17 So that was all great. The the thing they didn't anticipate was that open AI, you know, is a loses a lot of money because AI is a very expensive to develop. And they were sort of starting to lose some momentum to like Google, Gemini and Anthropic. And they realized that they need to, they have a limited amount of really what it is, is they call the compute limited amount of like server chips, a lot of of chips in in, in data centers to develop AI and run AI and they can't make. So they decided that we need to focus on the things that are most important to us. And they realized that like being involved in video is not core was not the most important thing they're doing.

41:59 And actually, so after a huge launch, so it was kind of starting to lose interest in people. So they did, openly. I decided this is not worth our time and our limited amount of of compute that we can devote to projects. When you want to, that's what. Happened that's. What happened? They were like, we need, we want to devote it all to making chachi PT great to competing with, with Claude for like enterprise coding stuff. And we're going to sacrifice the sword team. It's just not worth our energy. We'll just and they cut it and they got rid of it and, and literally Disney found out like a few hours before it was announced in the world. Wow, and that's a big deal to Disney's such a huge player to not tell them something like that a couple hours before is considered is considered a massive. Well, it goes to show you where the. Power.

42:45 It goes to show you where the power is in the world right now. You know, like Disney needed open AIA lot more than open AI needed Disney, right? Yeah. So yeah. And now, now Disney needs to figure out what their AI strategy is going to be. They were going to try tonicate to Sora, so now they need to figure something else out. Yeah, the whole the, the I've been learning. I I just read a great book by a woman named Karen Howe who's a tech journalist. And the empire of AI. That's right. And and she and she really broke down. I I didn't even realize everything. You just explained. She, she had just elaborated on and explained in her book and I didn't realize how expensive it is. And it really got me thinking as 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 they're providing, what, what a open AI or what most of these LLMS are providing are worth the expense of, you know, what, what it takes to actually generate it and create it for sure. And, and at the, and on top of it all, Entropic I heard this week is, is valued at a trillion dollars and, and almost certainly going to IPO this year. So it looks like more trouble for open AI, even in the competitive front. Yes, absolutely. Open AI seem like they were the dominant player and now they are absolute and minimum in a very tight race with Anthropic and Google. Yeah.

44:07 And how do you know how this works? And I don't know if you know how this works. I just saw within a couple of days Amazon invested I think 5 billion into Anthropic. And then Google announced a couple of days later, they're also investing 5 billion into who does it. So I know that one thing that happened with Open AI is that there was a inherent competition in the company with between the safety team and the commercial team that was that that had to raise enough money to be competitive in the safety research is the way that they raise it to the public, right. And and they would get the money from Microsoft, who would give you initially ejected them with a billion dollars and I think 10 and and more since then, but they were now held respond. They had to answer to Microsoft for saying, Hey, you know, we we got a billion dollars from you.

44:51 We have to give you access to XYZ. We're working on this. These two enormous conglomerates, Amazon and Google are both investing in anthropic. Doesn't that put them in a very precarious position when when all when all the competition is investing together in one industry in one company? Some you mean just open AI in a very position a bit, but I would say that you know, the reason Google and and Amazon are investing is is remember they are the two big they are two of the three biggest cloud computing companies. So ran you know, regular mid mid sized companies. You know, they get all their cloud computing from Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud or Microsoft and Microsoft Azure. And when they sign up for that, you often buy software through it.

45:37 So Claw Infravic wants to offer clawed enterprise through through AWS and through Google Cloud and Google and Amazon want to have it on there because it brings people in. So that that that's why that investment kind of kind of benefits everybody. So previously Open AI had an exclusive relationship with Microsoft because Microsoft invested early in them. But just recently they their deal has changed where Open AI is allowed to take investment and do cloud work with other companies. And the you know, this deal with Anthropic is not exclusive and it would not shock me to see Google more and or Amazon make make a similar kind of a deal with Open AI as well.

46:19 Really. So you could see them spending spending the money around and just trying to integrate both. Absolutely, yeah, they want it. They want to, if they think like enough of their customers want to have access to it and they want to make sure that they are, you know, that they, that they have a tight relationship to make sure that open AI will be on say, AWS for a long time to come. You could completely see that, see that coming. I think that the, the, the, the stock, the tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, they can spread their money very widely. They have, they have. It's $5 billion is not a lot of money for them, you know. Yeah, certainly, certainly, certainly. Yeah. And I get, you know, the way I was thinking about it was that you had to be beholden to someone and who would it be? But you're saying there's enough like it's just the software they're buying and like, oh, they need to just access permission to use it.

47:05 So like. It's just a, it's a partnership. They're just basically making aligning themselves more closely as partners is what they're doing. They're not getting in a $5 billion in a company that's worth will probably be worth, you know, because you said potentially a trillion by the end of the year is not very much equity actually, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Not at all. Back to Disney real quick, Josh tomorrow just posted today that he plans on hanging on to ESPN Now sports and streaming has been a whole mess and I'm going to hold myself back from using the word cluster. 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 been hearing about ESPN for a decade. You know, that like it, that it's losing their money and they're not sure what to do with it. And they're not sure whether to spin it off or just sell it or to like, what what, what's going on over here? Yeah, sport. I mean, Disney's real sure with these pans. Always been weird because the rest of Disney is kind of what they call a flywheel where everything is connected, right? Like the the entertainment content. They make shows, they sell toys and they shows up in the theme parks and so on and by and vice versa. Sports is just its own thing and it was a very profitable business for a long time because every cable system had to have ESPN and every, so they paid a lot of money. Everybody had cable, but everybody got ESPN in their package.

48:30 Cable companies paid 5 bucks a month for every one of their subscribers to Disney, ESPN. It was hugely profitable. Now obviously cable, you know, was withering because of cord cutting. ESPN makes a lot less money. So I, I don't know for sure why Disney decided to hold on to it. It could be, you know, the sensible reason is, and this some truth to this, that in Disney's looking for a competitive advantage, you know, they want to a lot of people sign up for Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN together, right? And that's sort of a lot of people who want sports will be like, well, I'll just spend a few more bucks to add on Disney Plus and Hulu with it, right? And so it brings them more customers that way. So that's sort of like that. 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 all over the place. Like, I mean someone and and I could imagine they'd probably piss off more customers than it would be than than it would actually. Be well, it pisses people off, but if you're a sports fan, you have to have ESPN. If you're a sports fan and you've if you're a sports fan and you've cut the cord, you don't, you don't use like, you know, Comcast Cable or DIRECTV or YouTube TV. You have to subscribe to the ESPN streaming service. I mean, it doesn't have close to everything, but it has a lot, right? I mean, most obviously, like Monday Night Football and they have a playoffs and they have a ton of important college football games, for example. And they have some of the NBA. You have to have it. That's that, you know, the sports streaming is worth something to people.

49:58 And the more people cut the cord, the more valuable it's going to be. But it's also possible to see that Disney may have said, I'm sure there's a price in which Disney would be willing to sell ESPN. And maybe they looked around and we're like, we're not going to get that price, frankly, You know, it's all about how how much value does it bring us? How much money could we get for selling it? You know, and does any like maybe a lot of people don't want to buy ESPN right now, at least at a big price, given the problems, you know, that are, that are happening in the sports market? Do you think I don't, I don't know the answer to this question, but just from a strictly financial perspective, are they are they even in the like the realm of competing for sports rights to kind of put a bunch of big sports on, on, on or, or bigger sports or more sports on ESPN to make it worth 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 just try to get a couple more NFL games, a couple of different sports rights that that you know, other that haven't spread throughout these other streaming services and try to make a blitz for it. They're never going to get even the majority of stuff. Partly like nobody has no, they don't have that much money, but also the the leagues don't want that. Like for the leagues, the leagues make more money by having a bunch of bidders, you know, and they want to have as many different media and tech companies as possible having some sports because that's health, that's healthy ecosystem in the long run for for the NFL in the NBA and MLB, because then they always have more buyers, right? The last thing they want if ESPN dominated the market, then the next time the rights come up, maybe ESP NS the only bidder. And that would be terrible for the sports week. So that's why what they want, they want Monday Night Football on ESPN and Sunday Night Football on NBC and Thursday Night Football on Amazon and the Sunday day games on CBS and on Fox.

51:41 Like that's perfect for them because everybody's doing well. And but I you do point to an issue where on the one hand, ESPN needs to keep a certain amount of key sports or else nobody does. The network has no more relevance. But you know, the tech companies are getting into sports in a big, big way. Amazon is into sports in a big way right now. I predict you are going Yeah, Apple TVI believe he doesn't have a lot, but they. They they you can see that with desire to start getting. You can see they do it. Here's what's really the danger is that YouTube could start buying more games for its free service. Like yes, there YouTube has already a Sunday ticket. You got to pay a lot of money for it. But YouTube put one NFL game last year on for free on AT supported YouTube. Then they have some soccer games. I believe in Latin America.

52:24 They could easily decide to buy more sports rights for free. And because they can make so much money with advertising on YouTube. You know, Amazon and Google have more money than you know Disney has ever had in its in its entire existence. You know, available if Amazon and app and and or Google YouTube really want to write a big check. Disney, ESPN can't compete. That is the danger that that ESPN is going to be facing in the years to count as they're up against much bigger and richer tech companies. Yeah. And I I I don't know much about any of their content, but historically their non sports content hasn't done as well, right? I don't know, ESPNSESPN.

53:09 Yeah, yeah. The original content that you'd call it. Yeah, they've done a little bit, and it's never really caught on, frankly. If anything, ESPN is more reliant than ever on the games like they used to, you know, like Sports Center doesn't get anything close to the readings that used to. Because people who want, if you want to like, get your Sports News and information, you can get that in a million places online. If you want to see clips of sports, you're better off getting those on like, Instagram and YouTube, right? And if you want to hear like, you know, ex players and commentators talking about sports, there's a million Twitter, there's a million party Twitter or podcasts, right? So that's that's all the stuff ESPN used to wrap around the games. 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 games. Wow. Oh man, I don't know. It doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me, but. I think it is, it is a very challenge. It's a very, it is a more and more challenging business every year, that's for sure. Yeah, and and poor Josh tomorrow we just kind of given the problem and I'm sure he knew it existed beforehand. But like, this is, this is between this and lay and having to lay people off like within the first couple of weeks of his being ACEO. I, I, I, I hope that he gets through this well and know that a lot of every company's doing it. Nike's doing it, Meta's doing it, you know, like, you know, there are cuts everywhere.

54:31 I, I, I, I, I want the company to do well. You know, I, I hope he, I hope he settles in nicely. Yeah, if you care about, you know, if you care about like movies and TV and entertainment, then you should, you should want these companies to be, to be healthy, you know. Yeah, definitely. OK. I would love to hear a little bit of the inside of what Cinemacon is like and what the energy was like this year. What's the what's the usual schedule like? You, you go, you go to Vegas, there's a bajillion people that everyone knows all around. Are there particular hotels that are assigned to like different like groups? Is everyone meeting up in one place? What's what's? What's the environment like? So Cinemacon all takes place at Caesar's Palace.

55:14 So every, everybody's, most people are staying there and all the presentations are in the, the, the Coliseum, which is usually where like, you know, big, big singers perform. So for the week of Cinemacon from Monday through Thursday, there's no performances. It's just booked for these studio presentations and and then Caesar's has like a Conference Center that is and that's taken over by Cinemacon. And there's tons of companies that like sell different movie theater chairs and projectors and new kinds of popcorn and whatever. And they take over all these rooms and you can like check it out. And they're trying to convince theaters to, you know, buy their 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 for every movie coming out in the next year. If you walk down the halls. And I will say, you know, it's all built around the studio presentations. And there's the first one is Monday is month. The 1st 2 actually are on Monday and they go through until Thursday afternoon. There's like pretty much 2:00 every day. And then in between those, you for myself, like I try to meet with different sources who might work like people who work for different movie theaters around the country. It's a good opportunity that for me to meet them, interview them, talk about what they're going on with their businesses, what their challenges are, what they think's interesting happening in the business. So I have a bunch of like meetings, sit downs, lunches, drinks, etcetera with people and I go to the presentations and, and then sometimes like different studios or, or theater companies will have like a drinks about drinks before a presentation or a party afterwards and can have some 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 to get a sense of all the movies coming out the next year and to meet a lot of people who are useful for me to know. Totally, totally. And what was the, were you there the last couple of years? How, how was this, how this year feel especially with that like there's a lot of movement going on in the industry now. So how does how environment? Like this is the second year in a row. The year before that I was in the AI field. So I didn't go in 2024. But this year I will say it was definitely more optimistic. One reason is there's always been a lot of fight over windows over how you know how long from when the movie opens in a theater to when it's on available to watch online for VOD. Everybody's kind of agreed finally on 45 days, which is actually what the theaters wanted.

57:31 The studios have pretty much all all agreed to that. So there was no arguing over windows, which was so that people are positive about that and people were feeling very great. Good that so far the box office is up this year and it's been down so many years in a row that does having any positive momentum make made made people feel good. So in that sense it was a much more optimistic Cinemacon with more positive energy than I saw last year. So much fun, so cool. What were what were some of your favorite presentations? Well I mentioned whale fall was a big surprise. I also I will say the the Dune they showed the 1st 7 minutes or 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 opinion. I will just say was at a whole other level. It was basically without getting too much with the 1st 7 minutes, it was like imagine the D-Day scene of stating Private Ryan, but I'm like an alien planet with like sci-fi tech like that. But it was that level of like it's felt like documentary kind of filmmaking and it'll really get close with the soldiers. I didn't expect that in a dude movie. And I really was really was extremely well done. And I would say like the room was really, really impressed by that. So it was it's also another reason why I think they can feel very good going up against Avengers. Like they showed great, they showed a great scene that people were really, really impressed by.

58:55 I'm. So happy to hear that. I love that I have cried. The truth is, I tried to I I tried to watch Dune one probably 4 times. Really not your, not your thing. You know what, I wanted it to be my thing more than I think it was. But I also particularly because I, I, I remember Dude 2 came out, everyone was raving about it and I was like, you know what? Even if I have to push through Dude 1 to get to watch Dude 2 in theaters, I'll do it. You think I try to watch 22 to watch? Do you want to get to 2 and three in theaters? I don't know. I don't know the spot of dude. I mean, here's what I would say. I always say this to people like, don't you don't have to watch a movie anymore. Like frankly, you can just read like the Wikipedia summary of the plot or ask like sometimes if I'm like seeing a movie and I haven't or TV show I haven't watched the prior season in a long time, I'll just ask, you know, I'll ask an AI to dislike, hey, hey, hey, remind me of everything I need to know, you know, before I watch the sequel. Yeah, I hope I What do you did you see the Toy Story 5? I thought that looked awesome.

59:54 I did. I'd actually seen it earlier because I did a story in Pixar in March and I went up, I went up to Emeryville, where the headquarters is for the store and they showed me some of the footage. So yes, I saw it and it's definitely like I. I would comfortably predict that movie and it's going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, quite possibly the biggest movie of the year. I mean, it looks like it has all the elements people love about Toy Story. And you know, it's dealing, it's it's dealing with a tablet, right? Which is obviously like whatever what every parent of a kid is, you know, it's like their biggest, their biggest crisis, right, is like, how do I deal with technology for my kids? And wouldn't it be nice if they just played with dolls and action figures the way that we used to do 20 years ago? So it's feels very current, simultaneously feels current and yet also captures the nostalgia a lot of people have for those characters.

1:00:46 So that's so, which is why I think it will get like middle-aged adults and if people can very feel very happy bringing their seven-year olds to see it also. I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to it and I and I you know, I, I was definitely hesitant about Toy Story 4I remember liking it, but I, I, I I did this trailer really was was really impressed on me. I it it stuck with me for sure. Yeah, it's a good trail. Yeah, I mean, I hope for I'm, I'm really hoping for a big year. It just, it feels exciting and it does. Yeah, yeah. Look, there's a lot of like people are saying this to me, like, look, if you just look at the cadence of the next few months, like Devil Wears Prada is almost certainly going to do really well and The Mandalorian and Grogu, we'll see. But it's a big movie coming on 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 to be massive in July. You have a new Minions movie that they showed some of it in Cinemacon. Like it looks kind of like cool. Like they're not. They're definitely trying some new stuff. I'll give them and we'll see. And then that month also has has the Odyssey, which is almost certainly going to be massive, and it has a new Spider Man movie that's almost certainly going. To be massive. So we have like the next few months, there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of success. Yeah, it might. It might even. It might even encourage me to get my stubs passed for the first time since myself. Yeah. You know, yeah, yeah, I could see that that might, that might be a good value if you're going to see them all. I've been, yeah. I, I, I keep on making very brave attempts at renewing them. And I'll, and I'll keep them for like, I'll be like, you know what?

1:02:18 My kid is finally old enough that he's sleeping through the night. I can go to a movie even by myself for a couple hours. And then I, I keep it for a month. I'm like, it's not happening. You're not actually seeing enough to be worth the money, Yeah. Yeah, No, no, but I hope so. And then I, I, I appreciate your time. I, I want to let you go in a couple of minutes. I want to just ask real quickly about some of your thoughts on this Warner Brothers Paramount merger, because it'd be, I'd be awfully remiss if I if we didn't talk about it at all. Yeah. First of all, I don't know whether there's a Twitter big deal or Twitter thing or not a big thing or anything. I heard that like 48 or or 49% of the funding from the deal is coming from the Middle East. Do you know about that? What does that mean?

1:02:58 What does that? Mean 49% of the equity. There's also a lot of debt, I will say, but of the the actual equity portion of it is coming from the Middle East because frankly, if you want to get 10s of billions of dollars these days, one of the best sources is Middle Eastern money. It's you know, they're because they're a minority. You can know how how not people would say, well, they're not going to have any influence like David Ellison. This will still have control of this company. But you know, they're going to have a voice that he has to talk to them because they're big investors of his. And you know, this he's paramount is going to own if this deal closes like 2 news networks and here's Middle Eastern money controlling two major news networks.

1:03:39 I understand why people are concerned about it. I would say but yeah, they're going to own, you know, they're, they're going to be, they're going to be major investors. That's absolutely true. So you made the difference, but you, you made the the distinction between the debt and the and the funding or the equity rather. Can you can you just explain that if in case anyone doesn't? Sure. So Paramount is paying, I believe $110 billion. That's how much this deal is worth in total. So where does that money come from? Like I and I don't have all this. I don't have the split in front of me, but some portion of it, some portion of it is equity, meaning like they're just writing a check, right? What they're like, hey, wonder bro, Hey, you know, here's cash that we have, right? It's from some of it's from Larry Ellison, some of it's from other investors, some of it's from cash Paramount already has and a big chunk of it's from the Middle East. But some of it is debt, right?

1:04:27 Which is like a bank is loan essentially loaning Paramount 10s of billions of dollars. And then and then Paramount's going to have to pay that back in the coming years, right? They don't have to pay back their the equity investors. The equity investors want to own Paramount going forward and they think eventually hopefully Paramount will be worth more in the future. And you know, but the debt holders like expect to get paid back with interest over the next several years. Right. Do you think there's going to be, I, I just thought of this right now, just because I asked you about the Netflix, you know, and I rather the Paramount being the dad's conservative station. Do you think there's going to be any kind of tension with the HBO crowd? Because the the HBOHBO crowd has always been looking to push the envelope in in a lot of different ways. Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think actually Casey Cloys on the HBO team are going to be left alone to do what they do because they do it well, what's right. Absolutely.

1:05:24 I think basically pound out right now. What are they succeeding with? They're succeeding with the dad shows and you know, and they have the they have some key big NFL games, of course, in the UFC. They have a lot of they're basically succeeding with men and they they don't do very well with non sports fans with women with and they don't have a lot of like prestige shows, right. They won't have a lot of like the kind of shows that win Emmys and that the kind of more affluent college educated audiences really love high class entertainment. One that's obviously what HBO is great at, right? So they're very complimentary actually. And what you're going to do some other random stuff on HBO, like on HBO Max, like the Max programming, you're going to see that kind of shed away because Paramount's already doing some of that, I think. But the HBO part of HBO Max is absolutely going to be preserved.

1:06:11 That's a really valuable brand, has a lot of cachet with consumers. And I think, I don't know whether when they merged them, it's going to be called Paramount Plus, it's going to be called HBO Plus. Who knows what it's going to be. But no, I hope not. I have no idea what they're going to call it, how they're going to do it, but within that, so within that streaming bundle, whatever it is, HBO will absolutely remain A distinct brand because that brand just one of the most powerful brands in entertainment and you would be a fool to swander it. Yeah, yeah, I hope so, because I mean the HBO of Euphoria and White Lotus and Rooster and I, I don't know if you've seen Rooster. I'm I'm a big fan. I actually the reviews were not that great so I haven't watched it. Is it good? Yeah, I think you know what I think it's it's a really good it's a really good HBO vibe show.

1:06:58 And you know, like it really feels authentic and it really feels true to like the to HBO self. And also it's, it's, it's the quirkier comedy that's kind of been more in I, I, I like this new phase of quirky TV, whether you want to call it plebeis or severance or white loadance or I think like this kind of falls into not having a particular genre. And so you don't really know quite how to consume it except to just trust the brand and understand the that you know the makers and like they're going to do a good job with it. Yeah, I mean, there's no TV brand, let's call them, that takes more creative risks than HBO, you know? So if you'd like creativity, you go. You can. You have to have it. Yeah, definitely. I also I and and I. I hope that the Penguin 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 a mini series unfortunately. Really. You don't think there's there's no more? There's no more. Plans, no, I've heard them say, you know, there's no there's no plans to do another season, unfortunately. I mean that story was self-contained. I also think like, you know, getting a movie star like Colin Farrell to do multiple, multiple seasons may be a challenge. But what it did show and you will see more of is that you can take random characters from the DC universe, like villains or supporting characters. And if you if you put like high class writers and actors and directors around them, you can make like a really good show out of it. It doesn't like not every show. It just has to be like Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman. You know, you can take all lots of other characters. So I think you will see other character like actually, you know, the Green Lantern show coming to summer.

1:08:27 I think this is called Lanterns is an HBO show. Like it's, it's between this, which means it's like HBO quality, even though it's, you know, from DC. So I think you definitely will see more HBODC shows going forward like the Penguin. Yeah, and what's and what I what it's cool and I hope it remains consistent. Is that like you said with DC, that they don't mind having different genres? HBO is almost its own genre. Like this felt like an off the HBO show that kind of had with DC adjacent, you know? But yeah, 100% and even though, you know, it was Colin Farrell who was in the last Batman movie, like you did not not have to see that Batman movie to fully enjoy them. Put no no, in fact, I didn't put them together and I saw the previous Batman movie I never put together until you just mentioned that to me right now.

1:09:08 Wow, OK, this covered a lot of fun information then. I really appreciate your time. 01 thing One last thing. I'm so sorry. Last last question. Last question is Netflix buying Matt Damon's a sorry Ben Affleck's BI company? Yeah, not a big deal PR move it or or indication of what the future of what the future is going to be like. What do you think? Or all three maybe? Actually, I would say not much of APR move. Like I've talked to them about it and it's I think it was a savvy move. Like Affleck has actually developed to some AI tech that does something useful. Like what this company basically does is it's it it's an AI model that is trained on the material from your movie. So say you've shot a movie, you put everything you've done into that movie in on that movie into the I I system, like every frame you've shot all the scripts, etcetera. And then what often happens in a movie is you're like, shoot, there was like and 1 angle on this scene that we should have, we should have gotten and we didn't right. Like and going getting all the actors together, getting back on location is really expensive.

1:10:19 This AI is really good at just helping you to reconstruct like a few one shot or, you know, one line of dialogue, which is not a problem. Austin for movies and TV shows. They either it cost millions of dollars to reshoot stuff or they can't do it. And then there's like a flaw in the movie where you're like, why do they not have this shot that they need? Or why is this scene seem to be missing? And it's because because you know, it did it either they forgot to do it or they it didn't come out the well they expected for some reason. So it lets them just kind of do a little bit of like reshooting or touching up in in post production for a lot less money. So that's why they bought it. I think it makes a lot of makes a lot of sense. It's kind of a shame that Netflix now controls it and nobody else will be able to use it. Yeah, I, I you don't think that's similar to search engine or chat bots that other variations of this of this idea are going to just start popping up and trying to sell themselves?

1:11:14 Yeah, absolutely. Other people will do it, but it's just, you know, obviously Netflix is now in the lead, right? They bought the to my knowledge is the first success. Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan Meynolds might be the next next one to try. To sell. Yeah, sure, I'm sure. Yeah, after his alcohol brands. Anyway, Ben, thank you so much for the time. If you don't mind hanging out, I just want to ask you a quick question after you finish. But thank you so much and this is really such a pleasure. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Good. To talk to you.