WEBVTT

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Every time I hear that, I always smile and I'm always just nervous that they're going

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to kick us off because I licensed it for episode 0 to 50.

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And I hope that that works versus typing in the episode title every time.

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Find him.

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Licensed people.

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His handle is cypherpunksinny.

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Sue the shit out of him.

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Oh, man.

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He's so good.

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Apparently, the Better Buy handle still is not approved yet, but we're good.

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Yeah, Zach, you had a couple of interesting thoughts about what's going on in the world

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today.

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Apparently, China is about to get wrecked or we about to get wrecked.

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Generally speaking, I think in fights like this, everybody gets wrecked.

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I think everyone can prepare their anus.

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Buckle up, boys.

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You can put that one on the recap.

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How well did that short perform?

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Probably well.

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Yeah, I don't know.

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I mean, we were kicking around on the thread, this rumor going around that Hollywood movies

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would be tariffed or whatever.

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I think that's TBD.

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But it brings up an interesting question about there's a few things on my mind.

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You got the fact that Hollywood is objectively broken.

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I can't even say how many meetings Corey and I have been in where that's basically the

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consensus view.

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Something's broken.

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It needs to be fixed.

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So does this situation we're in with tariffs and whatever's going on result not just in

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a broken Hollywood being fixed, but a broken global order being fixed?

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And then the other question is like, you know, Hollywood used to export culture and if our

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culture is struggling, then that export will struggle as well.

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And then the other question is like, how do we tariff things in a digital environment?

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How do you tariff digital goods?

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Which is not something I've thought about at all, but is worth thinking about if anybody

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has any opinions.

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You had a good point I'd like you to dive into about bonding for films.

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And if, let's say that they did tariff movies over to China or whatever, how that would

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affect the financing side of movies.

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Thoughts?

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Yeah.

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It would go immediately upstream into every single movie that's being developed right

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now and being underwritten.

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The studios look at what they can get from the domestic market, from America, from a

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3,000 screen theatrical release.

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They know how many marketing dollars go into that.

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And when you see crazy film budgets of $150 to $300 million and assume generally that

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marketing spends about as much as the budget on a big budget movie, these are like big

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studio movies, general, this is all very large generalizations, but they want to make their

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money back on the American market or get close, maybe 60 to 80 percent of their money back

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on the American market.

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And then the international market is where they make up most of the rest of it.

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And if you look at the tables of where movies are watched and people really spend money

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on movies, most of the places around the world where you buy a movie ticket, it's not 20

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to $25 like it's become in America.

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It's like 10 to 14 maximum.

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So you're getting a lot less dollars and you need a lot more eyeballs for it.

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So the primary driver of foreign territories is the Chinese market because they can mobilize

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hundreds of millions of people.

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They can get another America to watch the movie and send that money back.

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And they're counting on that.

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The studios are counting on that.

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There were some really ham-fisted ways like that movie, The Great Wall with Matt Damon.

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It's like an AI movie before AI where they typed in who plays well in China, what's a

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Chinese concept that we could do that would also be watched here, smashed it together,

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someone wrote a script, and yeah, it came out.

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Some of China watched it, so it wasn't a total disaster, but it was a pretty big disaster.

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But every Marvel movie, when you see that Avengers Endgame made $1.6 billion or something,

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a lot of that is the American market watching it three times, but a huge amount of that

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is every single Chinese viewer went to see it.

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So it goes all the way back upstream.

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You think most of the mid-tier movies went away, but at least we have these big budget

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movies that the studios are still doing.

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If this were to go on for an extended period of time, there is nothing that would be green

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lit over $150 million.

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And if you're a cinephile, you might say, oh, boo-hoo, we won't get a bunch more retreads

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and sequels and whatnot.

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But if those things go away, that literally sustains an enormous pillar of Hollywood.

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The ripple effects of that could be massive layoffs and studios shutting down, actors

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who are counting on that completely out of work, and the crater in real estate, the crater

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in the L.A. area could be extremely significant if you imagine how many billions of dollars

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every year we're counting on from China.

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And if that were to just go away, if you put a 100% tariff on it, it essentially means

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you wouldn't ever have a U.S. movie distributed in China.

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The upstream effects of that, if that were even in place for a year, could be absolutely

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devastating to Los Angeles.

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You talk about theatrical releases, obviously that's declined significantly and we're in

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the age of the streamer.

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How are they calculating revenue for streaming services, let's say just a Netflix-only movie

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that they're not releasing theatrically?

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How would the calculus be on that?

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As far as I know, they have their own streaming services that have these big licensing deals,

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so I think it would move upstream in the same way, where they still have to pay a lot of

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money to put them on their own streamers.

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I don't know the economics of that as well, and as far as I know, the streaming deals

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in China, it's still the theatrical release in China that's the big needle mover for it.

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It used to be the DVD market, we could sell DVDs over there, and then that went away.

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So I think it still would move upstream, and of course the economics of the streamers financing

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their own movies is totally different, because three of the major streamers don't need to

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make any money, and the other ones do, which is a whole other dynamic that's going to keep

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playing out over the year.

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But if you look at empirical theatrical data, the worldwide number is only down a couple

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of percent over the past five years.

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We think of it as cratering, but mostly that's because we spent five times as much money

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as we did previously, and a lot of those movies lost money.

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But the actual empirical number is just creeping down slowly, it looks just like an industry

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slowly in decline, it doesn't look like a crater, apart from the COVID years, of course,

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before and after.

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If we adjust that number for inflation, they're down like 40%.

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It's probably even worse than that, right?

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It's wild to me, and I'm actually curious, Corey, if you could corroborate, my understanding

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is that a studio success is 2x total P&A, right?

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So it's like if you have a $150 million movie, including P&A, which is prints and advertising,

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so it's like everything, so it's like the production budget plus what you spend advertising

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and get eyeballs.

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If you have a $150 million movie, like total, including production and everything, so usually

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it's half, so it'd be like a $75 million movie with $75 million P&A.

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You need to make $300 million back, or it's not a success.

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They're not going to kind of look back at it as a proper thing.

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You need to make 100% on your money, essentially.

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That's still the conventional wisdom, as far as I know, yeah.

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And so it's interesting because it continues to give credence to the Mr. Beast model, right?

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You get, I think Mr. Beast is a really interesting character because he's actually, I would consider

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him the Elon Musk of content, and what I mean by that is he will throw 100% of his money

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into everything he does, and it's the same thing with Elon with his companies.

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Elon will throw 100% of his money.

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He burns the ships, if you're familiar with the Cortez quote.

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He will burn the ships to make the thing work, and it's really interesting because it's working,

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you know, and we don't really see that in Hollywood anymore.

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I actually think the last vestige of something like that is like a, you know, Nolan doesn't

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need to do that, but I would say he does it from a credibility perspective.

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He puts all of his credibility into his next project.

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Hasn't been always a success, if you have seen Tenet, but it's, yeah, I don't know.

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It's interesting.

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Like, how do you think that dynamic is going to change if we get to this world where you

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have to make now 3X your money?

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You know, $150 million, maybe now you need to make $450 million with only the US market,

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or I guess that would include China, but it's like if 104% tariff is there, you now need

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to make $450.

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So, it's literally you can only do temples, you can only do Marvel, essentially.

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Yeah, and I mean, I'm saying if you get 100%, yeah, 100% tariff and it doubles the cost

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of a ticket, of a movie ticket functionally, right, if they pass that on to their consumer,

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you just have to assume you lose at least half or, you know, go down to a quarter of

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the audience.

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If the American movie is $20 and the Chinese movie is $10, like China has a robust, you

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know, its own Hollywood.

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They make a lot of movies and they have a lot of great filmmakers, so they need American

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movies less than they did before, before they had that.

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But I think, you know, even farther upstream, like exactly what you're talking about, like

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the $300 million tentpole is kind of the standard right now.

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Every studio has a couple of $300 million movies and every streamer is coming out with

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those as well.

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But if you just go upstream from that and they say, now the upside of that, the success

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is $600 million and we think now that the Chinese market is, let's just call it gone

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or let's just call it like a 10th of what it was before, maybe a quarter of what it

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was before.

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That means we can only spend, you know, let's just, you bring it all the way down, just

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the Chinese market.

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You bring the $300 million budget total down to like $200 million.

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And then every other country, right, even if it's not a 100% tariff, like what is the

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haircut that every other country is adding when you take out that foreign sales?

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You're counting on the foreign sales being bigger.

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We're talking about more than half of the budget being heavily, heavily impacted.

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So I think there's only a handful of directors that can command that.

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And Nolan's one of them.

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Villeneuve is one of them.

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And even, you know, even some of the, like Scorsese, the only reason Scorsese got $200

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million for Killers of the Flower Moon was because Apple wanted to buy an Oscar.

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No other studio would give that to him because they knew it didn't underwrite.

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I think you're going to see that more and more.

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And the only movies at that scale that would get made that way would be vanity projects

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from companies that don't actually need to make the money back.

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And that's a very, very tenuous, right?

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You have Jeff Bezos on the control of one of those.

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You have Tim Cook on the control of one of those.

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And literally, they could just change their mind about the risk profile of that.

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And they're holding, you know, the balance of LA big budget movies just in their hand

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based on a balance sheet of a company that has nothing to do with movies.

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And that's an unbelievably unrooted risky place for Hollywood to be.

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I think that we're just witnessing the death of this model.

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You know, tariffs might speed it up.

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The economic situation might speed it up.

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But same thing in 2008, you know, you had catalysts that pushed something, that pulled

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something forward that were going to happen anyway with the advent of the internet and

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new revenue models.

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You know, kind of to your point, JD, about we haven't seen these things come out of Hollywood

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where people are putting everything on the line.

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But the reason for that is because of the corporate structure.

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There's no one who has any incentive to do that because there's not one person who owns

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or has control of, you know, a studio or a given project that can monetize it, you know,

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in a way that would give a return, like in the way that Saylor owns MST, you know, controls

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micro strategy or that Elon controls what he does with the revenue and the investment

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in his companies.

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You know, I think that we're going to see this fragment and I think that we're going

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to start to see individual filmmakers or content creators start to generate their own little

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empires and you're going to see platforms like Indie Hub and Substack and whatever start

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to facilitate the plumbing of, you know, individuals that end up having a massive,

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massive following.

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So I really do honestly think, I don't know about the timeframe exactly, but I really

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think that we're witnessing the end of the total death of the old model and we're going

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into something completely new.

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Yeah, I agree.

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And I think Hollywood itself primed the pump for a catalyst like this to happen because

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an increasingly risk off model since COVID and since the strikes and an increase, a heavy

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increase in the costs of film production in America have led to riskless thinking, which

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is anti-cultural engagement and cultural resonance, right?

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And we've talked about that before on this podcast, but you know, you've got at least

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five to seven years and you can even trace it back to 08 when the $40 million adult drama

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disappeared and you look at the movies in 07, there's like 15 of them.

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You know, prime filmmakers hitting, uh, you know, hitting 400 in the majors, like unbelievable

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lineup of movies in 07.

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And then you start to see that class of movies slowly start to disappear.

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The, the, um, revenue of the best picture winner over the past 15 years has gone down

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and down and down and down.

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So like what Hollywood has regarded as the best movie every year has been a less.

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Nope.

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Nope.

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And he's gone and he's gone long up considering it's been that long since one has made over

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a hundred million dollars.

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So, um, Hollywood was ready and vulnerable for an attack like this because they've been

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doing that for so long.

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So I think it's going to be pretty vicious.

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It's interesting to call it an attack, right?

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Because I actually think that's correct because people are not thinking about this.

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From the outside, looking in and the adversarial approach.

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And so what I mean by that is the studios have always looked at anybody from the outside

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in as an attack.

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It was always a walled garden.

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Same thing with the union.

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Same thing with anything else.

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Like it was always, you know, Oh, you want to do this other thing?

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That's an attack.

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It's an attack on us.

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AI is an attack on us.

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You know, any type of offshoring is an attack on us.

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Like moving to Atlanta, moving to Chicago, moving to Nashville, moving to Toronto, moving

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to, you know, Quebec, wherever you're going.

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And it's really, really interesting that they just didn't see what happened in 2000 with

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the Internet when you had a walled garden of information in books, essentially.

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And then you just gave everybody instant access to that walled garden, which is a free and,

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you know, thank you to the cypherpunks who kind of made this free exchange of information

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and other continue to fight to keep information exchange free.

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But what's interesting, though, is the attack piece of this.

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As you're saying about kind of these, you know, new people like the door brothers and

00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:39.840
all these A.I. filmmakers kind of like jumping up and like sprouting.

00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:44.140
It's interesting to think that, you know, and I'm curious your take on this, Zach.

00:15:44.140 --> 00:15:47.979
Do you look at the rise of the A.I. filmmaker because I'm going to call them an A.I. filmmaker,

00:15:47.979 --> 00:15:48.979
right?

00:15:48.979 --> 00:15:54.000
Because they are they are still they're using a tool to create a narrative film.

00:15:54.000 --> 00:16:00.960
Do you do you look at that as like an attack on like the craft of acting or do you look

00:16:00.960 --> 00:16:04.760
at it more of as like an opportunity to find a new way for it to evolve?

00:16:04.760 --> 00:16:05.760
And is it inevitable?

00:16:05.760 --> 00:16:06.760
Right.

00:16:06.760 --> 00:16:07.760
I'm just curious.

00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:09.799
I don't I don't see them as attacks.

00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:10.799
You know, it's an evolution.

00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:16.919
A.I. is a tool just like actors use their bodies as tools.

00:16:16.919 --> 00:16:18.559
Cinematographers use a camera as tools.

00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:23.520
Technology is constantly changed how we have told stories and it will continue to do that.

00:16:24.039 --> 00:16:28.320
So I don't I don't see it as an attack, you know, in some adversarial sense, but it's

00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:32.159
what's happening and it's what's going to continue to happen.

00:16:32.159 --> 00:16:42.760
And the point of a story really is to is to boil down some truth, you know, and express

00:16:42.760 --> 00:16:51.719
some truth and whatever tools people have at their disposal to, you know, present their

00:16:51.719 --> 00:16:56.119
idea or, you know, whatever I say, truthful ones resonate, I guess, is my point.

00:16:56.119 --> 00:17:01.400
You can tell something that's sort of bullshit, but generally doesn't resonate.

00:17:01.400 --> 00:17:09.199
So, you know, will will actors be out of a job in the way that we were employed previously?

00:17:09.199 --> 00:17:10.199
Yeah.

00:17:10.199 --> 00:17:15.439
I mean, it's going to change and people are going to have to figure out how to how to

00:17:15.439 --> 00:17:16.439
deal with that.

00:17:16.439 --> 00:17:19.839
I mean, you know, we've talked about this a little bit, but like prompting and one of

00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:23.920
the things that I complain about is writing over the last 15 or 20 years.

00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:24.920
Writing is really great.

00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:29.979
Writing has taken a massive hit and we may see a resurgence on that with prompting.

00:17:29.979 --> 00:17:36.160
Prompting is basically great writing, very, very hyper specific writing and screenwriting

00:17:36.160 --> 00:17:40.560
is like this really interesting combo of technical understanding about how the story is being

00:17:40.560 --> 00:17:46.479
told visually combined with, you know, a writer has all these tools at their disposal, right?

00:17:46.479 --> 00:17:50.760
They have actors, they have camera angles, they have titles, they have, you know, all

00:17:50.760 --> 00:17:52.599
of these all of these things at their disposal.

00:17:52.599 --> 00:18:00.040
So, you know, I think that I filmmaking and and traditional filmmaking will sort of bifurcate.

00:18:00.040 --> 00:18:05.359
I think that, you know, there will always be a market for traditional films, at least

00:18:05.359 --> 00:18:07.040
for for the foreseeable future.

00:18:07.040 --> 00:18:10.839
But, you know, it's an evolution and I think we're definitely looking at a fork in the

00:18:10.839 --> 00:18:11.839
road.

00:18:11.839 --> 00:18:15.160
What's the next iteration of Hollywood in your mind, Corey?

00:18:15.160 --> 00:18:18.520
Like how does how does this revitalize Hollywood?

00:18:18.520 --> 00:18:23.880
Like do we get to, you know, everything is Altadena for five seconds and nothing exists

00:18:23.880 --> 00:18:27.839
and we have to rebuild from nothing or, you know, what does this look like?

00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:32.359
Yeah, it's not hard to imagine in an environment like this, it's not hard to imagine a cataclysmic

00:18:32.359 --> 00:18:33.719
event.

00:18:33.719 --> 00:18:37.560
But there is a lot there's still so much interest and still such a cultural fixation on Hollywood.

00:18:37.560 --> 00:18:41.479
There always seems to be money to bail somebody out over the past five years.

00:18:42.119 --> 00:18:49.640
We've had Hulu, Peacock, Paramount Plus, Lionsgate all fail financially and the new investors

00:18:49.640 --> 00:18:54.079
come in, they merge, they lay off a bunch of people and they go under some other shingle

00:18:54.079 --> 00:18:56.560
with a brand new investment and they're all still making movies.

00:18:56.560 --> 00:19:01.719
So it's not like I've been calling it Flint, Michigan around here, which is a little overdramatic

00:19:01.719 --> 00:19:07.640
because that in that case, literally just the executive state and everything else about

00:19:07.640 --> 00:19:09.280
that industry disappeared.

00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:11.160
And I think that could happen over a longer period of time.

00:19:11.839 --> 00:19:16.239
I don't see it being as dramatic as just offshoring a factory and then, you know, thousands of

00:19:16.239 --> 00:19:17.479
people are out of work.

00:19:17.479 --> 00:19:22.640
But that is happening pretty quickly on Hollywood standards, which moves very, very slowly.

00:19:22.640 --> 00:19:24.239
That's happening pretty quickly.

00:19:24.239 --> 00:19:29.239
Rob Lowe went viral recently for saying it's it's cheaper to fly 100 Americans to Ireland

00:19:29.239 --> 00:19:31.359
and shoot a movie in Ireland than it is to shoot in L.A.

00:19:31.359 --> 00:19:32.359
And he's right.

00:19:32.359 --> 00:19:34.560
You know, that's true.

00:19:34.560 --> 00:19:35.560
And so that's happening.

00:19:35.560 --> 00:19:37.560
Very little is shooting actually in L.A.

00:19:37.959 --> 00:19:41.680
And I've toured a bunch of studios around the world and they're all full of American

00:19:41.680 --> 00:19:47.680
shows and big budget American shows that are now staffed with international people.

00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:56.719
So to me, I think the revitalization of Hollywood is a much smaller, physical Hollywood, way

00:19:56.719 --> 00:20:03.640
fewer film professionals in Los Angeles, fewer executives who are smarter, who understand

00:20:03.680 --> 00:20:08.839
the actual environment, who aren't trying to bring back the movie world of 1994, which

00:20:08.839 --> 00:20:12.079
when you talk around town, like I said, Hollywood moves slowly.

00:20:12.079 --> 00:20:17.479
There is still kind of this sentiment that we just push through, just carry on, stay,

00:20:17.479 --> 00:20:20.400
and eventually it'll become 1994 again.

00:20:20.400 --> 00:20:22.079
I think that's the regressive way.

00:20:22.079 --> 00:20:25.959
That's the way that you can get really bummed out and and lose all hope.

00:20:25.959 --> 00:20:31.599
But I think in the new environment, with a lot of new tools and with worldwide filmmaking,

00:20:31.599 --> 00:20:34.000
you'll still be able to have an incredible cultural impact.

00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:37.319
The right writers and the right directors can still have their voices amplified.

00:20:37.319 --> 00:20:43.040
We just have to get these three hundred million dollar movies reoriented around reality.

00:20:43.040 --> 00:20:46.640
And then we have to bring back, you know, five to ten million dollar tries that are

00:20:46.640 --> 00:20:49.040
much more like oil prospecting, right?

00:20:49.040 --> 00:20:53.239
Take a hundred million dollars and make ten movies and see which one hits and then learn

00:20:53.239 --> 00:20:58.800
from that, learn from each other rather than, you know, this riskless, this riskless thinking.

00:20:59.359 --> 00:21:05.000
Part of what's dying, people like Zach and I don't, you know, obviously it's terrible

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:07.719
whenever anyone loses a job or loses a house or anything like that.

00:21:07.719 --> 00:21:08.839
We take no pleasure in that.

00:21:08.839 --> 00:21:13.239
But if what's dying is like the 18th Marvel movie, actually, that's even low.

00:21:13.239 --> 00:21:15.959
It's probably like the 27th Marvel movie by now, right?

00:21:15.959 --> 00:21:21.040
The movies that nobody is asking for, but they know that enough people will go to financially

00:21:21.040 --> 00:21:22.040
justify it.

00:21:22.040 --> 00:21:23.040
So they do it.

00:21:23.040 --> 00:21:24.040
No one really wants it.

00:21:24.040 --> 00:21:25.280
No one really wants to make it.

00:21:25.280 --> 00:21:27.479
There's no passion around it.

00:21:27.479 --> 00:21:31.319
Those are the types of things that should be cannibalized by AI.

00:21:31.319 --> 00:21:34.119
And I think the 2000 analogy is very good in that way.

00:21:34.119 --> 00:21:42.760
And I think too, like, you know, like peak cinema was basically peak boomer culture and

00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:44.560
career.

00:21:44.560 --> 00:21:49.079
You know, like just look at a film set and look at who was making the best movies in

00:21:49.079 --> 00:21:50.079
the 80s, 90s.

00:21:50.079 --> 00:21:55.119
You know, these are basically like 40, 50 year olds who were at the absolute peak of

00:21:55.119 --> 00:22:01.119
their career, you know, putting out the peak of the culture in which they grew up.

00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:02.119
And that's gone.

00:22:02.119 --> 00:22:03.119
That's done.

00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:04.239
We have a completely new generation coming up.

00:22:04.239 --> 00:22:05.239
Boomers are being sunsetted.

00:22:05.239 --> 00:22:06.560
Power is being sunsetted.

00:22:06.560 --> 00:22:12.619
And it's not going to look anything like what the boomers experienced or grew up in or built

00:22:12.619 --> 00:22:13.619
their businesses around.

00:22:13.619 --> 00:22:15.839
It's going to be far more localized.

00:22:15.839 --> 00:22:17.300
It's going to be far more specific.

00:22:17.300 --> 00:22:19.359
It's going to be far more niche.

00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:26.040
You know, I've said this before, but the whole world is we're going away from peak

00:22:26.040 --> 00:22:33.319
centralization and peak centralization for humanity was basically post-World War II.

00:22:33.319 --> 00:22:34.880
And that's going away.

00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:35.880
That's dying.

00:22:35.880 --> 00:22:40.920
So, you know, I think that here's another thing.

00:22:40.920 --> 00:22:41.920
Here's another point, right?

00:22:41.920 --> 00:22:44.920
Like movies always play a huge role in propaganda as well.

00:22:44.920 --> 00:22:49.239
And there's, you know, to your point about, you know, Apple only funding this movie to

00:22:49.239 --> 00:22:56.839
get an Oscar, like essentially that's a small group of people, you know, flexing or wanting

00:22:56.839 --> 00:22:58.520
to put out a particular kind of propaganda.

00:22:58.520 --> 00:23:00.739
They can do it at a loss or whatever.

00:23:00.739 --> 00:23:01.739
Those are going to remain.

00:23:01.739 --> 00:23:02.739
Those are going to stay there.

00:23:02.739 --> 00:23:13.280
But just like in 2008, what we've seen post-2008 is you just have a massive market built up

00:23:13.280 --> 00:23:20.560
underneath what was once, you know, a total empire.

00:23:20.560 --> 00:23:29.640
How do you, you know, how do each of you guys then see L.A. kind of evolve?

00:23:29.640 --> 00:23:33.760
Like what's the next version of L.A. in your opinion?

00:23:33.760 --> 00:23:40.400
Like my personal opinion and my personal hope is that we become Taiwan and we have like

00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:48.199
a massive like semiconductor manufacturing plants, like high-tech, high-quality manufacturing

00:23:48.199 --> 00:23:50.479
because of report city, right?

00:23:50.479 --> 00:23:58.119
I think there's a really good case to be made about, you know, the globalization and by

00:23:58.119 --> 00:24:03.719
that I mean the on-shoring because the globalization of semiconductor production is making it not

00:24:03.719 --> 00:24:04.719
in China.

00:24:04.719 --> 00:24:08.560
So like U.S. actually would be globalizing semiconductor production.

00:24:08.560 --> 00:24:14.040
But I think that feels to me like a pretty interesting area because I don't know if,

00:24:14.040 --> 00:24:19.880
like storytelling is going to be an export I think for a long time, but I just don't

00:24:19.880 --> 00:24:24.199
see with A.I. how this changes and so I'm just kind of curious your takes on like, you

00:24:24.199 --> 00:24:25.640
know, does it stay storytelling?

00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:27.599
Like what do you think?

00:24:27.599 --> 00:24:35.800
I think it begs an interest, a broader question of a globalized or deglobalized world or a

00:24:35.800 --> 00:24:39.880
tariff world or however you want to say it in the age where digital things have more

00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:42.079
value than they've ever had.

00:24:42.079 --> 00:24:48.920
Physical goods are really easy to slap a tax on, but digital goods are becoming increasingly

00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:55.760
valuable and, you know, I think ultimately that's the question, right?

00:24:55.760 --> 00:24:58.560
Like California has fantastic weather.

00:24:58.560 --> 00:25:04.719
It's got a, you know, it's got a fantastic, L.A.'s got fantastic, you know, quality of

00:25:04.719 --> 00:25:06.319
life so to speak.

00:25:06.319 --> 00:25:14.280
But I personally don't see, yeah, minus that, I don't see manufacturing coming back to California

00:25:14.280 --> 00:25:15.280
just for politics.

00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:19.520
I mean, it makes logistical sense, but they don't want anything manufactured here.

00:25:19.520 --> 00:25:22.359
The people who run this place, they're totally anti that.

00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:26.079
And it makes no fiscal sense at this point.

00:25:26.079 --> 00:25:29.560
You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube on that, right?

00:25:29.560 --> 00:25:31.439
Yeah, totally.

00:25:31.439 --> 00:25:33.199
The kinetic energy is gone on that deal.

00:25:33.199 --> 00:25:35.719
Like that's not coming back.

00:25:35.719 --> 00:25:36.719
So I don't know.

00:25:36.719 --> 00:25:39.000
I really think that L.A. is a big question mark right now.

00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:41.699
I think that there's always going to be a ton of value in a place that's just chill

00:25:41.699 --> 00:25:42.699
and has good weather.

00:25:42.699 --> 00:25:44.280
People are always going to pay a premium for that.

00:25:44.280 --> 00:25:50.040
But as far as L.A. exporting, anything of tremendous value, like I really don't know,

00:25:50.040 --> 00:25:51.040
man.

00:25:51.040 --> 00:25:52.040
It's hard to say.

00:25:52.040 --> 00:25:57.040
I would say what the what the inelastic good is that Hollywood has been providing for a

00:25:57.040 --> 00:26:00.119
long time is stories and stories.

00:26:00.119 --> 00:26:03.280
I forget what the name of that theory is, but the longer something has been around,

00:26:03.280 --> 00:26:05.400
the less likely it is to disappear.

00:26:05.400 --> 00:26:06.760
Right.

00:26:06.760 --> 00:26:08.880
It's like stories and farming and prostitution.

00:26:08.880 --> 00:26:09.880
Right.

00:26:09.880 --> 00:26:13.119
As as far back as we have history.

00:26:13.119 --> 00:26:15.719
And so that's that to me is the inelastic good.

00:26:15.719 --> 00:26:19.280
That's the demand for stories is not going to go anywhere.

00:26:19.280 --> 00:26:21.199
It's so core to humanity.

00:26:21.199 --> 00:26:25.199
And Hollywood, specifically in filmmaking, has had this monopoly on it because they've

00:26:25.199 --> 00:26:30.079
been the only ones who could centralize the writers and the directors through the director's

00:26:30.079 --> 00:26:31.079
medium.

00:26:31.079 --> 00:26:34.599
So they had the talent signed to them as a studio.

00:26:34.599 --> 00:26:37.920
So if you wanted to make a movie anywhere else, you had to start with the two hundred

00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:43.560
and fiftieth best director in the world, which isn't good enough in movies and the supply

00:26:43.560 --> 00:26:44.560
chains.

00:26:44.560 --> 00:26:46.119
You didn't have the ability to distribute it.

00:26:46.119 --> 00:26:47.119
Exactly.

00:26:47.119 --> 00:26:48.119
Exactly.

00:26:48.119 --> 00:26:50.800
So there's all of this centralization, the centralization of power.

00:26:50.800 --> 00:26:54.160
So I think the question now is, do directors still have to live there?

00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:58.239
And even if they don't live there, you know, my you know, most of my director friends who

00:26:58.239 --> 00:27:02.599
have careers don't live in Hollywood, but their managers do and their agents do and

00:27:02.599 --> 00:27:04.920
the financiers do and the distribution does.

00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:08.920
So there's still that supply chain running through Hollywood, even as there's been this

00:27:08.920 --> 00:27:12.239
big decentralization that we've been talking about for 10 years.

00:27:12.239 --> 00:27:18.319
Most of what that's meant is that people who can call in rather than be in meetings

00:27:18.319 --> 00:27:21.599
leave and then everyone else who has to be in meetings has to be there.

00:27:21.599 --> 00:27:22.599
Right.

00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:23.599
And I feel that pressure continuing.

00:27:23.599 --> 00:27:29.280
The Lindy effect, by the way, is that Lindy's law.

00:27:29.280 --> 00:27:31.560
In big budget productions, you still it's still a film.

00:27:31.560 --> 00:27:32.560
You still need to be there.

00:27:32.560 --> 00:27:33.560
You still need gaffers.

00:27:33.560 --> 00:27:34.560
You still need sound guys.

00:27:34.560 --> 00:27:35.560
You still need actors.

00:27:35.560 --> 00:27:36.560
You still need crafty.

00:27:36.560 --> 00:27:39.640
You still need a big, giant studio that's relatively quiet.

00:27:39.640 --> 00:27:44.239
So, you know, I think the big budget stuff will hang on for quite some time, but we're

00:27:44.239 --> 00:27:45.239
going to see this.

00:27:45.239 --> 00:27:49.560
We're going to see the periphery, you know, the independence, all of that stuff is going

00:27:49.560 --> 00:27:53.239
to start to find a market and find a way to produce things elsewhere.

00:27:53.239 --> 00:27:59.400
And the real question I think we're asking is, how do how do stories make money going

00:27:59.400 --> 00:28:05.760
forward and the instance that somebody can make money and not do it here?

00:28:05.760 --> 00:28:06.760
They're going to.

00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:13.880
And I think that we'll see a 10 to 25, 30 year disbursement of that.

00:28:13.880 --> 00:28:17.359
And, you know, it's still going to be a hub just for all of the physical constraints we

00:28:17.359 --> 00:28:18.359
talked about.

00:28:18.359 --> 00:28:22.359
But there's the transition is happening, to be sure.

00:28:22.359 --> 00:28:24.000
Yeah, it's interesting.

00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:26.880
The you know, that exact that's exactly right.

00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:30.800
Like the last shoots that I've done have been in Florida and then literally I was in Seattle

00:28:30.800 --> 00:28:36.739
yesterday on a shoot and now I'm back in L.A. and it's it's it's cheaper for some

00:28:36.739 --> 00:28:43.140
somebody to hire me to fly out of L.A. to do a shoot to come back.

00:28:43.140 --> 00:28:49.099
I'm just talking about people with some shoes today that are not in L.A. and, you know,

00:28:49.099 --> 00:28:51.819
it's wild.

00:28:51.819 --> 00:28:53.780
That.

00:28:53.780 --> 00:28:58.459
Just aspect of things, but it makes sense because the the, you know, it's the whole

00:28:58.459 --> 00:29:03.060
thing about why do people move to San Francisco to work in tech so you can get a job in tech

00:29:03.060 --> 00:29:06.619
so you can move out of San Francisco because you don't want to live in San Francisco.

00:29:06.619 --> 00:29:11.699
It's you know, those people who can dial in, dial in and the people who can't dial in are

00:29:11.699 --> 00:29:12.699
stuck to stay here.

00:29:12.699 --> 00:29:13.699
And that's interesting.

00:29:13.699 --> 00:29:15.819
It's like it's literally a form of indentured servitude.

00:29:15.819 --> 00:29:21.260
If you really think about it like it's it's the modern day form of an indentured servant.

00:29:21.260 --> 00:29:24.939
And I'm just thinking about this a lot as I have a lot of friends from from church who

00:29:24.939 --> 00:29:28.140
are actors and they're trying to figure out what to do right now because they haven't

00:29:28.140 --> 00:29:30.420
worked in months.

00:29:30.420 --> 00:29:35.459
And their agents basically say, if you leave L.A., I'm going to fire you.

00:29:35.459 --> 00:29:38.500
And so it's this really weird.

00:29:38.500 --> 00:29:42.959
Dichotomy because as you're talking about to Corey, like, yeah, all of the successful

00:29:42.959 --> 00:29:48.699
people I know who are showrunners or directors or whatever it is, are not here.

00:29:48.699 --> 00:29:53.540
They live in Austin or they live in Atlanta or they live, you know, a couple of the people

00:29:53.540 --> 00:29:55.339
I know are like in Chicago or Nashville.

00:29:55.339 --> 00:29:56.339
And so it's interesting.

00:29:56.339 --> 00:29:58.380
And then they just it's like, I'll come in for a meeting when somebody wants to do.

00:29:58.380 --> 00:30:00.400
But you're going to pay for my ticket to come out here.

00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:07.280
And so, yeah, it's it's it's interesting this this, you know.

00:30:07.280 --> 00:30:09.239
The Hollywood facade, right?

00:30:09.239 --> 00:30:13.680
You know, it's everything is real and nothing is real at the same time.

00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:18.239
One of the practical things that's just hyper different and I think just illustrates what

00:30:18.239 --> 00:30:23.160
we're talking about is, you know, back in the day, you get called up last minute for

00:30:23.160 --> 00:30:24.479
an audition.

00:30:24.479 --> 00:30:28.199
You get your fucking sides faxed to you.

00:30:28.199 --> 00:30:29.260
You need to be there for a meeting.

00:30:29.260 --> 00:30:31.880
You needed to be localized.

00:30:31.880 --> 00:30:33.579
And all of that has changed.

00:30:33.579 --> 00:30:34.979
Most auditions are all on tape.

00:30:34.979 --> 00:30:39.180
I mean, if you're going to network or whatever, you're going to want to meet people.

00:30:39.180 --> 00:30:43.060
But it's just, you know, that like if you leave L.A., I'm going to fire you.

00:30:43.060 --> 00:30:47.900
I mean, that's just like old school agent mentality where people needed to congregate

00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:50.099
here for obvious reasons.

00:30:50.099 --> 00:30:51.979
And that's still always going to be true.

00:30:51.979 --> 00:30:53.180
You know, people bump into each other.

00:30:53.180 --> 00:30:54.180
They go to parties.

00:30:54.180 --> 00:30:55.180
They have friends.

00:30:55.180 --> 00:30:56.180
They have a life outside the business.

00:30:56.180 --> 00:30:58.099
And that's all has a tremendous amount of value.

00:30:58.099 --> 00:31:01.979
You know, like to your point, J.D., the reason people go to San Francisco is because that's

00:31:01.979 --> 00:31:04.939
where all of the other smart entrepreneurial people are.

00:31:04.939 --> 00:31:07.500
And that's where the liquidity is at, so to speak.

00:31:07.500 --> 00:31:08.959
Like where's all the trading taking place?

00:31:08.959 --> 00:31:10.260
It's where the best parties at.

00:31:10.260 --> 00:31:17.219
And that's just a matter of like that's just kinetic energy.

00:31:17.219 --> 00:31:19.739
That's just a bunch of energy has been put into this place and it's going to be very

00:31:19.739 --> 00:31:22.699
hard to unseat that.

00:31:22.699 --> 00:31:26.060
But it is it is definitely being unseated.

00:31:26.060 --> 00:31:27.380
There's no question about that.

00:31:27.380 --> 00:31:31.380
And I think they're all, you know, maybe we land on a different city.

00:31:31.380 --> 00:31:35.699
You know, I mean, there's always going to be proximity is always going to have value.

00:31:35.699 --> 00:31:41.660
It's just can people afford to be, you know, approximate in an area that's too expensive

00:31:41.660 --> 00:31:42.660
to live in?

00:31:42.660 --> 00:31:43.660
Yeah.

00:31:43.660 --> 00:31:48.380
Austin's a really interesting one, because Texas is making a very strong state play with

00:31:48.380 --> 00:31:53.180
a lot of money, a lot of state money to bring, you know, people there.

00:31:53.180 --> 00:31:55.619
And they did the exact same thing with Elon Musk.

00:31:55.619 --> 00:31:59.219
And as soon as it was financially reasonable for him, he just moved there.

00:31:59.219 --> 00:32:02.660
And there go all of those jobs and all those taxes and all of that.

00:32:02.660 --> 00:32:07.099
And if you look at some of the ones I mentioned earlier, like NBCUniversal is not in a good

00:32:07.099 --> 00:32:08.099
place.

00:32:08.099 --> 00:32:09.099
Right.

00:32:09.099 --> 00:32:14.699
We did this one sack right with NBC, NBCUniversal, Comcast, NBCUniversal, right.

00:32:14.699 --> 00:32:17.819
And then it's and then it'll be like, yeah.

00:32:17.819 --> 00:32:19.780
And now that's NBC.

00:32:19.780 --> 00:32:26.020
And similarly, Paramount, right, Lionsgate, all of even Sony is doing OK.

00:32:26.020 --> 00:32:30.819
But Fox had to be acquired as soon as now they have these overlord companies.

00:32:30.819 --> 00:32:32.739
Those companies are not run by film fans.

00:32:32.739 --> 00:32:35.699
Those companies are run by boards of Wall Street people.

00:32:35.699 --> 00:32:42.540
And we went from having the best agent ever running the studio to now the former CEO of

00:32:42.540 --> 00:32:46.619
Boeing running the studio, right, which is, you know, wildly different outlook.

00:32:46.619 --> 00:32:50.780
So there's going to be no romanticism as soon as it's more profitable and more effective

00:32:50.780 --> 00:32:55.459
to have this to have these things in Austin versus L.A., which I think is the primary

00:32:55.459 --> 00:33:00.219
the primary competition right now is Austin that they'll do it.

00:33:00.219 --> 00:33:01.219
They'll do it in a heartbeat.

00:33:01.219 --> 00:33:05.180
There's no more romance, I don't think, around making I mean, they maintain an office here,

00:33:05.180 --> 00:33:07.459
of course, but there's no more romance around it.

00:33:07.459 --> 00:33:10.619
I don't think that would I don't think that would take long at all once the waterfall

00:33:10.619 --> 00:33:11.619
starts.

00:33:11.619 --> 00:33:13.979
And you've also got you've also just got straight tax, right?

00:33:13.979 --> 00:33:19.339
If you if you, you know, domicile as a famous actor in L.A., you're paying an exorbitant

00:33:19.339 --> 00:33:20.579
amount of money to do that.

00:33:20.579 --> 00:33:24.180
I mean, Phil Mickelson talks about this from from the golf perspective.

00:33:24.180 --> 00:33:25.900
Why the hell would you know, he was a California guy.

00:33:25.900 --> 00:33:30.060
He's like, I can't I can't continue to pay these exorbitant taxes on my winnings like

00:33:30.060 --> 00:33:31.060
I'm out.

00:33:31.060 --> 00:33:32.060
I'm done.

00:33:32.060 --> 00:33:33.060
Yeah, happening.

00:33:33.060 --> 00:33:34.060
Yeah.

00:33:34.060 --> 00:33:37.540
So I so many live in Arizona and then they come play golf in L.A. and go back.

00:33:37.540 --> 00:33:38.540
Yep.

00:33:38.540 --> 00:33:39.540
Yeah.

00:33:39.540 --> 00:33:41.739
It's interesting because I'm like looking at the because I just had the definition for

00:33:41.739 --> 00:33:47.260
the Lindy effect up here and it's, you know, I'm constantly reminded of how everything

00:33:47.260 --> 00:33:49.619
is physics, right?

00:33:49.619 --> 00:33:51.780
The laws of physics apply to everything.

00:33:51.780 --> 00:33:53.140
And that's literally what the Lindy effect is.

00:33:53.140 --> 00:33:59.180
The Lindy effect is just, you know, that that theory of something that's been popularized

00:33:59.180 --> 00:34:00.500
for an extended period of time.

00:34:00.500 --> 00:34:04.780
The longer it's popular, the longer it's popular until it's not until it's not.

00:34:04.780 --> 00:34:06.260
And it's usually one of those things, though.

00:34:06.260 --> 00:34:10.179
But but but if you think about that, that's literally a conservation of momentum type

00:34:10.179 --> 00:34:11.179
thing.

00:34:11.179 --> 00:34:12.179
Yeah.

00:34:12.179 --> 00:34:14.459
It's like you get momentum in the machine, you get it going.

00:34:14.459 --> 00:34:18.860
And I really think it's going to be interesting because, like, again, I, you know, used Mr.

00:34:18.860 --> 00:34:19.860
Beast as an example.

00:34:19.860 --> 00:34:23.820
But like the kids in North Carolina, right, and he's apparently built the biggest film

00:34:23.820 --> 00:34:31.860
studios in the plural in North Carolina because South Carolina is because that's what it is.

00:34:31.860 --> 00:34:32.860
That's what he's doing.

00:34:32.860 --> 00:34:36.540
And all these other people like The Daily Wire and other people, it's like, oh, I'm

00:34:36.540 --> 00:34:38.780
going to go build a studio somewhere else.

00:34:38.780 --> 00:34:40.659
Angel Studios in Utah, right.

00:34:40.659 --> 00:34:41.659
Angel Studios.

00:34:41.659 --> 00:34:42.659
A perfect example.

00:34:42.659 --> 00:34:44.300
And actually, Jeff, the block.

00:34:44.300 --> 00:34:49.100
Yeah, you're going to you're going to continue to see that beast is Mr. Beast is a good it's

00:34:49.100 --> 00:34:50.860
a good example because he's a singular guy.

00:34:50.860 --> 00:34:55.219
But you're just you're I just I really think that we're going into this world where you're

00:34:55.219 --> 00:35:00.540
going to have a much, much, much more vibrant ecosystem of a bunch of way smaller players

00:35:00.540 --> 00:35:04.379
carving out their niche and crushing that niche as best they can.

00:35:04.379 --> 00:35:09.540
Movies are movies are interesting because when you're browsing for one, you want them

00:35:09.540 --> 00:35:10.739
to be in the same spot.

00:35:10.739 --> 00:35:14.979
Like I'm not going to sign up for Angel Studios and Angel Wire Daily Wire and Angel Studios

00:35:14.979 --> 00:35:16.060
and Disney and NBC.

00:35:16.060 --> 00:35:19.979
I'm not signing up for all of them, you know, like so the second somebody can kind of figure

00:35:19.979 --> 00:35:25.179
out where the best party is at and get people to agree on that and figure out a way to make

00:35:25.179 --> 00:35:30.540
it profitable is is going to, you know, have a pretty outsized advantage, in my opinion.

00:35:30.540 --> 00:35:33.979
But in the meantime, you know, technology is the same thing, right?

00:35:33.979 --> 00:35:38.899
Like when digital cameras started coming out, and this is true over anything, I just

00:35:38.899 --> 00:35:41.899
saw it in L.A.

00:35:41.899 --> 00:35:45.219
You had this massive explosion of cameras, massive explosion of companies, all we're

00:35:45.219 --> 00:35:46.659
going to do this, we're going to do that.

00:35:46.659 --> 00:35:50.060
And then it eventually the whole market just collapses on the one or two or three that

00:35:50.060 --> 00:35:51.060
they like.

00:35:51.060 --> 00:35:52.060
And that's it.

00:35:52.060 --> 00:35:53.340
So we're in this we're in this explosion right now.

00:35:53.340 --> 00:35:56.739
We're going to have an explosion of different, you know, content creation companies or storytellers

00:35:56.739 --> 00:35:57.739
or whoever.

00:35:57.739 --> 00:35:58.739
And I think it's going to be huge.

00:35:58.739 --> 00:36:00.179
I think it's going to take a really long time.

00:36:00.179 --> 00:36:04.820
But eventually the market will settle on where people are browsing for those as opposed

00:36:04.820 --> 00:36:09.020
to having to figure out, you know, I'm going to manage forty five different subscriptions

00:36:09.020 --> 00:36:10.020
or whatever.

00:36:10.020 --> 00:36:11.020
Yeah.

00:36:11.020 --> 00:36:12.020
It's interesting.

00:36:12.020 --> 00:36:16.500
The unique thing to think about, then, is like how far up the hardware chain can you

00:36:16.500 --> 00:36:17.500
go?

00:36:17.500 --> 00:36:18.500
Right.

00:36:18.500 --> 00:36:21.979
Where it's like, how do you get Indy Hub or some of these other things is like the exclusive

00:36:21.979 --> 00:36:22.979
bill.

00:36:22.979 --> 00:36:28.340
It's like Samsung with their phones is like you can pay a bunch of money to be like preloaded

00:36:28.340 --> 00:36:33.699
on a Samsung phone and because it's advertising, whereas like Apple doesn't do that.

00:36:33.699 --> 00:36:41.060
And so it's just unique to see how content creators are thinking about that kind of stuff,

00:36:41.060 --> 00:36:42.060
because you're right.

00:36:42.060 --> 00:36:43.060
It's distribution.

00:36:43.060 --> 00:36:44.919
Distribution is the.

00:36:44.919 --> 00:36:45.919
Is the key.

00:36:45.919 --> 00:36:46.919
It's all about eyeballs.

00:36:46.919 --> 00:36:47.919
And so it's going to be.

00:36:47.919 --> 00:36:48.919
Yeah, it's going to be unique.

00:36:48.919 --> 00:36:52.199
You know, do you do you think I'm actually curious, both of your perspectives on this.

00:36:52.199 --> 00:36:56.899
What happens to movie theaters like what what is the next iteration of a movie theater?

00:36:56.899 --> 00:37:01.139
Do these just become big boxes that become studios like they're actually super ripe to

00:37:01.139 --> 00:37:05.820
be turned into studio spaces because it's just these giant like sound control boxes.

00:37:05.820 --> 00:37:09.179
But what you know, what do you think is next?

00:37:09.179 --> 00:37:10.459
Like are people just going to rent them out?

00:37:10.459 --> 00:37:13.459
Is it going to be one of those things like, oh, I go here and I play freaking Fortnite

00:37:13.459 --> 00:37:14.699
on a big screen?

00:37:14.699 --> 00:37:17.520
I think I think you most of them will collapse.

00:37:17.520 --> 00:37:19.860
The big ones will collapse because they just can't sustain themselves.

00:37:19.860 --> 00:37:20.860
Rents too expensive.

00:37:20.860 --> 00:37:22.419
Tax insurance, blah, blah.

00:37:22.419 --> 00:37:26.540
And I think you're going to see a bunch of little ones pop up in local communities where

00:37:27.179 --> 00:37:28.580
they're basically just like their own little film club.

00:37:28.580 --> 00:37:30.979
It becomes a social deal where people go to hang out with each other.

00:37:30.979 --> 00:37:35.979
They watch movies, they do their thing much smaller, much, much nicer, much more comfortable

00:37:35.979 --> 00:37:39.179
with people, you know, people can rent them out.

00:37:39.179 --> 00:37:40.179
You could four wall them.

00:37:40.179 --> 00:37:41.620
You could throw a festival at them or whatever.

00:37:41.620 --> 00:37:44.300
And the people who run those basically that's their whole life.

00:37:44.300 --> 00:37:47.379
And they don't necessarily have some giant agreement with the studio to distribute a

00:37:47.379 --> 00:37:48.379
movie.

00:37:48.379 --> 00:37:49.379
It's just a localized thing.

00:37:49.379 --> 00:37:50.379
I think that we'll see.

00:37:50.379 --> 00:37:54.500
I'm not saying like an insane amount of these pop up, but I think that that will replace

00:37:54.500 --> 00:37:56.260
the Megaplex for sure.

00:37:56.260 --> 00:37:58.979
Yeah, I think I would agree.

00:37:58.979 --> 00:38:00.739
Every major city has that right.

00:38:00.739 --> 00:38:03.860
LA's got 15 of those and they're always full.

00:38:03.860 --> 00:38:08.739
Random went to a Tuesday night screening of Tarkovsky's Stalker, which is like a three

00:38:08.739 --> 00:38:12.500
hour long Russian epic and one of my favorite movies on a Tuesday night.

00:38:12.500 --> 00:38:13.500
It was full.

00:38:13.500 --> 00:38:14.500
It was packed.

00:38:14.500 --> 00:38:15.500
Right.

00:38:15.500 --> 00:38:16.500
And that's the city where that would be packed.

00:38:16.500 --> 00:38:20.100
But there's something about I love that place called Bidiots and there's, you know, another

00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:21.899
dozen of them.

00:38:21.899 --> 00:38:23.979
There's something about that.

00:38:23.979 --> 00:38:27.340
There's someone in charge who's curating what movies they're showing.

00:38:27.340 --> 00:38:30.860
That makes me almost able to show up on any night and know that there's going to be quality

00:38:30.860 --> 00:38:31.860
there.

00:38:31.860 --> 00:38:33.379
And that's completely gone from the Megaplex.

00:38:33.379 --> 00:38:36.340
You know that AMC is just showing what they've been given.

00:38:36.340 --> 00:38:39.020
There's no curation of that, you know, whatsoever.

00:38:39.020 --> 00:38:40.020
Yeah.

00:38:40.020 --> 00:38:41.020
Yeah.

00:38:41.020 --> 00:38:42.020
You're going to start paying.

00:38:42.020 --> 00:38:43.020
Yeah.

00:38:43.020 --> 00:38:44.020
Tastemakers.

00:38:44.020 --> 00:38:45.020
And it's this, right?

00:38:45.020 --> 00:38:47.699
It's what we're doing right now is we're trying to, you know, find our voice in this void

00:38:47.699 --> 00:38:50.939
that is the next generation.

00:38:51.939 --> 00:38:52.939
Sneak.

00:38:52.939 --> 00:38:53.939
We lost him.

00:38:53.939 --> 00:38:54.939
We lost him.

00:38:54.939 --> 00:38:55.939
Good mute.

00:38:55.939 --> 00:38:56.939
Good mute.

00:38:56.939 --> 00:38:57.939
I just did it too.

00:38:57.939 --> 00:38:58.939
Maybe it was contagious.

00:38:58.939 --> 00:38:59.939
Excuse me.

00:38:59.939 --> 00:39:00.939
Sorry, man.

00:39:00.939 --> 00:39:01.939
Yeah.

00:39:01.939 --> 00:39:02.939
I was like, I don't want to blow everybody's ears off.

00:39:02.939 --> 00:39:03.939
I think I pulled something in my neck.

00:39:03.939 --> 00:39:04.939
That was cool.

00:39:04.939 --> 00:39:06.939
That was a fun one.

00:39:06.939 --> 00:39:07.939
This is 40.

00:39:07.939 --> 00:39:08.939
God, man.

00:39:08.939 --> 00:39:09.939
It's wild.

00:39:09.939 --> 00:39:17.139
Come up in like the home stretch here, but I guess, you know, Corey, you've been traveling

00:39:17.139 --> 00:39:18.139
a bit.

00:39:18.739 --> 00:39:22.540
What did you see kind of internationally on the cinema front?

00:39:22.540 --> 00:39:27.419
And do you think any of this stuff that's happening with the U.S. and tariffs and things

00:39:27.419 --> 00:39:35.219
like that are going to continue to encourage or discourage the creative, you know, industry

00:39:35.219 --> 00:39:36.219
globally?

00:39:36.219 --> 00:39:40.820
Yeah, it's interesting because when I was in Ireland, you could tell there was a palpable

00:39:40.820 --> 00:39:44.739
movement of Hollywood to Ireland specifically because their tax incentive is so good.

00:39:44.739 --> 00:39:46.860
They have a history of having good film crews.

00:39:46.860 --> 00:39:50.820
This is the other thing that people outside the industry don't really think about or expect.

00:39:50.820 --> 00:39:55.139
But you can't just drop a big budget movie into any country because you need so much

00:39:55.139 --> 00:39:56.139
local talent.

00:39:56.139 --> 00:39:57.419
You need to know that they're good on a set.

00:39:57.419 --> 00:40:02.020
And it's really rare in countries that don't have a history of filmmaking to be able to

00:40:02.020 --> 00:40:03.020
rely on that.

00:40:03.020 --> 00:40:06.780
And so they'll send advanced teams to train people so that they can keep up on a Hollywood

00:40:06.780 --> 00:40:08.659
fast paced, big budget film set.

00:40:08.659 --> 00:40:10.179
In Ireland, they already have them, right?

00:40:10.179 --> 00:40:13.659
They have an incredible number of really strong film crews.

00:40:13.659 --> 00:40:15.699
Romania, Hungary are building that.

00:40:15.699 --> 00:40:18.139
Croatia is building that.

00:40:18.139 --> 00:40:20.340
You know, that's where that's where Game of Thrones was.

00:40:20.340 --> 00:40:22.540
So, you know, you have you just pull all of those people.

00:40:22.540 --> 00:40:24.739
Malta is a small community for that.

00:40:24.739 --> 00:40:30.060
And then you have the Italy, France, Spain, Germany that have a history of their own filmmakers.

00:40:30.060 --> 00:40:34.739
And, you know, the other thing I would say from spending two months in Italy on a film

00:40:34.739 --> 00:40:40.620
set and with filmmakers is because of the language barrier of all of those places, their

00:40:40.620 --> 00:40:45.139
incentive is either to make small movies for their country or big English movies that can

00:40:45.139 --> 00:40:48.659
travel to America, because they as what I was saying at the beginning about needing

00:40:48.659 --> 00:40:55.219
the Chinese market is true times 100 for every other country wanting to make a movie that

00:40:55.219 --> 00:40:58.620
would actually make make some sort of serious financial return.

00:40:58.620 --> 00:41:01.540
Hollywood is still unique in the way that it can export a movie around the world and

00:41:01.540 --> 00:41:02.540
make a lot of money.

00:41:02.540 --> 00:41:05.020
Almost no other country in the entire world can do that.

00:41:05.020 --> 00:41:08.419
So when I was in Italy talking to Italian filmmakers, they're saying we want to make

00:41:08.419 --> 00:41:09.419
this an Italian story.

00:41:09.419 --> 00:41:10.419
We want to make it in Italy.

00:41:10.419 --> 00:41:14.459
But the maximum amount of money we think we can actually make on an Italian movie is maybe

00:41:14.739 --> 00:41:15.739
20 to 40 million dollars.

00:41:15.739 --> 00:41:19.820
But if we make it in English and we get an American star in it and we tell that story,

00:41:19.820 --> 00:41:23.500
there's a chance we could make 150 or 200, 250 million dollars.

00:41:23.500 --> 00:41:28.540
So as America goes, much of the rest of the world goes in terms of where the big dollars

00:41:28.540 --> 00:41:29.540
are.

00:41:29.540 --> 00:41:34.620
In terms of scale, it's still orders of magnitude ahead what Hollywood is doing versus the rest

00:41:34.620 --> 00:41:35.620
of the world.

00:41:35.620 --> 00:41:36.620
Zach, do you think...

00:41:36.620 --> 00:41:38.780
Say nothing of talent and quality of movie, by the way.

00:41:38.780 --> 00:41:39.780
Yeah.

00:41:39.780 --> 00:41:43.939
And I think that actually goes to my next big question is, you know, and if you guys

00:41:43.939 --> 00:41:47.500
aren't familiar with the movie, The King's Speech, it was an old Oscar winner, but and

00:41:47.500 --> 00:41:49.659
by old, I mean, like, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

00:41:49.659 --> 00:41:58.020
But the the guy who got that movie made was Franklin Leonard.

00:41:58.020 --> 00:42:01.540
And Franklin was like an assistant who read that movie.

00:42:01.540 --> 00:42:02.540
It's going to happen.

00:42:02.540 --> 00:42:04.219
He created this thing called The Blacklist.

00:42:04.219 --> 00:42:07.060
And he just like kept pushing it at people, basically, like kept like putting in their

00:42:07.060 --> 00:42:08.060
stacks of...

00:42:08.060 --> 00:42:12.939
So basically, the executives, you see, like printed out stacks of scripts that they would

00:42:12.939 --> 00:42:13.939
go read over the weekend.

00:42:13.939 --> 00:42:18.219
And then, you know, usually as an assistant, because at one point in time I was, you would

00:42:18.219 --> 00:42:22.580
like read these things and you'd write coverage, like I've written coverage for TV shows, like

00:42:22.580 --> 00:42:26.379
I wrote coverage for like one or two TV shows that like ended up being made.

00:42:26.379 --> 00:42:29.379
And it's just always like weird, like coverage is basically you read the script, you basically

00:42:29.379 --> 00:42:33.219
make like a one page synopsis and you need to be good at writing one pages, page synopses

00:42:33.219 --> 00:42:37.419
to tell people, read this, don't read this, because if you know you write good coverage

00:42:37.419 --> 00:42:41.419
and then they read it and it's actually something they make, you know, they trust you more.

00:42:41.419 --> 00:42:46.100
Where I'm going with this, though, is, you know, the tastemaker thing we were talking

00:42:46.100 --> 00:42:47.100
about.

00:42:47.100 --> 00:42:51.459
I'm curious, Zach, what do you think that is going to kind of like look like in this

00:42:51.459 --> 00:42:52.459
next world?

00:42:52.459 --> 00:42:56.780
Because things like The King's Speech, or even more recently, like Squid Game, right?

00:42:56.780 --> 00:43:02.540
Are things that some tastemaker somewhere saw and they're like, yes, and they're making

00:43:02.540 --> 00:43:03.540
big bets on it.

00:43:03.540 --> 00:43:06.459
And so like, how do you think that's going to iterate and change?

00:43:06.459 --> 00:43:13.620
Are we going to get to a point where we have like decentralized, like, budgeting, whereas

00:43:13.620 --> 00:43:17.540
like Angel Studios, they literally are making $100 million a year with their guild where

00:43:17.540 --> 00:43:22.340
people are paying them $100 a year to just kind of like pre-watch movies.

00:43:22.340 --> 00:43:25.899
Like, are we going to get more like guild type stuff where it's that or do you think

00:43:25.899 --> 00:43:32.139
it's going to be, you know, the studio model surviving in some way, shape or form?

00:43:32.139 --> 00:43:36.260
No, I think everything further decentralizes.

00:43:36.260 --> 00:43:47.139
You know, I think that as companies try to figure out how to monetize storytelling again,

00:43:47.139 --> 00:43:54.280
you know, the interesting thing about movies is that they really have this curve of attention

00:43:54.280 --> 00:43:56.580
and profitability.

00:43:56.580 --> 00:43:59.699
And it's generally kind of early on in its life cycle, and you might have a couple of

00:43:59.699 --> 00:44:01.620
waves and whatnot down the line.

00:44:01.620 --> 00:44:09.260
But in other words, the point I'm trying to make is that there need to be a steady stream

00:44:09.260 --> 00:44:15.139
of novel, new ideas and movies being pumped out to continue to be profitable.

00:44:15.139 --> 00:44:21.620
And so I think any company vying for talent or good movies is going to have to have their

00:44:21.620 --> 00:44:27.179
own quote unquote, tastemaker, you know, on staff and those people are going to have relationships

00:44:27.179 --> 00:44:29.560
with directors and actors and producers.

00:44:29.560 --> 00:44:32.840
And you know, in a model like Indie Hub, you know, those types of people can just say,

00:44:32.840 --> 00:44:34.760
hey, I'll bake myself onto this cap table.

00:44:34.760 --> 00:44:38.760
I've got a relationship with the guys over at such and such dot whatever.

00:44:38.760 --> 00:44:42.199
And you know, I vouch for these guys.

00:44:42.199 --> 00:44:44.320
I have a good track record.

00:44:44.320 --> 00:44:47.219
You know, nine out of the 10 movies that I thought would hit, hit.

00:44:47.219 --> 00:44:48.760
And so you need my opinion.

00:44:48.760 --> 00:44:52.639
Like I think these people can commoditize themselves to some extent.

00:44:52.639 --> 00:44:56.320
And it's just much more interesting way to do it in a decentralized world rather than

00:44:56.320 --> 00:45:01.439
hey, I'm going to go, you know, apply for a job at Universal or whatever, as opposed

00:45:01.439 --> 00:45:06.760
to I'm my own kind of freelance contractor and I've got good relationships and I know

00:45:06.760 --> 00:45:10.959
a particular market is going to respond to a particular idea in a particular way.

00:45:10.959 --> 00:45:16.320
So I think those people, you know, kind of end up generating their own category, so to

00:45:16.320 --> 00:45:18.479
speak.

00:45:18.479 --> 00:45:23.699
And again, my theme on all of this is just further decentralization, you know, movies,

00:45:23.699 --> 00:45:29.699
the business of movies and how movies coalesce and fall apart are very entrepreneurial and

00:45:29.699 --> 00:45:32.100
they're very contractor driven.

00:45:32.100 --> 00:45:36.699
And you know, you don't need to be employed by one, you know, again, back to peak centralization,

00:45:36.699 --> 00:45:37.699
right?

00:45:37.699 --> 00:45:41.699
Like a studio put a director under contract or a writer under contract and that person

00:45:41.699 --> 00:45:42.739
worked for that studio.

00:45:42.739 --> 00:45:45.379
But I don't think that we're going to that world.

00:45:45.379 --> 00:45:52.659
I think it's going to continue to be exceptionally entrepreneurial and relationship driven.

00:45:53.060 --> 00:45:57.219
In a digital world where you don't need to be in a physical place to have contact with

00:45:57.219 --> 00:46:00.820
somebody who might be a tastemaker or who might be a great director, you don't need

00:46:00.820 --> 00:46:07.139
to be conversing with people on the backlot at lunch every day to make connections.

00:46:07.139 --> 00:46:08.820
You've got social media for that.

00:46:09.379 --> 00:46:14.820
So, yeah, I don't know if that answered the question, but I just think we further decentralization,

00:46:14.820 --> 00:46:16.340
further decentralization.

00:46:16.340 --> 00:46:20.899
And in aggregate, I think that that increases the value of the industry.

00:46:20.979 --> 00:46:26.020
It's just that the financial benefits of those don't get plowed into one entity.

00:46:27.219 --> 00:46:27.860
Yeah, I agree.

00:46:27.860 --> 00:46:29.219
And yeah, we have those.

00:46:29.219 --> 00:46:29.379
Yeah.

00:46:29.379 --> 00:46:31.139
Did you want to ask a slightly different question?

00:46:31.139 --> 00:46:32.580
I was going to riff on that.

00:46:32.580 --> 00:46:35.300
You can jump on it, but I'll answer that thing.

00:46:35.300 --> 00:46:38.500
But what I want to know is, do you think it's going to be more advantageous to own a small

00:46:38.500 --> 00:46:40.100
theater or drive-in in the future?

00:46:41.780 --> 00:46:46.659
I'd still say a small theater because we still, for all of our technology, we've never solved

00:46:46.659 --> 00:46:47.620
sound and drive-ins.

00:46:47.620 --> 00:46:48.100
It's terrible.

00:46:48.340 --> 00:46:58.179
When I was going to say about the tastemakers, I would say that most of the people with the

00:46:58.179 --> 00:47:02.580
proclivity for tastemaking who have really good taste in scripts and executing movies

00:47:02.580 --> 00:47:06.179
and have been developing that skill for their whole careers are still at the studios.

00:47:06.179 --> 00:47:09.620
And over the past two and a half years, 40% of them have been laid off.

00:47:09.620 --> 00:47:11.379
And they're all somewhere.

00:47:11.379 --> 00:47:16.020
And I would guess that right now, most of them are carrying mortgages or wondering what

00:47:16.020 --> 00:47:18.340
to do next and trying to get back in.

00:47:18.340 --> 00:47:20.659
But I don't think those jobs are coming back.

00:47:20.659 --> 00:47:23.939
And that means I think there's an enormous amount of people with really good taste who

00:47:23.939 --> 00:47:26.899
are really good at developing scripts, who have a really good eye for talent, who know

00:47:26.899 --> 00:47:28.020
how to make movies.

00:47:28.020 --> 00:47:31.300
And I think that's only going more away from the studios.

00:47:31.300 --> 00:47:35.620
They're still there because the people that can really make the movies at scale are still

00:47:35.620 --> 00:47:36.659
the studios.

00:47:36.659 --> 00:47:38.100
That's the thing that's dying.

00:47:38.100 --> 00:47:42.820
And if you want to make a quarter million dollars to read scripts and make movies, then

00:47:42.820 --> 00:47:44.500
you have to be in one of those places.

00:47:44.500 --> 00:47:46.580
Those are the only places that are paying you to do it.

00:47:46.580 --> 00:47:50.820
As those jobs continue to go away, I think you're going to have what Zach was talking

00:47:50.820 --> 00:47:56.020
about of a peak boomer, but a peak millennial of 40 to 50-year-olds who have this skill

00:47:56.020 --> 00:47:58.659
that's still valuable in the marketplace somehow.

00:47:58.659 --> 00:48:01.540
And if someone can figure out how to grab all of those people and market them or even

00:48:01.540 --> 00:48:05.860
a handful of those people and empower them, I think you're just going to see that move

00:48:05.860 --> 00:48:07.939
elsewhere in Hollywood as these studios fail.

00:48:07.939 --> 00:48:10.659
But right now, it still is the gate that everyone's trying to get to.

00:48:10.659 --> 00:48:13.060
It's just getting smaller and smaller with more people trying to get through it.

00:48:13.620 --> 00:48:15.699
How do you get those guys involved with AI?

00:48:16.580 --> 00:48:20.100
I'm very curious if you guys have thought about this, but you actually just hit something

00:48:20.100 --> 00:48:20.979
that I didn't even think about.

00:48:20.979 --> 00:48:24.419
I have good friends who are over at Sony and people over at CBS, and they all got laid

00:48:24.419 --> 00:48:24.659
off.

00:48:28.580 --> 00:48:32.419
That's actually a really interesting thing, is you have these people who are really good

00:48:32.419 --> 00:48:39.699
at taste-making and really good at plussing things, and then you have these kids who are

00:48:39.699 --> 00:48:40.899
really good at prompting.

00:48:40.899 --> 00:48:42.260
How do you connect those two?

00:48:42.260 --> 00:48:43.780
That's an interesting thought.

00:48:44.659 --> 00:48:45.939
It's an interesting thought.

00:48:45.939 --> 00:48:47.459
I still think we're really far away.

00:48:47.459 --> 00:48:52.659
For as exciting as AI is and as fast as it's moving, I think we're so far away from an

00:48:52.659 --> 00:48:57.780
AI actually making a movie on its own apart from a very expensive production.

00:48:58.500 --> 00:49:00.580
And by very expensive, I mean like $5 million.

00:49:00.580 --> 00:49:04.979
And maybe AI can now take a $5 million production and make it look like a $12 million production,

00:49:04.979 --> 00:49:10.020
but I don't think we're anywhere close to $200,000 looking like what we consider a $25

00:49:10.020 --> 00:49:11.219
million movie to make.

00:49:12.179 --> 00:49:13.780
Or these Trump music videos.

00:49:15.620 --> 00:49:16.899
Well, that's the thing, right?

00:49:16.899 --> 00:49:22.100
I do the image generation and I see it, and I think you're more seeing the actual practical

00:49:22.100 --> 00:49:24.419
things like some of the VFX jobs.

00:49:24.419 --> 00:49:29.620
I think a VFX house is very close from needing to be 100 people to needing to be like 20

00:49:29.620 --> 00:49:33.620
people, and that's devastating for that element of the business.

00:49:33.620 --> 00:49:39.459
But we're not even close to taking a performance, like a strong actor performance or a dynamic

00:49:39.459 --> 00:49:43.540
between two people on screen that comes out of the magic of acting and directing and being

00:49:43.540 --> 00:49:44.820
able to recreate that with AI.

00:49:45.620 --> 00:49:49.459
I just think we're adding a tool that's going to make it generally cheaper, but I don't

00:49:49.459 --> 00:49:50.580
see it replacing it at all.

00:49:51.300 --> 00:49:55.699
Yeah, we're seeing the old thing die and a new thing has to be born.

00:49:55.699 --> 00:49:58.340
And for the new thing to be born, you've got to crawl, then you got to walk, then you got

00:49:58.340 --> 00:49:59.060
to run.

00:49:59.060 --> 00:50:00.659
Nobody's going to be running anytime soon.

00:50:00.659 --> 00:50:04.580
But what I would say to people like that is get your crew together.

00:50:04.580 --> 00:50:05.459
You're a good showrunner.

00:50:05.459 --> 00:50:06.260
You know some good people.

00:50:06.260 --> 00:50:07.379
You have some interesting ideas.

00:50:08.260 --> 00:50:10.179
Get some young, talented filmmakers together.

00:50:10.820 --> 00:50:11.860
Throw up something great.

00:50:11.860 --> 00:50:13.060
Whip up a little bit of an audience.

00:50:13.060 --> 00:50:14.020
Put it on Indie Hub.

00:50:14.020 --> 00:50:18.100
Bake yourself into the cap table and get paid in a novel way that you weren't able to get

00:50:18.100 --> 00:50:18.820
paid before.

00:50:18.820 --> 00:50:21.699
In other words, test out a new way of doing things.

00:50:21.699 --> 00:50:22.739
Test out a market.

00:50:22.739 --> 00:50:27.060
Test out a way to monetize something that's different than the old model and see if you

00:50:27.060 --> 00:50:31.780
can figure out a way to say, OK, we did something this small of this budget and got this return.

00:50:31.780 --> 00:50:32.820
How can we make this bigger?

00:50:32.820 --> 00:50:36.659
How can we import an audience from one platform to the other platform?

00:50:37.939 --> 00:50:39.939
I mean, it's why I founded Indie Hub.

00:50:39.939 --> 00:50:44.580
But I really, really think that the relevant question for the whole thing is where is the

00:50:44.580 --> 00:50:45.379
money coming from?

00:50:46.260 --> 00:50:48.580
And how is that revenue being distributed?

00:50:48.580 --> 00:50:49.699
Those are the big questions.

00:50:49.699 --> 00:50:54.500
And if you can solve for that a little bit with the way tech is now and the way payments

00:50:54.500 --> 00:50:58.419
work, it's going to take time.

00:50:58.419 --> 00:51:02.979
To Corey's point, like the peak millennial, he's going to have to be the old guy now who

00:51:02.979 --> 00:51:04.340
teaches young guys how to do things.

00:51:04.739 --> 00:51:06.739
But he has the overall knowledge on how to do it.

00:51:06.739 --> 00:51:08.100
So you've got to take people under your wing.

00:51:08.100 --> 00:51:09.620
You've got to take risks.

00:51:09.620 --> 00:51:11.219
You've got to try new things.

00:51:11.219 --> 00:51:16.820
But I really think that the answer to almost all of this is saying the corporate structure

00:51:16.820 --> 00:51:18.419
is no longer sustainable.

00:51:18.419 --> 00:51:19.300
It's too heavy.

00:51:19.300 --> 00:51:20.260
It's too overweight.

00:51:20.260 --> 00:51:21.379
It's too admin heavy.

00:51:21.939 --> 00:51:26.100
And you've got to go out and take risks and try to put it on platforms like Indie Hub

00:51:26.100 --> 00:51:28.500
and get yourself paid in a novel way.

00:51:29.060 --> 00:51:29.560
Yeah.

00:51:31.300 --> 00:51:31.860
Good stuff.

00:51:31.860 --> 00:51:36.179
Do you guys have any last kind of thoughts on anything or anything you guys are working

00:51:36.179 --> 00:51:37.060
on just coming up?

00:51:37.060 --> 00:51:40.500
You want to shout out before we wrap up for today?

00:51:41.860 --> 00:51:45.219
Not too much other than go check out Indie Hub.

00:51:45.219 --> 00:51:51.459
I do think it's worth, I don't know if we have any answers on this one, but it's worth

00:51:51.459 --> 00:52:00.580
thinking about the difference of how to value something that's digital versus how to value

00:52:00.580 --> 00:52:05.780
something that's physical and the constraints of something that's physical versus the

00:52:05.780 --> 00:52:07.219
constraints of something that's digital.

00:52:08.739 --> 00:52:13.300
You know, growing beef is going to be capturable, so to speak.

00:52:13.300 --> 00:52:18.419
It's going to be, there's clear things that you have to do to deliver your product, but

00:52:18.419 --> 00:52:20.419
that's not necessarily true in the digital world.

00:52:20.979 --> 00:52:26.179
And, you know, I think that there's, I think that it's really worth thinking about in a

00:52:26.179 --> 00:52:33.379
time of political uncertainty where the value chain, how the value chain works in a given

00:52:33.379 --> 00:52:37.540
market and where the efficiencies lie and the inefficiencies lie.

00:52:38.340 --> 00:52:38.580
Yeah.

00:52:40.739 --> 00:52:41.620
Yeah, I'd agree with that.

00:52:41.620 --> 00:52:45.219
And I think there's this temptation to think that because it's digital, it means free.

00:52:45.219 --> 00:52:48.500
And I think we've just been renting things with our information for such a long time.

00:52:48.500 --> 00:52:51.939
And I think as that goes away, people realize that none of that was actually free.

00:52:51.939 --> 00:52:53.379
Your data was just being sold a lot.

00:52:53.379 --> 00:52:56.340
And I think that era is slowly ending as well.

00:52:56.340 --> 00:52:58.899
And I think we'll have more of a sense that things aren't free.

00:52:58.899 --> 00:53:02.739
I think you could run into where you are paying for email accounts and things like that.

00:53:02.739 --> 00:53:06.659
And I think, you know, as something's free, it becomes lower quality, right?

00:53:06.659 --> 00:53:08.820
That's just necessarily.

00:53:08.820 --> 00:53:12.899
So if all of your content, if all of your entertainment, you expect to be free, you're

00:53:12.899 --> 00:53:15.540
going to be getting a pretty low standard of entertainment.

00:53:15.540 --> 00:53:19.219
And I think this will demand that people pay for things.

00:53:19.219 --> 00:53:21.939
It's interesting because that brings into, you know, going back, we haven't talked much

00:53:21.939 --> 00:53:24.739
about Bitcoin on those, but that goes to Adam Back's idea of hash cash.

00:53:24.739 --> 00:53:28.820
And so it's like, if people aren't familiar with this, but he was essentially, if you

00:53:28.820 --> 00:53:30.979
wanted to spam somebody with email, you had to pay for it.

00:53:30.979 --> 00:53:38.260
And that was part of the, you know, philosophy and stuff that Satoshi used in his thinking

00:53:38.260 --> 00:53:41.620
to create like proof of work and all that other stuff for Bitcoin.

00:53:41.620 --> 00:53:46.419
But I actually think you hit on something really, really interesting about, you know,

00:53:46.419 --> 00:53:53.139
getting to a true Bitcoin future where things are, you know, Bitcoin based.

00:53:53.139 --> 00:53:55.939
I don't want to use the word tokenized because that's not what I'm talking about.

00:53:55.939 --> 00:54:02.020
I'm literally talking about a Bitcoin first foundation, because if you are charged 10

00:54:02.020 --> 00:54:07.379
sats or one sat even to reach a person, I mean, people are doing that now with zaps

00:54:07.379 --> 00:54:11.139
right on Nostra and then, you know, on Orange Blab.

00:54:12.100 --> 00:54:17.219
If you are paying something, if it has a little bit of a sting to it, you're going to put

00:54:17.219 --> 00:54:18.419
a little bit more thought into it.

00:54:18.419 --> 00:54:20.580
It's not going to be one of those things you're just like, oh, it's like I'm going to reach

00:54:20.580 --> 00:54:21.219
100 million people.

00:54:21.219 --> 00:54:25.860
It's like, no, I want to reach 50 qualified people and I will pay more to do that.

00:54:25.860 --> 00:54:30.419
But because I'm paying more to do that, I'm going to actually spend more time to do it.

00:54:30.419 --> 00:54:31.459
So I think it's actually interesting.

00:54:31.459 --> 00:54:36.340
You know, we'll get to a place where AI is just flooding the zone, which is where we're

00:54:36.340 --> 00:54:37.219
at right now.

00:54:37.219 --> 00:54:41.379
But it's going to come back like the pendulum will switch from flooding the zone to actually

00:54:41.379 --> 00:54:42.820
like quality.

00:54:42.820 --> 00:54:46.659
And so right now, though, we're probably, you know, we're on our way this way to flooding

00:54:46.659 --> 00:54:46.979
the zone.

00:54:46.979 --> 00:54:48.260
We're probably like here.

00:54:48.260 --> 00:54:51.379
So we got a lot more zone flooding to happen.

00:54:51.379 --> 00:54:58.260
But I do think the tool as it's sharpened when it comes back the other direction and

00:54:58.260 --> 00:55:02.419
we're rebuilding things and we're seeing 3D printed sculptures and things like that.

00:55:02.419 --> 00:55:06.979
I think I think we're in for a really I think the new cultural renaissance is going to be

00:55:06.979 --> 00:55:07.780
really cool to see.

00:55:08.419 --> 00:55:13.219
I think I've had some really interesting conversations from the Indie Hub side of things,

00:55:14.179 --> 00:55:21.139
from the from the exhibition side of how do you how do you continue to monetize digital

00:55:21.139 --> 00:55:26.179
content in where where everything digital becomes free when information is free?

00:55:26.179 --> 00:55:27.459
How do you monetize that content?

00:55:27.459 --> 00:55:31.860
And will that content have a viable business model at all?

00:55:32.500 --> 00:55:37.939
And one of the things that I've I don't have an answer to it, but one of the things I think

00:55:37.939 --> 00:55:43.860
about is like to Corey's point, things that are free are generally going to be the cheap,

00:55:43.860 --> 00:55:44.739
lame thing.

00:55:44.739 --> 00:55:50.020
And, you know, even if you get one filmmaker who's really good at at AI and is able to

00:55:50.020 --> 00:55:55.540
pump out something that's really kick ass with AI, it's still going to generally be

00:55:55.540 --> 00:55:58.500
better if you have 50 great people working on a thing.

00:55:59.139 --> 00:56:02.020
And there's you know, the competition is always relative.

00:56:03.060 --> 00:56:06.899
Like, yeah, we're going to be able to do things that we weren't able to do before with half

00:56:06.899 --> 00:56:07.939
of the people.

00:56:07.939 --> 00:56:11.300
But if we use the same amount of people we were using before, we're going to do something

00:56:11.300 --> 00:56:16.659
that is significantly greater or more valuable, for lack of a better expression than we were

00:56:16.659 --> 00:56:17.219
doing before.

00:56:17.219 --> 00:56:25.459
So, you know, like I guess what I'm saying is products that require a lot of human talent

00:56:25.459 --> 00:56:31.939
and coordination will probably always capture or demand some premium because it's the collective

00:56:31.939 --> 00:56:35.060
efforts of a lot of people who are really fucking good at what they do, regardless of

00:56:35.060 --> 00:56:36.820
whether they're using AI or not.

00:56:36.820 --> 00:56:40.580
Yeah, it's still going to be a better output with better input.

00:56:40.580 --> 00:56:44.260
The simplest way to say that is, and it's my favorite thing to do and look at is, but

00:56:44.260 --> 00:56:48.340
two plus two in good business, two plus two always equals five, period.

00:56:49.219 --> 00:56:55.060
Like two plus two must equal five or you're not actually doing what you need to be doing.

00:56:55.060 --> 00:56:56.739
And five is the intangible.

00:56:56.739 --> 00:56:58.580
Like four is table stakes.

00:56:58.580 --> 00:57:02.020
Four is you made your money back, you made P&A.

00:57:02.020 --> 00:57:06.260
Five is, you know, you have the Dark Knight series, right?

00:57:06.260 --> 00:57:07.300
Two plus two equals five.

00:57:07.300 --> 00:57:10.179
And then that thing of like, it's like cultural icon.

00:57:10.179 --> 00:57:14.500
And it's one of those things that's got that intangible that is going to sustain and have

00:57:14.500 --> 00:57:15.139
a Lindy effect.

00:57:15.780 --> 00:57:20.820
Yeah, the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts, which is really, honestly,

00:57:20.820 --> 00:57:22.100
the magic of filmmaking.

00:57:22.100 --> 00:57:24.820
You know, I think you talked to most people who got into that business.

00:57:25.699 --> 00:57:32.659
There is some just incredible thing that happens when you get a great group of people together

00:57:32.659 --> 00:57:35.620
working on a project and you do something wonderful.

00:57:35.620 --> 00:57:37.860
There's that extra element that comes in out of nowhere.

00:57:37.860 --> 00:57:40.899
That's only possible when you've got great talent.

00:57:41.780 --> 00:57:43.060
It feels like magic.

00:57:43.060 --> 00:57:43.860
It feels like magic.

00:57:43.860 --> 00:57:47.780
Like it literally is indescribable when it actually fires like that.

00:57:48.899 --> 00:57:49.780
And it does.

00:57:49.780 --> 00:57:52.100
It does equal more than the input for sure.

00:57:52.739 --> 00:57:55.219
So yeah, there will always be a premium on that.

00:57:55.219 --> 00:57:56.100
It's the cocaine.

00:57:56.100 --> 00:57:58.899
Like it's interesting because I was even thinking about that indentured servitude.

00:57:58.899 --> 00:58:02.500
It's like, why are people here who are actors or whatever?

00:58:03.060 --> 00:58:05.620
Gaffer scripts who just haven't worked in a long time.

00:58:05.620 --> 00:58:07.620
And it's that thing you're talking about.

00:58:07.620 --> 00:58:13.699
It's like the ability to feel God, essentially, because I do think that that is the

00:58:15.379 --> 00:58:16.739
big bang moment, right?

00:58:16.739 --> 00:58:21.219
It's that it was that spark that kind of created everything, right?

00:58:21.219 --> 00:58:22.340
And it's like you want that spark.

00:58:22.340 --> 00:58:23.379
You're chasing that spark.

00:58:23.379 --> 00:58:24.260
You're chasing lightning.

00:58:25.060 --> 00:58:26.179
Well, I think it is.

00:58:26.179 --> 00:58:28.179
I mean, the Genesis thing is important, right?

00:58:28.179 --> 00:58:31.939
It's like God created man, then in his image.

00:58:31.939 --> 00:58:37.459
Just that phrase implies that it is a godly thing to create and we are in his image so

00:58:37.459 --> 00:58:38.260
we can create.

00:58:38.260 --> 00:58:40.820
So when we create, we are acting like God, right?

00:58:40.820 --> 00:58:45.540
It logically processes what I said at the beginning, that storytelling is one of the

00:58:45.540 --> 00:58:46.100
oldest things.

00:58:46.100 --> 00:58:48.899
It's like it's been a godly activity as long as we've been human.

00:58:49.379 --> 00:58:49.879
Mm hmm.

00:58:50.820 --> 00:58:51.459
I've had that.

00:58:51.459 --> 00:58:58.260
I've had this conversation where people, sometimes with VCs or like business people

00:58:58.260 --> 00:59:02.340
who just don't like, well, why would somebody, why are people like, where are all these,

00:59:02.340 --> 00:59:04.580
you know, like, in other words, how many movies could you get on the platform?

00:59:04.580 --> 00:59:09.219
Like there are 14,000 submissions to Sundance every year, the overwhelming majority of which

00:59:09.219 --> 00:59:11.139
you'll never see or hear about.

00:59:11.139 --> 00:59:14.260
And the question is, you know, from business minded people like, well, two plus two is

00:59:14.260 --> 00:59:15.540
not equaling four in that situation.

00:59:15.540 --> 00:59:18.260
I'm like, what you don't understand is that we're addicts.

00:59:18.260 --> 00:59:19.939
We can't stop.

00:59:20.500 --> 00:59:25.139
There is something else afoot here that's not just the balance sheet making sense.

00:59:27.699 --> 00:59:27.939
Yeah.

00:59:27.939 --> 00:59:31.939
So if you can just solve that, if you can just connect those markets, you can connect

00:59:31.939 --> 00:59:35.300
the addicts that are constantly making things to people who are constantly consuming things,

00:59:35.300 --> 00:59:36.179
you've got something that'll win.

00:59:38.020 --> 00:59:44.979
Speaking of knickknacks and zen, this is not a tobacco ad, by the way.

00:59:46.580 --> 00:59:47.300
No free ads.

00:59:47.939 --> 00:59:48.899
No free ads.

00:59:48.899 --> 00:59:50.100
I will do a shout out, though.

00:59:50.100 --> 00:59:55.219
We're going to be doing some stuff for Bitcoin Film Festival that is going to be advertising

00:59:55.219 --> 00:59:55.780
focused.

00:59:55.780 --> 00:59:57.459
So be looking out for that.

00:59:57.459 --> 00:59:58.580
And hang on a sec, bud.

00:59:59.139 --> 01:00:03.139
And yeah, but I think that's probably the end for today.

01:00:03.139 --> 01:00:05.060
So thank you guys for jumping in.

01:00:05.060 --> 01:00:06.580
Thank you, everybody, for tuning in.

01:00:06.580 --> 01:00:08.820
And we'll see you probably Thursday.

01:00:08.820 --> 01:00:09.780
I think we're going to do another one.

01:00:09.780 --> 01:00:10.979
So awesome.

01:00:11.540 --> 01:00:12.580
Thank you, guys.

01:00:12.580 --> 01:00:13.060
See you guys.