This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Har Everyone, Welcome to a special weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, looking at some of our favorite guests from the Bloomberg screen Time event in Los Angeles.
Screen Time gathers the moguls, celebrities and entrepreneurs defining the next phase of pop culture. Over a day and a half in the heart of Hollywood, we discussed and debated the future of Hollywood studios, the boom, and sports and live music, and of course, the effect of AI on the creative industries.
AI is everywhere. We're going to hear from actors, studio heads, investors, and even a late night host.
Not just any late night hosts.
No, he's been in the news a lot lately.
His name rhymes with Miimmy Kimmel.
That was the lame, but yes, indeed we are talking about Jimmy Kimmel. We begin though in the media space, and a conversation between our Lucas Shaw, who organized the event with the Bloomberg Live team, and the CEO of Skydance Media, David Allison, the two of them in a conversation, we.
Got to start with Paramount.
You chase this company for a couple of years, if not longer.
If you look at what they own.
They have a bunch of cable networks that have been in decline for almost as long as I've been doing my job. They have a movie studio that is, by most metrics, the last place movie studio the last few years, and a streaming service that in terms of at least engagement is sort.
Of in the third tier.
So why were you so interested in what do you see in the company that investors and a lot of other potential bidders did not.
Yeah, no, absolutely, it's a great question.
First, I just want to say we couldn't be more excited about the place that we're starting with the asset that we purchased, right, we have eighty million streaming subscribers. We have one of the best basically content libraries in existence with the Paramount and CBS. And I also think you need to distinguish when you talk about the linear business.
Right, there's the cable, which.
Yes, has been declined, but if you look at CBS, it actually is a remarkable asset that's been number one in prime time for seventeenth straight seasons. Incredible sports rights which we're growing and is still highly highly profitable and cash flow perspective, and I agree with you, has not been run in the best manner for the last fifteen years.
And for me, that's all opportunity, an opportunity to really reignite the creative content engines, to navigate the transition that's required to really turn Paramount Plus into a leader in streaming.
And we believe we have the ability to both win.
In content and also become the most technologically capable media company to effectively navigate this transition. We always looked at you know, you can look at the music business ten years ago. We believe we can navigate that. We also really looked at where traditional tech company were, you know, call it ten fifteen years ago, and there is a period of time where you know, the Microsoft's.
The world, the oracles of the world were.
Being disrupted and those companies that actually disrupted themselves and transitions are now all traded at all time highs. We believe we have the opportunity to do the same thing.
So you talked about streaming. You mentioned that the eighty million subscribers earlier. You know, you look at it, those those monthly Nielsen reports that people pay a lot of attention to. Right, are youtubes at thirteen percent of TV viewing?
Netflix? Is that between eight and.
Nine most months Paramount and you combine Paramount plus and Pluto it sort of sits around two percent.
You can correct me if I'm off there. I think it's about right.
So how do you get that up forget about thirteen or eight like Disney's in the four or five range.
How do you get that up there?
And you've talked about content and tech? Can you get specific on those fronts like what you're going to do?
Absolutely?
So, Look, one of the things we really believed in, like what I'll say, we're nine weeks in and I'm really proud of the momentum the team has been able to build over the last nine weeks. One of the things we really believe being the first own and operated studio to my knowledge since actually Walt Disney built his own shop, was that we would have the opportunity to
really think long term. That means long term partnerships with talent where you can basically say, don't just think about your next movie or your next show.
We want to build a relationship with.
You over a decade and actually say we're going to make your next four or five movies, your next four or five series, and really think long term and invest for long term growth. The great news and when you look at we had to win in content, I think we're well on our way to being.
Able to do that.
If you look at specifics right, we're able to get the Obviously, the UFC deals one of the first things we announced we came over. We're incredibly proud that Activision chose to partner with us on Call of Duty, which is the most successful video game franchise of all time
with five hundred million units sold. We're able to have James Mangold come over and obviously call his you know, one of the greatest filmmakers working to call Paramount Home Boulder Light, who obviously had incredible hits like Weapons earlier this year. In addition to that, you know, we've been able to secure high profile packages for streaming with basically paramount plus. And then we're also really reinvigorating what we're doing in news with CBS News with the acquisition of
the Free Press. And then I think when you look at CBS's broadcast lineup, I think we have the strongest lineup, maybe arguably in the company's history. And so I think we've really successfully reinvigorated the creative content engines of the company in a really short period of time.
And I think we're going to be able to do that at scale. So that's one two.
You know, I think when you look at kind of ten thousand feet, Silicon Valley has done an excellent job of really coming into Hollywood. I mean the platform that Netflix has built, the platform that basically Amazon is built, and these are incredible companies.
I'd say the platform that Amazon has built is not very good, but they do have the benefit of Amazon behind. Even people who work at Amazon but acknowledge the product could be better.
I think when you look at the number of subscribers, I think they're doing okay. And you know, from from that standpoint, but what we really want to become. We talk about becoming the most technologically capable media company.
Believe we have the capability to do that. We're bringing in the prior leadership.
We just obviously hired our CPO Dan Glasgow, who was formally obviously.
Running product at metaphor.
Facebook, who is obviously a phenomenal leader, to come into the business. And we have really deep tech partnerships that are really going to enable, we think Paramount for the first time to actually build platforms that are competitive with Netflix, that are competitive with Amazon, and actually successfully grow in scale.
And I think you've said this, You've talked about this a lot, given this moment in time that we exist in, great art and great technology need to work hand in hand together to effectuate the transition the overall businesses in Is there.
Some things like concrete about the Paramount plus platform right now that you think is clearly substandard, And how like I've heard you talk about the recommendation algorithm right and how you think that could be better. Does having us a better recommendation algorithm really going to like bring in ten million new customers or make people spend an extra two hours a day with your with your service.
So you have to do two things.
One like, let's just talk about the asset that we acquired.
We inherited right.
Paramount as it exists today operates three streaming platforms, three separate stack tech stacks on two different clouds, which is both inefficient and wildly expensive. So if you actually said I'm gonna if I had unlimited resources, this is not how you do.
For those who don't follow, the three services are Paramount Plus, Pluto TV, and b BT plus correct.
So we're in the process right now of basically consolidating all of those onto a single into a single stack, which will both significantly improve the operational capabilities of the product, and we're doing a lot to basically overhaul every single aspect of the stack. But also the more data that you obviously get in there, which is the more users, the better you're going to.
Be able to recommend content.
So we are we are definitely overhauling basically the product right now. But in addition to that, to me, technology is really in service of the content, not the other way around, and we're going to make significantly more shows at Paramount Plus. We are investing in sports rights, and when you look at the acquisition of the UFC, that is the largest sport that is basically not shared between multiple platforms, and to basically, and they have one hundred
million fans. They've grown twenty five percent from twenty nineteen to date. They grew at that level sitting behind a double paywall. So we think when you eliminate that double paywall, it's going to open it up and make it much more accessible. Literally, one paper you fight is what a Paramount Plus subscription is. And then basically those hundred million fans are going to be able to get access to
everything they love. And in addition to that, when you look at the overall sports strategy, which cannot be more important to us, Paramount had a really strong fall and spring sports calendar, but really light in the summer.
The football In the fall, you have March Madness.
In the spring, you have the Masters, which which we're incredibly proud to be partners with, and now with UFC, we have a year long sports strategy and that in addition to all of the new originals that we're going to be making for P plus, there's going to be more content, there's going to be a better tech product that's going to yield additional engage and scale.
So I won't I have a follow up on that, but I'm curious because you mentioned Pluto. You've talked a lot about combining the back end. How likely is it that you just combine all those services into one consumer facing app where if you want to watch Pluto, you're just going to Paramount Plus.
So right now we're basically combining the back the back end. It's certainly something we've discussed and explore, but not.
Something we're planning to do right now.
Got it? And you're in the like the fun spending money, showing people you're here to reinvigorate the company phase.
When does the less fun part?
So, look, one of the things that I think is actually important is this business can be operated a lot more efficiently than was operated in the past. And you know, we've obviously announced you know, two billion dollars and obviously run rate synergies. We've said we're going to meaningfully obviously exceed those targets, and from our perspective, we intend to do that as quickly as possible, so that we can basically get that behind us then have the entire team just building for the future.
So does that do cuts start before the end of the year.
You know, I can't answer that question.
Let's go to a couple other questions you probably can't answer. Have you we're going there already, all right, Have you made an offer yet for Warner Brothers Discovery?
All right, we'll talk about tennis.
We'll get to tennis at the end.
I already I don't know if you saw it.
I asked Greg Peters who is better at tennis?
Him or Bill Gate.
You can probably answer that question he dodged, But.
The adotention, I actually can't ass attention.
I've never seen either of them play tennis, so I don't feel equipped to be able to do.
Let's go back to the offer for Warner Brothers Discovery.
So so, look, we're a publicly traded company, and I think you know, we're not in a position to be able to comment on rumors speculation of any kind, because there's a couple of rumors and speculations obviously out there in terms of what we may or may not be doing.
But look, what I can't comment on is people to kind of understand our mindset, right, And I actually think, you know, ironically, it was David Zaslov last year that said, you know, consolidation the media business is important, and the way we approach everything is first and foremost what's good for the talent community, what's good for our shareholders and value creation, and what's good for basically storytelling at large.
And so from our standpoint, whether we were approach any acquisition, I actually do think there's a lot of options out there in terms of what actually might be actionable in the near future. We would approach that through the lens of wanting to make more, not less, you know.
Because the natural conclusion if you were to merge with one of those Discovery is you take two companies that combines I don't remember the content's been between the two of them, but spend billions of dollars. And much as you're combining Guidance and Paramount, you take money out. You would take money out there. Companies that merge don't tend to spend more money on the other side of it.
So what I would say, and again I'm not going to comment on one of brothers Discovery, but you know you said it when you talked about Paramount actually need more content to yield more engagement, and so we would actually want to be in the business throughout whatever lens we're looking at of actually producing more, you know, more movies, more television series, more to get to scale, because you need that content, you need that great storytelling to yield engagement.
And from that standpoint, we're also in the business first and foremost of creating long term value creation. And you know, in one of the things I think I hope we've proven obviously with our family is we are in the business of building long term value for shareholders, and I think we've done that successfully.
That's Guy Dance Media CEO David Ellison speaking with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw.
Coming up, more from our conversations at the Bloomberg screen Time event in Los Angeles. Up next, we'll hear from Warner Brothers co chairs and co CEOs Pam Abdy and Mike de Luca.
This is Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
We are back on Bloomberg Business Week looking at some of our favorite guests from the Bloomberg screen Time event held this past week in Los Angeles.
Our Lucas Shaw sat down with the duo behind this year's blockbusters, including Sinners, f One, a Minecraft movie, and Weapons. Warner Brothers Motion Picture chiefs Pam Abde and Mike de Luca. They break down the high stakes business of filmmaking and an era of shifting audience tastes and streaming disruption.
I want to start on the state of the movie business because you were two of the biggest semophiles in the world, I'd say, and I was listening to an appearance you guys made on this SmartLess podcast earlier this year, and you were talking about how there are not enough movies being made and you're sort of I was struck because you guys run a movie studio that would seem to be within your power to decide how many movies you make, So why don't you and your peers make more movies?
Well, we have made more movies, so you know, are one of the first things we were tasked to do when we got to the study it was increased the output, and I think we increased it from I think when we got there it was four to six movies and we're up to twelve this year, heading towards eighteen hopefully.
So we're doing our part, I feel like.
And one of the most amazing things the reason we're so optimistic about our business is Warner Brothers achieved four billion in worldwide gross this year, the first time since twenty nineteen, so at least in terms of our studio, we're already at pre pandemic levels. But I think the most significant metric is we did it on nine less
movies than twenty nineteen. We did it on eleven movies, and they had twenty shots at it, which I think shows that there's a robust theatrical audience just waiting for more movies to get made.
They always talk about, you.
Know, box offices down anywhere from twenty five to thirty percent, but there's also twenty five percent less movies in the marketplace. So that's why we always feel like it's a it's a glass half full situation, and if there were more movies, you'd see that box office climb.
Well. One of the reasons that I assume that the number of movies is down is how expensive it has become to make them. So, as someone who's not part of the the sausage making process, why does it feel like every major studio release now costs two hundred million dollars?
I don't think every.
Weapons did not, But can we agree that the cost of making movies has gone up.
A lot, sure, we can absolutely agree. I think the way we look at it is a diverse slate, right, and we look at different metrics and different size movies, and it's really about balancing the slates. So there's no one size fits all approach to budgeting of film. You have to meet with the filmmaker. You have to look at what the story is, who the audience is, what genre it is. We share it with our teams around the world, and we all come up with the right
size budget for that film. And it's really it really leads with being based on.
The vision of the filmmaker.
Right.
Okay, that does make me want to I wasn't going to get here yet, but I want to zoom ahead to the movie you just released, one battle after another, Paul Thomas Aason movie.
Great movie.
Everyone thinks it's, if not the front runner for Best Picture, one of them. You gave one hundred and thirty five million dollar budget to a director who never had a movie gross one hundred million dollars. Can you walk me through how that worked in your the formula you were just talking about.
Not confirming that that's the budget. However, to point take in that it's certainly Paul's most expensive movie. And I think when you know, when we all read it in this Pam set in our organization, you know, we are really big on sharing the script with our teams, both international domestic. Everybody who's got a stake in that movie's success gets to weigh in, and we arrive as many studios as all the studios do with a model that
basically informs the green light process. So we read this two and a half years ago as a satirical action comedy with Leo, and you know, because it read like the masterpiece it is, we leaned in, like if we we set up the kind of you know, rigorous analysis that enables us to trigger a green light, but if it's a if it's a you know, a bold provocative swing, we're just our dna is to lean in and give it a shot.
So Leo's comps kind.
Of gave it the credibility to say, well, we can aim for the high case. But really what carried the day was just it read like the movie it is.
It just read like a masterpiece.
And one of the overriding operating principles at the studio is to is to continue that legacy of warners whether it was Stanley Kubrick or Quean Eastwood or Ben Affleck. But get into these situations with the best filmmakers of the day and try to bring people, try to bring audiences or a star for originality, you know, new masterpieces, new modern masterpieces, and that's that's what we feel like Paul's given us.
So we're going to set aside the masterpiece part of the conversation for a second. Do you think that the movie will be a commercial success?
I do.
I'm a believer. It's a marathon with this movie, not a sprint. I think it's going to lag out to a number that we'll be happy with.
Yeah, but it's hard. We can't divorce.
I'd be lying if I said we're divorcing it from the pride we have in it, and you know it's it's it. And also with Weapons and Centers, what those three movies say about the chances for original films to get made, you know, from the best directors working today.
It's it's where Warner Brothers wants to be.
And it goes into our overall strategy. You know, when we met with David three years ago, we sat down and we said very clearly let's bring the best storytellers to Warner Brothers. And that's what we've done, and we've tried to do a mix of IP movies genre films. It's really about the balance of the whole slate, and you know, David us he's been so supportive in that and I feel like this year our slate really, you know, shows what our mission is.
Would you say that David has always been supportive.
Yes, from day one?
Well, okay, we have to address the fact that earlier this year he was out there meeting with people. It was he was not being very subtle about potentially looking for replacements for you.
Listen, we can't we can't address the speculation and rumors and all that stuff. All I can say is David, Mike and I had the privilege of seeing all these movies early. We knew what we had with the filmmakers and with these stories worries, and we just couldn't wait for audiences to see them.
So we David was completely.
Supportive of every film and of Mike and I and the choices we made.
Well, you got re upped yesterday. So clearly, when you go in a tear, whatever your boss may or may not be thinking for just a strategy.
Well, it got announced yesterday, but it had been done.
Yeah, the.
Hot streak for the year I feel like started with Minecraft.
Is that fair to say? For a long time.
Movies based on video games, TV shows based on video games didn't work, And that's totally flipped in the last couple of years. We just had David talking about about Call of Duty. What do you think has there been some change in culture as to why these movies are now working or is it.
I think it all goes back to talent, you know, like we don't. I think it's dangerous to traffic and blanket statements for any any genre, any adapting from any medium. So I don't know how other people do it, but we look at adapting from a video game the way you look at adapting from a book or a play or anything that's not a movie, and just try to apply the same basic rules of common sense. Do we have the right writer, Do we have the right writing team,
do we have the right filmmaker. I think anything can become a great movie if the filmmakers or castwell got it.
That was followed by Sinners Big Swing. Were you at any point nervous about how it.
Was going to do.
No.
I mean, I think from the moment we read the script, Ryan is just a singular visionary filmmaker. The moment we read the script, we saw it on the page collaborating with him. I mean, I just think what this movie has meant to audiences and how it's ignited them in conversation. I mean, there was this amazing moment that happened over
the course of the film. When it was released, there was an open letter written to the studio and to Ryan from a young man from Clarksdale, Mississippi, who drove ninety minutes twice to see the film because Clarksdale doesn't have a movie theater, so we brought a movie theater to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and we went down there for the weekend and we met members of the community and this young man who is an organizer, and it was, honestly, it was one of the most special moments of my career.
I can't tell you the conversations that were had, and the audience feeling that movie, feeling that music, Meeting the musicians who live and who Ludwig and Ryan gathered for the you know, from the Delta Blues to create this movie.
You can't take that away.
That is the power of storytelling.
You talk about wanting to be in business with the best filmmakers. We have Ryan coming on later today, so I'm curious what like you've worked with between the two of you, probably most of the best directors in Hollywood. What is it that sets Ryan apart from his peers. Is there something specific about him that you feel.
Like, you know, we love all our children kind of a thing.
But but I'll tell you. I'll tell you straight up.
Ryan is all heart.
And you know, he did a thing we didn't think it was going to become a marketing tool, but he did a thing where he explained it was for kode Act. You know why he picked the film formats he picked and why. I mean he's just talking about purfs and things that I should know. I mean, I kind of know, but he makes it completely not only understandable, but he managed in an instructional thing for Kodak to connect with cinophiles of like, Hey, the subtext was I made this
for you. I took the time to really pour over what would be the best presentation of this story for you with theatrical audience, and they felt Wow, this guy made it for us.
I'm going to go see it on a big screen.
Ryan's ability to connect with his audience, both in the material and then just talking about his movies is really unique to Ryan, and we're now making every director do it, even if they have to get training.
One thing that was really well publicized leading up to the film's releases. In order to get the rights, you had agreed to give him ownership, I think twenty five years after the fact. Why do you think that became such a talking point and have you done that with other filmmakers previously.
I think I just think there was an outsized spect you know, conversation about it because it was unique. But it was unique to this movie, and it was unique to Ryan's you know, to this deal. I think the importance of this movie and how it's affected audiences is what we should all be talking about, because, honestly, I went to the theater that opening weekend and seeing audiences on seventy MILIAMUIN or Imax, it's the greatest feeling in the world.
Both of you talked about the codec video. One of the things that I think Mindcraft and Centers shared is they both developed a lot of momentum online, which felt organic, and so I'm curious when it feels like a lot of.
Things become hits almost.
Beyond your control, how do you plan for that when you're thinking about green lights, when you're thinking about marketing, because you obviously can't factor in like, well, this one's going to go viral on TikTok and this one's.
Vert well, you know.
The first one of the things David tasked us with was, you know, even though we inherited the organization, what's the right balance for the era that we're in. So that involved a reorg of marketing and distribution. So when we elevated the next generation of marketing leadership at the studio, we talked about virality a lot.
We talked about where.
Audiences are getting their movie advertising now and what the kindling is for each project to light those bonfires online and getting that core audience, whether it was the gamers on Minecraft or the African American audience on Sinners, really white hot over something that we knew they were going to like, and being able to amplify that heat to the general audience really became the coin of the realm.
In our new marketing department, so while you can't plan for it, you can arrange the chess pieces to take advantage of it if it happens.
Are we going to get sequels to either Minecraft or Sinners?
You're definitely going to get a sequel to Minecraft. You know, Cinners is such a singular vision from a signature filmmaker, and it wasn't really set up to be an expanded universe. We just think it's again another cinematic masterpiece we're lucky to have.
Yeah.
That's Pam Abdy and Mike de Luca, the co heads of Warner Brothers Motion Pictures, speaking with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw.
Coming up, more from Bloomberg screen Time, held this past week in Los Angeles. Up next, Lucas Shaw sits down with late night host get Ready for This, Jimmy Kimmel.
They spoke just after coming off of Jimmy Kimmel's suspension by ABC.
This is Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
We are back on a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week looking at some of our favorite guests.
Actually they were all our favorites.
Let's just put it out there because they are unbelievable. The conversations the people who are at Bloomberg screen time that was held this past week in Los Angeles.
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel joined at Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw. This in the wake of his controversial and temporary suspension by ABC. Kimmel reflected on the evolving future of late night TV and media in the resident Trump era, divided audiences, and the high stakes of satire in today's charge climate.
Thanks for being here. I know it's been a weird few weeks, has it. Yeah, I can sell.
I want to start at the beginning if we can.
When I was born, Yes, it was in a manger. Well, so since you.
Brought it up, we're gonna talk about everything that happened. Have you listened to this AI podcast about your life?
No? I found it doing some research.
They have an AI voice that just narrates that first episode is your life until you get hired on ABC. The second episode is your career at ABC until recently, and the third episode is very recent. We can fact check it.
Does it have the details of my divorce?
No, but it does have a line The Kimmels weren't wealthy, but they weren't struggling either. They were in that sweet spot of American middle class life where dreams seemed achievable and laughter came easily around the dinner table.
That's pretty spot on. This AI is terrifying. How long after the.
Initial episode where you made the comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk the Monday episode, Yeah, did you realize there was a problem.
I didn't think there was a big problem.
I you know, I just saw it as distortion on the part of some of the right wing media networks, and I was I aimed to correct it. I have problems like all the time, and it's kind of funny because sometimes you think, oh, this is not a problem, and then it turns into a big problem. And then sometimes it goes the other way where you think like, oh, oh, this is gonna be a problem nobody really notices.
And so at what point did you realize this was a problem?
I think when they pulled the show off the air, Well, that's unusual.
Yeah, And what were the conversations that Data and Bob that led to that.
I hate to disappoint you, but they were really good conversations.
I'm not acting.
I mean, like really good conversations they are. These are people that I've known for a long time and who I like very much, and who were you know, who wanted we all wanted this to work out best. And I will tell you like I mean, first of all, I ruined Dana's weekend. It was just NonStop phone calls
all weekend. But I don't think what I don't think the result, which I think turned out to be very positive, would have been as positive if I hadn't talked to Dana as much as I did, because it helped me think everything through and it helped me just kind of understand where everyone was coming from. I can sometimes be reactionary, I can sometimes be aggressive, and I can sometimes be unpleasant, and I think that it helped me. Really having those days to think about it was helpful.
I have a dumb question about this as someone who is kind of reporting on it in real time, trying to figure out what's happening. So the show goes up there you have all these conversations, and when you made it, or when you all made a decision put the show back on the air, as my understanding at the time was it still wasn't exactly clear what you were going to say. They still hadn't resolved the issues with the affiliates.
So what do you resolve in those conversations to know you're going back if you haven't figured out a lot of the things that come out of it.
I think just the spirit of what I'm going to say, rather than specifically what I was going to say, And I think that's something that we all agreed on, and I think that ultimately I wanted to kind of cover every base if I could, and sometimes you can do that and sometimes you can't do that. And it was something really that had to come from inside me.
It had to be truthful.
And I had to lay it all out out there and just be honest about what I was feeling and what I'd experienced. And I think I did, and I think that it probably went about as well as it could go. I knew that it wasn't going to be perfect, and there were always going to be people that didn't like it and didn't accept it, But the important thing to me was that I was able to.
Explain what I was saying, what I was trying to say.
If you felt like your initial comments had been mischaracterized.
I didn't feel like it anywhere.
It was intentionally and I think maliciously mischaracterized.
Yesh, did you I mean, do you feel like you have become more political in your commentary on the show over the course of hosting it.
What do you think? I think?
I think if you talked to me when my first interaction with Timmy Kimmel was The Man Show, Yeah, yeah, which is you and Carola at this point, as best I can tell, around and complete opposite ends of the political spectrum, but still friends. Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, it feels like you became far more comfortable and insistent on talking not just about politics, but about personal things.
Maybe because you got older, maybe because you've got more comfortable in the role, maybe because the world around has changed, all of those things.
All of those things for sure, I think maturity is part of it. I think you figure out who you are. I think that when I started the show, I was mostly My homepage was ESPN dot com. It's kind of all I really cared about was we've been a radio sports guy. I've been a sports guy. I did football picks on Fox NFL Sunday for years in radio.
Yeah, I was on k Rock with Kevin and Bean.
I was mostly interested in sports, and I was interested in politics. I've always been a you know, even as a kid. My parents are very liberal. I've been a Democrat since I was a little boy. I think the first like political cartoon I ever drew was of Jimmy Carter and John Anderson. You know, It's like I was like twelve or something, and I've always been interested in politics, but I was.
Never a particularly political person.
I also think maybe maybe he did, but maybe he didn't have to be back then, you know. I mean, I think this is a very different situation that we're in now. And also my job, as I see it, is to talk about the news of the day, and these are the big stories of the day right pretty much every day.
And how much of that, Like, can you see a difference because we're in Trump too? Do you feel like it was the need to talk about politics is greater when he has been president as opposed to when other people, Like if you started when Bush was president and you had Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump, it does feel like I thinks they've got more political over time. But do you think it is also sort of a I don't want to use the word quirk, but a facet of Trump and his relationship at the media.
Yeah, I mean he's on TV all day, every day, so he gives us a.
Lot to use to deal with. You know, that's unusual. That's not how it used to be. You occasionally get a video of George Bush, like walking the wrong way on stage, and then you'd make a week out of it, you know, or or somebody trips or something like that. But now it's just you hear him, you see him. You He's just presented himself so frequently at it makes it it's just more digestible and it's more digestible and less digestible at the same time.
Right, do you feel like you interact with a lot of comedians. Do you think there's there's some writers and comedians I've spoken with who feel like comedy has actually been harder with him as president. What you just said is in a way, it's in something there's more material to work with. What would you say his impact on comedy hasn't.
Well, is there more I don't know if there's more material, it's just more focused in one area. I'm not a stand up comic, I know for stand up comics, you know, you work out their material and they do mostly that material every night. So politics change so quickly, it doesn't necessarily lend itself to that job. For me, I've always been more interested in doing new jokes every when I started on the radio every day and doing new jokes every night. I don't love the idea of repeating myself.
It feels more like acting to me than broadcasting, and I think essentially I'm a broadcaster and I'm more interested in that. So I can't speak to whether it's made their job more difficult. I know a lot of them just try to stay away from it. And I get it, you know, I get it. You're walking into a town and you don't know who's in the room, and you just want to make people laugh, and they're not necessarily on a crusade, And I get it.
And I don't think any.
Of those guys should be required to speak the way I do, or the way Stephen Colbert does or John Stewart does. And I think that applies to people on television too.
They don't. You don't have to do this. I choose to do it. Since you came back, have you asked Trumper Car to come on.
No, I haven't.
I wouldn't necessarily be interested in Brendan Carr on the show, but yeah, I'd love to have Trump on the show for sure.
Yeah. I mean I feel like he knows that he wants. I don't know, all right, I'll ask him. I'm curious about it.
You had these I'm sorry on this week and you asked you pressed him a lot on the Rion Comedy Festival that a bunch of comedians went. And did do you ask and who interviews for a living? Did you give him a heads up you were going to ask him about that?
Yes? I mean, you know how talk shows are.
We basically understand, there's an understanding of what you're going to talk about. Sometimes it veers off into various directions, but you always they always know basically what the topics are going to.
Be and why. I guess did you feel it's important to ask him about that? Because you had a point of view on comedians going to that festival. It seemed like you were against it.
I wouldn't have gone, but I wanted to hear his reasons, and I thought he had some compelling reasons. And it's nothing's black and white. It's not something I would do. But I do understand the idea that if we close ourselves off to the world or we isolate somebody, that maybe it's not good. I don't know that my my reasoning is the correct reasoning. I also, you know, we see it and we see it happening in this country too.
I mean, we travel abroad, many of us don't want to be held accountable for what our president does and says.
As an American, you know, going someplace.
I'm fortunate enough to be well known and people know where I'm coming from.
But I think it would be a different situation if people didn't know who I was. And I think I'd.
Probably be the first thing I'd say as I got into every cab is I didn't vote for him? Just FYI, you know, so I do think that there's you know, that kind of makes me understand right that position better.
That's Late Night host Jimmy Kimmel speaking with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw.
And if you missed any of it because it was a longer conversation, be sure to check it out. You can find it on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com.
That does it.
For the first hour of our special edition at Bloomberg Business Week, we've been checking out some of our favorite conversations from Bloomberg screen Time, that event held this past week in Los Angeles, with the whole Bloomberg News team.
Still to come. Actor Mark Duplas on making indie movies and the co CEO of the most valuable entertainment company, Netflix on how the business plans to maintain its lead.
Plus director Ryan Kougler on how he is looking to push the boundaries to tell stories that resonate. You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. We continue with more highlights from screen Time.
I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovec's day with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.
This is Bloomberg Business Week, Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Welcome to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week. We are continuing with some of our favorite conversations from the Bloomberg screen Time event. It was held this past week in Los Angeles.
Screen Time gathers the mogul, celebrities and entrepreneurs defining the next phase of pop culture. Over a day and a half in the heart of Hollywood. We discussed and debated the future of Hollywood studios, the boom in sports and live music, and the effect of AI on the creative industries.
Got to say, it's a really fun event. They've been doing it the last few years and it's just so fun to see the people and the cross section of folks that are there. When it comes to content creation, we'll hear from an actor, studio heads, and content creators. We begin with a conversation with Mark Duplas. He's a filmmaker, actor, and producer. We spoke about balancing indie spirit and Hollywood collaboration.
You do it all. Is there one that I'm sure you get this up a million times that you like more than most in terms of doing producing, directing, Or do you love how everything kind of helps.
The other thing?
I do like the blending of all the things.
And I come from the independent sector, you know, I came into this business making three dollar movies in my kitchen with my brother on our parents' video camera. So I'm no stranger to doing at all. But that said, I think that as I've been fortunate enough to do both indie projects and also be on a show like The Morning Show, which you know, one day's catering on that show is more expensive than most of the work I make.
I like the balance, you know.
I like hanging lights with my friends and sweating on my indie projects.
But then I like when my burrito has.
Brought to me in the trailer of the Morning Show and I'm taking care of So these are the things.
Well, someone who likes burrito.
Is yeah, it doesn't like a burrito delivery. Also a trailer pretty nice.
Yeah.
I'm wondering about if you were getting into the business right now and how that would be different. It's like you're making movies in your kitchen with your brother, but maybe you'd be using an iPhone, you'd be editing it using AI.
I think the headline is the democratization of the technology has made it so wonderful that you can make anything you want now so much more cheaply than I had it.
So you have it a lot better.
Than me on that front, but you have it way worse than I had it in two thousand and five when I came in because to talk about that. But the distribution channels are not there, right, and so we're now experiencing sort of the death of the hyperbolic television movement.
Right.
And we staffed up and we got all ready for it and here we are, and then it just dried up on us. So now we're going to have to start hacking a new road of direct consumer distribution. You know, we're working in so many different models now. We're making television series completely independently and taking them out and selling them afterwards because it is the wild West.
Well, you know, it's funny that you say that, because I think about something like YouTube and how much I want YouTube and specific channels and like anybody can put anything up there. When you think about distribution channels, what seems to provide the most opportunities for you, especially since you say you play a bit more in the indie world.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I'm very very fortunate and that I've been doing this for twenty years, so you know, I at least have somewhat of a name that people.
Are interested in working with us.
But I think YouTube is certainly exciting because you can put it up, it can catch fire, But the monetization of that and sustain ability is really questionable in my opinion. But then you have these smaller substreamer services, like you look at Dropout TV and what they're doing in comedy, and you look at Shutter. You know, they've become the home of horror fans as a subsidiary under AMC, you know,
and they're doing things in a low cost model. So I think the future here is going to be figuring out how to make things relatively cheaply, cutting your big producer fees, cutting a lot of everybody's feet across the board, and then when you're in a position to be on top and power, really share that back end with people. And that's how I came up an independent film. We would make movies for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Everybody would make one hundred bucks a day. It was
creative communism. And then you get points. We could take them to Sundance and sell them for a couple million bucks, and the sound guy would make fifty thousand dollars and buy a home.
It was a beautiful time.
It's not quite that easy anymore, but there's something in that model that.
Will still work.
I talked to somebody who lives out areas in the industry, has been doing this for thirty years, and he was like, I've got award winning casting directors, walking dogs, rover to make ends meet.
No, it's real, I see that bad.
I mean I live in the valley, which is, you know, the place where basically below the line union heads were able to buy their homes, you know, And and that was under the sort of unspoken promise that this industry would continue to boom. Strikes fires, but not just that the death of the streaming wars, which were unsustainable from them. That was just an arms race to see who could chuck somebody.
Out right that picks an apple. Are the winters I.
Mean TVD because we could see a merger happen in five minutes after this that changes everything, and there's I won't I won't go that far. But yes, there are certain people that have interests in those mergers and don't have interests.
So does do you see the industry getting better?
I think the industry is going to change. Look, I've been in this for twenty years. I know people who are been in this for much longer than me, and we there are times when, oh my god.
It was the nineteen eighties.
If you had a movie that had, you know, a gun and blood and some fighting in it, you could take it to VHS and you'd make your money and it was a killer.
In the nineties, it was that for DVDs.
In the two thousands, the streamers came in and I got to all these cool movies for Netflix and TV. But it's going to change. We don't know which way it's going, but we got to be vigilant.
You know.
It's We've seen it in the media industry, and we still like being in it. It's incredible to be thirty seconds still having fun.
You like it.
I love it. I don't say I'm having fun all the time. I feel a deep responsibility for like my brothers and sisters in la and in New York and everywhere who are just getting choked out by this business.
That's actor Mark Duplas. We also got a chance to hear from Elena Mayo, the head of Arian Pictures. She spoke with us about reviving a legacy studio with a modern mission.
This is like the underlying theme of the entire day.
How why are we here?
Well?
I think we're here because we have so much change in so Dyna, so much dynamism, and the reality is that no one really knows what the next wave of media content Hollywood is going to look like. So we're at this incredible inflection point and having to innovate in real time and build new systems while the previous systems are being dismantled, are evolving, are changing so well. I wish I had a quick answer to your question of
how do we do it? What we ended up talking about mostly is how do we just create enough sustainability for artists so that everyone can sustain this moment in time?
And so whatever is on the.
Other side of this, whatever that looks like that the creative voices that build our industry can still survive.
Does it get worse before it gets better?
I mean, if you look at it with a long lens, you know define worse, right, if you look at a long with a long lens.
It's always This business has always been challenged.
This business has always gone through dips, It's always gone through ebbs and how long this moment of uncertainty lasts is probably longer than any of us would love. And if that's how you define worse, then yes, But I think, you know, I think it's just going to always be changing. I don't know if it's going to get worse or better. I think we're going to continue to change and evolve.
You know.
I always think about supplying demand cycles. I've got to do green economics, and I think about the world in that way. And I think there was a period where we thought, man, if you're a content creator, you are good as gold because there's so many, you know, different platforms that need your services, they need your content. And then all of a sudden, I think there's a lot of content, and maybe I don't know, there was too
much content and the oversupply. So where is the rebalancing or or how do we get back to a different level.
I think we're seeing the rebalancing now.
I will say I personally am a little bit worried about the level of consolidation that we have because I do think that it is hard to keep saying swayed in the favor of the creators and of the artists, which is really the community that we need to continue any sort of.
Artistic endeavor and idea.
But you know, I think Mark said something He may have already said this to you guys earlier, but that I think is a really important bit of context, which is the past ten years of the streaming arms race was a boon, like that was a spike, that was an that was an abnormal state of our industry. Right, So this is a little bit corrective, right, It's not completely just the you know, Earth has fallen out underneath us.
This is a little bit of a correction of something that was a real kind of an aberration in of itself.
So a good thing a little bit maybe, but not kind of your content.
Yeah, I was going to say, I think the good thing is that there are more ways to monetize content, right, And we talked about everything from direct to consumer models to YouTube. There are a lot of different platforms in addition to Hollywood where you can monetize content.
How you do that, right? Is the thing that a lot of us don't yet know is, you know, oh, when.
It pauses, this could be serious.
It's political too.
Yeah.
The President has weighed in recently and he said the way to fix this is to put tariffs on films that are made outside the US. You're shaking your head.
I don't think that's the way.
To stay this. Why should we be filming scenes about Brooklyn in Vancouver?
I think that we listen.
I definitely am personally invested in US keeping production inside of the communities that you know, where the people that make them live, right, because it's not just about are we maintaining the integrity of the film itself by locations based shooting. This city is where the majority of people that make stuff live, and we've got to keep this city healthy and the economy and the infrastructure of that has to be supported by films being made here, and
we've got to figure that out. At the same time, if we're going to make the path of supporting these artists is to be able to make more, to increase.
The amount of stuff that is being made.
We've got to be nimble and if that means that sometimes shooting things outside of the States, or shooting things outside of.
LA and New York is the way to do that.
You know, a lot of the films that we've been able to make that are really innovative and original and risky. Have to find ways to cost less, and some of the ways that we find to make them cost less is to shoot them elsewhere. And then you have American Fiction, which is a Boston set story that shot in Massachusetts. So you know, we can figure it out different ways, but we've got to have some plex to.
Figure out what college that was?
What college?
And do it Bayden.
I don't believe they shot I would I would be lying to you. I knew exactly where that location was, but it may not have been a college at all.
I'm sorry, I guess.
So being able to film wherever in the world, like, that's.
Part of it, right, one hundred percent. We're you know, we're a global commut.
Without a penalty, whether it's a terror for one of.
One hundred percent.
And also what about the movies that we produced out of Hollywood that are not set in the US.
You know, we also produce movies that are set all over the world.
You know, Mission Impossible doesn't just all take place here, right, So I think we have to be a global industry. We have to, you know, be a global economy with artisans that are working all over the world. But the argument that I understand is that shouldn't be to the expense of the film industries locally.
Really, I feel very strongly.
About that you came of age in an industry while it was like undergoing this massive shift to streaming, which you alluded to when you began your career. Did you ever think that you'd be making movies at a company that was owned by Amazon.
No, I couldn't.
I shouldn't say this, but I remember when Amazon first started making television shows. I was at Fox and I laughed. I was like, this is ridiculous, this will never laugh and everyone was like and then pretty good, they started making incredible TV shows. And then you know, to track from that moment to now working at a film studio that is under the Amazon umbrella.
I couldn't have predicted any of this.
I will say, though, when you talk about all of those places that I worked, part of the reason why I got my dream job, the best job that I thought you could ever have in film.
I was a movie studio executive at Paramount.
I was on the Paramount lot, and after being there for five or six years, I realized that the world around me had changed, and I went to Vimeo very intentionally because I thought there's all of this cool stuff that is happening in this digital space that I need to understand it. And then I said, I got to work with close to the talent, and I've got to produce and be able to be scrappy and produce for
different platforms in different mediums. I went to go work with Michael B. Jordan and so it's been ever changing for the entirety of the time that I've had the you know, blessing of having a career in this industry, which is why I think it's not falling. You know, it's not all falling apart.
That's Elena Mayo, the head of Orian Pictures. Coming up more from the Bloomberg screen Time event in Los Angeles earlier this week. Up next, we hear from the co CEO of the world's most value entertainment company, Netflix.
That will we continue with highlights from Bloomberg screen Time held this past week.
This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Welcome to a special edition of Bloomberg Business Week. We are all in on screen Time. Bloomberg screen Time. It was held this past week in Los Angeles, at.
Screen Time, we heard from Greg Peters, the co CEO of Netflix. Greg joined Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw to discuss the company's growing investment in live sports and video games, as well as its efforts to keep viewers engaged for longer. He shared how the business plans to maintain its lead well investing in what's next.
Everyone acts like Netflix has won everything, right. I get a lot of people don't. People, even people at Netflix, don't like it when you say that Netflix has won the streaming war, as they think it's the wrong But I wanted so I want to start with something. Let's let's go negative.
All right, it is you're speaking to my personality here.
What is something that Netflix needs to do better?
We need to do everything better.
And I think you know the reason I hate, like, you know, when I hear we've won everything whatever. I actually think the worst position for a company to be in is to feel like they've actually won everything, because I think success has this, you know, vulnerability where you start to breed, you know, complacency, error against and things
like that. And I think in the world that we live in entertainment, this has been the most competitive entertainment environment that's ever existed in the planet, you know, in the history of humankind. It's getting more and more competitive, and if you don't maintain the sense that you are constantly vulnerable, I think you will lose.
So I think the biggest thing that people point to as perhaps a sign of vulnerability, at least that I noticed, is that your engagement, the amount of time people spend on the service has been pretty flat over the last couple of years. And then you look at the regular drops from Melsen and you see that streaming share of TV has gone up quite a bit, and your share that's gone up is a pretty small fraction of that. A lot of the growth has gone to these free services. So how do you address that?
Well, I think you just essentially explained it right, which is that we moved on demand very early on in the process, so we sort of got the benefit or basically built our business around that benefit. And then you know, everyone over a period of time caught up, and you know, essentially from our perspective, they're all now moving to that model and moving to that benefit from consumers. So you know, frankly, the fact that we were actually keeping pace in that
sort of you know, shifting tide if you will. I think it's a reasonably good thing. It's not great, you know.
I mean good thing, But from everything I've heard inside the company, like the goal was basically to replace television, right like have Netflix be the ones or if you can watch basically anything on television on Netflix except for news and until recently.
Sports, Well, I think, you know, expressing that as an ambition and also that as a way to organize how the company thinks about what we're trying to go do is great.
I also think that that's not.
Consistent with saying that we thought it was realistic that we were going to be the only thing that people were going to watch, right, because I also don't think that that's realistic at the end of the day. So I think there's always going to be like multiple sources of entertainment, even in the categories that we serve. We want to be you know, we want to win as more much of that as we possibly can. So I'm
you know, don't back to being complacent. I'm not happy with the fact, you know that we're not growing engagement. We should grow more engagement. I think we will. I expect you'll see engagement numbers will go up for us. But also I don't think that I don't think there's a world in which we be the only thing that people watch.
A big project I assumed to help grow engagement was the new user interface UI that you rolled out over the last year plus.
Yep.
Can you point to some key ways in which that has already helped or you think it will help?
Well, I would say a lot of what we've been doing is essentially re architecting the entire stack. This is from sort of how algorithms get calculated. We used to calculate overnight everyone's recommendations. When they show up in the morning, we would have that baked. Now we do it dynamically on the fly. And now we've created a UI where essentially you can you know, connect those those algorithmic pipes in and also launch new modules.
Can you use words that I'm not even going to insult the audience here that I will underserved.
Yeah, so thank you.
Basically, what happens now is that when we think about what titles do you want to watch?
Right?
We used to do that overnight and you'd show up and we'd give you those titles. But now the way that we do it essentially is as you're navigating the UI, we think about, oh, what are signals that you're giving.
I skipped over this thing really quickly. I'm not interested in that, right right, That's right.
So I think that's something that's going to take us, I think, a while to really build the fullness of how that delivers, you know, benefit for our users. But the thing that I can point to right now that the new UI structure is designed to go do and is doing for us, is serving new content needs. As we expand beyond just film and series. We spanned a live events and the UI has to do a different job, which is like, why you want to show up at
Thursday at seven pm? Because oh you're going to watch a you know, a boxing match that you know you would not otherwise get to see. Or why do you want to play a game or those kind of things. That's that's what it's that's what it's doing for us right now.
Right when it comes to to live that was something that you sort of famously said you weren't going to do sports for a while. And I know it's not just sports, you also do other live events, but the sports have been the biggest, right, your NFL game was really big, boxing match was huge, or both boxing matches, the logan or the the Jake Paul one will decide if it's really a boxing match or.
I'll refer it. But how much more are you.
Going to invest in live events over the next few years and are there things that you know that you want to add to the service that you don't have right now.
So it's a start with you know live we think of as an important additional form of entertainment that we can deliver members. It's sort of a different style of entertainment, you know where. Actually it's interesting because, in contrast to our on demand service, which has tremendous benefit because you control the entertainment when you want to watch it, the big benefit alive is that we're all experiencing the same thing at the same time, and that has tremendous sort
of social and conversational relevance. Right, so we want to do more of it. It represents a very small fraction of our total investment.
It represents a small.
Fraction of our total hours, but we think it also does a different job, so.
It sort of comes does it have a different impact, like do you see because from the third party data I've seen you tend to see huge surges and sign ups around some of those bigger events.
Yeah, I think we expect that it will do the same work ultimately that our other content does, which basically is a reason to sign up and a reason to stay.
That's you know, at the end of the day.
Now, I think we back to your point about like what do we know we want to get and stuff like that. We're still really learning in this space, so we're really trying to figure out like, Okay, what how is this delivering value to members? How is this delivering
value to the business. And there's definitely a different phenomena where these are punctuated moments to your point, right, which people go like, Okay, if I'm maybe on the edge of signing up for Netflix, this might be the thing that pushes me over, you know, to actually do that. So I think we'll see different things for sure, but we really are learning as we go.
I want to throw one poll to the audience before we ask the next question, because.
They are related.
So I just want to I promise Greg I would do this. Keep in mind how much these sports cost. Football is the most expensive, Tennis is the least expensive. Everything else sort of fits in between there. So even though Greg and I both like tennis probably smallest audience but also.
Least expensive international audience.
What would you say the odds that you make a bid for one of the football packages when the NFL ops out of its current deal in twenty nine.
Or you know, it doesn't really fit with our strategy as we understand it right now. So again back to your point, we think about what we're doing as an events strategy, and turns out, as you said, sports are big event and so we can plug those into that strategy. But we also want to make sure that we're being really really disciplined about you know, are we buying, are we investing in ways that are profitable for the business
and some of the big league sports things. We don't actually have a way to figure out that math.
Okay, all right.
Although it doesn't I mean, isn't the sort of the magic of football. I get that the NFL is maybe tricky for you and that it's not global and how expensive it is, But the reason it's so successful it's the one sport where like every Sunday sort of is an event.
It's amazing in that regard, right, But I think to some degree that lack of substitutability is of course what gives the rights holders the leverage.
And it's done a pretty good job.
Yeah, I know you have.
I can tell that you guys have this vision of where like you have more leverage than the sports leagues that are negotiation and that has basically never happened in media.
That's right, until it happens, I would say you should have some skepticism about that.
Okay, one other thing that you guys have basically never done as large scale EM and day. But the bigger you get, the more you tend to get tied to different companies, different deals. There's been some reports around you guys being interested in Warner Brothers Discovery. Is there any truth to that?
I would say this, you know, we come from a deep perriage of being builders rather than buyers. I also think that it's you know, one should have a reasonal amount of skepticism around big media mergers. They don't have an amazing track record over you know, the history of time, so you know, I would say it's our also, it's our responsibility to evaluate all our options.
In so you'll look, you'll have a conversation, but the odds of an offer are pretty low. Yeah.
Our job is to figure out, like what's the best way to grow our business right and we have to think, you know, really carefully, like how do we invest our capital, our time and our attention and if that's the best way to do it, great, and if it's not, then we should do something else.
What area you're investing a lot of capital right now? Or you might quibble with a lot, but it is.
Gaming small fraction of our total investment. But yeah, I appreciate you saying that.
You've been offering video games for four years? How would what would you what grade would little?
Over three? But over three? Sorry? What grade would you give your gaming efforts so far?
I'll give us a B minus.
How's that okay? Yeah?
I would say, look, you want to maybe just to start.
Where we're at right one.
You know, it's a big market you one hundred and forty billion dollars X China X Russia. That doesn't that's just consumer spend that has include ads. So we think it's a real opportunity for us to try and earn a percentage of that over a period of time. A lot of what we've been doing is really just building the foundation, right, We've been doing a lot of like
you know, real hard plumbing work. But now we're getting to a really interesting place where you know, we're going to deliver more of what our vision of.
What we should be doing in the space is.
And we call it games because that's a you know, a rubric.
Or you know, a name that we all can relate to.
But really I would look at this as how do we add more interactive capability? So that means even things like taking our live program back to a live program and how to add interactivity with live So we got voting right now that we're in testing on with David Chang and his live clicking show. You'll see that interact those interactive features come up with star Search when we do a lot another live event and non sports live event of star Search. So that's an exciting place to be.
And then it gets also, yeah, so you can see this is sort of how the Dave Chang experience is working. And you know, again this is you know, the tip of the iceberg, and we'll get deeper into this as we go. We're also i think more clear around what are the gaming areas back to the you know, the more traditional gaming areas that we are operating in. You know, it's a lot of interactive games around our IP. So you think about what you did with Skid Squid game.
I don't know if you saw Thronglets based on the Black Mirror universe, but it's worth checking out because if you're a Black Mirror fan, it's so in universe it's and the fans of Black Mirror just loved it because it was like they were having a meta experience there too.
But even like Happy Gilmore, we did a golf.
Game with Happy at Gilmore that got a remarkable amount of consumptions.
Do most of the people who use Netflix know you offer games?
I would say, I mean that's part of frankly, what's been hard about this, And I think it's it's hard for any brand that has a deep consumer sense of what are you doing for me?
Right?
And then you're like, well, I'm going to do this as well, and you have, it takes a while.
To really build up that sense of what's happening.
That's Netflix co CEO Greg Peters coming up on Bloomberg Business Week. More from the Bloomberg screen Time event held this past week in Los Angeles.
Coming up, director Ryan Kogler on the state of Hollywood, the vision for his multimedia company, and now he's looking to push the boundaries to tell stories that resonate. Sinners anyone, well done, Well done.
That's all coming ahead as we continue from Bloomberg screen Time.
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We are back on a special edition in a Bloomberg Business Week. We are highlighting and checking out some of our favorite conversations from the Bloomberg screen Time event. It happened all this past week in Los Angeles.
Ryan Kugler and Sevohania and are the creative forces behind Proximity Media in films like Judas and the Black Messiah, Creed three, and this year's Oscar front runner Sinners. Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw caught up with the pair and heard from them on the state of Hollywood, the vision for their multimedia company, and how they are looking to push the boundaries to tell stories that resonate.
But I want to start with the origin of your relationship and your company. So you guys met at USC. Right, where did the idea for a proximity come and what was the mission for it when you started it?
Such a great question. So an enormous circumstances is going to be three of us sitting here. We're going to talk about our partners, jay Z Coogler quite a bit. She's our partner and she's my wife. But it really started, you know, I really started year man like, I went to to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
I started in two thousand and eight. Said when did you come in, bro, was you fall two thousand and eight?
Yeah?
Yeah, So I.
Started in the spring and we met in the in the Roberts of Mecca's Center for Digital Arts, especially like our where we heard our stages and we were in equipment and Staid was working in the front desk there. I was working in the equipment room. And before that, you know, I found out I wanted to, you know, make make movies. In Zenz Coogler, she was zen Z. Evans then bought me my first final draft screenplay software, you know, help me, help me to start writing screenplays.
I found out that said had already made a.
Feature film before he even came to film school.
If we want to talk about, uh, talk about that first movie you made.
Yeah, Before I got to film school, I started making little YouTube videos poking fun of my arming In parents out of love. At the time, it would have today they would have been probably like TikTok videos. But these videos got really viral in the in the global armen In population. So it led to me making a feature film on my dad's mini DV camera. I say this all the time, but I wrote it, I directed it,
I shot it, I produced it. I did everything except for makeup, and then the makeup artist quit, so then I did that too.
It's an awful makeup but that but that movie was.
It was called My Big Fat Armenian Family, totally love letter to my to my people, and I had screened it locally in Glendale and it had you know, it did really well with my community, and that empowered me to want to go to film school.
It's where you know where we.
Met, you said, recently got the keys to the city in Glendale too.
But got nothing for it.
Nothing in the fun payperlanth the k.
But yeah, so so you know, ZIZI was she was doing sign language interpreted in at Fresno State. But she was basically like auditing classes as she all was sneaker in the class all the time. So we got we got two degrees for the price of one technically, and in seven I became friends.
He started producing, uh movies for a.
Lot of a lot of my classmates, got a big reputation as one of the top, you know, top.
Producers at the school.
Uh So we always wanted to work together, and I got the opportunity to make my first feature film, you know, shortly after I graduated. I was Frouville Station and we made it back in Oakland.
You know.
Zens was kind of like, you know, help we were living together. We just got our apartment. She was on set every day, you know, leaving her day job instead actually came up and produced that that film for us.
So it was it was a it was a fantastic startar relationship.
You know.
After that, we kind of went our separate ways. I made a movie called Creed after and it had a lot of Create had a lot of black time.
Yeah.
Created had a lot of story producers on there, you know, like like Sylvester Stallon Or and Winkler, Kevin King, Templeton and and I tried to get my buddy on. I tried to get sev out there to help, but they, uh we weren't able to get that and make that happen. Uh So, you know, mad Creed and then I got Then I got the opportunity to work on Black Panther.
At the same time, Sevok was making movies with a young man named Anische Choking Team, and they made a film that was all on screens called search that ended up being getting acquired to becoming Searching. One of won a couple of awards at Sundance Child. Yeah, and and right around that same time, a good friend of ours, Charles King, who is my manager, he was just really hard on me and Zenzi to to start a company.
He was like, you guys, gotta do it.
Now's the time I was pulling my hair out trying to trying to finish a Marvel movie. I thought he was crazy, but but we took his advice, and Zenzy and I sat down and and and coming up with the concept for the company. You know, we we kind of said, hey, the only way we would do this is if we could if we could have sev come join it.
Come join it with us.
We can kind of reunite the team that worked on Fruval together and seven a Niche came to screen searching at Natalie and Natalie and Nato Kasabi.
And who Who's who?
Said who Sav's wife and an incredible producer in our own right. They all came up to screen searching at the Castrup Theater in San Francisco. I think I'm about to open the San Francisco Film Festival, and we kind of sat save down in San francsco me and ins and pitched him on proximity and thankfully he said, he said yes.
So that's kind of the game.
And what a lot of filmmakers, actors talent when they create their own company. And I think it's especially it's especially tricking for directors. It can be hard to have the company be more than just like Ryan Kubler movies.
So how do you approach it?
How have you tried to diversify and do you have models that you look after other filmmakers who and you think I've done that?
Well that's such a great question.
Yeah, absolutely, you know, and honestly, for us it kind of worked out because you know, Black Panther two wasn't a Proximity movie. We actually started the company like right, you know, right before the pandemic kicked off in late twenty eighteen, and our first three movies that we made, I didn't direct them.
You know, it was it was a crash course in producing.
You know.
We did a Spice Jam in New Legacy, we did Judis in the Black Messiah, and then we did Creed three, which was Michael B.
Jordan's directing debut. You know.
So it was really really a great opportunity for us to kind of show to the marketplace is that, you know, the Proximity wasn't just about movies.
That I wrote and directed.
We actually had a chance to put you know, three out that I didn't write and direct.
I'm going to talk.
You know.
I mean, as a matter of fact, we've we've made a number of movies, a lot of shows now documentaries, and only one of our projects has been you know, Ryan Kugler directed film. So, like Ryan said right out the gate, we had Judas in the Black Messiah, that that was a film that honestly was one of the reasons we were sparked at starting the company. We realized that there was an opportunity here to help support incredible
filmmaker Shaka King and getting that movie made. And I think Judas is a good example, like a lot of the projects that we make, the ones that Ryan directs and not are not necessarily films that on papers seem like obvious hits or or sure things. And I think having that beer first film really as a company, I think it helps out the tone for what we were trying to do.
Both correct me if I'm wrong.
Both Space Jam and Judas and The Black Nocize Or came out into COVID, and Judas was part of the whole Warner Brothers experiment where it was on streaming in theater at the same time.
I forget Space Jam.
Was it was cool?
Yeah?
Did you feel like and I realized pandemic excused all of this a little bit, but having had movies come out in all different ways, do you feel like having a drop in theaters and streaming at the same time was a different experience as a producer, as a filmmaker didn't have any more or less of a cultural impact.
And that's such a great question.
Man.
It was our first time doing it, you know, so you got to remember, man, people were dying.
Bro like it was.
It was everything was shut down. You know, I remember uh talking with Malika Andrews. She was talking about going into the COVID bubble. Yeah, so yeah, like like the
NBA wasn't like nothing was happening. We didn't even know if our if our careers would exist anymore, to be honest, So when we had to make when we got when we found out on both films that that was what was happening, you know, we called both filmmakers, Malcolm de Lee on Space Jamming and Shaka King on Judish And I remember, you know, Shaka.
God bless him.
He was caretaking for his parents, trying to keep them because they were already trying to keep it from getting sick.
He was in the heart of New York.
New York was going through all that they were going through while he was trying to finish the movie, and he was just happy that people were gonna see you know what I mean, Like that was kind of his kind of his reaction.
You know, looking back on it, the world was going through a lot.
We were blessed to have the opportunity to have Creed three come out, you know, theatrically with Amazon MGM, you know, and there is that there is a difference, you know, when when when folks have a chance to see the film in theaters and it gets to be a moment before it actually goes to the streaming streaming space, you know. But at that time, you know, we were just getting started and it was kind of happening to so many different so many different films and filmmakers.
You know, it was kind of just.
What it was.
You know.
Yeah, I'm curious on that.
Have you have you ever thought about or would you make a movie for a streaming service and you make a Netflix movie?
Man, that's that's a great question.
I mean, I'm waiting for one where I ask and you're gonna that with it.
Yeah, I mean, you know, you get at your job, bro, Like this is just actually the first time anybody's ever asked me that.
You know, I'm not here to shit what I would and wouldn't do in the future, you know.
But but the theatrical experience is uh one that that that means a great deal to me.
It means a great deal to to.
To us, you know.
And you know, like I think that I feel a certain responsibility like if if Fruitville had happened a calendar year later, it probably would have come out on streaming.
You know.
I've been fortunate enough that that everything that I've written, in directed has been a theatrical release. So I feel like I feel a duty to try to try to protect that, you know. But that's where I'm at today.
Yeah, that theatrical experience triggered. We were talking with Mike and Pam earlier about that video with that you made willated to Kodak before so, which sort of went viral on the internet. How did how did that come about? And why do you think that resonated with people so much? Probably a lot of people who have no idea what you were talking about.
Yeah, I mean it came about from from just convererces with us, you know.
Internally. One thing that I thought, I thought it made.
Sense to do was to let audiences know why we shot the film know way that we did, let audiences know that it was a it was a unique thing that hadn't happened before in this In this day and age, everybody's fighting for everybody's attention, you know, and it's a lot of really compelling things that anybody can find on their phone and they nose feed. There's so much happening in the world. There's so much, so many talented creators.
I saw y'all had Twitch streamers on here, and you know, all of that stuff is incredibly compelling and addictive, and people need a reason, you know, to to hire the baby sitter, to to you know, to to make the day and to go out stand in line and go you know they you know, for us, you know, we felt that we should put it all out.
There for folks.
You know, we never in a million years, like like Zenzi and said whatever with me. That's actually Zinzi's handwriting on the on the on the whiteboard, because my hand writs chicken scratch.
You know what I'm saying. But you know, they were right there that day.
We all, we all worked on it and Warner Brothers was incredibly supportive with the video, gave us our our gave us their BTS team to shoot it and stuff.
We never thought that that millions of people would see, you know, we were hoping that, you.
Know, who would be happy with a few thousands, you know, like people who were really interested in and you know, in film projection and interested in theatrical experience.
But it really, it really took off on a way we couldn't have we couldn't have imagined.
That's Ryan Coogler and Sevohnian, co founders of Proximity Media.
And that does it for this special edition of Bloomberg Business Week, featuring some of the highlights from Bloomberg screen Time. It was held this past week in Los Angeles. If you want to check out all of the conversations, just check out the Bloomberg terminal oarhead to Bloomberg dot com.
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