Alana Mayo Talks the Future of Orion Pictures at Bloomberg Screentime

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. She's a film executive, she's a producer. She's the president of Oryan Picture. She helped bring us films including American fiction. Alana Mayo stops by. We're gonna be speaking to her in just a minute.

Yeah, Ryan Pictures Man, they've been around for a while, so interesting.

Different now though, yes, than it was in the nineteen seventies, which.

Is fascinating, right, you'd like to see how these things change. Hey, also billionaire real estate developer and maybe la mayorial candidate or maybe he wants to be governor of the state of California. We're Caruso of Carusa is going to be back with us. We're going to ask him, We're going to push him. Last time we talked with him, he's like, maybe I'm going to have a decision or announcement.

So maybe he wants to do it live with us on.

Air, maybe just saying maybe we're ready, let's do it. Also, yes, chef, yes, chef, Yes, chef, yes chef.

We got the colinary producer of the Bear stopping by and also the youngest female self made billionaire in the world joins us.

Lucy Guo co founder.

Home wants us to say yes chef when he's cooking, and we're like, not happening, that happening. That happening.

Hey.

Also, the youngest female self made billionaire in the world is with us. We've got Lucy grow co founder of Scalai and founder of Passes. She's going to be along as well. So she's a once to watch, isn't she.

Yeah, she's here with us. She's right here.

She is right here.

Yeah, she's coming by in in like forty five minutes. It's gonna be great.

I want to get to our next guest though, because we are in the heart of Hollywood, live at Bloomberg screen Time in La we're speaking to the folks who are defining the next phase of pop culture, includes film and streaming. Alta Mayo is with us. She thinks a lot about these things, streaming and traditional releases, probably simultaneously these days, which is like a little crazy of the world that we live in. Oriyan Pictures goes back to the late nineteen seventies. I think a day is silence

How are you?

Thank you?

I'm very well happy to be here.

Uh.

You just wrapped up this conversation with Mark duplas we spoke to him a little earlier. Also Catherine Oliver as well for from Bloomberg. She was the former film Commissioner of New York City. The focus was on reinfigurating the creative community.

How do you do it?

Just that small question I just want This is.

Like the underlying theme of the entire thing.

How why are we here?

Well?

I think we're here because we have so much change in so dynamo, 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 lot 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 the worse, then yes. But I think, you know, I think it's just going to always be changing. I don't know if

You know.

I always think about supplying demand cycles. I've got to dogree 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 a 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

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

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.

Yeah, I was gonna 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 platfor forms 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, uh, 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 of the US.

You're shaking your head.

I don't think that's the way to say 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 location spased 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

Plex to figure out what college that was? What was it?

I went to college and doing Stayden.

I don't believe they shot I would I would be lying to you if I told you I knew exactly where that location was. But it may not have been a college at all. I'm sorry.

I guess I'm just kidding.

Remember where Sopranos was like taped in my neighborhood and it's not in New York City, it's just outside New Jersey.

Yeah, but it was.

Supposed to be perfect.

So what do you say?

What do you say? We're talking with a lot of Mao. She is president of Ryan Pictures, you know. But when you talk about right, like you want la and the film scene and the filmy like you want it to be alive and healthy. But I also do think about you know, part of your market is a global market, Yeah, exactly, 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 community.

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

You have a really cool background. You have worked twentieth Century Thoughts, Paramount Pictures. You did a stinted Vimeo I did.

Yeah, Oh my god, that's a blasphem with it's a milling round. I know.

I haven't heard it.

A while society.

Sorry Vimo.

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 do this.

But I remember when Amazon first started making television shows.

I was at Fox and I laughed. I was like, this is ridiculous.

Because it will never laugh and everyone was like, and then.

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 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.

What's it like? I mean, Amazon is mass company and there are a lot of folks are like, yeah, that's where I buy all my stuff, right, But we know Aws is massive and we talked about it earlier too here in terms of what they are doing media.

All sports, entertainment. Doctor works for Amazon.

And your pharmacist y like hands in so much of our world and increasingly more so, what's it like they're running a studio within the Amazon world.

It's interesting, you know, the great benefit of it is in this time of instability, Amazon has such scale that it feels as if you can one still be innovative, you can still take risks, and you can ride these waves of change within this massive, you know, company that can withstand.

Some of the headwinds that we're experiencing.

So I think it's actually a place where innovation thrives, which sounds like a talking point, but I swear I just made that up. I'm like, let me see, I'm like my cue cards, let me pull them out. But it is also a big culture clash, you know, So it's navigating those two things at once well.

And I also can I just just to follow like AI? Right Amazon, They're so interchangeable, and then we're looking at anybody who creates content and it's almost terrified of it.

There are yeah where it's Those are difficult conversations that we're navigating every single day in real time.

And I think the difference from last.

Year where AI never came up, not once in a conversation about any movie that I was working on to this year, where it is ever present in what tools are we using, what tools are we not using?

And also the fear I can only.

Imagine next year, you know, this stuff is happening exponentially.

Is the fear warranted?

I think yes and no.

Right, I think anytime that you have a technology that is going to cause a reduction in jobs, of course it's worrisome for people like that.

It's a real human I can't you know, I don't know.

I think for me, who works with a lot of independent filmmakers and people that are making really highly original stuff but at a lower costs, I think the tools have honestly been mostly helpful because they are creating you know, reductions and costs to our budget.

Beyond that, I don't know, Like how do.

I was thinking? I think about this a lot, like because we're starting to increasingly play around with things like Chachi.

But stilt, I can't rely on it at all. Sure, Like it's it's not.

No, no, We're careful. We are, like I spend more time to like I do everything trying to make it good.

Right, It's like I don't when I get back I don't get the love that I need.

We check sources, But I was thinking about it in the entertainment world, back to like that Star Wars movie, the first one, and they were playing around with stuff. But I think about CGI, and I think about animation.

The first one, the first one, like in the nineteen seventies, first one.

Yeah, but that was considered high. But you know, technology has always had a roll increasingly, you know, whether it's mission impossible, the things that Cruise is doing, and this stuff happening around like pick pick whatever it is came a throat like everything. So technology has a role. So are we being silly to be so fearful of AI or we just have to be smart or is it something very very different from the things that we've had in the digital universe.

I don't think that it's silly to be cautious about technological revolutions evolutions, because they usually come with the flip side to the coin that can have some sort of damaging impacts.

But what I don't think is going to happen is I don't think that we as.

Studios are going to start generating all of our scripts from some l M and producing those scripts so that we don't have to pay writers.

I said, that's a real or.

It's not going to be all over the II actress.

I'm sure Chilli will be in some things. She will not be in a Ryan.

I have seen stuff that is so bad where I'm like, this was definitely from AI. But of course I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about sort of the old school creative process and just ask the basic question, how do you find the good stuff?

Well, that's you know, that's part of the job.

As you you spend ten, fifteen, twenty years reading twenty scripts a week, and part of my job is to sift through all of that.

And okay, so, for example, to pick something like it, to bet on something like American fiction, which I think everybody knows. Yes, how many things do you pass on before you get to that?

Probably over one hundred.

Yeah, the conversion rate of American Fiction was an incredible script. One of the best scripts I've ever read in my life. And those are unicorns, and they don't come around often and they cannot be generated. Can someone now write, you know, a replicate script that's American Fiction esque, perhaps through an LM. It's not something that's an incredible voice and writer who wrote almost a perfect script, and that those just don't come along often.

Do we have time?

Yeah, go your background?

Your dad? Yeah, Radio, Yeah, he was a big deal.

He's a big deal.

Is a big deal, I think, so, yeah.

How did that shape you kind of growing up in that world?

The best thing about having my dad and my mom both worked in the entertainment industries is I knew that you could make a living doing this, and I didn't have parents who were scared of me chasing this. But I will say I also had a parent who lived through massive, massive technological changes in his industry. I remember showing my dad and iPods, showing him Napster and his

Yeah, I mean, like we see it in our world, and we now do shows that you know right now, you're on our streaming service, you're on YouTube, you're on radio, and we do a couple of hours that throwed you know, tradition linear television into it, so it's this melding is pretty wild.

Thank you, Thank you. What a pleasure. Likewise, yeah, really fun. I hope you can catch up. I hope sin at some point in the future as well.

Thanks Alata Mayor, she's president of Ryan Pictures, joining us right here at Bloomberg screen time.