Wimbo Kelly one K six will come.
In twenty eighty nine Detroit.
Roble Force is obsolete and has no hope of becoming heroes. That is until a mysterious code virus infects the UA one oh one bots and no one besides Robo Force can stop them. Robo Force, the animated series premieres April twelfth on TV, which also happens to be the most
watched free TV and movie streaming service in the US. Producer, director and friend to the show, and also founder and CEO Today Sale Come, Brian Volkwiss is back to tell us all about Robo Force the animated series and I suspect the future of streaming entertainment as well.
Brian, nice to have you back on sir. How you doing.
Always a pleasure, and I do not use that term lightly.
It is literally always a pleasure. I was in a good mood before I saw you. Just now now I'm in a great mood.
So thank you, well, thank you.
We had a nice conversation before this conversation off air, and it seems that my NERD credentials have expanded greatly, very quickly.
Share that story.
Yeah, so I'm reading this great book Now it's funny.
I know the.
Author's name, Steve Kozak. I don't know the name of the book, but it.
Is about the Star Wars Holiday special. And I saw this name Mo Kelly all throughout the book, so I was like, oh, I'm talking to him tomorrow. So I've been reading your name all over because we're doing press worldwide international tour for Robo Force, and that is.
The book I I'm reading while on the tour.
Hi praise and I appreciate you for that, But let me respond in kind. Everyone has seen your work, and I mean everyone. Some may have seen your comedy specials you produce for Kevin Hart, Jim Gaffigan, Andrew Schultz, built Ingwell and others. Some know you work with icons on Earth series installments. I'm always intrigued as to what motivates you in this media space. What makes a good story to tell or show?
In my mind, anything good needs two things, heart and humor.
And you know I always give two examples.
The perfect examples of that premise are seven you know, the Brad Pitt Morgan Freeman movie and Bride'smaids.
Seven Dark Mean, What's in the Box?
The John Doe, Oh, the terrible blood gore. There's also a lot of humor, like a lot just because you've got a library card and make your Yoda one of the funniest lines of all time. Conversely, Bride'smaids, people pooping in stores, getting drunk at parties, knocking over fountains. There's a lot of heart in that movie. There's a lot
of pathos the movie. Yes, it's about all the girls getting back together and all the craziness at a wedding and everything, but it's also fundamentally about friendship and marriage, so you need both.
I'll give you an even crazier example.
The greatest movie of last year, The Beekeeper. Yes, I said it, dumbass action movie, stoopidter I get it.
I dressed like him for Halloween.
But it literally opens if you watch the movie again, if you haven't seen it, it literally opens with like this pretty powerful scene between Jason Statham and Alicia Rashad, Thank you, Like this pretty intimate scene of them, like not sexually intimate, but like two people having coffee as the sunsets this very powerful surrogate mother story where her surrogate like.
And then it's a dumbass action movie, but that scene.
It makes the movie work, and without that I wouldn't be talking about it right now.
It's interesting you said that not to name job, but I was just speaking to the director of The Beekeeper and also his latest film, A working Man, David Ayre, last week on this show. So it's it's almost serendipitous that you happen to mention The Beekeeper. But I can see where you're coming from. Let me ask you this as well. Animation has seemingly gone under a remodel over
the decades. What was originally just for kids is now for adults and kids, and this underlying action figure market also supported by both I need not tell you that, but why do you I think animation has become ageless, and it's appeal ageless in many respects.
You know.
I think it's because we start I always say, like the beginning of what we now call pop culture. I really would argue our current definition started with Planet of the Apes, because Planet of the Apes it.
Was before Star Wars to a.
Certain degree, you could argue from a pop culture point of view, it.
Was before Star Trek.
Even it was the first brand that had a movie, then another movie, toys, then a TV show and everything else, plates bowls, t shirts. So it's like we've gotten to this multi generational.
Stage of pop culture.
I played with Bumblebee, I played with Optimist Prime. So does my six year old kid last night. And I think that's a huge part of what's also happened with animation, because the same way I grew up watching Transformers and my parents didn't. When my kids got into Rescue Bots initially and Dino Trucks and now Transformers, I'm with them, like, I'm so excited to sit on the couch with them and watch this. And that wasn't going on in the nineties or eighties, let alone the seventies.
So I think that.
Had a lot to do with the switch, the transition. And a great example of that is the original X Men, which of course now we call X Men ninety seven. But I watched X Men by myself, but in retrospect, yeah, I think my parents would have loved it too.
How do you in your mind effectively translate, explain, describe the subtleties, the nuances. Because you talked about Rescue Box, we could talk about Transformers, we can talk about rober Force as we are going to and how that occupies different spaces and people dinal box people understand the subtleties and nuances because I know someone's listening, Like my eyes are glazing over. I don't understand the differences in all these properties. How is it different? Why is it different?
Why do people find themselves attracted to one summer?
All Not to be cheesy, but you're asking in a good way. You're asking a very simple question. So I have to give you a very simple answer. It's the writing. The writing creates the characters. And everybody talks about.
The world and world building and cannon.
You know, we use these big artsy fartsy words like I'm teaching a class at NYU.
The truth of the matter is it's about characters.
Like I always have responded to Jedi Luke and Ahsoka Tano like so yes, I love Star Wars as a whole, but that which brings me into Star Wars is a very specific Luke Skywalker, not even a new Hope Luke and Ahsoka twenty five thirty years later kept.
Me into it.
You know, I was watching Wicked for the second time with my daughter Sunday night, and like, again, this is gonna sound crazy, but the whitest man ever I relate to Elthabah. So I'm sitting here almost forty nine white guy from Queens connecting to a black woman playing a green woman in a movie, and like, that's who I connect with.
What do you think that connection is there for you? Before we go to your daughter?
I think it's because my life and career are similar to the whoop.
I almost said the S word to the stuff. Not that word. I said it S word. My life and.
Career, especially my career, just happens to connect with what she's going through in the movie.
My daughter, who.
Is eleven and has not yet had her teeth kicked in the way we all do. After we leave our home, our parents home, shenects with Gutland. So again, forty nine year old guy from New York eleven year old girl born and raised in la Completely different connections. But that's what makes anything great is you have something in there for all of you, for everyone, I mean, and that's what pulls you in a character.
Brian Volkwiss, we have to take a quick break, but that is a great stopping point and we can all marinate on that.
During the break.
We're going to talk about Robe Force, the animated series, which is going to premiere on April twelfth on two BM, speaking with Brian volk Weiss, front of the show, of course, but president and CEO of Nasal Company more in just a moment, can't if I Am six forty Live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Someone has to turning down one on one.
They've been attacking people and we have the power to start it.
You sure you wouldn't want to join us? Well? That went well.
What was unthinkable a few days ago has become a pattern.
Those one on ones were infected with some ro code.
You got this, You're program to lead? You got this?
You got this?
Oh my god, Duke, she's going to figure this out. We need to do so before she does. Using the entire army of you a one on ones to attack humanity isn't a liberation, it's a slaughter. Heart.
I Am six forty Later with mo Kelly, We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We're talking about Robo Force, the animated series, which is going to premiere April twelfth on TUB and We're going to talk about it right now with Brian volge Weiss, who has been on the show a number of times. You know his work from Icons on Earth and his many comedy specials that he's produced, and animation and action figures. He does a little bit of everything. But right now, let's talk about Robo Force,
the animated series. I got to ask you, Brian, sometimes I think the city of Detroit gets a bad rap. It seems like it's nothing but bad news and media when it comes to the city. RoboCop Detroit, Assault on Precinct thirteen Detroit, The Betsy Detroit, The Crow, dark Man, Evil Dead Detroit.
You get by point, why Detroit for Robo Force.
I'm gonna give you an answer you're not even gonna believe. But I will say this before I answer you. I believe the Detroit that we showed is positive. You won't see any burnt out buildings or any of the other stuff.
But here's why it's in Detroit. It's funny to me you started with this question.
We were this close to buying Robo Cop, so I had found out while making movies that made us. I was in Dallas, which is where RoboCop was shot for the most part with Ed Newmyer and Ed Newmeyer over dinner mentioned this wacky thing called Sonny Bono law, which meant the rights were going back to him in about nine months. So we made an offer and we were getting close to acquiring robo Cop.
And while that was all going on, we were developing.
I hope I don't confuse everybody with all the robos robo Force. So I said to myself, when we get the deal done for RoboCop, we will have RoboCop and robo Force work together. Well, I don't know if you've heard of this company. You seem smart Mode, but maybe you don't notice. There's a company called Amazon, and this is going to blow your mind.
They got more money than I do.
They bought MGM while we were negotiating. So when I thought we were about to get the deal done, Amazon came in bought MGM. And remember I told you they got more money than I do. So we ended up not getting RoboCop, but we were already in pre production on robo Force, so we left it in Detroit.
Let's talk more about robo Force set the stage for the story for me.
So the story of season one we took from real life. What happened in real life was the toy company that made robo Force came up with this huge, crazy idea for the biggest toy launch of all time, robo Force. Most toy lines launch with seven characters. Robo Force launch with thirty two characters. Most toy lines first waves start with maybe one vehicle. Robo Force started with three vehicles.
You never have a play set for a first wave.
The biggest playset you've ever seen, of course, except for the USS flag.
They go to Toy Fair.
And for anybody who doesn't know what toy Fair is, imagine like the Sundance Film Festival for toys. But imagine if there were no other film festivals, only Sundance.
That's toy Fair.
So they go to Toy Fair nineteen eighty three, they're like, look at this, isn't this great? And everybody thought it was great. Toys r US made the biggest order in the history of toys.
R US two million units of robo Force Wave one.
Wow.
You might be asking yourself, well, if it was such a big deal, how.
Come nobody really knows what robo Force is?
Right?
That announcement was on a Tuesday guess what was announced on Thursday, Transformers. So Transformers comes out, destroys robo Force.
Sticking with the same comp.
Robo Force toys r us order two million goes to two fifty KB had done.
Half a million order.
Goes to fifty destroys to robo Force. Not only that bankrupts the company that made it. So we took that story and made it our DNA. So at the beginning of robo Force, essentially you see Roboforce getting announced to the world like Yay, we're the best.
We're gonna save the world.
Across town an evil company, Utopia Ages they announced their new robots, the UA one o Ones. The UA one o ones are much better than Roboforce, and robo Force is decimated. So for fifteen years, the members of Robofce have miserable lives, horrible jobs, they fall apart, they get into fights with each other.
It's terrible.
Then, believe it or not, the UA one o ones they get hacked, they get corrupted, and guess who is the only force that can stop the UA one o ones robo Force.
You got it?
Wow, never we can invite you to Jeopardy. So that's our story. So the story takes place fifteen years after they had their teeth kicked in and their shins broke and all of that. And this is what I can promise anybody who watches. It's a redemption story. There is not a single character at the beginning of the series
that's the same at the end. Heroes become villains, villains become heroes, and you're watching everybody evolve in a way that's really I think typical of life in that it's your experiences, you know, going back to Wicked, it really is your experiences that make us. And we show that Robo Force rising basically all but from the grave.
They learned a lot in.
Those fifteen years of being in the wilderness, and now they're finally getting their shot at being heroes.
My time is run short with you, Brian Vogewise, very quickly tell me the significance of this being on two B and the future of streaming as you see it. You have that free model where everyone else struggles seemingly with charging the subscription.
Why to be so we were very lucky, you know, we financed Robo Force and then we took it out to the market. So it was obviously a little risky, but we got a bunch of offers and we went with tub because they remind me of like the early days of streaming in that they're very aggressive in a good way.
They're very confident, and they really.
Picked their battles carefully, and one of the battles that they picked was that they are free, so they've made it so easy for anybody to sign up, and that's part of the reason, I think, other.
Than Netflix in the YouTube I think to be.
Is number three overall and number one as it relates to the rise and percentage of all the viewers that they have. So we wanted to be with a partner that was kind of young and scrappy like us, and like would fight to win and not just be like, oh, let's put it out and see how it does.
That was our goal and we have had no better partner.
We can't have a better guest. Brian Volk Weisse Robo Force. The animated series premiere is April twelfth. On to me, Brian Volk, wise, thank you so much for always coming on and sharing your work with us. And you know it's not going to be the last time, so I look forward in advance to our next meeting.
At Zoe's Mode. Thank you for having me.
It's Later with Mo Kelly KFI AM six forty. We are live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Mo Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty