Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in which we speak with some of the brightest minds working in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with variety. Ryan Khalil and Blake Griffin are well known as professional athletes in the NFL and NBA, respectively, but they're also making a name for themselves off the field as partners
of their own production company here in Hollywood. Today on the Strictly Business podcast, the two way threats behind Mortal Media are here to talk about finding success in a whole new arena. Right after the break, and we're back with Blake Griffin, he is still with the Boston Celtics going into his fifteenth year in the league, and Ryan Khalil, who in enjoyed a thirteen year career mostly with the NFL's Carolina Panthers.
Together, they've produced.
A whole bunch of TV shows and movies, most recently including a reboot of the movie White Men Can't Jump for Hulu and the series Hello Tomorrow for Apple TV.
Plus.
Thanks for coming in, guys, Thanks for having us.
Yeah, thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
First off, Mortal Media, explain that name? Where did that come? From you guys are immortal athletes' what's that about?
Now?
I think you know, I think it's rare for athletes to have long careers, and Blake and I, as long as we've known each other, we always knew that going into this business, and so I think for us it was pretty apparent that recognizing our mortality in the game of football and basketball was a good reminder for how rare and how special those experiences and those careers were and are and still are.
So made the most sense for us.
Yeah, and the beauty of sports is you know, when your career ends, you're still somewhat young, so that mortality in a certain field doesn't necessarily mean the mortality for your future. So early on we always talked about having having our second life after our sports and I love the name. I think it makes sense. But people we always get that question. But it's also kind of fun being able to answer it.
Now.
The big difference between you guys, of course, is Blake you are still in the game, Ryan retired. Is there a difference there when it comes to operating a business like this. I mean, Blake, you're in the off season right now, but you know NBA will be coming up in what October and summer league's going on right now. So is there a difference in how you do your thing?
Yeah, very different. I mean when we first started, we were obviously both playing, but the off seasons sort of offset each other. So it was kind of nice, like one of us was a little bit off and then the other one was off. So now, you know, really with our schedule, it feels like we play every other day. So it's been great since Ryan retired that he's just he's just been there and he's been sort of like leading the ship that way, And for me, I just
try to find times here and there. You know, sometimes it might be a game day, you might have thirty minutes for a call, but you get a lot done on the road, or you get a lot done on off days.
I'm also really sensitive of his schedule too, almost to a fault where he's like, no, it's fine, don't worry about it. But I'll be like, don't bother blake with that during the playoffs right now, I don't he can. We can deal with that on Monday, and and so it's it's it's it's tough when you're deep in the season. Obviously, off season makes it a lot easier to work on
things and develop. But also this business is it's a lot of hurry up and wait, So you are getting into things and then it takes a long time to bake, and you're waiting on a lot of stuff. So it makes it easier in that respect to you know, if you can find windows where you're hustling really hard, there's also a lull that gives you the ability to take a breather and step away, And so I think it ends up working out.
So take me back to the origin story of Mortal Media. When did you guys start up? How did you guys meet up?
Blake and I know each other through mutual friends for some time, and then we both had a mutual relationship and Thomas Toll, who founded Legendary Pictures.
Sure, and.
You know, we had both been respectably hustling around town trying to network, meet up with people really understand the business and be sponges in the offseason, and Thomas didn't know we were friends and sort of suggested, Hey, I've met with a lot of athletes who liked the idea of the movie business, but more so putting their name on a poster and you and Blake are one of the few that really talk about it with a real passion and.
Wanting it to be a follow up career.
And he goes, you know, I think it would be interesting if you guys did it together. And so I called Blake and we were both laughing the fact that we didn't know each other. We're pursuing that, And so we got together, had dinner and really talked about what it could be, what it would look like, how we would do it differently. You know, our biggest thing was the athlete stigma, sort of what Thomas had suggested most
athletes want to do in this in this industry. So we talked a lot about how can we pursue it in a way where we can do it under the radar, put our head down, not not have it be a vanity project for us, and and really do it in a sincere way. And and so that's what we did. We we we started in our respective off seasons really just going to different places, interning, meeting with different folks, finding mentors, and really trying to hone in how.
We could sort of.
Catch up on a lot of inexperience but also find ways in which we could innovate or make a big splash.
But wait, how does this star athlete intern? Because that, to me, that's TV show by the way, in and of itself. How do you intern?
Well, it's easier for me, I just look like a really big intern. For him, it's a little bit harder. You know, he's a much more recognizable name and face. But he's done it. I know you did it with Funnier Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's mine was like a crash course internship. I think it was two weeks long.
But I like grew up in that kind of era when Funnier Die sort of took off and they were making unbelievable videos and I think I had shot something with them before and we just started talking about how much I love comedy and all that, and they said, why don't you come by? And it's funny now because I'll run into people who are like, hey, you know, we were in the same intern class on your Die and they're you know, working in comedy, the Riders whatever,
so we've we've kind of got different passions there. But I don't know, it just it's for me just sort of started with every time I wanted to do it, or I had to do a commercial or whatever it was. I always wanted to be funny, and so after a first round of commercials that I did with a car company, Kia, I asked if I could like sit in while we wrote or while the ad agency wrote, and then sort of gained more and more creative control. And that was kind of what interest got me interested in this.
Well, it's interesting about you, Blake, and I remember those Kia commercials. Is you've always been I think you've obviously you've got an interest in producing and the creative side, but you're kind of a performer. You've done stand up a lot. Has that faded for you over time? Are you still interested in that stuff too?
I wouldn't say I'm so interested. It was something really fun to do. From time to time, I would do a TV show or a movie here and there, and then I did stand up. I've loved stand up since
I was a kid. And got presented with the opportunity to go to Just for Last festival in Montreal and hosts a show called Midnight Surprise where the audience doesn't know who the the meetings that are coming up, but they just know that I'm hosting it, and I said yes, thinging like, oh, I just got to go up and you know, thank you guys for coming, blah blah blah, and I committed to it and they were like, all right, so we just need like eight to ten minutes up
top from you. And I was like, oh, okay, all right, So I got to go like write all this stand up. But a long time before that, I think after my rookie year, i'd met a comedian a good friend of mine, Neil Brennan, and he encouraged me to just start writing down thoughts and like writing down maybe they're not jokes yet, but their thoughts that I thought were funny and could eventually, you know, put those together. So I have this whole notes folder on my phone of just like random thoughts.
Some work out, some don't. So I just like went to work, wrote about ten minutes and I did it like six nights in a row, just for last But that's not something I'm gonna do in the future or forever. It was just a really cool experience, sort of like an internship, where you go into something that's completely new to you and you walk away and you feel like you have a new tool under your belt. So I've leaned on some of those experiences throughout my life, honestly since I've since I've done that.
See, I would imagine the athlete producer is a double edged sword. On the one hand, you guys being athletes, it's going to open a lot of doors people want to meet you. On the other hand, I wonder if you're going to be taken seriously do you encounter that?
That was something we talked about, you know, when we first started talking about starting this company. Was the reason we didn't want to just announce right away that we started production company. We wanted to just go meet with people.
We wanted to make the phone call to try to get a meeting with them, and then our whole like goal and it probably was like some sort of our weird competitiveness that we have athletes where you want to show people that this is something you really like and something you are passionate about, not just wanting to slap your name on.
I think for a lot of athletes or people of recognition like Blake, you know, there is sort of an expectation that that person might make some kind of appearance in the thing to help give it notoriety or at least at the very least, you know, whether it's social media or they're using their following to help amplify whatever
that project is. And so for us, we really tried to do the work and explore and develop things that would be separate from that expectation and make that pretty transparent early on, and so I think we knew it was going to take some time. So yeah, I think at the top there is a stigma that we were kind of fighting. But then I think the more we were showing the work we were putting out, and you know, being a producer is a lot like being a GM
we're sort of putting all the pieces together. The more we were able to show the studios or the networks that we had, the you know, we had the ability to do that and to put those things together, the more serious we were being taken. And obviously, over time you naturally build relationships and there's more trust involved, and
so it makes it easier and easier. And so we knew the long game was we were going to be like rookies again, and we were going to be hustling and grinding, and while we were trying to get away from the athlete stigma. I also feel like we leaned into it in the sense of, you know, we wanted to show we had great work ethic. We wanted to show we had resiliency, especially in a town that sort
of rejects you a ton. So we have the experience of failing time and time again and getting back on the horse and smiling and getting back into the fray.
And we also.
We're very competitive, and that we love when agents or studios would tell us you can ever get that done. That's never going to happen, you know, hang tight, dumb jocks, that's let the grown ups do this, and so we always we just love that so much, and it just it really gave us. You know, you hear athletes talk about it using their hater juice or whatever it is. But we we had a form of that that we were like, Okay, we'll prove you wrong.
We'll show you this is how you can do it.
And so and that also gave us the ability to really think outside the box because we had a lot of people say, well, this is how it's done, and we'd ask questions like, well, why is that, and nobody would have a great answer. It's just well, this is just how it's always been done. So we thought, okay, well we'll lean into the fact that we're outsiders and we can play dumb and act like we didn't know that you couldn't do it that way or you could do it this way.
And so we were we were able to have success with that.
And then the more we met with mentors or people that we really looked up to and we got to hear their stories, the more we started figuring out, well, a lot of these people who were really successful were mavericks or they sort of went against the grain or didn't do things the way it's traditionally done. And so we've continued to kind of think that way, although it's harder now that we have some we have some things made under our belt to play dumb, you know, because
we've been in it for a minute now. But we're continuing to find ways to think differently and you know, make a splash where nobody else is.
Yeah.
I think keeping that like mindset to is super important. You know, you when you start out, you don't know much. And then just in our six years or so, we've learned, we've learned some and like Ryan said, we've tried to put our head down and show our work ethic, and you almost get to the point where you sort of know sort of the unwritten rules, you know, how things work.
And so I had a thought the other day where it was kind of like, man, I wish I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then, you know, because you have to just keep reminding yourself to like
keep that same mindset of like make the call. Like you maybe you're supposed to go do this like hierarchy and call this person, but sometimes if you want to get something done, you're passionate about something, you make the call and you have to We have to make those decisions, you know, in real time what's what's right and what's
quote unquote wrong. But I think throughout our career, I hope we keep your mind it's ourselves of like the beginning, you know, and we just put our heads down and went to work.
You know, it's almost now something of a cliche in terms of the producer athlete. You know Lebron James, Tom Brady, you know, your your old Clipper running buddy, Chris Paul. You know, do you guys ever compare notes? Is there something to be or is it when you think when you talk about mentors, is it people who aren't even in the game.
Yeah, I would say people outside of the game. You know, everybody has their own style, everybody has their own way of going about going about this. But you're so right, there's now when people are always like, what are you going to do after basketball? I'm always kind of like, like, I gotta say, like a started production company just because people roll their eyes at you. I'm super proud out of the fact that we did. But it's the same thing.
It's the oh, another athlete startup production company. So I sort of give him like the quick, like one minute, thirty second spiel of like how we started and the way we approached it. But for the most part, we've met so many great people, especially early on and now with more, more and more projects we get under our belt, more people, the more people we have in our rolodex and are able to lean on, and people if you show that you're passionate about it and you care, people
are very willing to help. And that's been a huge help for us.
For me.
After the break more with Ryan Khalil and Blake Griffin and we're back with Blake Griffin and Ryan Khalil, guys. I think people would be shocked at just the sheer volume of projects that you guys have gone in TV and movies, and so I want to walk through a lot of this stuff, starting with the fact that, you know, I believe earlier this year you signed a find first Look deal with Sony, which I think obviously was probably a big deal for you. Uh how does that change the game for Mortal Media.
I think it gives us. It gives us a willing partner in a studio that's aligned with us creatively and allows us to have a shorthand and sort of get quicker through the development process and maybe also at production just because we're there on a lot and we're with a ton of really talented, smart people who like the stuff that we're cooking up, so, you know, versus free agents where you're sort of rustle your run around town, you're you know, you do the gauntlet, you're trying to
find a home for something. So I think that will be that will be a huge bonus for us. Unfortunately, the timing of the deal is right in the middle
of a writers' strike, so that's been tough. But it's given us an opportunity to refocus on a lot of our unscripted things, and obviously sports unscripted is an obvious path for us given our backgrounds, and that's been both fun and also challenging because there's a huge market for it, but there's also a really crowded market, and there's a lot of stuff that's been done already and a lot
of stuff that's trying to be done. So, you know, it starts with us finding something that we're really excited about, whether it's a story or a series that we want to we want to tell. But then there's a new challenge of finding a way that it hasn't been done yet, or finding a way that might be as interesting too, you know, to an audience that it.
Is to us.
Anything you could talk about yet.
No, nothing yet.
I mean there's a there's a couple of projects, you know, we just got there. So it's only been a few more Yeah, it's only been a few months. But we have about four or five projects that we're really excited about and that we're working on, and yeah, we'll have more on that soon.
And of course, you guys brought white men can't jump the reboot to Hulu. You know, a classic sports movie. What was it like to get that?
IP?
I would imagine it wasn't easy.
No, No. We first had a conversation about this twenty sixteen. I believe it was yoah twenty sixteen. Yeah, and we went to we had a general meeting with Kenya Bears, who was the producer on White Men Can't Jump, and just talked about anything and everything, kind of softly pitched in the idea of like what would White Men Can't
Jump look like today? And I think that was the sort of the thing that got him, because you know, White Men Can't Jump the original coming out in nineteen ninety two, this is before the Dream Team of takes basketball to a global stage and since then. I'm incredibly biased, but I think the NBA has grown more since then than any of the major sports, at least globally, and becoming so many, so many other countries and people are now, you know, on the other side of the world are
fans of basketball. So and even beyond that, fashion obviously ever evolving, and you know the fact that still today we're still having the same conversations about race. Things have progressed, but things still needed to move forward, and just in the title, it gives you a chance to talk about that. And it was a long process. You know, we can you call this back I think a month later maybe, And it was like, hey, I couldn't say this at the time, but have a deal at Fox where we're
gonna do five movies. I want this to be the first one, and we're so excited. Go off, get a script done, rumblings of a Fox, Disney, Disney takeover a Fox, and like, okay, we'll kind of wait. It's like Ryan said earlier, it's just a lot of like get this done, hurry up, talk about it, get excited. Wait. And then that took maybe I don't know, two and a half, three years maybe. Then you get on the other side
and you're like, is this project still going? You don't know what exec's going to be assigned to this project. And then finally get through that process and rewrites and director, and I remember the first day of shooting, I was like, wow, like, actually this actually happened. So it was it was a long wait, but it was super worth it, and I'm glad we got to talk about this the same topic, these same topics again, and.
You guys have another interesting reboot set up at Disney in The Rocketeer with David I looo again, how do you get your hands on such an interesting, cherished piece of ip like that?
That was all Ryan, Well, you gotta be a fan of the property first, and then there has to be a good reason to remy I would say, like for White Men Can't Jump. I remember initially it was more the abstract thought when we talked about recapturing. I don't think we ever set out to remake a classic, but there was just too much of that that was in the spirit of that movie that just made too much sense.
And I think the same with The Rocketeer, which is just recapturing some of the fun of that cult movie and then the idea that it was a dormant property and the studios are really keen on finding something that has a built in audience that can mitigate some of the risk of making.
A big movie like that.
For us, it was just it was an exciting opportunity but also a dunting one. And so I think a combination of a take that they liked and just the pure sincere fandom of it got them excited and nobody
was really had their hand up. And so I think, you know, part of producing is sort of doing the dirty work and trying to find out the politics of certain projects or studios and what's happening, what they're looking for, uh you know, uh, who's going where, what's involved with who's involved with what, And so there's a there's a whole ton of there's a there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid out first in terms of setting up what the correct political path is before you
even get to the idea, because it is such a fragile path to get to. And so for us, it was recognizing the I P and then finding out what was the cleanest path to try to convince the studio to let some inexperienced former athletes, current athletes, uh get a hand, get their hands on this property and and do right by it. And so so yeah, I you know, going back to what we were talking about before, the athlete of it all, I think it's it's helped us get in the doors, but it's still there's still a
level of talent that has to take place. And so and Blake and I are finally are Blake and I are constantly trying to figure out where our talents.
Lie and where tastes lie. I think we have good tastes.
I think we have an acumen for this that makes us good partners. And finding the idea either coming up with it in house or collaborating with a writer or another producer, and seeing it from start to finish, and again just knowing that it's going to be a hard, long, uphill battle and staying at it. And so to the point a white man can't jump years and years of development.
And it's a lot of like getting excited, and it's kind of like that scene in Swingers where they get in the car and they're like Vegas, Baby, Vegas, and then it cuts to them like an hour in the car and.
It's kind of Vegas.
Making movies and TV shows is a lot like that, And so you have to really have the ability to keep the excitement and energy up on something that you're just constantly knocking on the door trying to get over the finish line. And so Rocketeer's probably been one of our longest ones.
That was one of the first properties we talked about, yeah, when we when we sat down originally to talk about starting this company.
But it's funny.
We we we came up with a take, obviously being fans, and we imbued it with a lot of visuals that we thought would really help sell it. And then we found a producer. We found a producer that we thought would be a really great partner and that Disney like that would help sort of bridge the gap of our inexperience and having you know, quote unquote an adult on the project. And then we pitched it, and then we found out that nobody had really been doing anything with it.
You know, you can you can really make a lot of phone calls with insiders either at the studio or agencies, and really do a lot of due diligence in finding out who's involved with what and where do things lie, and then you can really kind of make a calculated you can make a calculated sort of gamble on how to go about it. And for that one, we really
kind of want them over with our passion. And then it's just been it's been one of those journeys where it's it's been good enough for them to keep going, but not great to get it over the finish line. And so we've we've had ups and downs in the development process of it, but it's been it's been really it's one of those projects that we we still love and we think there's an audience for and we're just we're just continuing to chip away at it. And we
have some news coming up. It's one of those things that just won't die.
It is. It's uh, it's been something.
That we we've we've really put a lot of heart into and so we have some news that hopefully coming out of the writer's strike we'll be able to share. But yeah, more exciting stuff on that to come.
Does being producing partners mean you guys have to have identical tastes, identical skills or is it about being complimentary somehow? And to some degree that question reminds me of like sports, where you know, I think about the Celtics and people's always talking about Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown. How do they compliment each other? You know, are they doing the same things? That kind of thing?
I mean, I think like a lot of is like any relationship or any team experience, Like there's trust. There's a certain amount of trust that's involved. We do align in our taste a lot, but there's there could be I don't think there's been yet, but there could be a time where I'm like, I just I don't get it. But if he's like I love this, do it, you know, like there's no there's no there's no stopping a project
between the two of us. If we're passionate about something, then you know that's that's I think that's how it should be, so that there's like a certain level of trust. And I mean, I think Ryan's been like since before he retired killed it, but since he's retired, it's just like been like another level. So that's been cool to see.
And I told him this a while ago, but like it makes me more excited for you know that when that time comes to be able to step into something and put everything you have into it and keep growing the company. But to me, it's just trust. I think, just knowing that like I trust his taste, I trust how hard he works. I trust that he'll go get
it done. And and like you said, the idea is almost like when you just like you sign with a team, the idea is awesome, but then you know, training camp, the whole regular season, practice every day, like that's all the stuff that like it takes to finally make a movie and get to the point that you want to get to. So I think from that aspect we're used to like, you know, it's just going to be a long journey and you just sit down and you get after it.
Now, I read a bizarre Gizmoto story recently about an action figure that you guys are I mean, it seems like gets backwards the way you guys are approaching this. Tell me about this new project where it just seems strange to me. Explain.
I think Blake and I have a lot of similar tastes, you know, we we both have an affinity for things old and new. There's a there's a project we've been working on with Vince Vaughan and Peter Billingsley that we can't talk about yet, but we've been working on it for a while and it's sort of again our approach to kind of thinking outside the traditional path of projects.
And so there's an idea.
About eighties specifically the era, the golden era of action figures of that time, and so sort of as a sneak peek into the larger endeavor, we released a limited edition statue of this particular.
Character named Flint Star Striker.
It's sort of a cross between Star Wars and he Man, and so there's a lot of there's a lot of childhood fun, childhood memories that have gone into this project from everyone involved. And so yeah, it's I'm I'm such a big fan boy, so I I sort of love the jj Abrams mystery box approach to things, and so we we definitely stole a little bit of that magic and in what we're doing with this project.
And so it's fun.
It's been fun to see, uh, the buzz around it so far and the short time we just put it out there, and obviously.
We'll we'll reveal more as time goes on.
But I think it's a cool way into a window and if you want to wait to sort of find out more about it, you can do that, or you know, I think those things might be pretty valuable in the future, so you might not want to miss out.
You heard it first.
Here, Well, I am definitely intrigued and.
In buying one too, right, Andrew, Oh, yeah, what does it cost? Yeah? Oh it's uh, we'll get your discount code.
Nice, nice, awesome. Well, guys, I mean there's a lot of stuff coming out of the Mortal Media shop and uh, it's gonna be very interesting to follow what you guys have got coming. Thanks for coming on the Strictly Business podcast. Appreciate your time, Appreciate it, Thank you, Thanks for having us. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping of scintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to
the podcast to hear future episodes. Also leave a review in Apple Podcasts and let us know how we're doing