There's Life After ‘Dead’ for Skybound Entertainment

zombie sensation. But there's a lot more to sky Bound, as I've learned interviewing David last week at the Future of TV conference. Stay tuned after the break for this really interesting conversation, and we're back with sky Bound Entertainment CEO David Albert. Well, good to talk to you, David. I it's interesting to have this conversation at a time where the sort of marquee show for sky Bound, a little little show called The Walking Dead, is ending its run.

Although to say it's ending also feels weird given that the franchise, broader than just that show, has such a long future ahead of it. So I wanted to start with, like, could you possibly have imagined when that show first launched? What was this twenty years ago? Twenty seasons ago that it would be everything that it became. So the comic launched twenty years ago, we're coming up next year. This is the eleventh season. Short answers. No, I mean I knew.

I knew the comic was special. I knew the story that we had was special. I knew that there's a great opportunity like a white space that nobody had done serialized horror, and I knew that that was something that was very much in demand. So I felt like we had a great window. But there's no way that I could have known that at that time we were going to go for twelve years, you know, multiple spinoffs, you know, billions of dollars of merchandise and video games out. No,

I had no idea that. So after twelve seasons, what do you attribute the outsized success of The Walking Dead? What? What? What do you think about it resonated so well? Well, you know, I always look at sort of the product market fit right in general, and I feel like, one there was no serio. I sawror, and I feel like that's now. It's really hard to imagine that because just how much horror is on television. But just thinking back

to that landscape no one had really done. And you know, there have been an episode of horror, anthological horror, but nothing that had come on that had been like, hey, we're gonna treat this men seriously and sort of do that. So I think that was a major aspect of it. I think separately, you know, Um, I think we got lucky and hit the zeitgeist in in a real way. I think, you know, people the digital world had really

sort of started to transform people's lives. Um and Chuck cost Woman had written a not ed I want to say, like right after the show came out about like why he thought zombies were resonating with people, and part of it, he said it was attributable to email the notion that the more that you sort of whacked them down, the

more they come back at you. And I did think there was something existential that we tapped into the notion that our work lives, we're sort of attacking us and getting us at all the different areas and hours that used to be safe and awful limits from work. So I think there was something there, Um that we sort of pepped into. The zepest Wells was sort of right time, right place, combined was sort of a lucky break. That's

an interesting theory. I would add to it that And I think this also spoke to I Lost was such a big hit. I think there's something about a show where do you see a society that has to sort of peel away from modern technology and go back to this sort of primitive use your hands to to fight and survive kind of thing. I mean, do you think that might be also a theory? Oh yeah, I mean I think I think people love those stories, right, Like you know, I grew up reading books like Hatchett and

Mackay and Lord of the Flies. Right, those are sort of like, you know, the nature of humanity questions like what happens when you take away all of our creature comforts and you put us there? Right? And I think, you know, some of us like to think we would do well. And I think it's it really poses those questions like how would you react in those situations? And um, I think it was. You know, I think I think

we got lucky with with that as well. But yes, I think people love seeing the sort of stripping people

way back to back to everything. And then on top of it, I feel like there was we also really don't we really st lead into the soap oper angle, right and sort of you know, if I pitch you this this story as opposed to some of abo zombies, where I said, Hey, a guy wakes up from from a coma to find that his best friend has taken up with his wife, and his wife is pregnant and he's not sure if if the baby is his or his best friends. Right, that sounds like a daytime soap

from when I was growing up. Um, but you had zombies and that becomes the Walking Day. Yeah. I mean, I think there's that formula of sort of the back to basics. I think that's worked for everything, going back to survivor to I think you look at a show like Yellow Jackets on Showtime Today that has a bit of that flavor. But I also want to talk about again, this is so much more than just a show. It is a franchise. You've got other versions on the air,

You've got so many different executions and other media. So can you give us sort of a the full scope of when we call it a franchise, everything that's going on right now for the Walking Dead, I mean, first and foremost, the Walking Dead is a comic it's the best selling independent black boy indpendent comic of all time. Um came out in two thousand three. And you know, everything really for us stems and starts and end with the comic book, Right. That's sort of that's our canon,

that's our more. Anytime we have a question, everybody goes back to the comic. Obviously, we have all the shows that are own. There's Walking Dead if you're the Walking Dead, Towns and the Walking Dead, a number spinoffs, additional shows sort of in production now, and of course they're Talking Dead. Which I also think was a huge opportunity for us to sort of sort of made the show successful was embracing the notion of a water cooler. Don't just do a show that's a water cooler show, make a water

cooler show about the show that's a water cooler show. Right, So it sort of really tapped into that sort of meta conversation, which I think was really helpful and make it successful. Outside of that, we have in a number

or video games, right. So we started with the tell Tales Walking Dead, which was a narrative driven game, which is huge, right, and it's some people's favorite character is Ri Grimes from the comic or from the show about a lot of people's favor character is Clementine, who originated un tell Tales Walking Dead, um, and is you know, now we're sort of giving an additional life. UM. There's a series of you know y a graphic novels that

we've launched from Tilly Walden that follows Clementine. So that's been really exciting to see the title game. I can't stress enough how transformative it was, not just for us as a company, um, but even beyond that sort of revitalizing sort of the narrative gaming genre. UM. You know, up to that point, I would say the narrative gaming was sort of a bit of a backwater UM in that space. But we really took the television approach. We're like,

writing is front and center. We're gonna run of writers room, um, and it's going to be about decisions and emotions, and approached that game with the goal of trying to make people cry, right, which was not an obvious play when you're looking at a zombie game. And that game went on to do you know, over a hundred game the year awards, done over a billion dollars retail. It's been a transformative moment for us to show the power of storytelling in the interactive format. Um. So from there, we

now have thirteen games out. Um we have a number of games in market now or number more games coming. We've done everything from uh, we did the Walking Red Wine, we did Waking Dead Coffee, we did Walking Dead cruises, we had Samurai Serbs, baby onesies. I mean, you know, we pretty much spanned the gamut of pretty much anywhere we can tell an interesting and propelling story, we do.

And you know, going back to that first question, I think the approach that you just laid out is also part of probably why The Walking Dead has been such a stalwart on television for so long, all these different other executions of that same I p and that kind of probably has sort of a virtuous cycle to it, right, the video game sense to the TV show, that TV

show sends to the video game for sure. Although what I would say is, I think, you know, there's a difference between franchises set around a single character, which can be hugely successful, and I think it was easier for us because we had a world, right, we had a world with a set of rules that was more important than an individual character. Rick Rhimes hugely important, you know, key figure for us in Walking Dead, Laura, but Rick

Rhymes doesn't show up in anything that Commentine does. And I think that idea that you can take that concept and extended out as long as you treated it with the same degree of seriousness, um that we did in the main show. That allowed I think the universe sort of feel bigger and broader than it would have otherwise. So I feel like that was a huge benefit for us. So when you talk about a world, when you talk about a franchise, what is the long term planning like?

Because I will not blink an eye if The Walking Dead is on in some shape or form thirty forty years from now, and so do you plan that far out? I mean, how does that work? It must be horrifically complex. You know, we have absolute concrete plans for the next five years, right, So I have contracts and dates that I have laid out on a board that I can show you that would literally show you everything that we're doing for the next five years of The Walking Dead.

We then have from years six and ten, we have sort of like um goals and some early prep work that we're doing. UM. So that's been sort of a

beneficial thing. And then beyond that, we really just have sort of like aspirations, So you know, we have you know, high level aspirations, but uh and sort of directions we want to take it opportunities that we like to do it, but our goal, our macro goals, we think that there's opportunities to be telling stories in this space for the rest of our natural lives and probably for some unattracted And I think that's also part of the Walking Dead legacy,

particularly on television, where what has now become the norm is if you have a successful show, it must become a franchise. You must figure out other iterations. Obviously The Walking Dead wasn't the first to do that, but do you think it's sort of accelerated that trend. I think so absolutely. I mean, I mean, I think a lot of this, you know, comes from that, It comes from genre and from B movies and from B television, right,

Like that's where we took our roots. Right, you know, we'll go back and look at Star Trek, right, why is Star Trek and able to survived for decades and decades it had you know, obviously Captain Kirkson amazing character, Captain cards amazing character. You know this world we have the world of the Federation. You have all these different planets and racist species, so there's always something new to

dig into and explore a different angle. And just like you said, I think survival and how you rebuild society when all our rules are taken away, I think it's something that we all think about, right like um, as a parent, I'm sure everybody every parent I know is her their kids at some point say that's not their right, and they'll say, okay, well, why is it not fair that? Well, if I was doing it to do like this, and I remember as a kid, I would say the same

thing in my parents, that's unfair. Fair I was the parent, I would do it like this. Everybody wants that opportunity to start civilization scratch. Everyone wants to be like, hey, here's how I would build the ideal society. And I think this gives you like freedom and the license to go ahead and do that, which I think is really really powerful. And you know you guys have certainly gone ahead.

And what I mean by that is when I think about the wealth of I p executions across so many media, I do wonder as well, whether there is a debate or a conversation internally about putting too much out there exhausting the i P. Because we've seen some pretty big i P. I think of you know, Disney and Star Wars as an example of too much too soon, and

you could really uh leave the I P worse for weary. Yeah, And so what we try to do, you know, I think one of the one of the things that I think happens in these spaces is sometimes people tell the same story over and over, right, Like I go back to you know, um, the old the old version of like you know, you go watch the movie theater that you play the video game at home. This is this in the eighties, and you're basically playing the same character

doing the same thing. And that sort of notion of just doing the same thing and not as high resolution or high quality form, I think is the classics sort of melting ice cube approach, where you're you are getting diminishing in terms. The goal for us is always to use whatever aspect of storytelling that we're using to open up a new frontier and explore something we wouldn't have otherwise.

So let me give you two examples, right, So one I talked about Clementine a lot, right where we say, hey, look, this character other than the Lens shows up in that Telltale game for about thirty seconds. Other than that, there's not sorry, there's really a little buddy Um the outside of that, there's really no intersection with the rest of the Cannon that we're telling about. So it's complete new story, complete new universe to sort of really explore Um separately.

Like when we do different games we're trying to use, whether it's an RPG, whether at the real time strategy game, whether it's a training a content trading card game, whatever model we're using, we're trying to explore different aspects. So I think part of the reason why, for instance, I love Star Wars and I grew up loving Stones and

Star Wars was huge to me. But so many of the movies were just retelling the original story over and over again, and I was like, it wasn't until the Mandalorian where I was like, oh, yes, this is something new, this is something exciting. That got me excited. I was like, baby Yoda, like I've been waiting for something like that forever, Like now that was powerful again, that was sort of really meaningful and impactful to me. And so we try to do the same thing. I don't think we always succeed,

but we try to do the same thing. Um in our gaming, inside of our books, always try to explore something new every time that you're you're if you're just an arena rock band playing the hits, you've no anger, gone to the place where you're vibrant and alive. And despite us being the walking day, we have to remain vibrant alive if we're going to survive in this media ecosystem. And so I want to bring it back to sky Bound itself because this this is this approach essentially defines

your company. You're not just looking for, oh hey, this is gonna make a good show. You're looking for And I'm using a parlance you taught me many years ago, the wheel of awesome approach. Talk about what what on earth that means and how that's become why that makes sense for the sky Bound Sure. Uh So, first of all, I love the fact that you remember the wheel of awesome because it really is the secret sauce for what we do. Uh. The one is we we put a

creator at the center of our business. We think that historically Hollywood has been organized around taking creators creations and then sort of sit arming them and keep them out of the process, and we think that that's some mistake. UM. So, my business partners Robert Kirkman, he's the creator to Walking Dead, Creative Invincible, and so he's at the core of the business. Now, he doesn't do all the properties we do, and he's involved in everything, but when it's somebody else's property, it's

that other creator that we put in the center. We're using the model that we built around him for the Walking Dead Invincible for other creators as well. So we put them at the center, and then we basically go in every medium that their pictures said and being right, so um comics, film, television, video games, audio, live events, merchandising, board games, video games, everywhere they want to go, and

we end up trying to take them there. But at the same time, for creators like look, I don't see that, I don't see I don't care what you're telling about, don't see this ever being a board game, or I don't see this ever being a comic book, we won't do it. We sort of we follow their will because we think that we're able to make better decisions if we're sort of very much in tune with those those aspects. So I'd say historically production companies are oriented around a

method of distribution. They're making television to be displayed in cable or broadcast, and they're making movies to be in theaters or now extremely right, we're organized around building ike and connecting creators with their audience and every area and every medium that they want to operate. And I think that's the thing that separates us out. When we explain that to creators, they always would say it was man,

that's awesome, or like, yeah, that's the real muscle. But how do I'm picturing someone from AMC Networks listening to what you just said, and I'm wondering whether they would think, like, wait a second. You know, we're the network that puts the show on the air. Shouldn't we be the ones in control and we're giving you notes on what the

show would could be. So is there any sort of tension there in terms of you know, yes, it's nice that you know, you want the creator to have a direct link to the audience, but on TV it's not doesn't really work that way. Yeah, I mean, so short answers, Yes, right, there's definitely there's definitely tension, and there's tension in every creative process, right, there's tension between the writer and the director,

there's between the directing the actors. I think the tension is uh is necessary, um And I think that ultimately though, if you look at our execution and market, it's hard to argue that we've done anything but be additive and

value value creative to the brand. So UM, if you want to speak at it from just a purely high level, UM, when we go ahead ahead with third parties, we generally come out on top because if we're creating something, I have the creator that I'm talking to, they have a consumer products team that's organ eyes around a decision making process with hundreds of different stakeholders, and they will come out with a safer and more rounded product. But in

this market that doesn't work. Fans sniffed out like decisions by committee and a heartbeat, and they can make they'll reject something without without even being able to tell you why. But when you dig in, it is because of this feels safe and sanitize, and it's not that we're so aggressive and risk taking, but we're authentic to the brand in a way and not in sort of the marketing speak of what authentic means. But we're really digging into

sort of like you know what. I remember we were making this wine, right, and we were having a problem with with the label. And the big thing for us is we want to make wine and we're putting wine in the market. It couldn't be and Robert challenged us that it can't just be a label slot. There has to be something authentic to it that how do we

tell a narrative with the bottle of one? Most narratives about wine are, oh, there's terre and that this farmer has been here for you know, hundreds of years years. We didn't have any of that. So what we did is we made an app where you could hold up your phone in front of the bottle, right, and a zombie would jump out. You get the second bottle and Rick would come out and fight the zombie. Right. So there's a whole little mini narrative that we're able to

imbue into the idea of drinking this wall. But we were having problems, like we were. We all looked at this label and it wasn't working, and we weren't following our own advice right. So we were going through we had design firms and all these people telling us what we should be doing, and it was taking forever. So I was like, Robert, you just come in and just look at this and fix it. He's like, you know what, you have the legs all along. He's like, just move

the leg like this, move like that. And instantly as we were testing it, the test results went up quantitatively. Moving the legs in two seconds made the made the sort of the score on the on the label go up like twenty points. We were there working with like

a whole team. So my point is that like that, that uh, consensus driven, you know, committee drink of an approach will fail when you have somebody who is a visionary who actually understands what is key about the inforation and the creatile will always beat the committee every time. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more with David Albert, and we're back with sky Bound Entertainment CEO. David Albert. I certainly don't want to give the impression that sky Bound is a one

trick pony, you know, with the Walking Dead, franchise. You mentioned Invincible, which is a animated show on Amazon, and you know, right off the bat, there's what strikes me as this contrast between The Walking Dead really launched in a different age of television than Invincible did, which is obviously smack in the middle of the streaming age. Is there a difference in terms of launching shows selling shows

in this newer environment. Absolutely, I mean I think that in general, the media landscape is much more cluttered, right, there's way more options, um when we launched. When we launched, you know, Walking Dead, I don't even think Amazon was doing uh, you know, Netflix was just getting into the originals business, right, Like, it was completely different landscape. Streaming was just the thing that was people coming on. You know, you talked to young TV exact today. They don't know

what Basic Cable is, right. They remember as a thing they grew up with, but they don't think of it as a vibrant place, whereas Walking Dead cut his teeth in the Basic Cable. Um, So now we have to

think a little bit different. And also there's been so much more explored, right, Like you've had the rise of farm language ships like squid Game and Narcoes and uh, you know all these different shows from all over the world favoda um that sort of have taken up market share and the realm of the possible is has been expanded, but the challenge for us was still trying to find that space. So um we looked for. One of the things that Bet Invincible that was interesting was nobody was

doing hour long R rated animation. Right. There's a lot of comedy that's being done, tom of comedy, there's kids action that was being done, but there's nobody that's making our long sort of adult themed to the animation. And we felt like that was a real window for us to sort of go in and attack. I mean, what you're talking about is sort of one of the classic things you learn about great television, which is that often it's when you zagged to everyone else's zig that you

get something that resonates. But I think the flip side of that is, is it hard to sell an Amazon or an AMC on something that you know from that network approach, it's always about clone whatever works, clone whatever works, and that's not what you're doing. So what's the secret to selling streamers or networks on something that is not a clone? I mean, I don't know that it's we have a specific secret, right, I think a lot of

it it's about trying to create a specific argument. One of the things that we had with with both Wanged and Invincibles, we have these hugely successful comics that sort of pointed to, uh, these fan bases, right, so we say, hey, look we have we have some data. Right, these things have been around for at this point going on twenty years,

so there's there is an embedded fan base. We had done different activations previously that had all gone very very well, and then you know, we were able to find some key influencers in the space on all these different areas

that sort of vet out the success. So for instance, you know, we had Steven Youan and Sandra O and Hersha Ali and Seth Rogan come on as voices early on in a way that people are like, oh, like, I didn't think a cartoon was going to be able to get that type of talent onto a show like that.

So it was validating from that perspective, And honestly, we've come at it from we've always been cheaper relative to the other entrance in space, right, So um, you know, you look at what Amazon is doing with Lord of the Rings. I mean, you know, I would say we have multiple seasons that will cost less than one episode of that show, and the show is the show. That show is great. We're trying to do something different. Um. So part of it's also like, hey, look we're a

lower cost experiment, but we can still reach a mass audience. Um. And we will point to different things. But it's also then we'll get like, you know, you know, getting Frank Darbon to come on to direct the Pile of the Walking Dead was validating, Uh, you know, to get someone of that caliber on the same way to get our talent on this show was So that was part of the ways in which we go about trying to you know,

sort of discount some of that risk of it. So when you say you approach the network or the streamer with data on the audience, what are we talking about, like what was how did you sell Amazon Invincible? What

data did you bring to bear? So we're able to bring in because we're coming from these other media, right we're able to say, look, here's the number of comics we've sold right here, the number of live engagement we had done we had partnered years back with MTV and done this sort of like this motion comic of Invincible that ran on MTV that had giant um giant billboards

and Times Square that I got millions and millions of downloads. Right, We had done collectibles and actually figure so I was able to get the sales data, readership data, um an exploitation data that was able to make them think, okay, like, hey there is something here. It's not like we're coming up with a completely original idea that no one's ever heard of. So it was a discounted and by the way, I love complete originals right like you know, I love

what Christopher Nolan does. Um, but getting some of those things moving in a new space and TV sometimes to be really hard. I want to turn to the financing side of sky Band. You guys went through a second round, I believe in May. Uh what is your approach there in terms of funding? What are you looking to do with that funding? Yeah? So, I mean part of it is, you know, we're we're one. We're moving into different areas of production, right, so for years we started as a

common company that also did television. We've getting into films. So we have our first big studio movies coming out next year called rent Field with the Cage, uh nic holeton Acrofina. We have a whole big audio department are One of our biggest hits is called Impact Winter, which was a top right original for Audible that we have a second season coming out in a third season production

as well, so we're building out our audio capabilities. Video games has been a huge growth area for us, so we're we're buying initial capacity, uh, increasing our ability to sort of speak to record to fans. So we for years we've been licensing games, we've built up publishing capacity. So for instance, Telltel the game I mentioned earlier, Uh, they went out of that company went out of business

and us on bankruptcy. We swooped in and picked up those rights, finished the game, and we're now the publisher of Record, but we also now publish other games as well. We had a great game come out called Beform in Your Eyes. Um. Those are really sort of a moving, an emotional game that want to bath to, so we're doing more of that. We also now have bought some development capacity so we're able to sort of do the

full stack in the game space. We do tabletop stuff, so it really has been for us about really expanding the reach and filling in the wheel of awesome so that we can better service our creators directly. The other piece to it is we're really building up that audience opponent where we can make things directly for the audience. Of the audience is telling us that they want so we can really be in direct dialogue and communication with

the audience. That is a real focus for us. It's been a bed rock principle since the founding of the company. We've been trying to figure out how do we get there,

um as aggressively as possible. What do you mean by their the audience funding the content partnership with the audience, right, so, whether it's whether it's funding so like we have a huge, hugely successful Kickstarter business where we've watched table talk games and books and comics and all sorts of different merchandise items, um, so it could be more like that, or it could just be like greater communication between us and the audience to say, hey, you love this comic, what is it

you want to see being done with it? And then figuring out then how we can use that information to sort of make more inform pitch. When you go into places like streamers and say, hey, look, not only are we coming with this information the or this I P but we're coming to this information about this audience space will come, will come to the table to do this. And then so thinking about ways in which we can

sort of increase that frequency communication. That doesn't feel uh spam me, that feels much more sort of like they're participating in this sort of you know, the creation of this process. When I hear you talk about this, it reminds me a bit of some experimentation we're seeing in the TV industry right now. I think about Fox, for instance, where through web three and n f t s they're kind of selling this notion of hey, you the audience can own a portion of this show, finance this show.

Are you starting to think along those lines? I mean, you know, I've I've heard a lot of those things, and I think that the current thinking there is probably just early. I think that there's more meaningful participations in ways to go right Like, um, you know, I've seen this where if you box something on Kickstar or you're much more likely I want to actually finished reading or

playing or consuming the thing that you get. You're also much more likely to sort of go out there and talk about it to your friends and sort of proselytize on behalf of you. And that's the best type of marketing. Right. So people talk a lot about micro influencers or um micro proselytizers, and I think, okay, yeah, that's a viable approach of strategy. But like for me, so if one of my friends who I whose taste like, if they tell me to read something watched up there or listen

to something, I'm much more likely to do it. But how do you get those people activated interested? And how do you get there? How do you get their opinions early? Right, So we have enough these big I p that people are coming into our ecosystems. I'd like to find out for them what are they looking for in next and being that that dialogue so they feel invested in from zero, So invest when we can just be It could be time spent, it could be conversations, it could be financial.

We're open to any any and all of those iterations. I don't think that there's a silver bullet to solve for there. Well, you know you mentioned kickstarter. Is there other ways to approach like a crowd equity raise, for the company overall or for a particular project. Yeah, I mean, we're we're actually looking to do to do something that we've we've filed um with the sec UH to sort of do a sort of crowd equity ways and so we're in that process now. We're waiting for approval to

go live. We partner with the company called Republic or we having sort of a m an opportunity to sort of bring more people into the company so they can feel like partners. But that's not gonna be the only way in which we let people participate. Of course, it's a hugely meaningful one, but there's obviously, you know, there's a lot of people that are giant fans that don't have the financial resources to invest, and we want to make sure that we're servicing all our fans in whatever

way that they wanted the service. That's really interesting, I mean is that gonna is that kind of crad equity Ray is going to be focused on a particular piece of I P or just the company in general, the company in general. You know, we went through those uh, we went through our A and B rounds where we did sort of you know, more traditional venture and strategic

investment um. But for us, the goal is to partner with our fans on the I P. So we want to say, hey, look like, let's partner with our fans, like, let's actually do that so they can have a meaningful voice in the direction of the company's going on. Does that presume, because frankly, I didn't think of sky Bound as a brand something that audience knows. But if you're

taking this approach, obviously I'm wrong. Well, you know there's a debate, right whether we're a branded house or house of brands, right, I think that's an ongoing struggle or ongoing conversation. And you know, for us, I think we're both right. I think you know, obviously where the house that brought you Walking Toad, where the house that brought

you Invincible and Impact Winter. But I think that you know, we're not necessarily creating the m c U here, but we do think how there's thematic through lines that makes sense that you're like, oh, I like what they're doing. And we've heard from a lot of our fans if you like walking to any like invincibly like Inpact Winter, there's a lot of connectivity amongst those those fan bases.

A lot of overlap. So people, I think, more so recently, are starting to see that, and ultimately I think, you know, I think, and if you look at it right, um, I don't know that people have watched Walking Dead on TV think of themselves as AMC fence right. And certainly when we launched in the era of Madmen and Breaking Bad, I'm not sure there was a ton of synergy between all three of those shows, although there certainly were plenty of people who did watch it, but I don't think

one was driving the viewership of the other. And I think that people who come to the sky Bound and see what we're doing tend to stay inside of our ecosystem, and so we're trying to sort of build out that audience in a much more connected way. When I think about sources of capital for the company, I also think about the fact that in the past few years, it's like every production company in Hollywood is getting their tires

kicked by investors of some kind. I think the fact that O T. T has expanded the demand for content has made you know, everything from Hello Sunshine to Lebron James spring Hill Company available either for the taking or for a big investment surely you're getting approached because you guys would would fit right into that model. So is that something you're thinking about. You know, Yes, we've been approached for We've been approached multiple times a year for

the last eight to ten years. Right, So i'd be a lie I said, we haven't been approached. It's not a perfortive outcome. Um, there's certain of those buyers out there that I think really get the space, and there's a lot of them out there that are just uh financial folks that don't necessarily understand what we're trying to build. We would much rather partner with our fans, um and sort of be in a dialogue where the creative is really driving the conversation much more so than sort of

being completely uh bottom line oriented. I see what's happening, you know at one of Brose Discovery when you have you're you're completely hold into a P and L and balance sheet that's you know, making it really difficult to sort of run you know, one of the great creative companies there's ever been, you know, with HBO, and I look at sort of some of those decisions that are going on there and it's really really tough, and I feel like that's you can be overly financially engineered, and

I worry about those potential outcomes. So that's why for us, if we can actually partner with our consumers, right, if our fans consumers can be our partners, I think that really changes the nature and direction of the company. And I don't think anybody has done that historically. And again, it's part of us where we're not even though TV is a giant part of our business and video against are joint part of our business. I really believe that the focus of what we do is connect the creatives

with their fans, and we can be that place. I think that's it opens up a tremendous alley for us. Another manifestation of the streaming age is the in the deals that get done between companies like yourselves and streaming services. We're seeing obviously the popularity of the cost plus model, where you're not necessarily able to hold on to any back end because the Netflix is of the world will sort of buy that out from the outset. How do you feel about that, because that is becoming a very

controversial subject. It seems like there's a real backlash in the production community. Well, I think I think it's a problem when you have when you're a content creator and your financial incentives aren't the same as the person that's distributing your show. Right. So, historically, putting aside whatever controversies there might be about networks and the creators, both networks and creators wanted as many people to watch their shows

as possible for the longest possible period of time. Right, So there might be an arguments over shows cancer too soon, too late, right, like you know, someone spent too much

too little. Right, there's all those fights that we had witnessed for you know that made up the uh, made up all the journalism for decades, and you know, at Variety, but ultimately CBN as they wanted people to watch their shows, and they wanted people to watch their shows for every week and watch it for year after year after year after year. I don't feel the same right now with that with a lot of the streamers because I think they're much more interested and people connecting and paying a

fee and then forgetting about it. Right. So, um, you look at something like HBO, which is highly correlated or at least historically had been highly correlated around certain shows coming up, so you can say, there's a certain people that would subscribe and then forget it. And there are certain people tune in the Game of Thrones or they would tune in for White Lotus or whatever it is,

and they would subscribe and unsubscribed. But you were really sort of tightly correlated around the performance of a couple of hit shows. Um, you know, I think you look at Netflix and I mean, there's so much going on, right and there's so many shows that get canceled after a couple of seasons because that's when this season's that talents start asking for more money, they're able to renegotiate, and that's it gets more expensive. There's no additional revenue

that comes to Netflix. If you're there for form and you in Domer season two, it gets more expensive. There's no additional revenue to the person already watching that show, right, there's that person is already locked in. Whereas historically, when with an advertising model, you were able to drive more revenue if you said, hey, look we have Side Elvets getting the biggest possible audience in the world. We can actually make more money on it now, So it's okay

for the cost to increase. And I feel like that that disconnect is. Ultimately the problem is that as a platform, the big streamers are commoditizing producers. And I'll tell you this as an artist, I didn't get into this business to make a piece of content, right. I got into make stories that matter, right. I got into make movies and TV shows and books. Think that stories that matter. I'm not a piece of content guy, And being reduced to a tile, uh can feel really sort of diminutive.

So yes, Uh, it is a hot button, the hot button topic in the creative community. I also want to know, you know, now that you've sort of made the transition from uh you were you know, had a show at a MC, a number of shows at a MC. Now you're in with Amazon, would you still do linear old school television? Is that you know you're still open to

parking a show there? Yeah, And look, I think linear television the thing about it linear as long as there's a streaming behind it, right, I actually think that there is something. The other thing I hate is releasing all the episodes at once. I hate it. You lose the opportunity to have the cultural conversation. So our our big conversation.

And Amazon was a great partner here was. We said, look, we don't want to go all at once on the business, so they let us do put out the first three and then they went weakly and it changed the nature because we were able to sort of build this audience. People started talking about it. People that normally wouldn't watch the show. We're like, oh, I gotta watch it. I need to catch up to be in there. So we were able to sort of create these cultural moments, like, look,

I love dealing with thrones at the Red Wedding. Had been binged, I don't think it would have been that giint cultural moment um that it was, because you wouldn't know where people are, right, So I feel like, yes, I think it's incredibly I'm totally supportive of it here as long as there's an opportunity to binge and catch up. Well, Alternatively, the way you've just answered that question, I wonder would you ever do a deal with Netflix where the orthodoxy

on the binge is pretty strong? You know, Look, I would never say never, and I've done I've worked there, and they do some things that are really amazingly well, But I don't think it's the best. I don't think that that's in the best interest is of the creatives. I think that's I would argue I don't even think it's in their own best interests, but you know they certainly know for themselves. So what's next for sky Bound?

Is there? You know you've mentioned Invincible, You've mentioned Impact Winter. Are are there other pieces i P? Because I know you've got like two hundred different pieces of I P within the sky Bound Empire? What's next? Do you think we should keep an eye on coming up the pipeline? Yeah? So, um, we have a bunch of things. So, uh, Invincible Season two and three is in production right now. We'll be

coming out. We'll be announcing a really states shortly. Um, but we're very excited about what's going on in the Invincible universe. Um. We have a show that we're starting in South Africa. That's gonna be the first show that we're we're funding that we're the studio on that we're doing as a partnership with with Freely in the US, Leftflix Africa UM and Sony for distribution. So but that will be our first show there. It's a really really

cool sort of y a spy feeling. We're doing the show of Encounada called Psychops, which is another animated show that's um sort of you know, uh at Files Meet south Park, which we're really excited about. It's really fun, really sort of cool cutting in these great young creators were working with. UM. So those are some of the things we're having in the have a few other shows

that are next year as well. UM. And then one of the biggest things we have is we have something called the Coastal Coastal Project, a Coastal Protocole, which is a video game that we're doing in conjunction with the Striking Distance and Craft, and that comes out in about three weeks. That's just a gigantic, beautiful sci fi horror game that's just honestly the next level and the fan reaction so far pretty through the root. So UM, I

mean there's just a ton going on. Um, you know, right now it's sky Bound and I really feel like it's never been a better time to be working at Skybone. Well, it sounds like you've got a lot brewing there, David. Thanks for taking the time to walk us through all things sky Bound. Thank you. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping of Scintilla in conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to hear

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