Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties, weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Littleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My
Speaker 1: guest is David Madden, Global head of Entertainment for what
Speaker 1: Pad web Tune Studios. I've known David in many incarnations
Speaker 1: as a creative executive. He's worked on the studio side
Speaker 1: for Fox Television Studios, as a network programmer for Fox
Speaker 1: Broadcasting and a MC network, and he's spent the past
Speaker 1: two years as head of television for the busy Gregg
Speaker 1: Berlante Productions. Now he's taking all of that experience and
Speaker 1: channeling it into working with a new form of storytelling.
Speaker 1: I'll let David explain what a web tune is and
Speaker 1: how the watt Pad platform works. I found it fascinating
Speaker 1: to learn from him about how the company in corporate
Speaker 1: simple math and insights from readers to help find kernels
Speaker 1: of gold in a vast mountain range of users submitted stories.
Speaker 1: During an interview in his l A office, Madden grins
Speaker 1: when he says, for the first time in his long career,
Speaker 1: he feels like he's working for a quote one Century
Speaker 1: company and quote. That's all coming up after the break,
Speaker 1: and we're back with David Madden, the global head of
Speaker 1: Entertainment for what Pad web tune Studios. You start by
Speaker 1: explaining to us what exactly a web tune is and
Speaker 1: how its popularity is growing around the world on social
Speaker 1: networks and various media like that. He started about ten
Speaker 1: years ago based in Toronto. It is the largest digital
Speaker 1: platform for web novels in the world if you actually
Speaker 1: exclude China. China goes off, but the rest of the
Speaker 1: world is the are just It's about ninety millions subscribers.
Speaker 1: Fifty five languages are represented in what on what pad
Speaker 1: um it is. It has grown over time to be
Speaker 1: a mammothly meaningful site, especially for younger people. The audience
Speaker 1: that the readers on what pad a largely fifteen thirty
Speaker 1: five um But and there have been things in the
Speaker 1: past that have become films or TV shows that were
Speaker 1: based on white Pad stories. There have been stories that
Speaker 1: have come out of off what Pad that have become
Speaker 1: movies or shows. So the Kissing Booth movies that were
Speaker 1: there are three of them on Netflix were based on
Speaker 1: what Pad story. We didn't produce it, but they did
Speaker 1: come from there. Um there's a movie called after theatrical
Speaker 1: movie Love Story that spawned five sequels. UM. While the
Speaker 1: optrical outside the US that was based on what Pad Story,
Speaker 1: So they that platform exists, and there was a web
Speaker 1: two platform. Web Tune is based in Korea and Soul.
Speaker 1: It is large digital comics and graphic novels platform in
Speaker 1: the world. Ninety million people subscribed to that, so between
Speaker 1: the two platforms almost two million people or on either
Speaker 1: what pad of web Tune. Web Tune basically just means
Speaker 1: it's a something visual, a comic on the Internet. That's
Speaker 1: all it means, um so, but it actually looks different
Speaker 1: if you if you go on web tune, it's vertical scrolling.
Speaker 1: So instead of the way that we are used to
Speaker 1: reading comics where you go across the page, you go
Speaker 1: down the page, get to end of the chapter. UM.
Speaker 1: Actually they call them episodes. So there are extra graphic
Speaker 1: novels on web tune that could be two five hundred,
Speaker 1: six hundred episodes long, and they're all carefully drawn by
Speaker 1: individual artists and creators and UH and have different UH
Speaker 1: readerships from from web tune. UM. Both what Pad and
Speaker 1: web Tune measure in things called reads. So if you
Speaker 1: which means like you could go on a story on
Speaker 1: what Pad or or comic on tune, you could be
Speaker 1: on it for five seconds, that's a read. You could
Speaker 1: be on it for five hours that's um. So, we
Speaker 1: don't actually really know exactly how many people have finished
Speaker 1: reading a given book or a given comic, but there
Speaker 1: are titles on web tune that have over a billion reads.
Speaker 1: Um there are type over a billion. My eyebrows just
Speaker 1: jumped out. Uh that I'm not sitting here saying that
Speaker 1: a billion people actually reads that start to finish. But uh.
Speaker 1: And there are titles on one bob Pad that are
Speaker 1: in the hundreds of millions of reeds. Um So a
Speaker 1: big global readership for these two platforms. And then there
Speaker 1: are titles that have virtually no reads. So it's it
Speaker 1: is genuinely a meritocracy where both platforms in their ways
Speaker 1: are built on word of mouth. Are they built on
Speaker 1: subscription or advertising? What? How do they monetize this kind
Speaker 1: of advertising? Well, and there's I could get a little
Speaker 1: more detailed. There there's advertising, um. There there's publishing. So
Speaker 1: the most successful of those books on either pad of
Speaker 1: web tune. They are there are hard hard copies, they're
Speaker 1: in bookstores, they're they're by their own Amazon, they're they're viable. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a title on web tune called Laura Olympus, which
Speaker 1: has been on the top of the Graphic Novel Best
Speaker 1: New York Times Bestseller list multiple times. The new there's
Speaker 1: a one called Tower a Tower of God that has
Speaker 1: one point five billion titles. Believe Reads I Believe and
Speaker 1: that's the third season that is about to come out,
Speaker 1: and that will that has been on the top of
Speaker 1: the list. That's another way to monetize them. Something called
Speaker 1: paid reads, where the most successful stories you can read
Speaker 1: for free up to a certain point and then if
Speaker 1: they continue. And it's modest as a couple of dollars,
Speaker 1: but that's it's another way for us to get paid um.
Speaker 1: Or there's paid a webtoon and get paid um. But
Speaker 1: that's how they monetize it. So that's it sounds like
Speaker 1: a literal trove of content. There's there is so much stuff.
Speaker 1: We don't actually know how much is on watpad, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly in the hundreds of millions of stories. Uh
Speaker 1: so is it the user do users upload their own stories.
Speaker 1: Users upload their own stories. Anybody, anybody in any country
Speaker 1: can put their story on the platform. We check it
Speaker 1: to make sure it's not offensive, obscenes something terribly, but
Speaker 1: once it clears that filter, anybody can put them up.
Speaker 1: There's no creat there's no qualitative filter. It's all about
Speaker 1: kind of just offensiveness. Um. And anybody can go on
Speaker 1: their read it's free. So so now the authors retain
Speaker 1: their rights, so we aren't by putting it on the
Speaker 1: platform getting their rights any any on both platforms. The
Speaker 1: creators retain their their creative prerogatives. Um. So it's so
Speaker 1: it's good for us because it gets people to come
Speaker 1: to our platform. It's good for the authors because it
Speaker 1: gets exposure for them and they hang onto their rights
Speaker 1: so they can sell something later on down the line,
Speaker 1: either the movies or television or traditional publisher or to
Speaker 1: us as a publisher for actual compensation. So so the
Speaker 1: things that you are developing into more traditional television and
Speaker 1: film or other types of digital media properties, you you're
Speaker 1: still have to you still go and do a deal
Speaker 1: with that creator and a licensing agreement. It's not like
Speaker 1: a blanket. Once they put it up, then then what
Speaker 1: Pad web tune can adapt it. No, that's that's correct
Speaker 1: and sort of how it works. Just to go into
Speaker 1: a little more detail. We love detail on a strictly business. Okay,
Speaker 1: then then here you go, uh so on what Pad,
Speaker 1: like I said, people can put up their stories. Um,
Speaker 1: if you are as reader, you're curious about a certain
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Let's say you're really into vampires. You
Speaker 1: and you went on what Pad and say, what are
Speaker 1: the top ten vampire story zone? Right now? The platform
Speaker 1: will point you to hear the stories that are most liked,
Speaker 1: that they've got most feedback against. All about word of mouth,
Speaker 1: it's all about positive feedback. Everything is tagged, everything data
Speaker 1: is collected and everything. So you'll you'll, you may check
Speaker 1: out that vampire story. That's another set of needs. The
Speaker 1: more time something is read, that that creates more and
Speaker 1: more constituency, more and more audience for that particular title.
Speaker 1: When it reaches a certain threshold for us, it's one
Speaker 1: thousand reads, then it kind of gets on our radar
Speaker 1: and it goes to a very large group of book
Speaker 1: scouts in Toronto, which would call the Content Group H
Speaker 1: and they review anything that's reached that threshold. They then
Speaker 1: anything they think could possibly be a movie, could possibly
Speaker 1: be a TV show, they sent to me and our teams.
Speaker 1: We have a film team, we have TV team, we
Speaker 1: have an animation team. Um. We then they said this
Speaker 1: maybe thirty things a month. Let's say. Um, we then
Speaker 1: look at those things and will cherry pick the things
Speaker 1: that we actually think we can sell, things that actually
Speaker 1: feel like they fit the television and film market. And
Speaker 1: once we've identified a title we like, then we reach
Speaker 1: out to that author and we say we'd like to
Speaker 1: make an option persons deal shopping agreement. Um, we make
Speaker 1: that deal with It's so far, every single time we've
Speaker 1: reached out to a water paddle author, we've made a
Speaker 1: deal because there there, they like the platform and they're
Speaker 1: excited to be there. Uh. They feel flatter that somebody's
Speaker 1: actually wanted to try to make a move your show
Speaker 1: out of them. Uh. With web tunes similar, although it's
Speaker 1: a web tune, authors creators have sometimes already found um
Speaker 1: revenue opportunities in Korea, so they may be a little
Speaker 1: more uh careful about what they what rights they want
Speaker 1: to give away and not give away. But basically it's
Speaker 1: been a very positive relationship between what authors, web web
Speaker 1: tune authors and US and once we make a deal,
Speaker 1: h then we now we're out like traditional producers trying
Speaker 1: to package things, put them together in such a way
Speaker 1: that we can sell them too. Platforms are you are?
Speaker 1: Are things being uploaded in multiple languages from uages for
Speaker 1: for what pad web tune because it just takes a
Speaker 1: lot more work to put a web tune up because
Speaker 1: it's all artistically created. Are basically either in English or Korean,
Speaker 1: m mostly in English, but but it's perfectly easy for
Speaker 1: anybody to type in their rock pad story. So, like
Speaker 1: I said, lots of lots of different languages. And what
Speaker 1: we've done is both position things to be in the
Speaker 1: US market um which are previently told by American authors
Speaker 1: telling American stories. But we're making shows in Indonesia and
Speaker 1: Malaysia and the Philippines, in Spain and France and Italy
Speaker 1: mostly from authors whore writing in the in the appropriate language.
Speaker 1: And the plan is to distribute these shows on the
Speaker 1: same platform so that you get to that you reach
Speaker 1: that audience, or you're going to license these You're gonna
Speaker 1: license these two more traditional network and streaming channels. The
Speaker 1: plan as to as of today is to sell them
Speaker 1: to other distributors. So we are selling to Netflix or
Speaker 1: Amazon or or or networks in the US. UH. And
Speaker 1: we have slight deals with companies like by a Common
Speaker 1: Freeman Freemantle where we have multiple projects with them which
Speaker 1: we are selling in multiple territories. Um. There are Indonesian
Speaker 1: networks and and and other Asian networks that we're selling
Speaker 1: things to down the line. Could there be some platform
Speaker 1: of our own maybe, but but for right now, we're
Speaker 1: really trying to work through through traditional distribution systems. We
Speaker 1: see Indonesia is like one of the growing markets in
Speaker 1: virtually every metric for media and entertainment. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting market to watch. It's basically it's the number four
Speaker 1: country in the world in terms of population and it's
Speaker 1: a big it's a big market for us. What pad
Speaker 1: is a very meaningful word as this web tune interesting? Um?
Speaker 1: Is there? So this is a kind of a new
Speaker 1: kind of storytelling. Is there are there qualities to adapting
Speaker 1: this to TV and fill to other types of media?
Speaker 1: Are there qualities that you're retaining? Is there something that
Speaker 1: makes it a web tune or a what pad story
Speaker 1: that you're trying to retain as you adapted for other formats.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a it's a good question. I
Speaker 1: think that it's hard to generalize because so many different
Speaker 1: authors are right for these sites. We have on what
Speaker 1: pad alone, five million writers working on our posting at
Speaker 1: least once a month. Five million writers. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of writers. So it's very hard to generalize across
Speaker 1: five people. Um. And it's a it's a slightly smaller number.
Speaker 1: Is so much smaller number for web tune because it
Speaker 1: just takes more work, But there's a lot of different authors.
Speaker 1: The thing I would say, um, is that coming from
Speaker 1: traditional media as I do, I'm used to writers who
Speaker 1: have grown up in Hollywood, who have who are reading
Speaker 1: Variety every day, who are very knowledgeable or think they're
Speaker 1: very knowledgeable about what we'll sell or will not sell,
Speaker 1: and they walk in with a certain degree of cynicism
Speaker 1: about what idea they may want to present. People who
Speaker 1: are writing for these platforms are the opposite. They are
Speaker 1: writing from their hearts, they're writing their stories. They're not
Speaker 1: even thinking about Hollywood mostly when they're writing them, they're
Speaker 1: telling their narratives. There's a lot of very personal perspective
Speaker 1: in there, and you'll just find ideas that either feel
Speaker 1: genuinely authentic and true to that particular writer, where where
Speaker 1: that persons lived, where that where that what their culture is.
Speaker 1: Or sometimes you'll you'll read ideas that you'll just think
Speaker 1: that's nuts, that's a crazy idea. But we live in
Speaker 1: a world where the craziest ideas tend to have the
Speaker 1: most traction. Uh So, you know, the writer's on what
Speaker 1: Pad and web tune debt tend to have no field,
Speaker 1: cynical filter. There's nothing in them saying, oh but that
Speaker 1: will never sell to two Netflix is they're not buying
Speaker 1: this kind of thing. One of the things that's really
Speaker 1: interesting about what pad if. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever read a book on this site, but it's a
Speaker 1: very different experience, or at least it candy. So you
Speaker 1: can read a pad story and you can read it
Speaker 1: like a traditional narrative. We read like a traditional book
Speaker 1: you've got from random house, or you can read it
Speaker 1: and you get to a certain point in the narrative
Speaker 1: where something meaningful happens, where somebody kisses somebody, or somebody
Speaker 1: dies or something significant happens, and you can write in
Speaker 1: the digital margins that say that was awesome, that was horrible.
Speaker 1: I can't believe they did that. Why do that? You
Speaker 1: can get get it into arguments with people. You can
Speaker 1: look up how many people like that given moment, and
Speaker 1: people hated that given moment. You can react in a
Speaker 1: social media is way to the book as you're reading it. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you choose to. Again, you're not obliged. But I
Speaker 1: think it's part of what the attraction has been to
Speaker 1: younger readers is that of billinge to react right now,
Speaker 1: a little more interaction into the book, um, which is
Speaker 1: on the one hand, fun for them. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: it gives us all this information about it's your focus group.
Speaker 1: Well you know it's it's like we can we can
Speaker 1: we can look at actual statistics of they love that moment,
Speaker 1: they hated that. So it helps us a when we're
Speaker 1: kind of working with our writers, say hey, don't cut
Speaker 1: this character out that's their favorite character, uh, or or
Speaker 1: guide them whichever way. It also helps us tell platforms,
Speaker 1: and this is a big part of I think the
Speaker 1: attraction of hey, not only do we know that they
Speaker 1: liked it, we know why they liked it. You know
Speaker 1: what what and they don't know exactly what they what,
Speaker 1: what meant something to them and what is because we
Speaker 1: have all this literal information that we've collected, so it
Speaker 1: is it is like a focus group, but it's the
Speaker 1: focus group of hundreds of thousands of people, not twenty
Speaker 1: four people. In more coming way, don't scroll away, We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with more from David Madden of what
Speaker 1: pad web Tune Studios. And we're back with more from
Speaker 1: David Madden of what pad web Tune Studios. What is
Speaker 1: your mandate now coming in to you know, to build
Speaker 1: out a studio and to to get what pad web
Speaker 1: Tune into the business of more traditional TV and film
Speaker 1: content creating. What is your goal do you want to
Speaker 1: do you have a do you want to reach you know,
Speaker 1: ten shows in two years? What do you can you
Speaker 1: give us some sense of kind of what your what
Speaker 1: your goal posts are at this point? Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know that our goal posts are necessarily numerical in that way.
Speaker 1: Um you know, I think that that and the different
Speaker 1: in the business are are are moving at kind of
Speaker 1: different speeds. We're a little farther along in the film side.
Speaker 1: So right now we have we have two films in
Speaker 1: post production that are actually not in post production, they're
Speaker 1: finished posts. They're actually now selling at the a f
Speaker 1: M with the American Film Market as the erectly as
Speaker 1: we speak, we're kind of four lanes on the film side.
Speaker 1: Lane one fully financing our own movies, and the kind
Speaker 1: of five million dollar range co financing movies that are
Speaker 1: a little more expensive. So we're doing one that we're
Speaker 1: closing a deal on with a distributor you would recognize, Uh,
Speaker 1: that would be like a ten million dollar movie that
Speaker 1: we would co finance. We we really want to do
Speaker 1: bigger movies where we wouldn't finance it, but there there
Speaker 1: would be studio sized movies, major streaming sized movies that
Speaker 1: we've just worked for fees. Um. And then we have
Speaker 1: a whole international movie business. So for example, we did
Speaker 1: a movie in Spain called Nana Uh my span it's
Speaker 1: just it's non existent through my window, which which came
Speaker 1: out earlier this year. It is now the number four
Speaker 1: movie non English language movie on Netflix in its history. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it spawned two sequels. That was that was based
Speaker 1: on a wit Pad story. Um. So so we want
Speaker 1: to do movies all over the place. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think in terms of goals, I'd love to be
Speaker 1: making uh four to six movies by twenty a year
Speaker 1: by UM. With television, we're a little more early stage.
Speaker 1: Uh and it's just kind of in the nature of
Speaker 1: how the two companies came together. Uh. So we have
Speaker 1: a couple of things that Disney Disney and Company, Netflix
Speaker 1: and the things we are in early stage about. But
Speaker 1: I don't expect us to have anything uh greenlit in
Speaker 1: even three I expect us to set up a lot
Speaker 1: of things, but I think, you know, by let's i'd
Speaker 1: love to have board of six shows on the air. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, but we have some growing to do to
Speaker 1: get there, especially like scripted scripted TV drama series. Those
Speaker 1: those can be big financial commitments. Are those Is there
Speaker 1: a world where you would UM finance that or do
Speaker 1: you aim to more like a cost plus model with
Speaker 1: streamers to kind of get you on the board if
Speaker 1: we could, if we could, Uh, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: believe this is a market where you deficit finance a
Speaker 1: TV series the way one used to ten years ago, Right,
Speaker 1: it says when you say it almost sounds like an anachronism. Well,
Speaker 1: and it is economically at this point but sure if
Speaker 1: if we if we can be in a position where
Speaker 1: we can be the studio on a cost plus basis, Um,
Speaker 1: that would be great. Right now. I think we're perfectly
Speaker 1: happy to partner with traditional studios, especially if we're doing
Speaker 1: something at a platform which has an in house studio
Speaker 1: connected to it. We're happy to partner with people. Um,
Speaker 1: we we want to walk before we run. Um, but
Speaker 1: in the longer run, could we if we could own more,
Speaker 1: would be better? Sure? M. You seem to have a
Speaker 1: lot of fair amount going on on the movie side.
Speaker 1: Are the are you finding those relatively low budget movies
Speaker 1: there you can make enough to make it worth your while.
Speaker 1: We'll find out, you know. I think that that you know,
Speaker 1: we're playing to a very in the movie side, certainly
Speaker 1: on the smaller movies, we're playing to a specific target.
Speaker 1: We're playing to y A, We're playing to young romantic stories,
Speaker 1: young thrillers. Um. So it's still a market actually that
Speaker 1: that consumes movies. UM. You know, obviously harder with people
Speaker 1: my age. Um, I'm very old by way for anybody's listening,
Speaker 1: but so uh so, I there seems to be a
Speaker 1: lot of appetite for for the brand. So we've both
Speaker 1: in the US and internationally, so I think that people
Speaker 1: know that there's especially if you can say to people, hey,
Speaker 1: we have eighty million reads on this, there's enough people
Speaker 1: who love this book that they're gonna want to check
Speaker 1: out the movie. And if you can make a movie
Speaker 1: for four or five million dollars or le stephen, uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty safe. It's pretty safe that you know that
Speaker 1: you'd be that as long as we don't make a
Speaker 1: disastrously bad movie, that the audience that so that either
Speaker 1: read the book or knows of the book is going
Speaker 1: to be stimulated. You want to go, m h. You
Speaker 1: must be as you develop things, and you know, with
Speaker 1: the anticipation of getting shows before cameras, you must be
Speaker 1: having to arrange some creative marriages between creators and people
Speaker 1: with the skill to really, you know, put a TV
Speaker 1: show on its feet. Is that I know, we all
Speaker 1: know that can be tricky at times. Has that been
Speaker 1: Has that been a big focus for you in terms
Speaker 1: of matching the right creative partners to get things? What
Speaker 1: have you found people that have experienced I mean, are
Speaker 1: people are like more seasoned writers writing in these formats? Um,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? People who are adapting them.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the authors of the original book
Speaker 1: The authors are the originals. Well, the authors of the
Speaker 1: original books are, um, you know, they're starting, some of
Speaker 1: them are starting to have enormous amount of success and
Speaker 1: therefore have the different degrees wanting to influence or shape
Speaker 1: the way their stories are being told. Uh. And we
Speaker 1: respect that and we're happy to. But it's not just
Speaker 1: similar to working with traditional authors of traditional book business, um,
Speaker 1: in that both in the traditional book world and in
Speaker 1: our world, they're writers who take go with God, don't
Speaker 1: care to send me my check, or are rooting for
Speaker 1: you and their authors you want to be more involved. Uh.
Speaker 1: And either is fine. But you rarely find an author
Speaker 1: that is equipped to become a show writer. And I
Speaker 1: think that's again, I think that's true in both an
Speaker 1: immediate It happens, but rarely and and you know, I
Speaker 1: think that if I think many authors love the ability
Speaker 1: to sit at their computer and create that their own
Speaker 1: story with very little micro managing. And if you're gonna
Speaker 1: go with the television or film, you have to be
Speaker 1: able to put up with micro management on a lot
Speaker 1: of different fronts. Uh. It's like a professional So it's
Speaker 1: just again, some can adapt to it, most can't, and
Speaker 1: and even most even more than that, just don't want to. Yah.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I mean, David, you've had such a breadth
Speaker 1: of experience on the studio side, working for Fox Television Studios,
Speaker 1: working for the Fox Broadcasting Network, Game Scene Networks. What
Speaker 1: we've given all your experience in traditional television and film.
Speaker 1: What do you see is? What do you see? What
Speaker 1: is the sort of special opportunity here? Used to be
Speaker 1: able to walk into a studio or a network with
Speaker 1: an original idea, uh, and the writers of something that
Speaker 1: they came from them and pitched that and have a
Speaker 1: chance of sellient um. And that's super hard. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a rare thing that even the most experienced,
Speaker 1: even the most lauded writer, ken walk in and just
Speaker 1: tell their story. Uh. The phrase I p or the
Speaker 1: to those two letters didn't really exist when I started.
Speaker 1: Nobody used that expression. Now it's the expression that ever
Speaker 1: everybody's lips. Uh. When I was in my last job
Speaker 1: as a producer, working with BRILLIANTE, so many people, even
Speaker 1: though we were very powerful producer people wires walked in
Speaker 1: and the first question they ask is do you have
Speaker 1: any any i P um And so the building now
Speaker 1: in this job. But I think is unique is we
Speaker 1: can we we have the blessing of a having i
Speaker 1: P that is that has a built in fan base,
Speaker 1: that that we can prove and demonstrate that the i
Speaker 1: P has has audience. But it's coming from writers that
Speaker 1: they are actually telling original stories from their heart who
Speaker 1: are not writing from calculation. They're they're writing from their spirit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that quality, even if those writers can't be the
Speaker 1: person who actually writes the script, those are those qualities
Speaker 1: of freshness, of of true uh audacity um. That is
Speaker 1: a lot of it attracts our adapters to the right
Speaker 1: to the stories that are on our plan form. So
Speaker 1: I think the opportunities just to tell stories that break
Speaker 1: some rules because they're coming from people who don't know
Speaker 1: the rules uh and yet have ingrained popularity, popularity that
Speaker 1: we can demonstrate. And I think that's synthesis of originality
Speaker 1: and proven success. Is a pretty unique thing that these
Speaker 1: two platforms can actually offer. What's been the responses you
Speaker 1: talk to people in the creative community more, you know,
Speaker 1: more traditionally seasoned producers and writers. Has there been is
Speaker 1: there are people intrigued by these stories? Uh? Well A
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I have a first approach, it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of like I told you, I reacted like, well, what
Speaker 1: what is that? What? What? What? There's a little education.
Speaker 1: I have to kind of go through this entire speech
Speaker 1: many times. UM. So if it seems familiar to me,
Speaker 1: that's why you can send this out in advance. When
Speaker 1: you go, I'll send them copy of the podcast. Thank you,
Speaker 1: happy to be happy, to be a service. Um No.
Speaker 1: But but I think once you take people through it, uh,
Speaker 1: then I think they are treated because I think it
Speaker 1: is again that combination of oh I can walk into Netflix,
Speaker 1: I can walk into Disney, I can walk into Paramount
Speaker 1: Plus with data with stuff. Uh and and that's meaningful.
Speaker 1: That makes you feel less naked as a writer, like
Speaker 1: you're walking in with something where it's like here, look,
Speaker 1: there's people who like this. Um And at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's you know it. There's the liberty of doing something
Speaker 1: that's kind of crazy and nutty. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be uh like, oh, you're you're doing something with I P.
Speaker 1: But it's for Marvel or it's for d C. So
Speaker 1: it has to follow all these rules. That have built
Speaker 1: into that world a little bit of that you have
Speaker 1: to kind of fit into a very tricky box sometimes,
Speaker 1: at least so I'm told. UM so so I think
Speaker 1: it's so far, um, I mean four months in so
Speaker 1: far people have responded to it really well because they
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, there's a chance to do something different. Well,
Speaker 1: I think original ideas are are as scarce as rain
Speaker 1: in southern California days. And that is not to diminish
Speaker 1: the importance of either. David, thank you so much. Thank
Speaker 1: you for the education. Hopefully we can be of service
Speaker 1: here too with with a good explainer, but really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I can sense, and having known you a long time,
Speaker 1: I can sense your enthusiasm and your excitement about this.
Speaker 1: I genuinely am. I mean, I've enjoyed all the jobs
Speaker 1: I've done, I've had some great bosses, I've I've I've
Speaker 1: all the steps in my path I value. But this
Speaker 1: just feels really different, and and if I can say
Speaker 1: it this way, I feel like I'm working for a
Speaker 1: twenty one century company, having spent all of my career
Speaker 1: prior to this working for twenty century companies. Nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with twenty century companies, but they're clear economic challenges facing
Speaker 1: those companies. This company feels like it's all potential, it's
Speaker 1: all outside. Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us
Speaker 1: a review at Apple Podcast. We love to hear from listeners.
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