Speaker 1: Even among other CEOs, Jeff Bezos has known for being
Speaker 1: an especially aggressive businessman. He's really good at playing the
Speaker 1: game of capitalism, where the imperative for any company is
Speaker 1: to grow and keep growing. So Bezos wants to have
Speaker 1: a hand in almost every aspect of his customers daily lives.
Speaker 1: And when he hits the wall, he's known for buying
Speaker 1: his way in. When Amazon struggled to sell shoes, they
Speaker 1: bought Zappos for about a billion dollars. When they were
Speaker 1: flailing around with their grocery delivery business, they bought Whole Foods,
Speaker 1: and then in May, Jeff Bezos did it again. Amazon
Speaker 1: today just did some shopping of its own, buying MGM
Speaker 1: for nearly eight and a half billion dollars. But this
Speaker 1: is coming as Amazon continues it's push to try and
Speaker 1: figure out Hollywood, try and figure out how to make
Speaker 1: this work with streaming that's kind of been all over
Speaker 1: the map. This is so fascinating. You have this company
Speaker 1: that's really the epitome of the modern company buying a
Speaker 1: film studio that was founded in the silent era. Amazon
Speaker 1: said it was buying one of the most storied names
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. MGM is home to movies like Rocky and RoboCop,
Speaker 1: Fargo and the Survivor TV series, and of course Bond
Speaker 1: James Bond, Mr Bond. The deal surprised even obsessive Amazon
Speaker 1: and Hollywood watchers. Here's my colleague Lucas Shaw, who covers
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry. The response was at first shock at
Speaker 1: the number Amazon was paying almost nine billion dollars from GM,
Speaker 1: which far exceeded what anybody really thought it was worth
Speaker 1: on paper. And the other reason the deal surprised Hollywood
Speaker 1: was what it said about Amazon's and Jeff Bezos's overweening ambition.
Speaker 1: For ten years, Amazon had offered TV shows and movies
Speaker 1: as a free perk to Prime members, but Amazon streaming
Speaker 1: service was seen as trailing Netflix. Making original TV shows
Speaker 1: and films was even considered something of a vanity project
Speaker 1: for Jeff Bezos. He seemed to love attending award shows
Speaker 1: and throwing parties for big name actors at his home
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills. But the purchase of MGM suggested that
Speaker 1: Bezos was far more serious, that owning content was a
Speaker 1: vital piece of Amazon's future. The deal is the clearest
Speaker 1: indicator yet that that Amazon is not just fooling around
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. It's not just some other kind of interloper
Speaker 1: from another industry that thinks it's cool to go to parties.
Speaker 1: They want to play to win. The day of the announcement,
Speaker 1: Beazos talked about it during the company's annual meeting with shareholders.
Speaker 1: We're really excited about MGM. The acquisitions thesis here is
Speaker 1: really very simple. MGM has a vast, deep catalog of
Speaker 1: much beloved intellectual property, and with the talented people at
Speaker 1: MGM and the talented people at ms On Studios, we
Speaker 1: can reimagine and develop that i P for the twenty
Speaker 1: one century. It's gonna be a lot of fun work
Speaker 1: and people who love stories are going to be the
Speaker 1: big beneficiaries. But this was more than a busines and steal.
Speaker 1: It seemed like another inevitable step in Bezos's own remarkable
Speaker 1: reinvention into something of a celebrity himself. And this company,
Speaker 1: which started as an online store then became a cloud
Speaker 1: provider than an AI company with Alexa, now had a
Speaker 1: new target. Hollywood. You're listening to Foundering. I'm your host
Speaker 1: brad Stone. In this episode, we're going to tell the
Speaker 1: story of Prime Video and Amazon's beleaguered path into the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry. It's a story that starts with a strange
Speaker 1: choice by Jeff Bezos to create original content. Amazon Studios
Speaker 1: launches a few celebrated shows, a few more notorious bombs,
Speaker 1: and then gets consumed by a me too controversy that
Speaker 1: shook the company to its core. Bezos's decisions in Hollywood
Speaker 1: would end up changing the company and himself in ways
Speaker 1: that no one predicted. We'll tell you more after a
Speaker 1: quick break. Let's go back a decade and a half
Speaker 1: before Amazon came to buy MGM, before they were investing
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in making movies every year, The mid
Speaker 1: odds were a fertile period for Amazon. This is around
Speaker 1: the time that Jeff Bezos was conceiving the Kindle and Aws,
Speaker 1: and when Amazon was furiously entering new industries and new countries.
Speaker 1: Back then, Netflix was a company that sent their customers
Speaker 1: DVDs in the mail. But then in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Netflix introduced a streaming service called watch Now at no
Speaker 1: additional church. It was the official start of the streaming revolution.
Speaker 1: Piso saw what Netflix was doing as the future of
Speaker 1: home entertainment, and he wanted to join the race, but
Speaker 1: Amazon didn't have a vast streaming content library. They didn't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable charging customers for an inferior product. Bezos himself
Speaker 1: came up with the answer that Amazon would give away
Speaker 1: its content for free as well two members of its
Speaker 1: Prime Shipping club. He argued that making TV shows and
Speaker 1: winning awards would help with Amazon's core business. Here's Bezos
Speaker 1: speaking a few years later at the Recode Conference in
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. So, uh, from a business point of view,
Speaker 1: for us, when we win a Golden Globe, it helps
Speaker 1: us sell more shoes. And it does that in a
Speaker 1: very direct way because when people if you look at
Speaker 1: Prime members, they buy more on Amazon than non Prime members.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons they do that is once
Speaker 1: they've paid their in your fee, they're looking around to
Speaker 1: see how can I get more value out of the program,
Speaker 1: and so they look across more categories, they shop more,
Speaker 1: they do they there are a lot of their behaviors
Speaker 1: change in ways that are very attractive to us as
Speaker 1: a business. Bazos saw the Prime video could get more
Speaker 1: people to buy Prime memberships, get people to interact with
Speaker 1: Amazon dot Com every day, and if a competitor like Walmart,
Speaker 1: also geared up to deliver in two days. Amazon Prime
Speaker 1: would already be offering something more. Years later, when antitrust
Speaker 1: authorities were investigating the Amazon MGM deal, critics would point
Speaker 1: to this moment as an example of Amazon behaving anti competitively.
Speaker 1: They were using their dominance in online shopping to give
Speaker 1: themselves a big head start in online video. Amazon introduced
Speaker 1: Prime Video. In February two eleven, we saw Amazon dot
Speaker 1: Com take on Netflix directly, Amazon starting an unlimited streaming
Speaker 1: video service with five thousand movies and TV shows. It's
Speaker 1: for its existing Prime customers, are already pay seventy nine
Speaker 1: dollars per year. The selection was thin, old episodes of
Speaker 1: The Dick Van Dyke Show, PBS documentaries, and old films
Speaker 1: like Stanley Kubrick's two thousand one Open the Pod Bay
Speaker 1: Doors Help. I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can do that.
Speaker 1: But slowly Amazon started licensing more TV shows and movies
Speaker 1: for media companies like Viacom and Epics, which added stuff
Speaker 1: like Jersey Shore, SpongeBob SquarePants, All Right, pin Head, Your
Speaker 1: Time is up, The Hunger Games movies, and The First
Speaker 1: Avengers such better that might be a really good time
Speaker 1: for you to get angry. That's my secret, Jetty. I'm
Speaker 1: always angry. And because paying for rights to stream blockbusters
Speaker 1: and popular TV shows was so expensive, because they were
Speaker 1: getting into bidding wars with Netflix and Hulu, Amazon decided
Speaker 1: they wanted to control their own destiny. They would create
Speaker 1: their own TV shows. But at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: people were skeptical. They were like, wait, you guys are
Speaker 1: an online bookstore or something, and now you're gonna try
Speaker 1: to be you know, NBC or some or whatever. You're
Speaker 1: gonna try to be a real network. Like I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I believe of you. You know, I'll come back
Speaker 1: in a few years um, And so you have to
Speaker 1: to some extent earn credibility. That's Roy Price, the first
Speaker 1: head of Amazon Studios, as we'll get too later in
Speaker 1: this episode. Roy was later outsted for sexual harassment allegations,
Speaker 1: but he was also responsible for some of Amazon's early successes.
Speaker 1: When Roy started creating TV shows was a really big leap.
Speaker 1: Bezos and his fellow geeks in Seattle thought that they
Speaker 1: could come down to Hollywood and swim in their pool.
Speaker 1: The plan was audacious, maybe even arrogant Bezos believed that
Speaker 1: Hollywood had such a low successory and stumbled so frequently
Speaker 1: with expensive movies that bombed, that Amazon could do things
Speaker 1: differently and better. In two thousand twelve, Amazon Studios opened
Speaker 1: up their first office in Sherman Oaks, above a food
Speaker 1: Ruckers restaurant. Bezos informally dubbed it the Scientific Studio. The
Speaker 1: idea was that Amazon would be methodical about only making
Speaker 1: shows that people wanted to watch. They gave their customers
Speaker 1: a set of pilots and let viewers vote online about
Speaker 1: which shows they wanted to expand in the full series.
Speaker 1: It was a very silicon value approach. Let's tap into
Speaker 1: the wisdom of the crowd, and most Hollywood veterans rolled
Speaker 1: their eyes. There was a lot of experimentation and and
Speaker 1: it was actually a somewhat amateur on them. We said,
Speaker 1: all right, but we really do need some real professional
Speaker 1: shows on the site. Among the first shows that viewers
Speaker 1: chose were the political comedy Alpha House, which was like
Speaker 1: a watered down version of Veep, and a tech industry
Speaker 1: spoof called Beta's, which was a poor version of the
Speaker 1: HBO comedy Silicon Valley that debuted the next year. They
Speaker 1: weren't exactly hits. Around this time, the Netflix original show
Speaker 1: House of Cards was a huge success, so Amazon was
Speaker 1: playing catch up. So we had to sort of convinced
Speaker 1: people that you know, this is this is actually adding
Speaker 1: value over and above all the TV you already have.
Speaker 1: So you've you've got to be distinctive and bringing something
Speaker 1: that is it's it's like film on TV and it's
Speaker 1: great and it's setting a high bar. So Roy decided
Speaker 1: to seek out prestigious projects. He wanted Amazon Studios to
Speaker 1: look like a place that was friendly to artists and
Speaker 1: where audiences could find shows that weren't on mainstream TV networks.
Speaker 1: Amazon's original programming when it first started to really roll out,
Speaker 1: was notably quirkier. That's Danny Gabby. Danny used to be
Speaker 1: a Hollywood agent, and he remembered having a terrible time
Speaker 1: trying to sell a project called Mozart in the Jungle
Speaker 1: about hijinks in a fictional New York City symphony. It
Speaker 1: is my honor to introduce to you someone special. At
Speaker 1: twelve years old, he was the youngest person to ever
Speaker 1: win the Maler Award for Young Conductors. That thing died
Speaker 1: on the vine. It wasn't really going anywhere. And then
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, I remember seeing it turning
Speaker 1: up on Amazon and I thought, oh, wow, they're really
Speaker 1: taking a chance for such a for such a unique,
Speaker 1: quirky show. And I always really loved that show and
Speaker 1: really loved That's loved that pilot script. Mozart in the
Speaker 1: Jungle was Amazon's first modest hit, but their next show
Speaker 1: made Amazon a serious player in Hollywood. Here's Roy. When
Speaker 1: I read the script for Transparent, it was it was
Speaker 1: so moving, and it was so great and it was
Speaker 1: so real that you know, we had to make that show.
Speaker 1: It's a show about a fictional Los Angeles family where
Speaker 1: the father played by Jeffrey Tambor, decides the transition later
Speaker 1: in life. Are you saying that you're gonna start dressing
Speaker 1: up like a lady? All of them? My whole life,
Speaker 1: I've been dressing up like a man. This is Transparent
Speaker 1: was a critical hit. Activists praised it for a sensitive
Speaker 1: portrayal of transgender issues. The show made Amazon seemed progressive
Speaker 1: and forward thinking, and in January, Transparent won a Golden Globe,
Speaker 1: making Amazon the first streaming service to win a major award.
Speaker 1: They beat Netflix at something for the first time Transparence
Speaker 1: producer and writer Choe Soloway stood on stage and accepted
Speaker 1: the award and thanked Jeff Bezos. I want to thank Amazon,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. I want to thank the trans community. They
Speaker 1: are our family. They make this possible. This award is
Speaker 1: dedicated to the memory of Lead. It was a tremendous
Speaker 1: validation of Amazon's efforts in Hollywood and if Roy Price's
Speaker 1: initial strategy, and it was a sign of the times
Speaker 1: viewers were beginning to pull away from cable to look
Speaker 1: for high quality shows online. How after their big win
Speaker 1: at the Golden Globes, the Transparent team Joey Salaway and
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Tambor appeared on CBS this morning for a victory lap,
Speaker 1: and they brought along Jeff Bezos. He pledged that Amazon's
Speaker 1: approach with TV shows and movies was different. There are
Speaker 1: two ways to go about deciding whether to make a show.
Speaker 1: You can ask yourself how many millions of people are
Speaker 1: going to watch this show? I think that leads you
Speaker 1: into corners that aren't interesting. Or you can say, you know,
Speaker 1: is the creator of this show incredibly passionate about this topic?
Speaker 1: Is the creator of this show one of the world's
Speaker 1: great storytellers. Can they assemble a cast to make this
Speaker 1: thing come to life? You know? And so if you're
Speaker 1: asking that, if you're saying, you know, can we build
Speaker 1: something truly remarkable? I think remarkable storytelling always finds an audience.
Speaker 1: Bezos is saying here that Amazon would keep making more transparence,
Speaker 1: that he would choose passion and artistry over popularity, that
Speaker 1: streaming would offer an alternative to the Hollywood formula. This
Speaker 1: approach would lead to a few more critical hits for
Speaker 1: Amazon Studios, like the marvelous Mrs Masal I would like
Speaker 1: to repeatedly kick every man in here in the ball
Speaker 1: the next several hours. I won't so. I am still
Speaker 1: a lady. Your wife must have a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: She's seeing you naked. And the wonderful Phoebe waller Bridge
Speaker 1: comedy Fleabag Tell the Truth. It's horrendous. It's horrendous, It's modern.
Speaker 1: Don't lie, I'm not look like a pencil. Both were
Speaker 1: projects with messy feminist heroines. They made Amazon seem to
Speaker 1: stand apart from the rest of Hollywood. Here's Roy. One
Speaker 1: of the ways that the studio record was truly distinctive
Speaker 1: is we I think led the league in shows created
Speaker 1: and led by women, winning Emmy's and sort of going
Speaker 1: from nowhere to being, you know, internationally famous and from
Speaker 1: you know, Transparent, you know, Fleabag and Mazel and many
Speaker 1: many in between. And I'm glad to say that a
Speaker 1: lot of the shows really stood out. And you know,
Speaker 1: we won the Globe for Best Comedy four years out
Speaker 1: of six. We won the Best Comedy Director at the
Speaker 1: Emmy's four years out of five. But as Netflix also
Speaker 1: started to mint even bigger streaming hits like Stranger Things,
Speaker 1: that approach wouldn't last. After a few years, Amazon retired
Speaker 1: its quirky pilot voting system. Bezos wanted larger audiences. He
Speaker 1: sought it experienced tastemakers and storytellers Hollywood. It turned out
Speaker 1: was changing the company instead of the other way around.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you more after the break. On December three,
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, Jeff Bezos through the buzziest party at
Speaker 1: Hollywood at as Beverly Hills Estate. Tons of famous people
Speaker 1: were there, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Diane Keaton and
Speaker 1: Ben Kingsley, t Bone, Burnett and Beck and many more.
Speaker 1: They were there to celebrate Manchester by the Seat. It
Speaker 1: was Amazon Studio's biggest movie hit yet. It's a very
Speaker 1: depressing family drama starring Casey Affleck. The movie was up
Speaker 1: for several major awards, continuing a winning streak for Amazon Studios.
Speaker 1: At the center of attention was Bezos. He seemed to
Speaker 1: be loving it. His wife, Mackenzie, was nowhere in sight.
Speaker 1: Friends of the couple told me she disliked these kinds
Speaker 1: of parties. It looked like Bezos was at the start
Speaker 1: of a major personality shift. He used to be content
Speaker 1: to stay out of the limelight, focused on the business
Speaker 1: and on a secret technology projects. But now, with Amazon
Speaker 1: stock price tripling over the previous five years, he was
Speaker 1: one of the richest men in the world, and that
Speaker 1: status came with adulation and social opportunity. Bezos seemed to
Speaker 1: relish it. At the Golden Globes, he sat near the
Speaker 1: stage and laughed uproariously as Jimmy Fallon made jokes about him.
Speaker 1: Amazon did pretty well tonight, eleven nominations for Amazon. So
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is here tonight. He actually arrived yesterday, but
Speaker 1: there was no one around a sign for him. Uh
Speaker 1: that night. Manchester by the Sea won five Golden Globes,
Speaker 1: including Best Drama Motion Picture. But behind the scenes, Bezos
Speaker 1: wanted big changes. He was no longer content with Roy
Speaker 1: Price's niche artists driven shows. He wanted Prime Video to grow,
Speaker 1: to drive customers to Amazon Prime in hundreds of countries
Speaker 1: around the world. Here's Roy, you know, over time, uh,
Speaker 1: your audience gets bigger. I mean, as your service grows,
Speaker 1: as you grow around the world, you really need some
Speaker 1: tent pole shows. So you've got to have your um
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you know, a Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: or what have you, um, Game of Thrones, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So Bazos tells Roy at a meeting,
Speaker 1: bring me my Game of Thrones. That's a direct quote.
Speaker 1: He was frustrated that he didn't have a blockbuster franchise.
Speaker 1: At another meeting, Basis gave Roy a sort of ingredients
Speaker 1: list of what he believed was essential for every huge show.
Speaker 1: His list includes stuff like a heroic protagonist and compelling antagonist,
Speaker 1: positive emotions, negative emotions, wish fulfillment, and diverse world building.
Speaker 1: Those last, to her common tropes in science fiction and fantasy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Basos came up with this on the spot and from
Speaker 1: that point on, every time an Amazon executive wanted to
Speaker 1: greenlight a show, they had to explain how the project
Speaker 1: contained all thirteen of Bezos's storytelling elements. And I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, when I first wrote about this list and
Speaker 1: it came out, people were really upset about it that
Speaker 1: this billionaire founder thought he could boil down creativity into
Speaker 1: some formula of his own making. It was weird, but
Speaker 1: it's just another part of Bezos's analytical mind, sort of
Speaker 1: like the pilot voting scheme. Bezos wanted to systematize the
Speaker 1: process of creating hits. He believed you can impose a
Speaker 1: rigorous process around the very act of imagination. The quest
Speaker 1: to find the next Game of Thrones put a ton
Speaker 1: of pressure on Roy Price because those big shows and
Speaker 1: movies that Bezos wanted they take time to make, and
Speaker 1: Roy was about to run out of time because in
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, and entertainment journalists named Kim Masters was
Speaker 1: hearing things, bad things about life at Amazon Studios. Kim
Speaker 1: says she got a call from a source. This source
Speaker 1: painted a picture of cultural dysfunction, a sexist work environment.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a bro environment. Um the upper
Speaker 1: ranks Roy's people that he had brought in. Let's just
Speaker 1: say the source felt that they were not doing great
Speaker 1: job and dubiously qualified. And that's not all. Kim source
Speaker 1: also intimated something more serious, that Roy Price had been
Speaker 1: accused of sexual harassment back in by Issa Dick Hackett.
Speaker 1: She's the executive producer of the Amazon show Man in
Speaker 1: the High Castle and the daughter of the writer Philip K. Dick.
Speaker 1: There was an incident at Comic Con I think in
Speaker 1: San Diego. They were there. There was a dinner where
Speaker 1: Lisa and Roy were in proximity to each other. He
Speaker 1: was being, in her mind, very harassing, which ultimately led
Speaker 1: to a car ride where he re inappropriately started talking
Speaker 1: about his genitalia and um. There were other people in
Speaker 1: the car who were witnessed to this and tried to
Speaker 1: get help her fend him off, and he was aggressively
Speaker 1: pursuing this. And then they arrived at this after party
Speaker 1: and he walks up to her and whispers something the
Speaker 1: very graphic sex act in her ear, just randomly, very odd,
Speaker 1: and she was very upset about it. Kim's article alleges
Speaker 1: that Roy Price set outrageously explicit things to Issa Dick Hacket,
Speaker 1: such as you will love my dick and anal sex.
Speaker 1: I reached out to Issa Hackett for this episode and
Speaker 1: she did not want to rehash the incident, but back
Speaker 1: in she told Kim that Roy's comments in the car
Speaker 1: and at the Amazon studio after party were quote shocking
Speaker 1: and surreal that he did not relent when she told
Speaker 1: him that she was not interested, that she was married
Speaker 1: and had a wife and children. And here's Roy Price's
Speaker 1: version of the same event. He denies the specific comments
Speaker 1: attributed to him in the article, but concedes the incident
Speaker 1: happened and that a sexually explicit remarks were failed jokes.
Speaker 1: Well it, you know, it was obviously unfortunate and unintended.
Speaker 1: And I went down to San Diego to look at
Speaker 1: a pilot screening at Comic Con of Man in high Castle,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had a dinner party. I got an
Speaker 1: uber to go to an after party afterwards. I had
Speaker 1: never met kak It, and she hopped in my uber
Speaker 1: along with the guy from Amazon, and you know, there
Speaker 1: was banter in the uber and I deeply apologize. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if the band enter was you know, overboard. Um,
Speaker 1: and we get to the after part. I mean it
Speaker 1: was very short. It was like whatever, ten blocks at
Speaker 1: one in the morning. Anyway, So I don't know, we
Speaker 1: get out, we take a self I thought everything was copasetic,
Speaker 1: and but obviously, you know, one person's copsetic is it's
Speaker 1: everyone has the right to define their own line of
Speaker 1: humor and copestic and not copessetic. And I'm not objecting
Speaker 1: to that, and again I'm I'm sorry for it. Two
Speaker 1: years after all this happened, Kim Masters published her article
Speaker 1: in The Hollywood Reporter. Her piece came out in October.
Speaker 1: The Roy Price story went public the same week that
Speaker 1: the New York Times and New Yorker published their bombshell
Speaker 1: stories about Harvey Weinstein and pervasive sexual harassment in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: And but that was it. You know, that was not
Speaker 1: a good week to have a bad article, and so
Speaker 1: it was not really kind of to stay under the circumstances,
Speaker 1: and so that was it. Says a Fox's alert. This
Speaker 1: is just breaking Roy Price, Amazon's entertainment chief is taking
Speaker 1: a leave of absence following a sexual harassment claim. Now
Speaker 1: this comes as the massive Harvey Weinstein scandal is now expanding.
Speaker 1: Roy's career in Hollywood. Never recovered and What's more, some
Speaker 1: of the most prestigious projects he brought into Amazon Studios,
Speaker 1: including Manchester by the Sea, Transparent, and a four movie
Speaker 1: deal with Woody Allen, all got clouded by their own
Speaker 1: sexual harassment and assault scandals. With Roy gone, Bezos needed
Speaker 1: a new leader for Amazon Studios. He was at a
Speaker 1: turning point. He wanted a huge hit, and at the
Speaker 1: same time he was getting personally interested in expanding his
Speaker 1: profile in Hollywood. That's next. About three months after Roy
Speaker 1: Price resigned, Amazon Studio's got a new boss. Here's my colleague,
Speaker 1: Lucashaw Jen Sulky. Is you know a Hollywood veteran, at
Speaker 1: tried and true person. Uh. She was at the time
Speaker 1: one of the top executives that at NBC UM someone
Speaker 1: who had relationships with people all over town. I don't
Speaker 1: know that she was seen as kind of the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of great taste, but she had a very good sensibility
Speaker 1: for what people wanted to watch. Amazon was sending a
Speaker 1: clear message by hiring a prominent woman to head the
Speaker 1: studio at a time of me too controversy. Here's Jen
Speaker 1: Sulky at a panel held by Vanity Fair. I've never
Speaker 1: met Roy Price and UM so I don't I can't
Speaker 1: speak about him personally, but what I can say is
Speaker 1: that there had been a lot of um negativity and trauma,
Speaker 1: a little bit of trauma around the company, understandably, and
Speaker 1: then there had been a lot of healing that had
Speaker 1: already started, which I was really happy about. Chen Sulky's
Speaker 1: arrival signal something more subtle. Amazon's tastes were changing, and
Speaker 1: I think to a lot of people as symboled a
Speaker 1: clear departure from the Roy Price era, in both in
Speaker 1: that they brought in someone who was the consummate Hollywood insider,
Speaker 1: and in that she had more broad and commercial taste.
Speaker 1: She was not going to come in trying to make
Speaker 1: another transparent Jeff Bezos wanted big franchise TV shows and
Speaker 1: movies with bankable stars that could capture the attention of
Speaker 1: customers and recruit new prime members UM. They wanted shows
Speaker 1: that could speak to the middle of America, speak to
Speaker 1: the kind of person you think of as the average
Speaker 1: Amazon customer UM, and that resulted in shows like Jack Ryan,
Speaker 1: which was political thriller adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel,
Speaker 1: and resulted in the show Like The Boys, which was
Speaker 1: this sort of cynical, acerbic take on the popularity of
Speaker 1: superhero shows. Maybe not super mainstream, but one of the
Speaker 1: most popular shows on Amazon. Danny Gabby, the former agent
Speaker 1: it's now a vice Studios executive. He sat in meetings
Speaker 1: with Amazon. He felt their desperation for some kind of big,
Speaker 1: blockbuster content. They all looked us and they said, you know,
Speaker 1: we've been having a lot of internal discussions and we
Speaker 1: need to figure out how we're going to be working
Speaker 1: on bigger, tentpole content, think real events series, series like
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones. And they started throwing out Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones a lot in conversation, and then I remember it
Speaker 1: was there was this mantra that everybody started to beat
Speaker 1: and beat out in the meetings all around the same time.
Speaker 1: And the sense I got was maybe they were having
Speaker 1: some issues with eyeballs on some of their programming, and
Speaker 1: some of the people at the top looked at the
Speaker 1: studios team and said, you all need to start thinking
Speaker 1: a bit more commercially, because we're not going to keep
Speaker 1: sinking money into this thing if you don't. Amazon executives
Speaker 1: were reluctant to admit that ESOS was dictating this change
Speaker 1: in strategy, but Danny would often receive calls with urgent
Speaker 1: request to create slideshow decks for meetings with Amazon. I'd
Speaker 1: have a lot of last minute late nights where I'd
Speaker 1: have to be throwing together decks about our upcoming film
Speaker 1: or series or documentary slate that they could take up
Speaker 1: with them to Seattle. I remember once I was literally
Speaker 1: at Coachella. I think I was trying to trying to
Speaker 1: watch Kanye perform, and I got a phone call from
Speaker 1: our then president saying, I need I need a deck
Speaker 1: about all of our film pipeline that we can go
Speaker 1: and discuss with tomorrow Bezos, maybe at the meeting. This
Speaker 1: new sensibility was accompanied by bigger investments. Amazon would spend
Speaker 1: about five billion on prime video in eighteen eight billion,
Speaker 1: and an astounding eleven billion. It's money that even surprises
Speaker 1: the film industry. Here's Brad Fuller, producer on the Jack
Speaker 1: Ryan series. He's talking to us while sitting by the pool,
Speaker 1: which is why you can hear the sound of water lapping.
Speaker 1: I remember going into an airport right after they dropped
Speaker 1: the first season of the show, and I was traveling
Speaker 1: and I looked in the paperback section in the In
Speaker 1: this you know in the Airport's store and John Krisnsi's
Speaker 1: face was on every single Tom Clancy title, like they
Speaker 1: were promoted and it said watched Jack Ryan on Amazon,
Speaker 1: and um, we were getting packages from Amazon and John's
Speaker 1: face was on the box. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Like they I had never felt promotion like what they
Speaker 1: did on that show in the first season. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that this could actually occur. It was amazing.
Speaker 1: Brad Fuller never got hard numbers about how the show did,
Speaker 1: but he knew it was a success because Amazon immediately
Speaker 1: started talking to him about a second season. They're very
Speaker 1: secretive about their data. As someone who who likes numbers
Speaker 1: and likes to understand analytics and what's happening, I was
Speaker 1: continually pressing and pressing and pressing. And that's Todd Lieberman,
Speaker 1: a producer of the Amazon film The Aeronnuts, starring Felicity
Speaker 1: Jones and Eddie Redmain. He was told it was one
Speaker 1: of the most successful original movies ever released on Amazon acclaim.
Speaker 1: Amazon repeats to many of its partners, and like those
Speaker 1: other partners, he never got hard evidence. Movie studios released
Speaker 1: box office numbers. TV networks issue ratings reports, but streaming
Speaker 1: services like Amazon provide almost no data publicly or privately.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to determine just how Amazon stacks up against Netflix, Hulu,
Speaker 1: and newer players like Apple, TV Plus or Disney Plus.
Speaker 1: Amazon has more than two hundred million Prime members, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't reveal how many people watch or how many
Speaker 1: new Prime subscriptions it gets from its movies and shows.
Speaker 1: But one thing was clear, Amazon and Jeff Bezos are
Speaker 1: in the streaming game to stay. When they bought MGM,
Speaker 1: they basically purchased a vault of valuable intellectual property that
Speaker 1: they could mind for sequels, reboots, and TV series, and
Speaker 1: Bezos kept gravitating towards Hollywood. Every fall, he hosted a
Speaker 1: top secret event in Santa Barbara for entertainment executives and
Speaker 1: actors called Campfire. It was like his own private Davos
Speaker 1: or TED conference. He invited Oprah and Shonda Rhymes, as
Speaker 1: well as speakers like Jane Goodall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Speaker 1: Bezos brought his family and regularly called it the highlight
Speaker 1: of his year. More and more of his private life
Speaker 1: was being swept up into this world of celebrity. He
Speaker 1: kept attending award shows and sat prominently in the audience.
Speaker 1: Here's Chris Rock and Steve Martin at the Oscars. Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos is it? Oh, Jeff Bezo, great actor? He's got
Speaker 1: cash when he writes to check the bank bouts. Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos is so rich. He got divorced and he's still
Speaker 1: the richest man in the world. The Jeff Bezos that
Speaker 1: was sitting there at the Oscars seemed like a much
Speaker 1: different man. He had come a long way from the
Speaker 1: guy who predicted that he could build an everything store
Speaker 1: in the Internet. Here are you? I'm Jeff Bezos, what
Speaker 1: is your claim to fame? And the founder of Amazon
Speaker 1: dot Com. It wasn't just a change in Jeff bezos interests, personality,
Speaker 1: or how he was spending his time. There was a
Speaker 1: physical transformation too. In full view, Bezos was getting buffer.
Speaker 1: He was working out a few years earlier, there was
Speaker 1: this famous photograph of him from the Sun Valley Mogul's
Speaker 1: conference wearing Aviator sunglasses, his biceps bulging. He was kind
Speaker 1: of coming to resemble the action stars that he wanted
Speaker 1: for his movies. It was ironic. The journey had begun
Speaker 1: with Bezos trying to transform the way Hollywood created hit
Speaker 1: TV shows and films. But in the end he was
Speaker 1: the one who changed, letting go of his quirky attempts
Speaker 1: to re engineer the entertainment business. Years journalists Kim Masters again.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a pattern that we're seeing with
Speaker 1: the with the tech companies. They come in here and
Speaker 1: they think they know how to reinvent the wheel, and
Speaker 1: that everybody here is it's been doing it wrong, and
Speaker 1: they're not that bright. After all, it's l a, it's Hollywood.
Speaker 1: And then they've started the higher legacy media people. So
Speaker 1: Jen Sulky is at Amazon, they find out that sometimes
Speaker 1: those dumb Hollywood rules exists for a reason. You know,
Speaker 1: the old rules exist for a reason. This was something
Speaker 1: Bezos was about to learn the hard way in the
Speaker 1: main part of his business, because while he was off
Speaker 1: coverting in Hollywood, the Amazon marketplace was going wild. It
Speaker 1: had evolved into a massive online bizarre where there were
Speaker 1: practically no rules to who could sell or what they
Speaker 1: could sell, and what tactics they could use to win
Speaker 1: the sale. Fraud and counterfeits were running rampant. How Amazon
Speaker 1: built a global marketplace and then try to tame it
Speaker 1: We'll tell you that story in the next episode. Foundering
Speaker 1: is hosted by me brad Stone. Sean When is our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Lucas Shaw contributed reporting to this episode. Raymondo
Speaker 1: is our audio engineer. Molly Nugent as our associate producer.
Speaker 1: Mark Million and Vander may Robin Agello and Molly Shoots
Speaker 1: are our story editors. Francesco Levi is the head of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and if you like
Speaker 1: our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends
Speaker 1: see you next time.