Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Masser and tim
Speaker 2: Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio. He's a Hollywood machine.
Speaker 3: He is his own Hollywood machine.
Speaker 4: He's the individual behind our screen Time world, behind the
Speaker 4: screen Time newsletter. You can sign up for that at
Speaker 4: Bloomberg dot com slash screen Time. We're talking about Lucas Shaw,
Speaker 4: Bloomberg News Managing Editor of Media and Entertainment. He joins
Speaker 4: us from our Bloomberg La situation. Lucas, it's like always
Speaker 4: Sonny and nice out there. So I know you come
Speaker 4: to New York sometimes, but LA is home. But we
Speaker 4: appreciate you joining us. I want to talk about people
Speaker 4: going back to the movies this year, because this is
Speaker 4: something interesting is happening. You wrote about this recently, and
Speaker 4: I'm wondering one why people in your view or are
Speaker 4: going back to the movies, and two whether or not
Speaker 4: this is sustainable.
Speaker 1: First one is tricky day and or you know, the
Speaker 1: good slate of movies, things that people were very excited about.
Speaker 1: So you had probably the highest volume of high caliber
Speaker 1: summer blockbusters in a long time.
Speaker 2: You know, we tried to capture the lessons from those in.
Speaker 1: Es, say for Business Week, and it's everything from having
Speaker 1: an appropriate window delay before lay between when a movie
Speaker 1: appears in theaters and when it's available at home to
Speaker 1: bring something fresh and different to the table. Which sounds
Speaker 1: tried and obvious, but Hollywood has been in this pattern
Speaker 1: of releasing cinematic universes for the last ten years, and
Speaker 1: you look at what a lot of the things, A
Speaker 1: lot of things that work this year are either new
Speaker 1: movies that haven't been around in five or six years,
Speaker 1: something felt fresh. In terms of whether it's sustainable, I
Speaker 1: think that just depends on whether Hollywood learn is the
Speaker 1: right lessons from this right, you know, are they going
Speaker 1: to see obsession and instead just make a million different
Speaker 1: deals with other YouTube filmmakers, or are they going to
Speaker 1: find the right filmmaker and put the right infrastructure around them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're still down a lot right from the
Speaker 3: pandemic Lucas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sales are off I want to say ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen percent. The I should say the revenue is off.
Speaker 1: The ticket sales are off considerably more. But one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why revenue has recovered is higher ticket prices.
Speaker 1: The popularity of IMAX. You know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that seems to happen is there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a enthusiasm around being a cinephile and filmmaking, people who
Speaker 1: are excited about going to see a Christopher Nolan movie
Speaker 1: in seventy millimeter or going to see Ryan Coogler and imax.
Speaker 4: You said, yeah, you said, in other words, as you write,
Speaker 4: being a film nerd is cool again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have.
Speaker 3: To say, I haven't seen Odyssey yet, but I want
Speaker 3: to get to I'm going next week. I want to
Speaker 3: get to it in the theater. I really don't want
Speaker 3: to see it at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's seventy mil or just normal IMAX.
Speaker 3: I don't know what should we do.
Speaker 1: You've seen it, right, I saw it in seventy mili
Speaker 1: no imax, which is not what Christopher Nolan would want.
Speaker 1: I may go see it again in seventy milimeters IMAX,
Speaker 1: but they're on They're only like forty screens in the
Speaker 1: country that have that.
Speaker 2: So you come to New York Lucas. Okay, that's what
Speaker 2: we'll do.
Speaker 3: They're still Hey, listen, what I really think is cool
Speaker 3: is in this story. Business Week actually pulled people studio chiefs, producers,
Speaker 3: talent agents, filmmakers, analysts, and die hard filmgoers on the lessons.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I did think was I
Speaker 3: want to go to the first one. Young people still
Speaker 3: want to go to the theater. So it is interesting,
Speaker 3: Like we talked about this being kind of cool, but
Speaker 3: I think we keep thinking that some of these trends,
Speaker 3: you know, young people are going to be doing things differently,
Speaker 3: but we still now hear like they weren't going to
Speaker 3: buy houses. Well now they are maybe going to buy
Speaker 3: houses if they can afford them, but same thing for
Speaker 3: the theater. They're going back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look, it's a feeling that there was a
Speaker 1: feeling that young people would not be going to the
Speaker 1: movies anymore, and that has I think, mostly dissipated. That
Speaker 1: was like a that was one of those pandemic era
Speaker 1: moments where because of the popularity of video games, because
Speaker 1: of all these other entertainment offerings at their disposal, people
Speaker 1: thought that young people.
Speaker 2: Had moved on.
Speaker 1: And I'm still reluctant to say, like moviegoing is as
Speaker 1: popular with young people as it was before. But I
Speaker 1: think the notion that young people are just not interested
Speaker 1: in movies was clearly false. They just are interested in
Speaker 1: particular types of movies, you know, making minecraft or property
Speaker 1: that they love was something that could get them to
Speaker 1: go to the theater and get them excited about it.
Speaker 4: What about this idea of like the YouTubers starting to
Speaker 4: get into two films and these one offs, and if
Speaker 4: they are one offs? You mentioned Obsession directed by a
Speaker 4: twenty six year old YouTuber, Backrooms directed by a YouTuber.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen either of these films. I've heard about,
Speaker 4: especially heard about Backrooms. But I'm just curious, Lucas, about
Speaker 4: what that tells you about where the industry is and
Speaker 4: if there's like this, if there's a new route to
Speaker 4: the big screen, or if this is just like this
Speaker 4: is a you know, kind of a one off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a you know saying in journalism
Speaker 1: three as a trend. And so if you look at
Speaker 1: this year, you had this movie Iron Lung from a
Speaker 1: popular YouTuber named market Player that he mostly self distributed
Speaker 1: earlier this year, that did really well for the kind
Speaker 1: of that type of property. And then you had both
Speaker 1: back Rooms and Obsession, and so you had to have
Speaker 1: three YouTube adjacent films in a row. It's it's tricky
Speaker 1: because there have been filmmakers discovered on YouTube for a
Speaker 1: decade now, if not more than that, So the notion
Speaker 1: that there's a crossover potential is not new. But I
Speaker 1: do think when you have three movies hit in the
Speaker 1: way that they did at the same time that some
Speaker 1: legacy franchises like Star Wars or DC Comics underperform, its
Speaker 1: certainly opened Hollywood's eyes. They were, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of producers trying to find that, you know, the next
Speaker 1: Reddit meme or four Chan meme that can become a movie,
Speaker 1: or that next YouTube star. You know. The truth is
Speaker 1: that each one of these stories is distinct. But I
Speaker 1: think that for me, the biggest lesson was you took
Speaker 1: kind of talent and ip that resonated online, that knew
Speaker 1: how to speak to an audience, and then plug them
Speaker 1: into the system in a way that gave them the
Speaker 1: freedom to sort of stay true to their vision, but
Speaker 1: had all the intelligence and bells and whistles of a
Speaker 1: proper Hollywood release, And to me, that's the right formula.
Speaker 3: Do you agree that audiences really want happy endings? I
Speaker 3: mean I kind of do.
Speaker 4: I do too.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's enough stuff in this world that
Speaker 3: kind of stresses me out that when I go home,
Speaker 3: I want a happy ending.
Speaker 1: I think that Hollywood fell in love. Part of this
Speaker 1: was the result of television where, you know, particularly after
Speaker 1: House of Cards on Netflix it and maybe maybe Breaking Bad,
Speaker 1: but I'll get back to that, people fell in love
Speaker 1: with this idea that nobody had to be likable, and
Speaker 1: it was it was fine to make projects about all
Speaker 1: of these kind of loathsome figures. But if you think
Speaker 1: back and this is more television than film, if you
Speaker 1: think back about you know, the anti heroes of that
Speaker 1: first era of the Golden Age of TV. You know
Speaker 1: Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Walter Wright, Walter White from Soprano's
Speaker 1: Mad Men and Breaking Bad, respectively. These were folks who
Speaker 1: were very flawed and in many cases like kind of despicable,
Speaker 1: but you were rooting for them. The series did a
Speaker 1: really good job of making you care about them and
Speaker 1: you almost like felt bad but you couldn't help but
Speaker 1: kind of want to see them succeed or do well.
Speaker 1: And I think we tilted too far away from that,
Speaker 1: where there were projects that were just very dark and
Speaker 1: bleak and depressing, and where nobody was redeemable. And that
Speaker 1: just ultimately is going to turn people off. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that everything should be sunshina rainbows. You know, look
Speaker 1: at all the problems in the world around us, and
Speaker 1: I do think people are craving stories that reflect some
Speaker 1: of those, but they don't want to walk out of
Speaker 1: the theater constantly feeling depressed.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit in talk
Speaker 4: sports and the connection between sports and Hollywood. You reported
Speaker 4: this week on Bob Iger and Josh Kushner and they're
Speaker 4: huge purchase of more than twelve million dollars of the
Speaker 4: LA Lakers. What was your first reaction when you saw
Speaker 4: these two, Like, we know these guys are close and
Speaker 4: iigre's been an advisor to Thrive, But what was your
Speaker 4: reaction when you saw this duo team up to buy
Speaker 4: the Lakers.
Speaker 1: I mean, my first reaction would involve an expletive that
Speaker 1: you're not going to want me to family show.
Speaker 2: So I'll just skip that one. Let's just say I
Speaker 2: was a surprise.
Speaker 1: I'll leave it a mystery as to which one, which
Speaker 1: four letter word It was a surprise. You know, Mark
Speaker 1: Walter had bought the Lakers just less than a year
Speaker 1: ago at this point, and I think Laker fans, which
Speaker 1: I am more excited about, the idea that the owners
Speaker 1: of the Dodgers, and the Dodgers have been one of
Speaker 1: the best run franchises in all professional sport works since
Speaker 1: since the Guggenheim Group took over, that they would sort
Speaker 1: of apply that formula and ferry dust to the Lakers
Speaker 1: because the Lakers had struggled a little bit the last
Speaker 1: few years. You know, it's hard in pro sports being
Speaker 1: owned by kind of a family where their entire network
Speaker 1: is tied up in the team because they just don't
Speaker 1: have the resources that some of these massive new ownership
Speaker 1: groups have. At the same time, my main takeaway was
Speaker 1: man Mark Walter must be in trouble because there had
Speaker 1: been reporting by Bloomberg and by others about some of
Speaker 1: the investigations into his kind of insurance company and how
Speaker 1: he was moving money around, and I just find it
Speaker 1: hard to believe. And again I don't have the inside
Speaker 1: track on this, but I find it hard to believe
Speaker 1: that he would sell the team that quickly if there
Speaker 1: wasn't something precipitating that I did. And we've had reporting
Speaker 1: since then on kind of his need for cash as
Speaker 1: for the Kushner Iiger duo. You know, we knew that
Speaker 1: they were trying to get an NBA team and have
Speaker 1: been trying to do things in sports. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit of an odd a nation, you know. In particular,
Speaker 1: like when I think of Bob Iger, he's probably one
Speaker 1: of the most prominent Clipper fans in Los Angeles, So
Speaker 1: the idea that he's now going to be the owner
Speaker 1: in face of the Lakers is a little odd. But
Speaker 1: we also know that he is, as the former CEO
Speaker 1: of Disney, was sort of looking for that next act
Speaker 1: in some way to stay in the public eye, and
Speaker 1: this is a good one for him.
Speaker 3: Hey, before we wrap up, just got about a minute
Speaker 3: or so to go Bloomberg screen time. The live event
Speaker 3: coming up September thirtieth, October first in LA We're going to.
Speaker 2: Be there, one of our favorites. I think it's fair.
Speaker 3: It's an incredible event, I have to say, and all
Speaker 3: kicks off on the evening of September thirtieth. Anything you
Speaker 3: can tee up for us, or how you're thinking about
Speaker 3: kind of content and the creators of content and how
Speaker 3: it's delivered and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, we have one of our certainly one
Speaker 1: of our best lineups yet. We've got a couple of
Speaker 1: returning champions or guests. Netflix Coast CEO Ted Sarandos and
Speaker 1: NBCUS Donna Langley. We've got a bunch of new people
Speaker 1: like Danae. Wall from Disney in the head of HBO,
Speaker 1: Casey Bloys and Jerry cardinally who's involved in one of
Speaker 1: the biggest shareholders in Paramount. So I'm sure the Paramount
Speaker 1: Warner fracas will come up quite a bit. You know.
Speaker 1: We've got one of the mayoral hopefuls in La so
Speaker 1: I imagine Nthia Rahman. So I know we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about sort of production flight leaving Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: what the city and state can do to leave.
Speaker 2: It or keep it there.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll talk about AI and music with the
Speaker 1: CEO of SUNO, Mike Schulman, who's someone that might colleague
Speaker 1: Ashley Carmen and I just profiled. So we'll touch on
Speaker 1: a lot of different topics.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, we're certainly looking forward to and thanks
Speaker 3: so much for covering out some time as we get
Speaker 3: ready to head into the weekend. Lucas be well, thanks you, yeah,
Speaker 3: Lucas Shaw Bloomberg News Managing editor of Media and Entertainment,
Speaker 3: joining us out there on the West Coast.