Transcript

Rapid Response: How Star Trek prospers against Netflix and Disney+, w/Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.

Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. Hollywood in general. markets itself and benefits from being a mirror that reflects the moment in which it's making its content.

So when you see something like the opening of civil war this weekend. You realize that people are obviously in an election year really thinking about this, that it is highly, highly, highly there. Look, we go to the movies or we watch television to have to experience catharsis. We go and we sit in the dark and we eat our popcorn to experience a sense of catharsis that allows us a closer understanding. Of the very thing we're experiencing in the world, which is why movies

Have always been so much part of our popular culture. That's Alex Kurtzman, the executive producer behind Paramount's ever-expanding collection of Star Trek TV shows. He's also worked on franchises from Transformers to Spider-Man to Mission Impossible. As we approach the one year anniversary of the Hollywood strikes, I wanted to talk to Alex about the state of the streaming wars right now. He's someone Paramount Plus Tap to help compete against Netflix and Disney Plus and others. Even if you're not a Trekie, Alex shares insights for leaders everywhere about how to keep your brand feeling fresh and when to risk upsetting your biggest fans.

Let's get into it. I'm Bob Safian, and I'm here with filmmaker and producer Alex Kurtzman of Secret Hideout. who orchestrates the Star Trek TV franchise for CBS and Paramount Plus. Alex, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Bob.

So your your entree into Star Trek came on the big screen working with J J Abrams on Star Trek Feature films. And so in preparing for this chat, I started looking at some recent box office numbers for like civil war and Godzilla Kong and Dune Two, of course. Are are you An avid movie goer yourself? Like have you seen this latest batch? I I try to get to the movies as much as possible. Anything Alex Garland makes, I will try and get to see. I have not yet seen Civil War. I'm very excited. I did see Dune last weekend.

I saw it uh projected digital seventy and actually digital IMAX, which was, you know, the way to watch that film. The blockbuster movie genre? Is such a Sometimes I think it's like a crapshoot. It's like you d you never know who else is coming out when you are and sort of what's gonna differentiate you in in in that marketplace, right? Oh it's you know, it's

You you can call a crapshooter, you can call it Russian roulette. I mean, it depends on how you look at it. And it's particularly competitive now, but yes, it's um You know, it it's a strange thing because people will spend literally years of their lives Building a movie. And you know by three o'clock that Friday whether you're dead or alive. It's a very strange thing.

Do you know beforehand though, like Do you kind of know whether it's working? I mean, you kind of do, right? Yes, you know w there you mostly know when it's working. You definitely know when it's not working, and then every once in a while you get very surprised. We actually were very surprised on the first Star Trek movie. We thought it was gonna do okay.

And then it ended up doing, I think, close to eighty million dollars, which was something like twenty million more than everybody thought it would do. So those those things do happen. And that that surprise. With that. Film. Was it because

Like you weren't sure the film was as good as it could be, or because you didn't realize the a the audience was gonna respond that like you could activate such an audience. No, no, it's never you know it I would separate greatly. what I think of the movie versus what the audience will you know, whether they'll go see the movie. So I I loved the first Star Trek movie. I I I just loved everything about it. Star Trek was in a very strange place when we made that film. So I think it launched a whole new interest in Star Trek. But that was the point was because Star Trek was at a fairly low place.

We just didn't know how many people would come. Uh, we knew that people were really interested in the trailer because it looked so different than what Star Trek had done before, but we just didn't know Does that mean we're gonna get only diehards? And no new fans, are we gonna get a whole new audience? And we ended up getting a you know, both, which was obviously that's that was our golden ticket that weekend.

Yeah, I mean I guess that that balance of sort of the diehards and the new one, like you're s you're still balancing that, right? Because the folks who who f who who glommed onto that film, like now they're diehards, but You know, that's a long time ago already. It's a long time ago and and yes, the that is my every single day is You know, thinking about fans. There's there's actually a a huge misnomer about Star Trek fandom, which is that there's a one size fits all fan. There's many different sections of Star Trek fandom. You know, I I one of the things that I I think was

really helpful was realizing that Y you know, none of us own Star Trek. Star Trek is owned by Gene Roddenberry. And the fans. Full stop. And the fans have been the ones who've saved Star Trek from the beginning, the fans have been the one who who keep, you know, evangelizing about Star Trek.

And If you do not please the core fans. You will not Star Trek won't continue. But the tricky part is The core fans of today will not necessarily be the core fans of ten years from now. And so how do you build for that?

Yeah, I had I had a uh an early mentor in the magazine business, actually, Fortune magazine, and he said to me, you know, you always need to deliver meat for the dog, which was his way of saying like cover that base, cover that base. That's right. But then but all your growth is going beyond that base. And so how much do you give them And h you know, and how much can you take them for granted because they'll accept anything that is sort of close to that core. You can never take them for granted, ever. In fact, you have to listen to them religious. And we do that as part of our shows. What what we do is we You know, we scour everything that everybody's writing on the internet about it and we talk about it in the writers room. And I believe that the only way you can build new fans is to first

Please the core fans. It's it's everything. Because you know, first of all, television gives you the benefit of being able to tack and change course along the way. So if something's working, you know very quickly. And if it's not working, you know very quickly. And if you're still building a season of television or if you're still you know thinking about what's next season gonna be, you can say, Okay, what are the things that we learned from this season that worked for us and what do we need to change? What feels resonant about what the fans are saying to us? Were you a Trekkie as a kid? I I was a fan, actually when I saw The Wrath of Khan.

In the theater as a little kid. It was the first time a villain had ever rivaled Darth Vader. And that seemed impossible to me at the time. And

Then I started noticing that my friend His father worked at JPL. And just so our Audience knows JPL refers to NASA's jet propulsion lab. And his father would sit down and watch Star Trek with

my friend every Saturday on reruns. And that was actually the first time that I began to understand what I have now come to see. full frame, which is that Star Trek has influenced enormous amounts of people in The tech world.

To go build the things they saw on television. And that is an amazing thing'cause there's not a lot of of franchises that you can say have done that. Yeah, yeah, I had a guest on the show recently, uh a futurist guy named Ari Wallach, who talked about how Hollywood's depiction of the future Is Often dystopian.

be a disservice that discourages our our dreams of a better of a better world. But Star Trek's always tried to have Somewhat of a different vibe. There are always. Bad guys as you No quit.

Kong, right? Sure. So uh I think actually the thing that distinguishes Star Trek and that is the special sauce of Star Trek is Roddenberry's very unique Vision of optimism. I mean What the what Star Trek posits is a world in which all of the things that divide us now are in the rear view mirror.

contributions that Roddenberry ever made to the conversation about race, gender, equality. Was that no one ever talked about it on the bridge? But everybody was a different color. And had different interests. And different preferences and no one talked about it. It was just an assumption that it was okay and understood and accepted.

And that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I I think that I would say the number one ingredient to Star Trek's endurance over all this time is that essential vision of optimism where our better angels have actually driven us to the best version of ourselves as humanity. And that is how we have continued to grow. So I think in a lot of ways it is a compass for So many people to imagine a better world.

Hm wh why is it so hard in Hollywood For that. To be more prevalent. Like why is there such a fascination with Dystopia. Is it just easier to tell that kind of a story? Well, I think Hollywood in general

markets itself and benefits from being a mirror that reflects the moment in which it's making its content. So when you see something like the opening of civil war this weekend you realize that people are obviously in an election year really thinking about this, that it is highly, highly, highly there. Look, we go to the movies or we watch television to have To experience catharsis. And right now the premise of civil war is kind of on everybody's mind in some form.

Right. It's writ large and it's taken to the extreme, but it's on everybody's mind. And so We go and we sit in the dark and we eat our popcorn to experience a sense of catharsis that allows us a closer understanding of the very thing we're experiencing in the world, which is why movies Have always been so much a part of our popular culture. As you're operating Star Trek.

via televis or streaming. Versus in the in the theaters is Like what What's different about that? Or is it not really different? The benefit of having a season of television where you're doing, let's say, ten to thirteen episodes a year. is that you have much more time.

To tell the stories and to live in the nuance of character. We can do one show that's an adult drama, we can do one show that's a comedy, we can do one show that's action adventure. And that way we will be able to speak to each segment of the Star Trek audience. I'll give you an example with lower decks. So lower decks is uh our animated show that Mike McMahon

Did Mike McMahon came from Rick and Morty, which is you know another show steeped in a a a deep, deep understanding of science fiction. And he said the thing that I wanna make sure of when we do this show is that We are never punching down on Star Trek. We're never making fun of it. You can laugh with it, you can't laugh at it.

Now Mike comes from animation, right? So he wasn't thinking of it as a live action show. So it organically made a lot of sense. for us to do it as an animated show. Could lower deck's Be a live action show? Absolutely. In fact.

In season two of Stranger Worlds we crossed the lower deck's characters over. They they go through a portal and they come out as the real actors who play them, Tani Newsome and Jack Quaid, and they join the crew of the Enterprise as live action characters and it totally worked. It was it was kind of proof of concept that if we ever did want to do a spin off of something like that, we could have done a live action. Mm-hmm. So obviously you're deep into the details.

of the creative parts that make up the But at the same time there's these these business challenges and you know, you've been you've been labeled like the future of Paramount Plus, you know, uh how Paramount Plus is going to compete with Netflix and Disney. There there's a lot of Pressure in all that. Like h how do you think about

What's happening in the streaming world and What your role is and and how you compete. It's a question I think about every day. what happens to Paramount Plus, how it scales as a company, big picture. Th I don't have any control over that. What I do have control over is Quality.

And my feeling is that Part of building this franchise correctly Is allowing each showrunner Two

Bring their vision to the table. And I'm there at the beginning to help The boat get off the dock. With Some of the key decisions, some of the big, big decisions, and then I stay involved.

on the shows that I'm not show running, I stay involved, but I'm not there to micromanage them. I think that is a huge mistake. If my mission is I want each show to be its own unique color in in a rainbow, then I cannot begin muddying each color. With too much of my own perspective.

When it comes to the business side of things. What I try and shield them from as much as possible. is the pressure that comes down from above about You know, what is the cadence of shows, how many how you know budgets. I know you're not gonna like it.

Paramount, but you have to do it and here's why you have to do it. So that by the time the show runner is hearing about it The ground has been softened a little bit. How do you Think about what And an appropriate

Cost bases. Mm-hmm. In a world where, you know, you're competing with people who are at all different levels of the investment they're making in it. Part of my job is understanding How Star Trek monetizes for the company. That I work for.

So In this weird moment in streaming where It's very hard to tell what metric anyone is using to really Argues success. Is it viewership? Okay, well, but what kind of viewership? You're not giving us numbers, so what is that actually translating to? Is it subscribers?

Because Are you able to calculate that X number of subscribers are signing up for your service just to watch that one show. You know, we don't know. No, but they won't they won't tell us. The companies won't tell us. What I can tell you

Is that Star Trek is a waterfall? That keeps rolling downstream for thirty years in terms of licensing. So it's not just a matter of saying Okay. Y you have to decide in this quarter.

whether you're successful financially. My argument is you have to think big picture. You have to assume based on the performance of all other Star Trek shows. So you're still gonna be selling the show in thirty years. And if you're still selling the show in thirty years and you you can count on making a lot of money, you just may not get it this quarter. But you're gonna get it. Although that can sometimes be a hard argument,'cause all

Some believe that well, I'm not gonna be around thirty years from now. I need to I need to show something now, right? No doubt. There's no doubt. And the and that's why ultimately, you know, despite you know all appearances, we're actually not in the Quantity business. You know, we're actually in the quality business, which means you have to assume that from the minute we decide we're gonna make a Star Trek show, a live action Star Trek show, you're two to three years out from it ever ending up on screen. Because you have to assume it's gonna be a year of writing. A year of production and a year of post. Now obviously there's blend in terms of those timelines.

But It is a massive undertaking. It's like making three huge studio movies at a time. So in order to lay it out for them and to say I need you to

To accept the financial buy in. for just one season of tele of television, let alone three or four. I'm gonna tell you how we're gonna roll it out over the course of the next four to five years. to use a very f uh frequently used masters of scale Analogy, I'm not looking at the puck, I'm looking at where the puck is going, and part of my job is to

Is to tell Paramount, here's where the puck is going to go. I think what Alex is saying here is being felt throughout many industries, not just in Hollywood. Looking toward the future, to where the proverbial puck is headed. It's smart business, but it requires bravery and risk. because the pressures of the moment can fight against longer term opportunities.

I also want to double click on Alex's comments about serving core customers first. This is a trickier choice than it can seem because growth is all about your next customer. And sometimes you have to let go of the past to unlock what comes next. After the break, we'll dig into that trade-off more deeply. Plus Alex explains why a golden age of TV might be over. and how last year's Hollywood strikes have fundamentally redefined the entertainment industry. Stay with us.

When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative planning where wealth works together.

Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford's CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more.

As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Before the break, Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman shared his experience re-energizing a beloved brand.

Now Alex and I explore newer trends in streaming and how Star Trek evolves to appeal to new audiences. Let's jump back in. When you talk to Barmount Plus. Where is that business model going, you know, are How do you think sort of

Newer consumers, Gen Z, newer audiences are gonna deal with it. So I'm lucky'cause I I have a uh seventeen year old boy in my house. Right. And so I see how he's consuming media. And I see that there is no monogamy to any particular channel other than TikTok. TikTok is the one constant in our house, right? So He'll watch something on Hulu or he'll watch something on Netflix or he'll watch something on Max.

There's no monogamy there. And does it Does he have like an affinity where he knows that like That's a Paramount Plus show or that that's a Hulu show, or is it just like I'm just watching that show? Nothing, right? No.

No. No. No. I think what you're gonna start seeing is That

Some of these companies are gonna start merging. Because it's very difficult to sustain them. On their own. We have watched over the last Decade.

You know, the great streaming wars. And I think There was a window of time. that happened to coincide with what everybody calls

the golden age of streaming where you had this unbelievable amount of quality television on Where you would get these Amazing artistic shows that all cost twenty million an episode and made zero dollars for anybody.

Right. But they were amazing pieces of art. It was an incredible time. I think we have now come out the other side of that where a lot of the streamers are saying That did not work for us.

That that was not. a financially viable and sustainable way to run a business. We need shows That are much lower cost. that are recognizable instantly, that have the ability to cut through the clutter.

And I would say that the winner of the streaming wars was easily in hands down Netflix, but even they are saying we're not gonna spend the kind of money that we spent. Before on shows. It's like that investment was there to sort of

Change habits in a lot of ways to get us used to these these streamers, but now that we're there I it's not worth continuing to spend that money on it'cause You lose money on what you're creating. Well I think what they recognized was that Wall Street came along and said

How much are you making? And people the minute they the minute they had to open up their books, Wall Street didn't like it. And so then it becomes very difficult. Which is why franchises like Star Trek have An advantage because you've got sixty plus years of embedded institutional understanding and memory in the world. You know, not just domestically but internationally. So

In terms of something that will cut through the clutter, I am constantly amazed that We drop a small piece of information about Star Trek. And there are forty five articles within twenty four hours. And that just doesn't happen when you're doing a normal cop show. It just doesn't happen. You're lucky if you get one or two. I mean we've seen some of those franchises sort of

run into the risk of exhausting themselves. You know, I think Marvel a little bit has kind of exhausted itself. So how do you gauge like progress and success? And and protect from kind of over utilizing that very powerful asset. We spend far less.

Producing our shows. than my understanding of other big franchises In terms of what they spend to make their shows. And Therefore I'm able to say to the company that I work for

It's the right proposition for you financially. And because we have created an ecosystem, we shoot most of our shows in Toronto. We now have to have All these assets that we can begin

Cross pollinating between shows. And not just the assets that we physically build because you have to m remember If we need a prop, we can't go down to the store and buy it. We have to make it. Right. There if we need a costume, we can't go to the local whatever and get a cop outfit. We have to make it.

Everything is bespoke on our show. So once you've created all of those things, you now have a warehouse, many warehouses full of it. And if we're really smart We can begin to Amortize the spin between the different shows.

It's same thing goes for let's say building visual effects assets. We build a whole library of visual effects effects assets. They're very expensive, but once you've built them You can use them again and again and again. And you just have to be clever about how you do it so the audience doesn't feel that they're seeing the same thing. From the point of view of someone who

works at a brand that is not in the entertainment business. The the line that you're walking about Sort of not Being the same. But at the same time being familiar.

Like that that feels like that's a a a walk that a lot of Folks running businesses are You know, struggle with. Right. Because part of what draws you to that brand is I know what I'm getting. But if you give me too much of what I know what I'm getting.

I get tired of it. I think the only way For Star Trek to endure is to take Massive Swings.

And ideas that on f at face value Seem crazy. Nick Meyer, who directed The Wrath of Khan, which I mean, I think if you pretty much ask any Star Trek fan Which is the best Star Trek movie of all time. They will tell you the Wrath of Gone. Nick said to me once

If I had taken a poll And asked every Star Trek fan out there, should I kill Spock at the end of the film? They would have crucified me. Uh. Because we did it the way we did it.

It's the scene everybody remembers and still talks about as one of the greatest scenes, if not the greatest scene ever in Star Trek. Mm. Right. And we took that lesson to heart when we did the two thousand nine movie. And we and we had the benefit of

Actually, In the movie. By saying we're gonna blow up Vulcan. We're gonna blow up the planet that everybody loves the most. You know, if you asked if you took a poll and you asked Star Trek fans, what do you think about us blowing up Vulcan, they would have said, Get these guys out of here.

But because we did it and we tied it into the DNA of the story itself. And then we had Mr. Spock himself come on screen and tell you why it was necessary that that had had to happen. We actually paced and led the fans. To accept it. And that's I think what you have to do is you you say, look

You're gonna get your Star Trek comfort food and that it's gonna feel like Star Trek. And once you have gotten people to buy into that. And they know they're watching real Star Trek. Then you take big swings and you start changing it up. And Hopefully your audience follows.

I I mean it's interesting because it's there's something a little circular about the way You think about this because You started by talking about how you have to listen to the fans, but you're also giving them things sometimes that If you ask them, they wouldn't want. Yeah.

It's it's true. You actually have to hold both things in balance. You really do. And this is where A a system of checks and balances within the structure of each staff itself is so critical.

Because I like to populate our staffs. With a really nice cross section of writers. When a writer says to me, Yeah, I'm not really a Star Trek person, I will go hard. At bringing them onto that stuff.

Because I need that objectivity. I need someone to be like, That's just not holding my interest. You know, if I can get somebody who's not a Star Trek fan to start liking it. Then we've got something. Die hard. Policeman in the room.

Who say you absolutely cannot do that to Canon. You cannot do that in Star Trek. And then you have a Talmudic debate. About. What it means To make a choice like that. And then once you've really, really run it through

Everyone's perspective. You kind of know like I think we have a really legitimate reason for taking this risk. But if we don't have a legitimate reason for taking the risk, we don't take the risk. So I want to ask you We're about nine months since

Hollywood disrup was disrupted by strikes. Yeah. How did you think about That at the time and N now, you know, as we're approaching a year later, like

What's really different or Is it Is it not really that different? Oh no, it's I mean, it changed everything. There's nobody who went unscathed during the strike. Obviously, we all went on strike because we felt it was necessary.

To make the stand. But we also knew that there would be a price for everybody. The thing I noticed most immediately was that When Work came back. Anybody who had something that they were looking to sell.

Nobody was buying anything. Nobody. It was like there was a freeze. on spending for new new things. And so you quickly let's not take anything out right now.

Let's just work with what we have. And keep going. And wait until Actually the doors start to open again. Because we're just gonna get a lot of no's and what's the point of that?

It sounds like a supply chain almost. Like there's a supply glut. And when do you work once it's worked through You'll be able to sort of get back to business as Usual. Or is there s something that's been like fundamentally altered? No, I think there's something that's been fundamentally altered.

I don't think it's gonna be business as usual. I think that There's gonna be something new. There's gonna be something totally different. And As the streamers sort of grow and as you as as you start to see companies consolidate, it is absolutely gonna change the agenda.

About How many things get made and what kind of things get made. And for whom. And so our goal is to stay nimble. Our goal is to try to predict where it's going, but also to follow what we're seeing.

And then there's that weird X factor, which is just What inspires me as an artist? to tell a story and I want to spend the next year or two of my life on it. You know, sometimes what I have found is that when I'm not listening to the market at all. And I'm just following my own instincts about something that I want to see and experience.

The market will catch up to that. Not the other way around. Well, This has been great. Thank you. For doing it.

Thank you for having me. It's uh It you know, part of building the Star Trek universe started with listening to Masters of Scale. I'm very grateful for What you guys have created'cause it really helped me see what was possible. Since my conversation with Alex, I've been thinking about his emphasis on taking big swings, but also on creating a process and team.

That debates each of those risks. There's A lot of talk in business about being intentional. But in the rush of day to day pressures and the passion to pursue an idea, we've fallen in love with. We can overlook what's at stake.

A cost-benefit analysis shouldn't prevent us from taking risks, and every business needs to take leaps now more than ever. But going in wide eyed and prepared for wherever that risk takes you. That's the final frontier. Has gone before.

I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. Rapid response is a wait what original. I'm Bob Safien. Our executive producer is Eve Tro.

The production team includes Chris Gautier, Alex Morris Mashamaku Tonina. and Brandon Klein. Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastonelli.

Original music by Eduardo Rivera and Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lytal Malad. Visit masters of scale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our email newsletter.