Transcript

Rapid Response: What’s the next Barbenheimer? with The Ankler’s Janice Min

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Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. Going to movies now has this expectation like going to six flags, like You can't just ride a scary roller coaster, it has to go upside down and you're suspended for six seconds, and then you have to go ninety miles an hour down.

They sort of created a bar where the experience has to be something that would not be as satisfying. on your television in a streaming service. Also this move towards safety where the expectation of a sequel is that it makes seventy percent of the original and In this age of studios having so much debt, you're going to take that bet.

over an original project. That's Janice Min, co-founder and CEO of The Anklor, the hot new resource for inside Hollywood Info. And there is a lot going on in entertainment right now. Last year at this time, Barbenheimer dominated headlines, but Movie goers this summer haven't had much to get excited about. Janice explains the mythic importance of summer in the entertainment cycle, why Inside Out 2 is beating expectations, and what the Paramount Sky Dance deal means for studios.

Plus why Netflix keeps dominating the screaming wars, what she sees as the short-sightedness of live sports deals, and more. It's an action flick with drama too, so let's get started. I'm Bob Safien. And this is rapid response. I'm Bob Safian and I'm here with Janice Min, the co-founder and CEO of The Anchler. Janice, it's it's great to see you.

Good to see you. It's been a while. Last year at this time We were on the brink of Barbenheimer, which Jufs the movie industry global phenomenon. This year. I don't know, that doesn't seem like there's quite the same

Buzz and anticipation for anything. I think you're right, Bob. I mean Let's let me just first establish we're in a weird period in entertainment. We had the strikes last year. And People thought we'd have some big rebound and that

Entertainment would come. Flooding back. But In fact, it came sort of limping back. And um, so what you're seeing this summer, I'm going to guess a lot of listeners of this podcast are suddenly thinking, Have I been to the movies this summer? And the answer Very much might be no, unless you have kids and you took them to Inside Out too.

We have a pipeline problem. Things were not put in production or things that were in production got pushed back. Uh because there was a lot of insecurity around when the strike would end. But we're also in this sort of crisis in Hollywood.

Of Franchises, reboots, kind of this retread that Though the audiences are telling us often they don't like it. It keeps getting made. We had a really grim May at the box office. No one Saw Furiosa, which was the Mad Max.

Threequel, the third the third installment nobody asked for. And At the same time we had some bombs, as they're called in Hollywood, some bombs on Netflix. There was Rebel Moon Two, which they put out even though no one really watched Rebel Moon One. I mean the other thing in Hollywood people tend to also Have big feet big feelings. There's lots of emotion around success and failure, and there's definitely a bias towards negativity. So oh my God, the the theatrical is dead, and then comes inside out too, which is its own kind of mini Barbenheimer. Already has exceeded a billion dollars. And it Kinda revealed this pent up hunger.

Uh People who just A needed to get into air conditioning. Um and that's one of the great things movie theaters provide. But also there has not been a ton of children's programming out in the theaters in Ages and Despicable before.

Is doing quite well as well currently in the theater. So Anyway, that's the story of the box office. But I am pretty sure. No one's marked in their calendar, Oh, I can't wait for opening weekend.

Friday, because I am dying to see, you know, XYZ. Like that kind of motto culture that Hollywood to drive. It's not happening right now. How important is the summer season in like the year's entertainment cycle. Like is is it particularly important for the industry? Summer has always had this mythic Spot in

The psyche of entertainment. It was where you were going to put out your biggest swings. Basically, you're pouring sometimes up to 200, 250 million dollars on a movie that's the vision of maybe one director and one studio executive, and you're You put it into theaters and you're Keep your fingers crossed and hope it It's lightning in a bottle. And I'm you know, we grew up doing this. You go to the movies all summer and it's kind of fun and you you plan your weekend around it, but that habit has died now. Some of it is because Hollywood let the habit die when they pivoted to streaming. But it's also it's a little bit like going to s Uh going to movies now has this expectation like going to Six Flags, like

You can't just ride a scary roller coaster. It has to go upside down and you're suspended for six seconds, and then you have to go ninety miles an hour down. And so the experience has to be something that would not be as satisfying. On your television in a streaming service. And that that has created a very expensive, very high bar. And also this. move towards safety where A sequel the expectation of a sequel is that it makes seventy percent of the original and In this age of

consolidation and studios having so much debt, you're going to take that bet. over an original project. You mentioned the streaming platforms. Like Are they looking for summer blockbusters the same way, or is that just Sort of uh

You know, a reflex. And do we even know when so much of their data is kept internally, like what moves the needle for them? Well this really is a story about Netflix. Netflix is the one who They they they went into the business of also releasing what would be called summer movies year round.

And s you might recall like The gray man was an attempt. Two create a sort of a summer level franchise. I don't think there's gonna be a gray man too. And so so you've seen people try to Do this sort of eventized streaming.

Movie, but They don't market them. This is something Hollywood still does really well, is the marketing campaign to get something in your face. It's the billboards. It's the subway ads. It's the YouTube pre-roll. And they're very, very good at that and telling the story of that. And Netflix on the flip side of that is like If you like it, you'll find it. Or if or it'll find you on the in the algorithm. So good luck. And th that's where they've been very surprised by certain things that took off like baby reindeer.

Sometimes the audience will tell you What works in a way that It's completely unexpected. Yeah. The other news I want to ask you about is the the

Off again, on again, Paramount Sky Dance deal with David Ellison Son of Oracle Larry Ellison now points to take over studio. How obsessed is Hollywood about the deal and Ellison? Are you Is this a big deal? This has been the longest, most tortured saga. And yeah, and I have a friend who once said of Paramount, like it's like Three Mile Island. It's like you can try to clean it up, but it will always, there will always be radioactive residue in the soil. So Paramount is like our other legacy studios that are carrying enormous amounts of debt. They let Netflix eat their lunch'cause everyone here is a little technophobic and they waited very long.

And they also didn't want to give up these incredibly lucrative business models of cable television affiliate fees, um linear advertising and so they waited and they got caught. Up in playing catch up and then they lost a ton of money. So Sherry got herself in a corner. My understanding is she has a lot of emotion attached to the company because she had this incredibly complicated, toxic relationship with her father, who had

complicated and toxic relationships with many people. And I think David Ellison is almost uniquely uh built to be the Next owner. of Paramount. He loves movies. I I mean you can't overestimate the role of having, I think is your dad that's eighth wealthiest man in the world. Fun for uh bankrolling this. I think you also see this as ki as the

Inevitability of where Hollywood is headed. where you already have Apple, Amazon, Netflix bringing their tech ethos to Hollywood and I have a Larry Ellison sits by the sidelines and lets his son play Paramount CEO alone. And so I think you'll probably start to see. So whatever the tech ethos is of Larry Ellison, I don't think it's a gentle, kind one, uh begin to take shape at Paramount.

It's another family legacy though, right? It's like move from the redstones to the Ellisons. It's sort of a I mean that's why every one of these things is a mini succession. And this that you have to sort of read into the psychodramas of that are going on behind the scenes. It's hard not to. You know, rich people They don't dream of owning a packaged goods company. They dream of being in Hollywood. That gives you a relevance and a juice that That is much more fun. Um, and for David Ellison, who was this kid who grew up loving movies and He as you can see from his most successful projects, he's cofinanced with Paramount.

These movies like Top Gun and Tom Cruise and sort of this kind of old school version of a hall of Hollywood blockbusters. And that could be great, but they also talked about two billion dollars in everyone's favorite phrase, cost efficiencies, uh, which it essentially means um jobs lost and assets sold. I mean as a as um Hearing you talk about this like Do you feel like the legacy media companies are at an inflection point? Is there a change coming or have we already seen the change? the the the streaming services have done it, Netflix has done it, and and the these legacy companies are just

you know, reacting. Some of the smartest people in town have said to me that What we're gonna see in the next few years this is going to be the rise of the independents. That the the studio system, it's like turning around Oceanliner that where the engine's broken and

But If the nimble upstarts will be able to move much more quickly. I mean, the way someone who had had visibility to paramount spoks had described to me that Even though you're seeing thousands of layoffs at Paramount, we've seen thousands of people laid off at Disney and Warner Brothers that There's still so much more to cut because it's an infrastructure built for another era. And

The fast moving independents don't have that burden. I have to ask you about YouTube. YouTube fascinates me. It remains the most popular streaming platform for younger viewers despite efforts by Netflix, Disney Warner Brother Discovery, like n none seem to have an answer for YouTube's dominance.

It feels strange to say it, but Do we still Underestimate YouTube? We totally underestimate YouTube. When you look at the amount of time spent on YouTube versus any other streaming platform, I mean hands down, blows away everything. So they've captured The attention economy, as people say. I think it's hard for Hollywood to think about YouTube as

Anything more than promotion. You put your trailers on there, you do an announcement saying how many million views a trailer got. Uh, but Boy, if you think about the levers that A YouTube can Uh switch. To

Turn that into a more Premium experience. And I know they tried that and it didn't go very well, but they have so much data at their fingertips now. And also you're seeing this fundamental shift in the creator economy where Creators used to think that Hollywood was the be all end all, that if you became a really huge creator, you might get a show on Hulu or you might get a show. That was the that was the goal, right? That was the technical. Yeah. And now it's not increasingly for people. You have Mr. Beast doing his$100 million deal with Amazon, and we'll see how that goes. But you also have what are the watershed moments for the creator YouTube Hollywood relationship? There are these huge YouTube stars named Rhett and Link, and they ended up with a deal with Uh Warner Brothers Discovery to do a reality show.

It came out, did not do well. They ended up doing basically a twenty minute video rebuttal to Hollywood, where they fired Hollywood and they said We can this is what you don't understand. You don't understand how to talk to our audience. You gave us really terrible notes. Uh, your process is awful. And we want to have nothing else to do with you and we are going to Just talk directly to our audience now instead of through you. And I think that's the opportunity when you were talking about the independents, it's that whole the direct to consumer fantasy of you don't need the middleman. And who are these old guy gatekeepers who are trying to tell me how to do my thing, and you're seeing the most successful creators. Make Like ungodly amounts of money.

In a way that Hollywood probably would not have Made possible for them. Janice gets right to the heart of the Hollywood drama, that all the efforts to make entertainment more businesslike may actually have made it more vulnerable. А з машин із індустрія сінстрім і страйкс. There's another wave still to come.

After the break, Janice takes us inside those disruptions from AI to live sports, plus lessons from Disney's battle with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, George Clooney and Taylor Swift as role models, and more. 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 can be two types of companies.

Those were 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, Anklar Media's CEO Janice Min talked about this summer's weak box office and the alarm bells throughout the entertainment industry. Now Janice shares her concerns about the NBA's recent TV deal and what Hollywood doesn't get about AI. Let's dive back in. I saw that Ashen Kutcher recently made A statement about

Open AI's text to video software Sora. And he said that The future movies and entertainment will be viewers. Giving prompts to software that'll create bespoke content just for them. Like Those kinds of ideas like

Do the studios take any of that seriously? Not yet. And I think if you are at a Disney you are using AI but not necessarily calling it AI in special effects. And there is a movie that's coming out

In November, that's directed by Bob Zabekis, that stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright Penn, and it it's called here, and it uses AI technology to present them as 20, I think they're in their twenties or thirties, and it's They released a trailer recently. It's pretty convincing. But AI It still feels like the future, and I think what

isn't fully processed is that it's here. The tools are here. And it's one of these funny things about Hollywood where people a lot of people are using AI, but it's like a shameful secret. And Bob, you've talked to people who are on the AI side in Silicon Valley and like it they are like they're rapacious. I mean they they will they're not waiting for Hollywood to give them permission. No they are they are moving and all of it is moving really fast, right? And if you don't start experimenting with it and at least understanding what's going on. Or trying to, you know, if the catch up, as you used the phrase before, just gets Deeper and deeper. I I would say Hollywood's already, you know

Mm-hmm. in the hole on AI and doesn't realize it. So the the climbing out process will be super challenging. The our writer of the real AI newsletter, Eric Barmack, he utilized the one text make a film through one text prompt he made a film. And you it was only like a sixty second film. But we know how quickly this technology moves. By the end of the year, can you make a thirty minute film? You know, can you make a two hour film to think that's gonna be, Oh my God, our kids are gonna be making AI films. No, it's gonna be you will be making an AI film as early as next year. Like that's that's the crazy part of it.

The NBA just agreed to a new eleven year, seventy-six billion dollar deal with NBC, Amazon Prime. And A B C S P N Huge increase. The the this value of live sports It keeps climbing.

Can the entertainment business model like support That Money and still making money on it? No They it the entertainment business absolutely cannot. And we are living under this delusion that

People are just obsessed with mid season NBA games and it's going to drive so much viewership and and uh streaming subscription. There is this thing happening, and again, this is one of the things Hollywood is susceptible towards is Big solutions. And so you're looking at, oh my God, we swe we thought we were gonna pivot to streaming, but we've run out of streaming subscribers. And it turns out people just wanna subscribe to Netflix and maybe if they have money in their household, one more service. So oops, we spent all that money. We're losing four hundred thirty five million dollars a quarter. Oh my God, the silver bullet is sports. People love live. People love sports. And so I think they're looking for anything that keeps people in the From churning out of their subscription. Every day these streaming services are fighting to have you not cancel. And the but the flip side of this is going to spend so much money, record numbers on the NBA, where players are getting 51% of the money. And so you're seeing their salaries increase to, you know,$50 million deals, crazy amounts. But guess who's gonna pay for that? The consumer. So that's why you're seeing also these increases in streaming services in price. And

Anyone who is following anything or has been to the grocery store knows that people do not want to spend more on anything right now. So it feels a little bit like a perfect storm coming and it's also kind of rebuilding the cable idea that you're gonna you're gonna assume that people are gonna pay. There are enough people who are gonna pay for a s a particular part of your service that only appeals to a small number of those people. And that's you know, that's the old cable model where you're gonna get. Fox News'cause you can't live without your Fox News or ESPN'cause you can't live without it and now

They they are taking a big gamble that people can't live without their NBA. As you mentioned sort of niche fying audience, I was thinking about your personal career journey. Like You remade the magazine Us Weekly leaning into celebrity culture for the broadest mass market. And then you remade business focus coverage, leading Hollywood reporter and billboard. And now at Ankler, you're you're going even deeper on the business of entertainment. But this was like a transition from serving

A mass market to a more targeted market. H how how purposeful was that for you? Was that just where sort of the opportunity of the possibility was. It I would say it was

Both. I mean Us Weekly for those who lived through the Us Weekly era as adults or near adulthood. That was almost like a mass hysteria in America around. Uh like Bob, you you probably had an opinion about uh J Lo and Ben the first round, or you might have had an opinion about Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt. Like these were like very smart people who were under the spell of this celebrity culture in a way that Chest. disappeared. And uh and so this was, you know, pre-social media. And so a publication like Us Weekly could become one of the biggest publications in America, feeding this sort of voracious desire for celebrity. And

That was reaching, I mean. You know. 14 million people a week, I believe. And then going to the Hollywood Reporter, that was definitely like okay, but you can you do something special that super serves like an audience, but that also has reach out to the bigger universe. And that worked. You know, I think the addition of programmatic advertising into publishing Did not serve anyone well.

kind of turning your fate over to platforms you don't control. It was problematic. And so with the ankler, like Це Ричард, май партнер, This very specialized rarefience. I would say trade coverage was very late to the impact of the disruption.

in Hollywood. And Richard was owning it, he was telling people the truth. I saw who his subscriber list was. It was unbelievable. And I said to him, like, would you want to do something more with this? And he said yes. What we couldn't have predicted was how how much the disruption is going to con accelerate and I joined Richard before Warner Brothers and Discovery merged, before the strikes, before Netflix had its famous stock tank and rebound. And so the disruption has been sort of wilder and bigger, but

It still has required speaking this very unvarnished truth to an audience about what's happening in the business. And One of the things, of course, as someone who just loves media that concerns me is yes, we're all going into our corners. We are serving a really small segment of the audience. But it is a business that works. It's profitable. We grow a ton every month. The entertainment business is not just films and television that are being made in Hollywood. And the entertainment business now encompasses so much more. So We hope to grow along with where entertainment goes, but so far, so good. So

Where we are now Like, what's at stake for The entertainment business. For Hollywood. How should we think about that?

Looking ahead from here. Okay, so I think one of the things that's at stake is the future of the legacy studios. And when I say legacy studios, I mean these sort of brand names that People know it's Disney? It's Warner Brothers Discovery and it's paramount.

They all have crushing debt. And they all have streaming services. that Disney's has done well. Everyone else is sort of struggling. And if you're Disney and you've seen your uh market of children's programming and children's films get eaten away by Super Mario Brothers, which was released by Universal, you're saying, Oh my God, we no longer own the children's space. That's not great. And Disney has had this long history of being able to create a lifelong partnership from the time you're a kid and the brand means something and you can build this universe, but Disney's future is in theme parks and live experiences. And that's where you're seeing this big shift in Hollywood. Netflix has started, Netflix experiences. Universal is has gone big in on theme parks, so uh

I would hate to see the industry become an Amazon, Apple, Netflix town. I don't think That's fully healthy. But for anyone who has who spends their day shopping on Amazon or going to Whole Foods you can see how they're just better resourced, have better customer data, and you can kind of see the march continuing. You know, in some ways it's a it's a great error to be a consumer, even if you're not a business, because there's so much content out there.

On the other hand, If we're not taking risk with the content we're creating then Maybe you're getting lots of uh options of the same flavor.

Well, Bob, I want to ask you, what shows are people telling you this summer, oh my gosh, have you checked out this or that? Even that sort of era of streaming is blown past us. I'm watching Presumed Innocent on Apple, but no one else in the world I know is watching that. I'm watching The Bear season three, and some people I know are watching it, but it's not that whole that all consuming, you're caught up in the wave, and isn't that fun? And you could talk about it with people. Yes. So Yeah, that's a and that's a bummer. Well, Jens, this has been great. Thank you so much for doing it.

Yeah, no, thanks. This was fun. Glad to do it. Ha ha ha. Entertainment business is so Entertaining. And the work being done is still incredibly creative, whether that's the bear or presumed innocence or even despicable me for. What Janice's insights underscore is how dispersed our attention is today.

How rare culture wide moments like Barbenheimer truly are, and why they may stay rare for business reasons and because of marketplace realities where coarseness keeps winning over compassion. It's never been harder to carve out an audience of scale, but also never more valuable. As we all move faster and take more risks technologically and creatively. We need to also find ways to connect with each other. to laugh together, to cry together, to be together.

That's the promise of the very best entertainment. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. Rapid response is a wait what original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our producer is Alex Morris. Assistant producer is Masha Makutonina.

Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli. Theme music by Ryan Holiday. My head of podcast is Letal Malad. For more, visit rapidresponsshow.com.