#676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More

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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So now you put some questions. Now it is seen. The cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscellary. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show where each and every episode

Well, there are some exceptions, but most episodes it is my job to deconstruct world class performers, to interview them in an attempt to tease out the habits routines. techniques, strategies, favorite books, whatever it might be, that you can apply in your own lives, or at least test. To see And my guest today. Is David Mazeel.

And for those of you who don't know the name You will certainly recognize his work. You can find him on Twitter at Mazeel David. He is the founder of Mythos Studios and the former founding chairman of Marvel Studios. In two thousand three, David pitched Marvel on his idea of Marvel financing and producing its own movies in a connected cinematic universe. He went on to executive produce Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man Two. Thor, Captain America, the first Avenger, and the Angry Birds movie. In 2009, David arranged the sale of Marvel to Disney for a cool four billion dollars. David is currently the founder of Mythos Studios, an IP entertainment studio, the Ecos Genesis art collection. All one of one original handcrafted digital art is the first offering in the forthcoming Ecos universe.

And uh I'm very happy to share this interview because to my knowledge it is the first Time. David has ever done a long form conversation like this publicly where he talks about the ins and outside of how deals are actually made in Hollywood. Some of the inside baseball of Tinseltown making very unorthodox career moves.

And I had a blast with this conversation. I learned a lot. Had a ton of fun. Took a lot of notes in the process. And got me thinking about all sorts of things. And I hope that is true for you as well. You can find ecos. Online at

E K O S dot Io on Twitter, you can find uh Both Ecos at Ecos Genesis spelled the same way and at Mazeeldavid, as I mentioned before, and we'll link to of course all the social and everything else. In the show notes, as usual, at Tim.blog slash podcast. And without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with David. Mayzel.

David, so lovely to see you. It's good to see you, Tim. And I had Thanks to your inspiration.

Fine. Thank you for that. I'm honored to inspire you on something like that. You inspire so many. I'm putting together. The coffee

Matcha alternating schedule, which seems to be working very well for me so far. So thank you for that. And I'm excited to Have you On this show. For many reasons, one of which is this is in a way A debut, an audio long form.

debut. So I'm very Thrilled to Be able to explore a lot of these things that will be scratching my own itch in terms of Asking Questions that follow my curiosity. So let's begin

Not exactly at the beginning, not at conception, but A beginning of sorts. And that is with Michael Ovitz. How did you first Connect with Michael Ovitz. And who is Michael? In the

Mid nineteen nineties. Michael Ovitz. Was the most powerful person in Hollywood slash entertainment by far. He had created

Creative artist agency. Which was already at that time the biggest talent agency. in Hollywood, and he had created this leverage by controlling so many stars and by being this very mysterious figure.

that he just became almost like The wizard of oz like some mythical creature. I remember I I was debating a career switch. I was working in consulting for entertainment companies. With Boston Consulting Group at the time.

And decided that my love of Hollywood and movies I had to move out to Hollywood and really try it. And not have regrets. And he was on the cover of Business.

And I just cold called them. I sent him a letter, old fashioned paper resume. You know, went to Kinko's to print it out. And um I was granted a five minute interview uh in Flow Not to LA. And so that was the first meeting. I remember

You put me up at the Beverly Hills Hilton. And he made me stay two days waiting for the meeting. Like it just kept getting delayed, you know? So To dig into a few aspects of that.

We're talking about The Wizard of Oz at the time. in entertainment. A power broker. Of high order.

He must have been having everyone and their grandma and cousin trying to get a hold of him. What did you say? in your cover letter or what was it in your resume? What combination of factors do you think led to you being granted an audience with the Wizard of Oz? I think I pieced it together after a while. I was fortunate to have

A stellar resume, but so do a lot of people that I'm sure were approaching Michael at the time. And It was In retrospect, I think I can say this now.

Michael had been hired by Matsushta, the Japanese company. To secretly analyze and potentially sell They're holding of Universal Studios, which they had bought years earlier. So I was in the right place at the right time.

As a great agent would do, he sold that assignment. But he didn't necessarily have people That could do the work for him. And all of a sudden he got this Harvard MBA resume of some guy saying he Be willing to work and take whatever and

Yeah, in many ways I think it was just a Really fortunate timing. That it came across his desk then. And you had the relevant experience in

Mergers and acquisitions or that type of steal analysis? No. Or no I had the um I sort of joke. I mean I I was very into creative things and I turn that part of my brain off. After graduating from Duke.

'Cause I needed to make some money. And I figured my rational brain was more predictable. And so I went to To HP S. And I had the Harvard Business School moniker.

And I had a couple of years at Boston Consulting Group. But I think Once I learned Michael and once I started working with him. That was the first job, which was to secretly help him on that assignment, which was amazing as your first job in Hollywood to have this huge secret you couldn't share with anybody in town.

I would had a s office way in the back, so none of the other agents would know what I was doing. I was getting these secret emails between Universal and the Japanese at the time that Lou Wasserman Another mythical figure was that even privy to. So it was a blast. But I think he Enjoyed having his token Harvard MBA.

by his side that he could offer up to his clients and He did, you know, I was there for whatever That Moniker might deem to be useful for for whether it's Tom Cruise or Warren Beatty or

A company like Metsusta. Now If we take a step back And since you came to know Michael very well.

You look at what made Michael effective as a power broker. What are some of the ingredients? that made him so effective and Your description as we led into this made me think of perhaps other comparables. I'm sure very different people, very different businesses, but say like Larry Gagosian in the art world, or others who in these fairly opaque, somewhat opaque industries, just develop relationships that give them

an incredible degree of leverage. What are some of the sort of requisite components, ingredients that made him so good at what he did, because certainly he wasn't the only person trying to be powerful or influential in Hollywood. No it's interesting, Tim, because I'm not sure. I ended up

Being you know, I was employee number four hundred out of four hundred, I quickly Because of the secret. project and the fact that it became pretty obvious he was also considering leaving CAA to run Universal to whoever bought it. Which was cataclysmic at the time. So I had this secret and we flew to Japan and all that kind of stuff together.

So I became to his right hand side and stayed there pretty much through Nineteen ninety nine. two thousand. So four or five years and I saw what he's notorious for.

Which is a tenacity and a focus and a work ethic. That would not let anything but His success happened. Which

Was combined with a level of street smart. on how this town works and A ability to amass Leverage and perceiv leverage. That caused

His wishes to Get executed one way or the other. And then also combined with amazing use of PR. to create this mythical image of himself.

And personally I was able to watch that. 'Cause a controversial figure and that's very Clear. From the history.

But I was able to look and see where we were similar. and where I might want to take a different path. In my own career. But if it wasn't for Michael Hyer and me. And giving me that break.

I don't think I'm in a position to do Marvel Studios ever. I was naive as hell when I moved to LA. I was smart from a book sense. Academic. I had no idea about personal street smarts, let alone Hollywood street smarts. Um I was somewhat creative, I felt.

But I didn't know how this town really works and Not only did I get to see Michael Tim. I had access to all the information at CAA. All the deals. So I just so

So I'm gonna pick a little bit more at the origin story, not in a critical way. But in a curious way. And if you have to speculate Feel free to throw in the caveat that you're speculating. Cover business week. Putting himself in these PR positions that would

create a dynamic that might help him do whatever it is that Michael wanted to do, which I believe he also imparted to Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. when they were founding Andrews and Horowitz A sixteen Z, and they did a masterful job in turn of utilizing targeted PR. The reason I bring that up. is he's on the cover of Business Week. I have to imagine you are not the only

business school graduate. To reach out to him. You're probably not the only consultant either, yeah, who reached out to him. So why do you think you got the extensive five minute interview. Right. Well there's two questions. There's one, why the interview and the second Which I think you're related to too, which is why I get higher.

Yeah. Totally. It wasn't like I went through three people to get to Michael. I think I spoke to a couple other people that same day, but Michael was on my schedule. Right, so I had my time with him.

In that five, it was no more than ten minute. Period. I do remember connecting. Like I don't know how. But I think he saw

My tenacity? That I was willing and committed. To Do what needed to get done. And he saw that through stories of

Projects. That you assignments that you'd worked on in the past. Yeah, I can't recall what he talked to me about. But You know, I had gone to Duke, I had You know, I was number two in my class. I was on the board of trustees when I graduated as a student, a full board member.

I was wild accepted right into HBS. Yeah, I had a great I produced the Broadway Duke series, you know, in not that that matters But you're right. I mean a lot of people have great resumes and I think it was the energy together.

But something I've never told anybody is he didn't hire me right away. So that interview happened. I didn't hear anything back for a while. And I started interviewing with other people. I remember I had a Job offer from David Stern at the NBA.

Which was wow, I mean we were just talking about the Celtics, but Like I had interview with the commissioner of the NBA. And he hired me to be vice president of entertainment. I remember he offered me fifty thousand a year and I was like Mr. Stern, how can I like live in Manhattan at fifty thousand a year? He's like, Don't live in Manhattan. That was his answer. He's like, no.

And I actually interviewed with Marvel and got a job offer from Marvel. At the same time as head of business development. When it was owned by Ron Proman. I remember their Manhattan offices. And then I got an offer from McKinsey.

Which was like triple the money. Which I needed. To be a median entertainment specialist for them worldwide. Like a new position. And so I literally accepted that offer from McKinsey, moved to New York City.

And started on a Monday. I wrote a letter, an email, I don't forget what it was at the time. But it was it must have been A letter or an email.

To Michael and a guy named Sandy Kleiman saying, Guys, just so you know, I accept another job at McKinsey. And on Wednesday, I got a phone call from Sandy Klein, who is working for Michael. Saying, is it too late? For you to join us.

And I gave noticed on Thursday so I was at McKinsey for one week. So And Sienny gave me A note for Michael. F on top of the letter I send saying, Is it too late to get David?

So I think it was timing. You know, it really was the timing. That piece things together. But I can't explain. Having a bunch of excellent offers doesn't yeah. Competing offers doesn't hurt. Yeah, with him though, it's you're right. Your sense that

He was at the center of attention and had his selection of things. I do think in my career when I look back on it I was very fortunate. with some timing issues, both with Michael And eventually would marvel. I

Had to create both jobs. And I'm proud of that. But I also Approach them both. At the right time.

I think anyone who's ever been on this podcast who has achieved outsized success. If they're being really honest, has to. admit there is a huge factor of timeout. Yeah. They just have to.

Which doesn't demean or minimize the hard work required to translate that into Amazing outcomes, but nonetheless, it's an ingredient. So let me ask you just a few more questions about that period. And for people listening who are like We wanna talk about the creative stuff. We're gonna get to the creative stuff, but

Understand. From my perspective, this is all creative stuff. And I'll I'll give you a sense of what I mean. For those people who don't have context. McKinsey B C Boston Consulting Group. These are

for many graduates of good schools, coveted jobs, highly competitive jobs, they're also Firms within which If you play your cards right and you keep your head down, you can make a lot of money. And It takes time.

But that is one potential option and it would seem to be more Predictable. perceived as more secure, stable than some of these options you were looking at.

What led you? And a lot of people go into consulting or investment banking for that matter, and they say, I'm gonna do this just for a few years. Get exposure to a broad array of industries, and then I'm going to forge out on my own and do something entrepreneurial that doesn't always happen, as you know. What contributed to you at that time deciding to branch, ultimately recognizing you did accept the job of McKinsey, but then ended up with Michael. But nonetheless To explore options outside of

Consulting. It was very personal. I wish I could say I had realized this on my own, but My sister older sister passed away. And a young age, and I saw impermanence, and I saw.

The fragility of life for the first time. And It did affect me and I knew I wasn't completely happy. not being creative, not at least trying to

be out in the middle of the action and in the arena. And quit BCG soon after that. So when I wrote Michael that letter I was back home living with my mom, which wasn't now that's like popular to do. Back then it really wasn't. And I ended up taking the McKinsey thing because I had run out of money that I had saved from B C. So I like was forced to take something. I think I s tried to learn poker at the time and was losing some money at the games that that were going on. And so it was

A gift from my sister, frankly, to make me realise that We should try to live to minimize regrets if possible. So sorry to hear of that. And I imagine that must have been really challenging for your whole family and for you.

It was really A beautiful gift though. Because I think I might not have been have the backbone to like you say A lot of people talk about branching out, but you can get really secure at those places. And um

I was headstrong in fact when Michael offered me the job. He said, Why do you make it at McKinsey? I told him. And he said, Okay, we'll match that, but there's no guarantee I can fire you tomorrow. You know, so

It was a gamble. It was definitely a gamble. Ha How am I supposed to live in Manhattan? Don't live in Manhattan. Yeah. That is

Yeah, especially from the commissioner who has just signed this like huge deal with the owners, you know? It's like come on, you're not you're not like shy for money at the NBA. This is kind of an amazing answer though. You're like I can't really Hard to refute in a sense. So let's Come back to something that you've mentioned in passing, but the creative interests

that you turned off in favor of developing or honing in on your rational analytical mind. Yep. What were those interests? It was primarily when I grew up acting in theater.

I was an actor in high school and Love life theater and Luckily my career brought me To have the chance to produce multiple shows which I've really enjoyed. And

I also just love culture and entertainment. Star Wars was a huge Impact. So the idea of crafting Mega cultural movies. To me as a creative producer, as a business producer combined, was Really exciting.

And so it was really Show business in general. And I knew my acting skills were not that Great. Uh they're pretty bad.

But an idea of being a creative producer on Broadway or film. That's what seemed the most exciting to me. So I want to quote someone. And then get it. a little insight from you. So this is a quote from

Believe I'm getting the pronunciation, right? Kevin Uvain. Yeah. As quoted in the New York Times. And the quote is David has this is in uh brackets. But encyclopedic knowledge of comic books and treats them like real art, with a savant like ability to take out characters that appeal to him and make them really relevant.

When did your relationship with comic books begin? early. I mean it was probably like a lot of us, you know, something I loved as a kid, probably when I s started turning five or six and Marvel specifically, but overall comic books, and Iron Man specifically. But a lot of characters. Like I'm excited to see the new Flash movie that's coming out. And it was something I remember my mom

I used to joke with her recently before she passed that She would Tell me to stop reading my comic books and focus on schoolwork, right? And it turned out to be my career, so it was pretty Ironic and

Kevin who gave that quote I remember being touched by that because When I joined CAA Back to Michael. Kevin Houvain and Brian Lord.

Richard Love It. The three People who are predominantly writing CAA today. And took over the firm when Michael left and our Arguably some of the if not the most powerful

agents in town. We sort of grew up together in the mid nineties working for Michael and um It was an unexpected quote when I saw that. But it was nice to hear His kudos.

Coming from his position and And I guess we did do some deals, like Natalie Portman was his client who k was in Thor. And many others as well from CAA. Yeah, so comics were always an interest. Marvel specifically, Tim.

Was A fascination with me. And so even before I got that job offer. When I was talking to Michael, when I was at business school Like over beers, some of my friends and I were like, We need to leverage buyout Marvel from this vitamin company that owned it.

And it was completely tilting at a windmill and nothing came from it. What a fun windmill to tilt at, though, while you're slamming back beers at HPS. Exactly. Foreshadowing. I think that's what they might call that. Oh before we get to Marvel. What are other lessons that you learned? I'm Michael or just

during that chapter of your Hollywood Experience. I would love to just know what kind of principles or lessons. you ended up absorbing. Best practices, anything that comes to mind.

Tim, I think there's a couple that I'll point out. When was Michael really taught me? How to work with the creators of this town. Because he put me in front of them.

I remember It might have been the first or second time. I was ever with him at a industry function. And he Yeah, he's and uh

Always give him credit for this. Whether he said it or not, but often many times he said something like, Hey, here's a lesson here. Tom Cruise was there. And he introduced me to Tom Cruise and then he said

We'll be right back. And he took me to the bar. And Michael ordered drinks for Tom and whoever he was with. and brought the drinks back. for Tom and whoever was around him at the time, like you know, whether it's his assistant or Girlfriend at the time, I don't know.

And he mentioned to me, just remember, we're always in the service business. Remember who's our customers are. The fact he did that personally and didn't ask me to go do it or somebody else. was like Whoa this guy

Is that a different level? And I remember the The second day I was there. He brought me into a meeting with Bill Gates at the time, who's

And they talked about creating Like a competitor to A O L and you know, I guess saw how he dealt with the tech and which as you Hinted became a big part of his life later on. And he always was on the cutting edge of technology. So he opened my eyes to

Keeping an eye out to what's going on. With tech and entertainment and How those two industries are still trying to figure out how to work together and Michael was sort of ahead of the time on that. And then I guess third was

All of us have to figure out our our personal style and approach and I saw How there's choices to get made. On how you sort of learn about Hollywood and progress through Hollywood.

And that's me. was eye opening because I also realized I wasn't very good. Uh That game of using leverage or

The politics of what needs to get done. in a any entity, but this time specifically Hollywood. So it was an eye opening lesson for me. I asked a professor of mine at one point What it was like. working in D C because he ended up

being a congressman and spending a bunch of time in politics, and he said, It's like Hollywood, but with less attractive people. And I always thought that was hilarious. Right. And probably accurate on some level. You have said before, this is from the Financial Times, that to be really successful in Hollywood, and you already alluded to some of this One needs to be very good at business fundamentals. Managing the creative process and street smarts to understand the town. Could you give An example. Of

Each of those perhaps. Case studies, times when you absorbed lessons related to any of those. The business fundamentals, managing the creative process, and street smarts to understand the town. Yeah, and the first one, business fundamentals, it became pretty clear to me. That That was an area that Hollywood was not very focused on.

And to this day. You probably can make the same case if you look at some of these enterprise values of the studios. But the idea of shareholder value. The idea of the what creates A Disney to be worth more money or universal.

How do you value a business? The idea of value was foreign to people. And um, to his credit, I remember Brian Lord who Is running CA now. And is one of the most amazing people in this town. I say that in all respects. But I remember

Him pulling me aside back in Nighty Five. And asking me to Tutor him on financial statements. And shareholder value and All those types of things and now he's running this

huge agency. You know what I mean? But he's also saw the same thing and was Wise enough to realize It was something that He could use to his advantage once he learned it.

So that actually becomes really important because Later on. I realized the market here was inefficient. And that the fact I was able to do But we'll talk about

Later with Marvel, should never have been able to happen if it was efficient, right? Yeah. And then number two, the creative process. God, there's so many things there, but everything like that's that Tom Cruise story. Which is understanding them, and Michael also talked about always the people around the star. That it was so important to have a great relationship with them. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, and

He exposed me to what a star like that is used to. In Hollywood, so Understanding that They have other people around them that will be maybe whispering in their ears negative things. And so you have to play defense and offense.

I was so fortunate, Michael put me in front of so many people. I remember him sending me to Warren Beatty's house. Just this icon, right? And still is. To talk about the stock market.

And I only say this because it just shows you how for thinking Michael was. And he gave me a chance to interact with these mega stars on a personal basis. Now, did Warren just r reach out to Michael and say, I want to learn about the stock market? I think it was the opposite. I think what I learned when I got there. 'Cause I remember I sat with him for like five minutes, awestruck. And then he basically looked at me and said, Hey kid, there's no way I'm ever gonna learn this. I've had too much fun in my life. I'm not gonna start focusing on the stock market now. It was he might have used a different word than

Fun with an F. So it definitely was Michael. tutoring his clients. I think Magic Johnson has been publicly talks about how Michael Well Get him a business week subscription and

Things like that. Wow. While he was a basketball player. Yeah. Yeah. Magic has run with that. He's been so Exactly so good at executing. Wow. That's wild. And the third Street Smart Wow, I mean That one I just realized how small this town is, Tim.

It really is It's a small group of people. And still is And understanding What?

People want And how you can make a deal. By figuring out the magic of delivering what they want, but getting what you want back and The street smarts I'd say, Well, I've never talked about this publicly.

is to know that it's what is their motivation. Are they going for their annual bonus? Are they going for the best seat in the restaurant? Are they care about their stock options? They care about their prestige, they care about credit. You know, and so many different people here. Are motivated by other things. So sometimes it's it was good street smart wise to figure that out and it helped me. The rest of my career.

So if someone is listening and they they say, you know, at some point I would like to set foot into what we would broadly call entertainment. And they suspect they're gonna end up in Hollywood or LA or at least interacting. With Groups from those places.

And they're not gonna have Michael Ovitz. They may not have a direct mentor. Are there any Books or resources or docs or They could just be scripted movies too, that you would encourage people to watch to help them with those buckets. I'm thinking about that off the top of my head.

There are biographies of Michael Of David Geffen. Of industry figures like that. And I think those are useful. To understand the history of the town.

I also M surprised we used to have paper trades, the Holly Reporter and Variety, they're now all online, right? But How many times they interviewed

Young People that wanna come into Hollywood. And they're not really up to date even on the current stuff that's happening. Right. So just there's so much information available that wasn't available to me at the time. Diving into

History Through articles and through Biographies. And just keeping up every day. With what the latest news in Hollywood is.

Even just those two things together, if you don't have a mentor, you'll get the benefit of a lot of learning, like in most areas of life. Yeah. Totally. And I'll Reinforce a point that

might not be the sexy piece for a lot of folks, but the business fundamentals. It's If you want to as you have done and we're we're gonna segue shortly. Capitalize on inefficient markets. Or

Asymmetric upside opportunities. Having a grasp. of just a handful. Of fundamentals is so incredibly valuable. And I another example of that would be Bill Gurley, who's a spectacularly successful venture capitalist. And

famous mostly well, I shouldn't say mostly, but he's associated with benchmark. And he came from Wall Street. having developed these different valuation models or at least used all sorts of tools for establishing value and got to

tech in Silicon Valley and saw what you saw in Hollywood. It's like wow, people really aren't tracking this stuff. and uh being able to sort of retrofit those to this new environment allowed him and his partners to find some incredible opportunities. Exactly. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

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Faster. So post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Tim. That's LinkedIn.com slash Tim. To post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Yeah.

So let's talk about About Marvel. How does Marvel Enter. The picture.

And it relates to CA and Michael is Michael did not take the job. With Universal. We sold it to Cro. Edgar Baufman. And famously Michael was supposed to run it.

And ended up not getting the job. And it was given to Ron Meyer. who was Michael's partner at CAA. And it was somewhat Shakespearean because Michael and Ron

We're so close. Perhaps there is the papers say Michael might have over asked for what he wanted. from Edgar Brafman, but he hired Ron Meyer. Who end up spending twenty or twenty five years For twenty years running Universal Studios.

Everyone thought then that Michael was gonna stay at CAA. But then he decided to go to Disney. and be president of the Walt Disney company. With his friend Michael. Eisner.

Who was CEO? That was Cataclysmic. In Hollywood. I remember walking to

A meeting that Michael called. early in the morning to announce this. And then later that day. He called me to his office and he invited me to join him. at Disney.

I had a job offer from Ron Meyer to go to Universal as well. And the third option was to stay with the new owners of CAA. Kevin and Ryan and others. I love Disney. Like I grew up

Loving the Disney parks. We haven't talked about this, but when I graduated from business school, the job offer I turned down when I went to B C G was for the Walt Disney company. For strategic planning, Tom Stags, who ended up almost becoming CO. Was in the waiting room with me at the time. And so I always had this interest in

in the Walt Disney company and Michael was my guy. Right. Here's my idol. Now asking me to join him in his new chapter. So that turned out to be critical. 'Cause I then got to spend a couple of years At Disney

Where it was like Your dad was the president. So you had open access to everything, you know, like I did at CAA. Now I'm in a studio. And I'm s from a studio perspective. All the games that are played and you know how they view the world.

And I was put in strategic planning and corporate development, which was a powerhouse group at Disney. Yeah, you should explain what corporate development does. Yeah. Kind of like you couldn't script this movie better, you know, in a way. Um corporate development at Disney was Michael Eisner had this group of people That controlled strategy in every major move.

Under him. And they would work with division heads. And essentially it was his way to centralize Major decisions at Disney and sort of control. those decisions. And

I was put in an office You know, next to Kevin Mayer, who ended up almost becoming CEO. Tom Stags who I mentioned. And so We'd go to meetings with Michael Eisner and Michael Lovitz and

I was Michael Ovitz's guy, they were Michael Eisner's guys, and we come back and we all get our phone calls, and it was just a crazy fun time. They just bought A B C And I remember Michael Eisner. saying um and oh it's David what are you interested in? I said, Well sports and ESPN is sort of cool.

I'll help out. A B C Because of that I was The liaison on corporate development with Bob Iger, who was the president of that division at the time.

And Steve Burke, who was his number two guy. of universal Comcast later on. So I was so fortunate to be exposed to so much in a two year period, Tim. you know, good and bad about what happens at a studio like Disney.

And that's one of the things my job was was to recommend acquisitions. And The three thread with Marvel, I recommended, I don't even think this is public, so this is breaking news. I recommended that Disney buy Marvel. back in like ninety six nay seven At the time it was no more than a hundred million dollars.

And I remember getting kicked out of the room basically. Because One of the first things that Michael Eisner and the other people in the room saw Was that there was no theme park rightlable. East of the Mississippi River.

'Cause that was a deal that Ron Perlman had given to Universal. And because of that Um I sort of was Not gently told that this was a stupid idea.

What year was this roughly? Ninety six, ninety seven. Ninety six, ninety seven. Yeah. I'm also thinking of the kind of state of the art. At the time, CGI, what was possible, what was not possible, in your mind, what was the value proposition at that time. For Marvel. Um the recommendation. What what were the

the bullet points in the recommendation for that acquisition. The same as what I Told Bob Iger. You know Fourteen years later, when I actually sold a Marvel for On paper four billion. Pull this ago. Bob wasn't the decision maker in that earlier meeting. He probably would not have even been in the room because he was running ABC.

At the time. But he remembered that, and I remembered it. And Separate from the movies. Disney

is very good at thinking about their customer. And they're very strong with All of us is babies, right? And we all love Disney. And then normally guys start not liking Disney when they're early teenagers, right? It's not cool anymore. And

Traditionally That happens as well. With Females at a later age, but at some point you lose interest in what you loved as a kid. And then it comes back when you're a young parent, right? And you have your own kids. And so there was a huge gap, especially with guys between like age twelve and age whenever they have kids.

that Marvel was very strong with. And so it just mapped on that. I don't even know if I was able to even get to that point in this meeting, but it mapped on that on that whole. Tremendously well. That was the driver at the time. And then obviously all the stuff you could do with the Marvel characters and

I Was starting to dream Then about Marvel films in a bigger way. But that idea came to me actually later, a few years later.

So it's driven more by the gap in the lifetime cycle of a Disney customer. That makes sense. So you make the pitch, you're very unceremoniously ejected from the meeting. Which I which happened to me a lot, by the way. Happened many times. And uh at that point they're like, Yeah, great idea, kid. Not for right now, not for here. I'm not sure they said great idea, yeah. Yeah, right. So how so how does Marvel then boomerang

And come back to you. Michael Got fired. By his best friend. From Disney.

And Ninety seven, ninety eight, and There, to make a long story short, he again asked me to join him. in this next venture of his career. And

That lasted a couple of years during which he bought a Broadway company and I was able to produce a show called Fosse and Exercise my first direct creative project this Broadway show. Which did very well and we won the Tony Award for Best Musical.

And so it gave me some confidence, which is relevant. Uh. What happens with Marvel later on. And then I chased some internet money from ninety nine to two thousand and one, a very famous investment banker. Very well known in Hollywood named Joe Ravage, who was Goldman Sachs at the time, set me up with a John Malone company.

And I lived in London and Amsterdam for two years, which was Great and Also scary because the dot com crash happened in In the early two thousands. And then I came back to LA.

And I was ready to get back into traditional business. And I went to work with R E Manuel. And Patrick Whitesell. Who was a guy, a great agent. Who had an office next to me at CAA.

And they had just started Endeavor, what is now William Morris Endeavor, this huge company. And they offered me my first real payday to work for them for two years. The reason that's relevant. Besides Ari and Patrick being amazing guys and shows you how small this town is and they still run that it company. I knew I never wanted to be an agent.

Long term. Why is that? It wasn't intriguing to me to in an agency like in a consulting firm or a law firm. There was a role for someone like me that was a wild card. For a period of time.

But the real power and money came if you represented clients. And you could show that you're bringing in direct revenues. And that wasn't what I did. And I also had my own entrepreneurial

desires and It was in two thousand three. When I knew I had a couple months left to go with Endeavor. That I sat down for a weekend.

And figure it out what has become Marvel Studios and started that path in my life. Okay. I'm gonna inflict something horrible on my audience, but I can't help myself. So this is gonna be one of those dun dun dun c cliffhangers on page twenty two of a comic book. Ah. So Marvel, we're gonna come back to Marvel, but I I have to very selfishly ask you about your

Side. path into Broadway and theater. And uh I say selfish because This I don't think is known. I don't think I've mentioned this anywhere, so this is a first also that I have over the last few years become one of the larger investors in a theater production. And it's the first time I've ever become involved with that.

And they did a a run in Pennsylvania, their first commercial run, and now they're going to be opening a much larger production in Chicago in the next few weeks, in fact, uh, as of the time of this recording. For people who want to check it out, personality musical dot com. That's the story of Lloyd Price. And if you don't know that name, you should know the name. It's pretty Bananas. How many cultural sort of milestones.

This man touched in any case. It seems like a very Tough business. Even the deal structures have all sorts of terms that I had never heard before in my life. It's very different from say early stage tech investing on a multitude of levels, and yet It seems like a

beautiful powerful vehicle And art form. In so many respects. What would you say were key decisions or events that inform the success of Fawcing.

I think Personal passion. In everything that I've done, when I look back at it. I get very focused on whatever project I'm working on. And I think I do better if I really love it. And theater and the excitement of live theater, which you're now experiencing, which is so cool with that project, however it works out.

Is really indescribably Hard to replicate. It's A little bit like

A live action film shoot. But more unpredictable, there's an audience there, it's an animal of its own. So That was number one. Number two.

I enjoy I guess telling stories that have some sort of meaning to me. And relevance. And This was Bob Fosse, who was a very complicated man. Arguably one of our best choreographers in America ever and probably the best one of the best ever in Broadway.

And there's a movie called All That Jazz, which I will recommend to everyone to watch if they haven't seen it. With Roy Scheider and Jessica Lang. Which he directed. Which is really weird. biographical story about himself because he predicts his own death.

Oh wow. He also was a great film director. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I think for Cabaret. And when I s learned about this guy's life And Saw that he died of

Whatever substance abuse and womanizing his lifestyle. And had a very tragic end. I thought that was a really interesting story to tell. And then Third, he was known for his sensuality of his dance.

And it was like Whoa I you know. I had never seen anything like that, so the ingredients made me believe. Not telling this guy's life story through dance. Through his own dances? could be a really

cool Broadway project. I never thought we'd win the Tony for Best Musical because we had no dialogue in the show. It was literally all his dances and the different phases of his life. And the other part I'd say Is and is sort of similar. I'm not afraid to use creative and business in a decision. A lot of people in Broadway or or any place entertainment. Are so afraid of that because you're entitled to suit if you talk about profits.

If you want to be creative, you have to just not you have to ignore that and be above all that. And it's so the creative mystique is so subjective that people have. In most cases, there's not real accountability. Unless you like Actually draw something or write it yourself. But I knew that

A story a dance musical would be very inexpensive. Both its original setup costs, the set itself, which is basically a black stage and two presticums. What was that term you used? The blank stage and then I think it's proscenium. It's like the arches in a theater. I'm I hope I'm saying that correctly.

But we had a s I got the image. Yeah, I think it was like three million dollars to set up our set. Which s some musicals are way higher. And then the running costs of the show were really was really low because it was 32 amazing dancers, but no superstars. And so it was also a show that was easy to tour. Like you're doing with your show. And so I understood the economics of Broadway and

This was a chance the company that Michael had bought. was technically basically bankrupt, so we didn't have a lot of money to spend on a show. Or market it. So out of all the stuff we could do I saw that.

The company owned the rights to this Project. And I picked that one for us to focus on. So I was producing that at night and running the company during the day. For about two years. For people who don't know and wink wink might might even be me. I'm sure there are others out there. The word producer gets used in all sorts of contexts in movies and TV in

in theater, what does it m look like for you at the time to have been producing at night? What were you focused on? There's not accountability in general in entertainment and titles can mean Nothing or everything. So I'm glad you clarified that.

I don't know what the name is for what I do, but I've been lucky enough with Fawcy with Marvel with my projects post Marvel. To Conceive of the idea. Basically.

Or see something like Marvel that exists. That has some legacy or faucet rights of And to envision. I guess the first step is vision what the project could be. And something that perhaps other people hadn't seen.

And then when I produce It's Literally Probably not liked by many people, but it's micromanaging. All the various relevant

Major creative decisions or business decisions, which might include bringing in huge creative talent, which I did on Fosse. I brought in his ex lover Anne Ranking. to direct, who had all lot of the dances in her head. And I was dealing with Gwen Verdin, his ex wife, and his daughter Nicole Fosse. But it's I like to define it. There's no faucet musical if I don't

Make it. And there's no MCU or Avengers if I don't go to Marvel. So it's having the vision. And then going there and making it happen with whatever dials I need to turn. creatively or business or political or financing to get it done.

Just very quickly we're gonna hone in on this, but MCU just for people who may not have that acronym, if you could just say what that is. And then looking back at your experience with Fosse, is there anything that you wish you had known then that you know now, anything you would have done slightly differently, perhaps? Keep it on theater for a second. With Fosse, I was blessed. We had our out of town tryouts and then we went to New York and we won the Tony. Like it doesn't get much better than that for a show, right?

Yeah. We were able to sell that company. Because of Fosse's success. To Bob Sillerman at the time? I remember the investment banker that worked for me was a guy named Steve Bannon.

Which was odd, but at the time he had just come from Goldman Sachs and I'm not going to be able to I only knew him as Polymath. Yeah. He did a great job as my banker and got the company sold. So when his name popped up later on in my life, I was, Whoa is that the same person? And it was So that was sort of funny. Wow. I know. Crazy stories. Later on If we want to circle back to it. I Also produce

The Spider Man musical on Broadway. Which famously lost like fifty or sixty million. I was gonna say cost a little more than three million to put the set together. Now Marvel Had no capital in it. And we had I think ten percent of gross ticket sales. So we ended up making

A significant profit from that. Production. And it was fantastic to work with Bon One Edge from you two. So there's a la whole different animal. The Spider Man musical, but

I was involved with that as well. Well, let's hit it straight down the fairway between these two poles. And uh just before we move on, since I promised folks, MCU. What does that stand for? Marvel Cinematic Universe. Okay. And then

We do the Wains World Brrrr Brrr we go back in time. Yeah. And you know you have a few months left. And working with, if I'm remembering correctly, Ari and Patrick. Yes. And Somewhere in the next few months

Some of the ideas. related to Marvel start to percolate. What does that look like? It actually happened, I remember specifically, it was in like October, November of two thousand three. When I think my stint with Endeavour was gonna finish at the end of that calendar year. That story about the

Discussion with Disney to potentially buy Marvel. Marvel went bankrupt in nineteen ninety nine. And It had gotten through a fight between Ron Perlman, Carl Icon, and Ike Promotter. And Ike Pro Mother successfully got it like for thirty or fifty million dollars out of bankruptcy.

And it did Then a public company for a couple of years post that and achieve like a two hundred million valuation. And I was an investor in the stock. And so I watched as

The first X Men movie came out. Spider Man, of course, right? And the stock had sort of stopped at A two hundred million evaluation. And

I Took out some old fashioned paper. And I thought to myself, okay. What will my next path be?

I could, you know, potentially stay at Endeavour. And William Morse for the reasons we talked about. It was just endeavor at the time, I decided not to do that. I think Ari is really happy about because He very much wanted to buy William Morse even back then, and I was telling him all the reasons not to.

And so I think he was very happy that he didn't have to listen to those anymore. And he's done so well with that acquisition. So worked out really good for both of us. I had another path, which was I could go to one of the studios. And Try to work my way up to be chairman of a studio. Which is the only position I saw.

Where you could be both creative in business. Those jobs were what I really wanted. Chairman of a studio. You green light movies, that's the ultimate power. You decide what gets made. And then you can influence that. on every one of those dials that I mentioned creative for business.

And it was the only place where I saw that that really merged together. Some producers had Sort of power. But not as much as a studio chairman.

And so I thought about that path, Tim, and I realized I didn't like it. It wasn't like A law firm or McKinsey. Which is somewhat of a meritocracy, not totally, but you at least logically you should proceed if you Deliver results. I don't know what the formula is. To become studio chairman. It's just

One person selected every ten years, you know, they're all in their sixties or seventies and I knew I would would be a fool's gamble for me to do that. So then I'm sitting there with this crazy thought I'll create my own studio. Then by definition, I'm in charge of that studio, right? And My business

I thought too. It has to be something I'm really interested in. It has to have something that could really be a sustainable good business. Because I feel like it's my job to do that. I just realized as you're talking, I have heard and used this term studio myself. Many times. And I don't actually know exactly what it means to be a student. Yeah. Good question. Do they raise money and fund production and then

External production companies and teams kind of Take that money and run with it. How much is internal versus external If you started your own studio what Would that entail? So what a studio should mean.

is that you bring all the elements to the table. You have the money You have the properties. You have people that either make the films or hire producers. Properties meaning the intellectual property. Exactly. You either make the movies yourself or you internal producers or you hire other producers to do it. And then you market and distribute the films, which is costs as much as making the movies for major picture. And so at the time there were six studios.

Universal, Disney, Fox. And so on. Sony. And They made all the movies. So everyone with every IP holder Then and even now would license their properties to these studios.

And so Spider Man was famously licensed to Sony. Sony would make the decision when there's a movie. How much they're gonna spend Creatively what it was gonna be. and market and distribute that movie and keep the vast

Not the majority, but like 95% plus of the profits. So an IP holder like Marvel. We'd only get a piece of the money. And they'd have like script notes, like certain rights, but nothing very heavy. Like you couldn't make Peter Parker Do some crazy job that would be a good thing.

you know, wasn't relevant to the comics or something like that. And then normally ancillaries like toys would be split between the studio and the rights holder. So the way Marvel got to a two hundred million valuation was off the toys of Spider Man. Or the toys of Hulk. Or the toys of X Men.

Very little money from the movies. And I was frustrated with that as an investor. I didn't think it was a good model to grow enterprise value. And so I was very focused on Marvel right away. So luckily I didn't have to look at my second choice. I knew I was personally interested in it. And then I had this hypothesis.

Or model at the time. Which was I knew how bad the first movie business was and You spend in this case a hundred million dollars on something you hope people show up. Yeah, research can help you a little bit, but very little. It's pretty random. Stars at the time could maybe open the movie. But it's a horrible not a horrible, but a pretty bad

Business, but the sequel business. was amazing because statistically you could predict the revenues plus or minus something and you can manage your profit margin. Not whether you made profits. And so the big idea I had, which was now it's called universe, was What if after the first movie

Every movie after that was a sequel or a quasi sequel. Which required All the characters or m a lot of the characters just show up. In multiple movies. And that led me

Again to Marvel because I knew about the vast universe of characters and And that this would be a perfect s way in my mind to Make every movie after the first one. A sequel.

Quasi sequel. It came up like over twenty four, forty-eight hours. That weekend. The whole thing. Were you

Sitting in an ashram where you Flying on airplanes, were you Having uh. I was endoscopy, what was going on? It was very boring. Sweatpants sitting in my

Rental apartment. Across from the park, I'm near Fairfax. Where I still have it my studio, same building. Okay, so you're capturing all this on yellow notepad or in your laptop or wherever.

Then what? So it's like great idea. I can see how this works. That was the good news. The bad news was I didn't know anyone at Marvel. I knew Marvel had licensed a lot of its properties like

Spider Man and X Men, I didn't know how many that they had licensed beyond that. I had never made a movie before in my life. Right. So there's a lot of things That were obstacles and

In the next month or two. I Got an introduction to a man named Aviar Rod and Ike Pro Mutter, who were the two guys running Marvel the public company at the time. How did you get that introduction?

This is non trivial. Yeah, it's shows you how small this town is. My lawyer who negotiated my deal with R Manuel and Endeavour. Was a man named Josh Grode. Who was also Avi Rod's lawyer at the time. And I told my lawyer my interest and he said, Oh, I can introduce you to Avi.

Now To show you how this town is really small. Josh is now the CEO and president of Legendary entertainment. Which is a

Big mini studio owned by a lot by the Chinese. And so he's become his own studio chairman and pretty powerful company. With the King Kong movies and other things like that. So You mentioned studio at the time Avi was in charge of what was called Marvel Studios.

But it was really a small shop of giving script notes to licensed movies. Avi successfully Saw the potential of Marvel Films and started licensing the movies. Post the bankruptcy. Ike and Avi had known each other.

For many years, and obviously start as a toy creator. And he did the original license deal with Spider Man, he did the original license deal with Fox for X Men. And that's what The route that Marvel was on at the time was licensing these movies. And

continuing to license their films. Ike. owned I think forty or fifty percent of Marvel at the time, even though it was a public company. And he was in charge. Of everything.

How uncommon is that? That seems like a gigantic equity position. It was. Yeah. Because he got it out of bankruptcy. He got out of, you know, bankruptcy and he kept it. And so Ike was the person I really needed to pitch. I pitched him at Mar-a-Lago. in November of two thousand and three. And I remember that.

Flying to Palm Beach. And having lunch there, and Trump came by who's close with Ike, they're still very close and I was introduced to Trump and Trump said something about He had a TV show starting soon, which turned out to be The Apprentice, and he was excited about that. That's all I remember from that conversation.

And I pitch Dike in the same way I pitched Ovit and Ike did not See and agree that they should do their own films right away. But he was open minded enough to offer me a job. And give me a lot of stock options.

And market. And give me a chance to fight for it internally. Yeah, and Ike is now I think the largest individual shareholder of Disney. Alright. So he's like

You can fight this fight. I don't necessarily agree with all of it up front, but you'll you'll have your your day in court, so to speak. Exactly. That was it. And what then proceeds To happen from there. I had one other job that I was looking at. Which

I'm I'm only gonna raise and I've never told this publicly Because of your question about theater. But I got a phone call in the fall of two thousand three from a very high pitched voice who said Hi, this is Michael Jackson and He went on to say that he had seen Fosse on Broadway.

And love the show. And it was a personal call. I don't know how he got my phone number. And then I thought it was fake, right? And he said, I want you to tell my life story through my music videos. And I was like Whoa.

And that turned into a One or two month Set of discussions with Michael. About doing A fifty fifty deal.

Where I'd have He put in all his music videos and all the IP. I'd be able to produce it. And we both had vetoes on each other. And he even I got him to agree that he would perform randomly

Once every couple months thriller. So you go to the Broadway show and you'd see Michael Jackson actually perform, like be like a lottery, right? And Josh Grode was my lawyer on that. So I have the deal agreement. I was gonna say that'd be tricky to figure out from the legal perspective. Yeah. He was very smart. I gotta tell you, he was very smart. Business person. And then I

I wasn't really seriously I was gonna carve that out of my Marvel deal. And I think Marvel was gonna let me do that. And then I saw Michael Get arrested. And so I let that fizzle right at that that period of time. But

Uh, it was like the other thing that I was looking at and then Third, hef was circling me about potentially helping him run Playboy at the time. Which was an IP company. But Marvel was the part where my focus was the highest and

Uh I started right away. Basically two weeks after that meeting with Ike. At the end of two thousand three. In title, what was your Uh my title was president of What was then called Marvel.

Studios which wasn't a studio. We didn't bring any money. We didn't have Distribution and marketing. We weren't making the movies. But it was called Marvel Studios from a title point of view. Yeah.

Okay, so he put you in the position where you could At least without having to lily pad hop around the company. Right. Implement what you'd been discussing.

So this part we're gonna get into Which I'm happy to do. Like you said in the beginning, I've never talked through in this way and I've also not done press of any significant note in the past ten years. So A large amount of this is

Still coming to light? And so Some things people might know and some things they might not. But In two thousand four, we had a very small office, office Santa Monica Boulevard.

I think Ike was definitely interested in making more money from entertainment. My job was really How can we make more money? without taking any significant risk.

Had a career of bankruptcy. type of companies, Remington and now Marvel. And those People are not ones that take big capital risk on big grandiose visions, right? And so in the board of directors was a bunch of ex-bankruptcy guys, basically. And Sid Gannis, I remember, who is the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures was the the one Hollywood person there.

And so I would argue for the studio In the board meetings. And was basically told to Be quiet, maybe not those words. My last name was in Spielberg, and not bring it up again.

Unless Marvel had no risk. Not little risk, but no risk. And And so Conjure me this, Spielberg. Yeah. And what was important at the time is I asked the board to at least give me six months, and what that meant is not to license any more movies.

They were about to license Captain America and Thor to two major studios. I think it was Warner Brothers and Sony. And Thor specifically was very close to being licensed. And I basically had to hold my breath in the board meeting and say if you do that I can't do anything. I need at least those characters to to put together.

Something that's not. Somebody would finance as a slate. And they gave me that six month time. And so during two thousand four I put on my MBA hat. I spent a lot of time in New York and was able to raise

The financing that We needed was about a half a billion dollars. of what turned out to be I mean it sounds crazy to say but For those that are interested, it was No risk. It was not a recourse. Marvel never had to pay it back.

Yeah, no cash collateral. Two things. How do you sell? How do you pitch that? And then how do you structure that? The structuring uh that's related. It was this idea of the universe. Again.

Not a word that we used at the time. But it was the vision of intermixing all the characters. So If we owned First to my board. The argument was if we own our own studio.

It means We get The full financial upside. That that they understood very well. Number two, we decide a green light.

When the movies get made. That they also understood because They only sold toys really at the time. And the toys were contingent on a movie, which they didn't control the timing of. Now when you're doing a public company and you're giving guidance every year.

How can you give guidance if you don't even know what movies are gonna get made, right? And so controlling green light was important, full creative control. I felt that People Like myself and Kevin Feige eventually. Because we care about the movies would make better movies for the fans.

I'm not sure my board really heard that point or really understood it, given that we neither Kevin nor I had ever made a movie ourselves. Like I said. And then fourth, we would keep all the ancillaries as well, the toys and video games. So there's a lot of reasons For this to happen.

The challenge of not having Risk. is normally insurmountable. Thank God again for timing, like we talked about, the bond bubble of two thousand four. Was happening. So it was a time where there was loans being made that shouldn't have been made.

And a lot of people were Enamored with Hollywood as they get enamored every few years. And so I was able to pitch. that give me four at bats and if one of them hits

Then every movie's a sequel after that, and when they ran their models They were able to get it past their investment committee. To the point where there was no equity component. Wow. All right. So are we talking about just so I understand. There are many ways to

raise financing. So are we talking about Banks? Are we talking about if so, what types of banks are we talking about? Who are the people you were pitching to agree to these terms and provide the financing. different entities but turn out to be Merrill Lynch. who took the gamble with us and helped structure it.

And it was structured, as I mentioned, as pure debt. So Very low interest rate and The only collateral were the Film rights to ten Marvel characters. Of which we could make for the movies.

And A lot of people misunderstand that. They think we pledge ten of our characters as collateral. It wasn't that at all because In the worst case scenario. It only got collected is if we lost money on those first four movies.

And then those six characters We owned all the rights besides Film. And if a film was ever made by the bank whoever collected this collateral We got

The same License fee that we get if we just licensed it that day. to a party. So there's no opportunity cost. So that's how you would justify it to your board of directors. Exactly. Also.

Right. Worst case we just get what we would have gotten. doing our current model. And actually even better because we were able to get five percent of a hundred percent revenues as a producer fee.

So even if the film lost money, we were making ten to twenty million. And the bank let us keep all of the non film revenues like toys and video games in a different waterfall. So even if the four at bats lost, we were making twenty five million per movie. And that's a hundred million dollars and the whole company was worth two hundred. So It was not a deal that the board could say no to

But they also got enthusiastic about it by the end of two thousand four. Okay. So Were there any hurdles with the board, or was it just so clearly delivering on The request

of zero risk. that there was just no defensible position they could take that would object to things. Eventually when the f financing came together. It's important for Marvel fans to realise that It was tender at the time. If we were not able to raise

Riskless capital like that. The MCU might never have occurred. Or if I got there six months later And those other movies were licensed.

Marvel or any IP holder making their own hundred million dollar plus movie was revolutionary. Like nobody To this day, I'm only aware of Marvel and Angry Birds who's done that. And Angry Birds I was part of after I left. So it It was a crazy idea, Tim, and to Ike's credit. He did give me that audience. He sent me an email that I have

Behind me. Recently Thanking me for my tenacity. And basically said, I can actually read it. One second.

This was after Avengers Endgame in two thousand nineteen. David, the movie was a terrific accomplishment. And we know that it all started with you, your vision. And your tenacity in pushing to achieve that vision. The word tenacity is about those hurdles you just mentioned.

Right. It was tough. That was a huge hurdle to get over. having the correct financing that would Work. I have never said this publicly. I could have showed up in the boardroom.

And given up half the equity. And the same terms for the other fifty percent of the money. And that would have been easier to structure. And perhaps my board would not have cared. Hal is better than nothing of the movie.

And I was very greedy. I wanted Marvel to keep 100% of the upside because also I was one of the largest individual owners at that time with my stock options. And so I was very tenacious with Ike, but I was also very tenacious. With Merrill Lynch. That we keep

A hundred percent of the upside. And no deal is easy. They tried to renegotiate. And make us put up a third of the budget. Some other way. And I was lucky

I was not lucky is fortunate, I guess, to be able to convince them not to do that at the end. So it was very precarious for a while. And this was renegotiating years later after they had signed on the dotted line, or this was mid process. We probably came to agreement in the fall of O four and closed it in the spring of O five. And you know, things always get renegotiated until they're close. Best way to put it. Yeah. Now all those guys, it turned out to be one of their best loans they ever made, obviously. And I'm friends with a lot of the those bankers still.

It was a Interesting time. But that was only one of the things because even with the money that Came in. We still needed a distribution deal with a studio.

Not all that money was Contingent. Honey. Major studio putting up a hundred and fifty million bucks. To market the movie.

Before we get there, just a very quick question. Keeping in mind them. Slow moving. From Long Island. Yeah. Takes me a minute or two. So I'm thinking of the numbers here.

Company is worth As a publicly traded company, I think you said two hundred million, right? Two hundred million dollar market cap, you're raising five hundred million. To do that, I would love to know what the most important exhibits were and how the licensed films like X-Men and Spider Man. fit into that.

If at all, right? Because otherwise it strikes me that it would be Perhaps based on industry comps, but it would be considered potentially very speculative. I think a lot of people are now looking and learning

that Marvel Studios was a relay race. You know, Stan Lee and the original comic creators created the characters. And then the baton went to Ike and Avi, and Avi specifically doing these license deals. And Ike supporting him. And then the baton in two thousand three went to me. And then we can get to later on. I passed the baton to Kevin Feige in two thousand ten and he's still writing the studio. But

If I didn't have the The numbers of X Men And Spider Man to point to. And run scenarios to my board internally and to the bank. that what if, you know, we just do half of those numbers or or two thirds of those numbers for their stress case scenarios.

Yeah, I mean they never ran a stress case scenario like at doing a third of those numbers. If they did, we would have failed. So they wanted this deal to happen. And You know, there's incentives. We go back to Street Smarts of Mike Ovitz, right? I what does Merrill want out of this? What does the bank want? Well They really

They got it. I think a three percent success fee. With this deal. And they held the debt. For all of probably a half hour till they flipped it to somebody else.

So There was incentives for For everyone to get this deal. Darton. And

You know, that was important to figure out. Dumb question, who's paying the three percent? It comes out of the facility. Okay. I'm gonna need you to expand on that. So I raised five hundred and twenty five million. And

Three percent of that, about seventeen million. Got it. Went to Merrill Lynch right away. Yeah. And who are they raising it from? I'm just wondering if they're like taking it o out of one pocket and sticking it in the other, what That means. I learned this in real time doing this. We really didn't have

A banker helping us on this deal too much. And so it was a man named John Turitsin, who is the general counsel of Marvel, who is important to mention because He was the closest person and still is to Ike, and he Kept my head in the game.

And he helped me get through this process and Many times I thought of quitting and Ike probably thought about firing me and he probably I know he talked his both. off the ledge many times. So If it wasn't for John, there's no Marvel Studios either.

I'm either fired or I quit. Probably fired. It's a pretty detailed thing, but I I was very greedy. I wanted the interest rate to be lower. And we got it insured by a company called the MPAC. Most of the debt. So it became triple A debt, which is then easy to sell to pensions and easy to sell to individual investors. So Meryl turned around and and it was packaged with

Triple A and they were able to resell it. Yes. But we just to and I'm sorry to belabor this point, but my podcast is basically my uh Continuing education. So coming out of the facility. Is Merrill Are they basically reselling it and then taking their three percent after they have resold it? I guess I'm just trying to figure out where.

The success fee. Yeah. How it comes out of the facility. I think they took risk because At the time the deal closes. They're obligated. to put up the five twenty five.

So they got their success fee, I think, right at that time. And then they resell most of it. Two other people. Pretty immediately. So I don't know, I'm trying to remember back this was two thousand three, two thousand f two thousand four, two thousand five.

But They had risk. when the deal closed for I don't know if it was for half hour or for one day or for two days, but they had risk for a period of time. Before they resold all that and that's when they get their success fee. Once they the money's guaranteed us. Is one division of Merrill Lynch paying another division?

The seventeen million or whatever it added up to. Oh, that's a good question. No, if they got stuck with the whole loan. Yeah. And they're sort of paying themselves, I guess. Yeah. I didn't I didn't think about it that way. Yeah. Okay. Wow. What a world. Yeah. I'm not sure there was a risk of that when it happened because most of it was insured. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Okay. This is a world that is largely foreign to me. But let's come back to As you mentioned.

The other very, very critical. Kind of leg on the stool, which is a distribution deal. How did you go about securing that? How did you go about Trying to pick

Like is all distribution more or less the same thing and it's just a different marquee name on the same function and they kind of all perform the same way. How did you go about navigating that? Well it's easy because we didn't have a choice to pick. Nobody wanted to be our partner. So at the end of the day, only one person said yes, which was Paramount. You know, part of ICOM. But the way we got there, I mean, no at the time this is really important. In two thousand three, two thousand four, two thousand five, Marvel wasn't the Marvel it is today.

So everyone that's listening It's many people Probably don't remember. That Marvel.

wasn't this huge thing that it's been the past fifteen years. And in Hollywood If it was, by the way, I never would have gotten this opportunity. So Disney or somebody else could have bought Marvel for five hundred million, you know, much earlier if they wanted to.

And So The studios Nobody wanted to distribute these movies. You know, it wasn't just Sony, it was you know universal.

And others we had obstacles now, we wanted great terms, but Nobody really believed in these properties and and you know Ironman New line, which is part of Warner Brothers. They had the rights for many, many years, and I think for seven or eight years, and never thought it was worthy to make into a film and

They let the rights expire and give it back to us. So it was a very different world. Yeah. So why Paramount? When I was at Disney I got to be friendly with a guy named Rob Moore, who was running One of the senior people at the studio at Disney. He was vice chairman of Paramount at this time.

He was on his way to a Lakers game and I like tackled him in the parking lot and just bugged him enough. Because he w he didn't want to be late to the basketball game, but He agreed to L serious, he agrees in like You know, have a meeting with me. And then Brad Gray was his boss who Avirad knew.

And so we sort of tag team these two men. And convince them that This was a good bet. And to your point, we showed him that They were the last money. They put up the last hundred and fifty million. They got the first hundred and fifty million back. So the film only had to do like a percentage of X Men.

For them to at least get their money back. Right. So they were Yeah. Last in, first out. In terms of preferences. Yes. But even with that, nobody else wanted to do it.

Aside from Getting slide tackled in the Lakers parking lot. What was it do you think And maybe you already answered this and I just And too dense and it didn't land.

What led them To say yes. In contrast to all the others who said no. What did they see, or how did you refine the pitch? That didn't exist. In the other.

Conversations. I think they listened. And Rob trusted me from our times at Disney. He knew me pretty well, so the past relationship helped.

And he knew I wasn't careless with my analysis or my statements. And so for at least for Rob I can't speak for Brad. But for Rob He understood, and when he finally listened to where the break even was for them.

He saw it was a good bet. In the upside, he had distribution rights to like, I think Five or ten movies. And the downside, you know, he basically broke even. If the film didn't do well. And there's a lot of other games like

Studios. make money internally, even on PA. Could you just explain P and A? Print and advertising. So

I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg had a distribution deal with Paramount and he was running DreamWorks Animation. And he basically coached me on what terms I should ask for and mentored me on that. So we had a deal that was really good. There was no non cash charges, there was no overhead charges. Non cash charge. I mean I under I understand the wording, but I don't know what it is. They would inflate the costs that they got reimbursed.

So they would say they spent a hundred and fifty million on marketing, but You know, twenty million if that's overhead and another ten million some odd cost. Shipping and handling for infomercial products. You're like, How is shipping and handling seventeen dollars? Right. Extra handling, man. Yeah, right. Okay. Okay. So it's it's actually was important.

Because It can eat up all your profits on a movie if you get charged Too much. We had like a ten percent distribution fee, which is really attractive as well. Um, I think George Lucas has the lowest I'm aware of it's six or seven percent for Star Wars. Um how the hell did he get that? I mean, that was also at the time, it's easy for people to forget, but it's like it's not like that was the juggernaut franchise that it is today. But I don't wanna take us too far afield, but

Wow. Okay, got it. So they say all right, worst case. We recoup. Best case we have. rights to these things you claim will be as Predictable or similarly predictable to sequels.

Sure. Okay. And Tim, I the part that I guess with both the bankers and with Paramount is I would strongly make the case creatively.

For why I thought Iron Man would be А сус, вай ДСЮ Which wasn't called at the time could be a success. And then also Avi and Kevin would come into these meetings with the bankers and with the

Distribution partners. To talk about their experiences on those movies of X Men and Spider Man. So we had the sexy halo effect of producers on those movies, even though we weren't actually The full producers. And all those things.

Especially with the bankers were really important. And we'd rob in Paramount. I think it was more the financial Trade for them. But

They saw the success of Spider Man with Sony and You know, hope that they could get that upside. Which they did. So why Ironman, right? I I as you know, we've talked about this. I love comics. I have Yeah. Boxes and boxes and boxes of comic books from my childhood still

Cardboard backed and poly bagged. Sitting. In my parents. Probably garage being eaten by mice or something at this point. But

There are a lot of characters to choose from. You have a lot of options. Why Ironman? We didn't have that many options again. Right. So when we close the financing We didn't have Ironman.

We listed ten characters, and those ten characters were Led by Captain American Thor. This thing called Avengers, which People thought was a British spy. T V show.

And the ventures weren't defined in our deal. So It could be as with the comics, different characters in the Avengers, right? So it was sort of a weird Category of a property. There was Black Panther in there, there was Doctor Strange, but nobody cared about those characters at all. That people thought of Black Panther as a terrorist group from the sixties.

Doctor Strange was a small comic. I think we had cloak and dagger in there. Shang Shi Which finally made it as a movie. Power pack.

I mean there weren't that many big names. And I'm not sure we even put Thor in in the beginning because There was disagreement internally whether Thor was even practical given the cost of Asgard. And so for a while we didn't know what the first movie was gonna be.

I was able to get the rights for Hulk back. I mentioned Ron Meyer went to become chairman of Universal from CA earlier. And so Ron, I knew very well. And I texted him And asked him for meeting and

They had done the first Hulk movie. With Ang Lee. Which was Critically. Well received, but not box office wise.

And they were owned by GE at the time. And I said, Ron, are you ever gonna make a Hulk movie? And he said no. Probably not. I say, What about if I finance it? And You distribute it, I'll give you ten percent.

And he said yes. And so That's why we got the Hulk back into the Marvel Universe. And that's why the first Hulk movie was made in two thousand eight, because by making one film We got the rights back for Hulk and perpetuity. At least as a supporting character.

And also We were splitting toys fifty fifty with Universal and that became Way in our favor and Hulk hands were our number one toy. So we were thinking of Hulk potentially as The first movie.

And then Iron Man came back. And Kevin and I were both really excited about Iron Man, as was Aviard, who who was still the studio. He left in early two thousand six. And so We zeroed in on that. And I think I don't know exactly why other people missed it. I think the what we were excited about was the man inside the suit.

Like we love the sexy suit of armor. Like most people do. But Tony Stark is such a cool character and If you don't see Tony Stark, you don't see How good the movie can be.

And so I think that was probably the breakthrough for the three of us. Yeah, I can't remember which film it was from, but There's uh one of the Marvel films. I think it was quite a bit later, where there's some disagreement. I th I want to say it's between Thor and Stark. And he's like, Well, if we take that suit off you, who are you? And he's like, billionaire playboy, uh Exactly.

Let's then walk into The next steps. For Iron Man. Because I feel like this

Is such a Maybe not make it or break it, but just such a critical Project overall. as sort of a harbinger of things to come, perhaps, as a signal. As a proof of concept.

What were some of the key decisions or critical moments? in in that development phase and Then moving into the theatrical release. To give perspective on that. We talked about how in two thousand four, two thousand five it was primarily raising the money and getting

Distribution partner and Paramount. I was then promoted to vice chairman of the studio. In that period. And in two thousand six, Avi left the studio. And

Then I was running the studio. Myself and I promoted Kevin Fige, who was a young kid that was helping Ove on script notes. Who I'd gotten to know very well and Admired him, his creativity and

His love of the comics. I promoted him to be my president of production and I was chairman of the studio and promoted to that. I also was fortunate To be Promoted to office of the CEO.

Wake and John of the Parent company. And so it's relevant because With those pieces in place. We were able to focus solely on making that film.

Right. There was No more internal politics. There wasn't. These external things we needed like financing or distribution deals, we had that. We had the rights back. We had a clean structure.

In the company. And I promoted my ex assistant into the creative realm. He became our number two guy, creatively, Jeremy Latcham. We hired Ludia Spazito and Victoria Alonso, two amazing talents.

early in that period of time. And All of us then focused on making this movie and John Favre was identified as the director and Robert Downey as the actor. That was the two Big decisions.

How did those two end up happening? A lot of people think of John today for his Star Wars stuff and A lot of visual effects, but at the time he was well more known for swingers and You know, for Those types of films.

People forget about elf too. Yeah. And um he was just coming off as a thora. And We felt like we knew how to do the comic book part of things, like the action and the comic booky part of stuff.

But we also knew we didn't have a lot of money. To make the movie, I could green light to one sixty five million. I told my board I'd make the film out of budget. That would allow it to break even at a percentage, I think two thirds of of X Men. And so my budget.

For the film was about a hundred, hundred and five million dollars. Now that's Sounds like a lot, but it wasn't. I mean Batman that year was 230 million. And so that allowed us to have

Some action, but not a lot. So we knew we had we'd have an hour and forty five minutes of You know, Tony Stark in his workshop or talking to pepper pots. And John was great. on those scenes and is great on those scenes.

And also getting the best out of talent like Robert Downey. So I think That was Something we all saw. in in Favreau, plus he seemed very

committed to it. His career obviously has taken off. In the past fifteen years tremendously, and he's shown his talent in so many other ways. And Robert Downey I think originally came from

From John? And Kevin, they both were proponents for Robert as studio chairman. I had to give the final thumbs up and thumbs down on that, but I agreed with them. Knowing Tony Stark from the comics and Robert's work.

You know, it wasn't obvious. I mean, Robert had never had a box office success. He had just been arrested. A couple years earlier for for drugs. Spend time in jail? So it's not who you bet your company on and He came in and did a video audition.

Which is also rare. And I remember taking That recommendation to Ike and the board and showing him that video audition. And They asked a lot of tough questions.

But they Also agreed. That was a key part. I mean, I think with those two pieces in place. Kevin and I were off to the races with John and Robert. To make this film which is

I think this month, you know, it's our fifteenth anniversary of release. What were some of the biggest challenges? It could have been in production or in distribution or in any facet of that experience. What I just talked you through was the biggest Tim. It was getting

The job at Marvel. Getting the financing in place, convincing the board. Getting distribution deal. Getting the rights back to Iron Man. Getting the board to agree with

Us on Robert Downey. And getting the internal politics of Marvel, like there are in every company settled. So by that spring of two thousand six, two years before the movie comes out, We have All those pieces in place.

And We didn't have an office. We took the Mercedes Benz dealership in Santa Monica Boulevard. Playboy had an office in the very top corner and they were having financial difficulties, and I sublet it from Hefner. And put a Marvel Studios sign.

Outside that cost ten thousand dollars. And we announced our presence and We just We'd work there eightin hours a day. We move pre-production for movie, which is where all the planning gets done.

Right there in that same floor, which is normally never done with the studio, which was Kevin and I. People should hear about Is I had this philosophy that Studios.

Hollywood Studios had this unnecessary layer of management called studio executives. Who hired the producers. So Our model was there's no studio executives. We were the producers of the movie.

And so Kevin and I were technically Studio executives, but we were working on the film, Kevin every day, me with a significant chunk of my time, because I was also a co-CEO. And we didn't have that layer. So we all with John and Robert and all the pre-production. We're all together for months.

you know, planning out this film. We had a pretty Smooth ride. Amazingly from that point on. You know, we took the spruce goose hanger. By the ocean, where Howard Hughes had this huge wooden hanger that he built the biggest airplane in the world.

And that's appropriately where we filmed it since Tony Stark is influenced by Howard Hughes. And That was a big decision because we didn't get tax incentives by being in California. But it turned out to be great because We were all so close.

And it became A set. of people that were really enthusiastic when it's Baltro joined. That was a big win. I think it was Brian Lourdes.

Who called me and said Gwenneth was interested and my God to get An Academy Award winning actress like her, you know, was a dream. It all came together. We had some disagreements at the end about Reshoots, which costs some money.

But I was able to get Ike and the board to approve the ones that we wanted to do. But marketing was a tough challenge too to get Paramount to manage marketing. 'Cause all this stuff doesn't make any sense if nobody goes to see the movie. I think It was Katzenberg who told me to show up at every meeting and

Make sure we get a good release date. In retrospect, we chose May second. Because nobody else wanted it. Like it was an early date. People thought the summer started with Memorial Day. And so us going to May second.

Now it's a great date and Marvel has it every year. But we had a It turned out to be. Really good because we had the first movie of the summer. And bear amount.

gave us that date, they keep their best dates for their own movies. So we were able to get a date they didn't want. It sounds weird to say things went smoothly from that point on, but for those two years Things went very smoothly. Let me rewind just a little bit because I have uh some notes in front of me that I wanna fact check with you.

You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but This is Hollywood reporter, so you would hope that it is Accurate. Is it true that you had an early proof of concept in a sense of changing Marvel's strategy with a low budget Iron Man animated film? Or maybe animatics.

Is that true? Yeah. Yeah, it is in two thousand four, while I was raising the money for the theatrical films. I wanted to prove to the board that we actually could produce something. And so I was able to make a deal with Lionsgate, Michael Burns and John Feldheimer still run Lionsgate. that we'd make three million dollar directed DVD animated movies. I think the budget was three to four million.

And they put up the money. We uh Marvel Studios. We hired a guy named Eric Rolders. Ha ha.

And then we I remember they got their three million or four million back and we split the money. So we had no risk. It was like a mini Marvel Studios. Type of deal. And we made I forget the order. We made a Doctor Strange one, we made Iron Man, we made Avengers, we made a Hulk one.

And they all did pretty well. And so they're still fun to watch. And that was our chance to creatively be in charge of a project and show the board that we could do it. Incredible. Mm-hmm.

A lot of people don't point that out, Tim. You do good research. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I need to thank my team also for finding this particular example and I Love finding these proof of concept moments or talking, as we have been, also about structuring, because As you mentioned, I think in many worlds, not just film, not just Hollywood. There is a almost a religious divide between the the people who are derisively called suits and the people who are sometimes over romanticized as creatives, and you can be

A sort of one event. Athlete. in that sense that you stick really narrowly within a lane and you can become world class and very successful doing that. But in many cases it's like the creatives don't get to do what they would most want to do unless

Things are structured. by someone who understands incentives. and these various provisions, right? So it's I find your story so compelling for a lot of reasons. One of which is you Blend

these capacities in a very effective way because they could be blended ineffectively. Part of it. Time is I think most people because I haven't done press. They view my role as very much the financial structuring, the distribution deal.

The co CO role on Marvel and less on the creative side and I think You know what? In retrospect and talking this through with you, the biggest creative thing I've ever done in my life was the first that weekend and having the vision for the MCU.

For having what became the universe. And just Intuitively believing These characters could become a modern mythology. For this world.

a delusional belief I had at the time in in retrospect. Like I didn't Realize the bar of this and Then I had to put on the hat that I had to do. For each of the dominoes, you know, so If I went into my board and I just creatively talked.

They wouldn't have listened to me. So I had to argue in their language about Finance and to the bankers about the financing and to Paramount about their breakevens. And politically.

structure a studio in terms of personnel that I thought could do well and then to manage Creative people like John Favreau and Robert Downey. And Kevin Feige, my president of production, who

They all worked for me, right? I was chairman of the studio. But to get the best out of them it's I learned this from my time at CA and Disney. It can't be because you're their boss. It's gotta be because you give them The creative

Freedom. To explore and be careful about guardrails, right? So A lot of people would say, Oh, it was my idea and I was studio chairman to do Robert Dowdy rather than saying, Yeah, I mean John and Kevin recommended him, right? Um, and I love that. I mean That's why you hire good people. That's why I prom I'm very proud of promoting Kevin Fige. A lot of people, I think, believe

Because I haven't been too impressed that Stanley or Kevin Created Marvel Studios. And As we heard in the story.

That's Not. The case, right? There's the baton came to me and That was my legacy, which I'm really proud of. I'm also really proud of identifying Kevin. Um

I remember the conversation with Ike who had never met Kevin before in two thousand six. Mike's in New York and Kevin and I were in LA. Don't you need to hire somebody. Um when Ave left. I said no, Kevin can do it. He can be my president in production. And and he's now when I sold the company to Disney.

I told the same thing the Iger that Kevin could run it. And he's become I'm his biggest fan in how he's done the films the past ten years and You know, the m the most re respected create a producer in Hollywood. And so part of managing creativity

Is knowing when to exert yours and when to get the best out from others. I remember that Biggest time I ever exerted mine. What early in two tausin six

I think it was over Christmas holidays. I got Unhappy with the Iron Man script. And The script at the time Jeff Bridges, Obadiah Stein, who in the movie is the villain.

was actually working for the mandarin. And so there was a whole nother scene or two. Where we met the mandarin in China. And he was manipulating Obadiah Stain and there's another big action sequence. And that felt too comic booky to me.

Because for these movies to work. I was running marketing From Marvel's perspective, I didn't delegate that. I was going to every meeting as the chairman of Marvel Studios. I had the relationship with Rob Moore to get the best out of Paramount. Kevin was on set every day. And so

We would talk about everything, of course, and I'd go to set many times and Kevin would come to marketing meetings. But we needed to appeal from a marketing point of view to non comic book fans. Otherwise we would have died. Only four or five thousand people read Iron Man comics. So I needed the movie to be appealing to my mom, my girlfriend of the time.

You know, the whole world and So it had to be a classic story about a man changing his life who happened to change into being a superhero and making other big decisions. And so My spidey sense was the story was getting too comic booky in act three. And we needed to make it more Shakespearean, where the father figure of Obadiah was the villain. And so

I went in as studio chairman where I could have dictated that. And told John Favreau and Kevin. We're chopping off that part of the movie. But instead I went in

I remember first calling Ike and John and telling them what I thought about in my discomfort and then Going in and calling a meeting and recommending it. And explaining why. To John and to

Kevin and to The team. Rather than just ordering it. And To their credit, they

Embraced it pretty quickly. And that became which we had to do because we were pretty close to getting the production. And that I think made the story We all believe better, we kept a mandarin for a later film, and we save money on the budget too.

Because we didn't have to do that scene and we probably didn't piss off China. At the time. So we had a lot of benefits from that decision. Win win win. So I don't know Robert Downey Jr., I don't know Kevin. But I have spent some time with John. He's been on the podcast and I just want to strongly plus one. that he is one of the most talented people. And that's not to diminish the hard work that goes into it. I should say skilled.

People. Yeah. on a multitude of levels that I have met and really knows how to do what you were describing. In terms of embracing the comedy, but not making it overly

Slap stick. and getting a lot out of performances on screen. He's Really. Exceptional and also just very uh at least in all of my experiences, just very pleasant guy to be around. He is. We had a blast on set and

The other thing John did really well, to your point there. Is We didn't freeze the script. on Iron Man, which most people would say is crazy. 'Cause each day costs three or five hundred thousand depending on the day.

of cost. So if you miss your day and you don't finish everything. You blow that money. But we kept time for Robert to improvise. And John managed that. And Kevin and they did a great job. And John is the director and

So many of the lines that you probably love that so many people love. Came out of Robert improvising. And That was a risk and I felt

Very secure. In that Given John's expertise, like you say. Worked out. So let's look at

The series of events and I'd love for you to walk us through the milestones or the Key moments. Between Iron Man. And

The sale to Disney. Before we get to that I have to ask because you've mentioned it a few times. Why so quiet with PR? Why haven't you done more?

PR. It relates to what you're about to ask me to sell to Disney, which I try to live life Intentionally. And One of the things that I've tried to avoid is

You get too focused. On my own. I guess ego for lack of a better word. One of the reasons I sold the company to Disney One big reason was shareholder value and get the best price.

And the other was me personally, I was okay with it because I wanted to venture away and do new challenges. I realised That If I open the door on the PR side. It would just be a route that didn't interest me at the time and

I'd be talking about the past all the time and I Did well with the sales of Marvel to Disney. And so obviously I could have afforded PR people, and I just never did that. And that was my reason. I always thought Truth always prevailed and

You know, we've learned in a lot of parts of our lives in the past eight years that that truth is fungible. And so It was something where By being quiet, there was a lot of confusion about all the stuff that we talked about, and I found my story essentially

Being somewhat rewritten. out of history, which is really weird when it's You know, eight years of your life and something that was your vision and dream. Being written.

Where they just Didn't even mention. What we just talked about. One famously in the cover of Vanity Fair a few years ago. And the same author of that article's writing a book that's coming out in the history of Marvel Studios, coming out in November, Joanna Robinson.

Who now has done her research and Knows the story that we've talked through. And realizes the mistake that they made. So the past couple years I've realised Two things. I mean one

I enjoy telling the story. It's a big part of who I am. My friends knew people like Brian Lord and Kevin Uvain and My Hollywood. Friends knew and the people in Hollywood that mattered. But even in many cases if they don't see it written and so on, it gets confusing.

So I've realized Yeah. If you care about something, it's important to be part of the narrative. Luckily for Marvel, it's so big. And it's done so well that

There's plenty of shine to share. As I mentioned. Avi, I give him full credit for The license deals of which I would not have been able to Open some of the doors I did.

And Kevin, I'm his biggest fan, but I'm proud of my vision for Marvel Studios and where it came from me and Whether it's my future wife or it's people listening to this podcast, that's part of who I am. I'm proud of going there and making it happen and putting on all those different hats that we talked about. That were needed at the time. And I'm proud of handing the baton to Kevin and the sale to Disney.

And so there's enough Great. Credit for everybody to have. And hopefully everybody sees that. When

All the facts come out. And so that's been an You know, this is a big step in in talking about PR and It's fun to tell the story to people. There's so many different angles to it. And the other part that's been a big influence is when my mom was recently sick. A lot of the doctors and nurses and other people around her.

I'd have time with and I would tell them the story. And I realized how it affected their lives. They go home and tell their kids they're with the guy who founded Marvel Studios and Not everyone gets to Meet us and have these discussions and I realized

Marvel brings a lot of joy in people's lives. I just flew back from Miami yesterday and I have a Marvel bag with me and the security guy. At the uh airport. Was all excited. He helped me through security, which was a good benefit. So there's actually a a selfish benefit of carrying a marble bag. Pro tip. Go get some marble bags.

I'm really glad that that you're willing to take the time to have this conversation. I'm having a lot of fun. I'm learning a lot. I'm taking notes. Yeah. Not only about your entire journey with Marvel, but I'm gonna watch all that jazz. And uh There's more, of course, in the notes.

But let's talk about Iron Man to Sail, and you can walk us through that in any way that makes sense. I'll leave it to you to guide us. Sure. It's So as we're making the film, I mentioned that things went smoothly. From spring of two thousand six to May second, two thousand eight.

They didn't really go smoothly in terms of people's perception of the movie. They went smoothly in us making it, us feeling good about it. But nobody really believed our stock went down for four and a half years. So I came in my options were at nineteen bucks a share.

When Iron Man came out, I think the stock was trading like eighteen dollars a share. And I was Not for lack of trying. I mean, I was on CNBC. Towing Marvel.

Ike famously doesn't really care about press but Even he agreed we should do press. And so we had articles in Business Week at the time and Fortune and Financial Times and all these other places. And New York Times as well, a famous article that I keep by my

Office door, which talks about all the risks about Marvel. This was like a two thousand six or two thousand seven article. At the end of the article, I'm like David's we're doing this really in a smart creative way and People are gonna love it. I sounded like I was crazy on the street, you know? So Even Paramount projected we're gonna do about forty or fifty million for the weekend.

And My board. Came finally to LA. They didn't care about it really too much. From that point of view.

But we had the premier. And I remember my board Telling me that. Kevin and I

We'd get I think it was a half a million dollar bonus. Each if the film broke even. And so that was my own company was like, Hey, out of boy, the way to go, breaks even, we'll make money on the toys, you know? And so, you know, I think we were immune to it. I think Kevin and I and

And I think John and Robert, we were so immersed in making the movie and we felt so good about it. That For some reason. That lack of confidence in

the Wall Street or otherwise didn't affect us too much, but it was there. It's important to realize that. Because I was having Lunch with Bob Iger. probably once a year since I joined and

Kevin Mayer and I'd wear my Spider Man tie and stuff like that. But it was only after the Ir man came out, did I really start thinking Where does this company go? And we had Hulk coming out a month later.

And that film a lot of people misunderstand. They're like wondering why we did it. And like I said We did it to get the rights back for Hulk as a supporting character in movies like The Avengers. And we had to make that movie for that. And we plan the budget of that movie to do break even as long as it did like the first film. So we weren't expecting it to Break.

How like Iron Man did. But the night Iron Man came out, I was at A man named Ron Burkle's house. who had become a mentor and still is. And I got a phone call.

From Moore that At like six PM, hey, we're gonna do sixty million. And like an hour later, seventy million. Every hour went up 10 million, and finally it did 100 million. at like ten PM at night on Friday night. And I knew Things that change for Marvel.

They changed for John, Robert, Kevin, and I. What a night. Can I just pause to say Or actually pause to ask, like what did that Feel like What was your experience as you're getting these updates hour by hour?

By the way, it's still unreal like telling the story to you. I still pinch myself every day that I was able to go from reading Iron Man comics to like Having this crazy dream to making Marvel. Into what it is today.

Is crazy. And Kids ask me how do you do that and I just don't even like It doesn't happen, right? And so When Iron Man came out and it was we knew the number The adrenaline was just huge. Like we had just had the premier.

People seem buzzed about it, but until we got that box office number. You get really busy. Like you have to give quotes right away and we had A Wall Street analyst meeting coming up like that next Tuesday. And so you get busy doing things, but I probably didn't really celebrate it till later in the summer.

It definitely you know, we did have a dinner. This year people might be interested in. So I organized a dinner at Mr. Chow's. A famous restaurant in LA. In Beverly Hills with John Favre, Robert Downey, Kevin and myself.

To celebrate. And It was like couple weeks after Iron Man opened. And

Kevin and I had suggested to Ike that we buy cars for Robert and John as presents. for them and we had worked with their wives to figure out what cars they want. And so Favreau had picked this Mercedes and Robert Bentley. And so at Mr. Chow's we swapped Favreau's car So he drove in with whatever old car he had

And we knew he's gonna get his Mercedes, and we brought Robert in on the joke. So come back to that in a second, but at dinner We celebrated and I said, guys, I will green light Iron Man two. If everyone around this table And I looked at John and Robert and Kevin.

Commit to making it so we can release it may second, Two thousand ten. Or whatever the equivalent weekend was. Which is really quick for a movie with no script. I think everyone was sort of surprised.

Things don't just happen that way in Hollywood. So a lot of what we did in this movie Was like film school. Natalie Portman I was introduced to by Leo DiCaprio. We wanted Natalie to be in Thor. She had no desire. Kevin Havaine was your agent.

To really be in it. And then he knew I wanted her in the movie and he was bowling with her one night and Texted me to get dressed and come out to a midnight bowling. In Hollywood and he introduced me to her and Said you two should work together and

So it was really like Kids in film school. So it all worked out for everybody. So we did celebrate and then at the end of that night We gave John his new car.

But the funniest part was Robert Was in on the joke. But there was no car for him. And we did that on purpose so that he get like where the hell's my car in his mind, right? And so we waited a week, so he'd be like wondering and then brutal. Brutal. Yeah. His wife told us when he was taking a nap one afternoon and we brought it into his driveway. So when he woke up, he saw it in his driveway.

That's incredible. That's so funny. Um So we had fun with the So you mentioned these regular meals, I think it was with Bob Iger and then you mentioned Ron Burkle, who's become and still is a mentor. I want to pick up on those two. What was the context of meeting with

Bob. On a regular basis. As it's Just to keep in touch, to swap stories, to give news from the front lines in your s respective Worlds, what was the context? And a stepping back for your audience.

It wasn't just having meals like I called Bob a couple times with business proposals. One of the time I said let's do Animated movies fifty fifty. Marvel Disney.

And that didn't go anywhere. So We had a habit of talking about business opportunities. But our stock was so low in February of two thousand nine. That

I didn't Raise a sale at all. And then importantly, and this is all public, because when you do things As a public company The SEC makes you go back for five years, every email, every meeting.

Every communication I had with Bob or with Kevin Mayer or anybody else. At Disney is public record. But I called Bob end of May. Our stock was back up to thirty five.

I felt that Disney stock was also undervalued. It was at twenty five dollars a share with the economic collapse. And Disney as a company is very sensitive to the economy. People go to theme parks more often, they do stuff like that.

And so I felt like I was a big Disney shareholder that Disney Where I follow the stock closely, at least. At Disney

Was at least a double when the economy recovered. Whereas we were At two movies a year at best. And Could be plateaued for a while. And DreamWorks animation.

was a company that also had two movies a year and they were plateaued. So all of that in my mind, when I saw our stock hit thirty five or thirty six or thirty seven. I called Bob, we organized a secret meeting in his office. Early June. I brought my Marvel encyclopedia of characters with me.

And that's the meeting where I this is news for your readers too. So for your uh listeners. There was two deals that we had on the table that would have encumbered us. Encumbering means we would have tied up our rights. And been way less attractive for potential purchaser. We're about to extend our distribution deal on the movies.

beyond what Paramount had to another studio. I won't name them on this on this thing yet, but We were very close to doing like another ten or twenty movies to them. And we're about to do a kids TV network with Discovery and Hasbro. Which ended up being called the hub. So I remember David Zazlov at the time and and Brian Goldner, the CEO of Hasbro, recently passed away.

The three of us were working on this and I was working on this other deal. So I knew that there was a window to sell the company. That six months later. we'd be way less attractive to Disney or anyone else because we'd be committed to somebody else in T V and then somebody else in film. And I was gun shy. I knew how easily a deal can fall apart from my previous time. Suggesting this at Disney.

So all of that was in my mind. In June when I went to see Bob. And I remember telling Bob about our TV deal. And with Discovery and Hasbro and him saying, Hold on, let's do a T V deal at Disney

And we'll do a Primarily male, but you know. Kids, teenager, entertainment network. And I joked with him, I said, No, you know Not gonna get a little bit pregnant, you know it's

We either do something big or we don't. And he took that. See his credit. And said then let's think something big. And I remember

Vividly. Him saying I said I think we would need fifty dollars a share. We need a five in front of it. So we went pretty far in this meeting. And he knew I knew Kevin. Mayor, and he knew I knew Tom Stags, who was CFO at the time.

I think and He basically said, Well, my board and Kevin and Tom think that's a fair price. And I said, absolutely. I said I've got this thing planned out for the next ten years. And so since I had done work for Bob, he I think had some trust in that. And we talked about the vision of connecting all the characters and what the future movies were gonna be.

Iron Man Two was our next movie. We had delayed Thor, so I knew that would be good to have Iron Man Two as the next movie because That's predictable. And I explained how we're leading up to the Avengers and how everything after Iron Man would be a sequel to Iron Man, everything after Avengers a sequel to Avengers. Which I think has proved to be the case.

And That was June. First week of June, two thousand. Nine? We announced the deal.

The end of August, two months later. And we kept it secret. And they ended up Pain. I think it was fifty one a share, and we got forty percent of it in Disney stock.

We wanted fifty percent. And so That was a great trade for our shareholders. And turned out to be one. And you know, Disney got up to a hundred and eighty or two hundred at some point. Now there's close to a hundred. Even with their correction.

And so I remember meeting with Kevin Mayer. Right after that, we didn't even have a banker. I went through my projections with Kevin and as friends we yelled at each other, swore at each other. All that kind of stuff. I remember Kevin saying I was basically saying

For Captain America and Thor. You need to give us credit for like eighty percent of Iron Man. You know, in your model. And he's like, No, it should be sixty percent. No one cares about those characters, whatever. And then I said Iron Man Two should be like a hundred and ten percent of Iron Man, and Avengers should be like a hundred and fifty percent of Iron Man. He's like, No, Avengers is a new movie that should be like Captain America or Thor.

And I was like, No, Robert Downey, we had signed up for the Avengers, so it's basically a quasi Iron Man sequel. So all those things were like It's an interesting story because I'm negotiating with someone I worked with that I've known for decades. With a company where I worked at intimately. And

To your question though. After that first meeting. I went to that meeting. I didn't even know I was having a meeting. And if he did know, he he would not be surprised because it would be about a business deal, that kind of stuff.

I called Ike From in front of Team Disney. after leaving Bob. And I'm and I was as pumped about this meeting as I was about Ironman's Box office. Because I could see the excitement in Bob's eyes.

Turns out that they had internally been reviewing options and Marvel was on their list. Though they hadn't proactively contacted anybody, including myself. And I called Ike and I told him. I think I have a buyer for the company. And he I thought there'd be one of three

Responses, Tim. Even though Iron Man it came out, even though it was my idea to do the MCU Or Marvel, this new Marvel studio is self financed, self producing. And connecting the characters. I wanna come back to it in a second, but I'm gonna go.

Even with all that. I knew Ike might say you're fired. Right on the spot. Or more likely. Get your ass back to the office and work on Iron Man Two.

And other initiatives that we were g doing. As a company. But he said fly to New York. Come see me. And I made a reservation to come right away, like the next morning or whatever.

I rode on the airplane what my Scenario planning would be So he was open minded to it once I got there and made the case. Wow. Okay. So you didn't he didn't lop your head off. Didn't march you off with the guards.

Well that I mean that speaks to Seems to speak volumes to his character and presence of mind to be able to Mentally having committed for so long to not selling nor even entertaining the possibility of a sale.

To Endure the cognitive dissonance. of considering it as an option. I mean that's no small feat. Yeah, and I I think that's a trait I saw Nike all the way through. He's notorious for being very fiscally conservative.

And some people mistake that for not being supportive of major decisions. And he did hire me and gave me a chance. With Marvel Studios. And here he gave me a chance. He still wasn't convinced, but he at least wanted to hear my case. It took a while to convince him.

And then the major thing was Bob and Ike had to get together. And so in the meeting with Bob, I remember Bob said What do we need to do? He even asked me, What do you want out of this, David?

And I said, No, no, you have to make Ike happy. That's the person that has to be convinced. And I had Basically,

Understood from Bob that If I didn't want to do something that This wouldn't go anywhere. So I arranged a meeting in New York where Bob came to the offices at like nine o'clock at night and he and Ike I let them go to dinner. I kept back and I didn't ask to go and

And they had a wonderful dinner and I think this is public. Bob had Steve Jobs call Ike. And talk to him how well Uh preserve Pixar's culture.

After the sale. So all of that really helped, you know, get this across the finish line. Incredible. What a story. Wow. What a wild adventure. How does Ron Burkel fit in as your mentor. In all of this.

And maybe just in a snapshot explain just enough. background so that people can sort of conjure image of someone. Ron is most famous for owning Ralph's Grocery stores. He started as a bagger. And became a

The owner and Became a billion through that and other investments and he's notorious as a very savvy investor and a very Hard businessman to, you know, in terms of the terms that he requests.

For investments and We met I don't know exactly where we met, but I think we met At one point when he was interested in buying Endeavour. When I was working with Ari in the early days.

And that deal didn't go anywhere, but Ron and I became friends and then he watched my career. At Marvel and The relationship grew deeper, he also Was

We had mu Leo as a mutual friend. And so we had social acquaintances in common as well. The intersection with the Marvel story is I was at his house for a party that night when the when the box office came out. The night before Iron Man came out, we actually Kevin and Robert and John and I went to theaters together.

To see the Thursday night shows, and that was a blast because it was the first time we saw. a live audience watching the films. We didn't test market these movies at all. That was exciting. We wanted Robert to sell tickets, but they wouldn't let us have him do that. Why didn't you test mark it, I'm curious. So no test audiences. It's very atypical.

We could have really blown this, Tim. I mean I mean we we went a lot with our instincts and um The collective group and I'm trying to remember if we ever had one. I don't recall it happening. So you mentioned

The dinner. The turning point dinner with Bob and Ike. And then a a lesser known fellow named Steve Jobs. Right.

And uh then we know how that story in a sense Ends at least. from the public perspective, which is in the successful acquisition. Are there any other points along that path that you would like to Mention

I think from a deal perspective, besides negotiating The percentage in Disney stock. We were pretty close to what Bob and I spoke to in that first meeting. And then it became about keeping Marvel as a separate company. within Disney. So the culture didn't get messed up.

And I specifically Wanted to step aside. And I Told Bob about Kevin. How I thought he could run.

the Marvel entity within Disney in a uniquely great way. And then Bob got to meet Kevin. And see for himself. And so that was a big part because Personally, I wanted to go on to different ventures and different parts of my life. And selling to Disney allowed me to do that.

In a very clean way. Both financially with other shareholders uh to be able to afford that and then two Easier to leave a company when it's a division of a bigger company. And by itself. So that for me was personally.

In addition to the deal time, it was sort of exciting to think about my next venture and scary. They didn't quite know who I was outside of My role at Marvel. And uh what that person would be. But besides that the deal went through

Pretty well. And the price of it we got four billion dollars. Which is about three point eight. billion more than the price when I joined. And

We ran a lot of scenarios when I presented to the board in two thousand four. But the main scenario valued the new studio. as potentially in the three to four billion dollar range. And It came out close enough to that.

And you know, our comic division And other things had not really grown too much. our toy division we went from Making toys to licensing, which was sounds like a minor thing, but it was big at the time. But pretty much it was

A lot of people now, I guess, are hearing Marvel Studios was a startup within the parent company of Marvel. But it was one that had to raise its own money. It got the IP from the parent company. But other than that, we had to manage it, raise our own money, do our own deals and

I was speaking to a tech entrepreneur this past weekend in Florida from one of the biggest tech companies in the world and He was very intrigued about how Marvel Studios was a startup just like his company was at the time. I think this may be a

Logical place. to begin to wind to a close with this first Chapter. Of our Ongoing conversation. Okay.

I wanna do a bit of teasing, so next time But broadly speaking, I'd want to talk about Some of your adventures outside of Marvel and Disney. So Angry Birds.

and other things, including Ecosgenesis which We will talk about at some length. And Also how people might think about

Building A universe. Constructing a universe of characters. What are the necessary steps, common mistakes, et cetera. that you might be able to share as lessons learned or things observed. And

I would say I'll ask you Two of my Favourite Rapid fire questions. The answers don't need to be rapid fire, but The questions are intended to be short because I can be very long winded with my like seventeen part questions. This lead up is an example of that. So the first question is

What books if Any have you gifted the most to other people. Or recommended the most. That come to mind or gifted a lot or recommended a lot to other people. Are there any books that come to mind?

The book I recommend to people the most is Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. But I'm not sure that's a good book. Yeah. I'm not sure that counts really that counts. Yeah. Classic and awesome. Yeah. And it's an incredible book. It's probably the live action movie

I would most like to make As an individual movie. You know what I mean? Which could be interesting. Yeah. That could be interesting. All right. Let me ask you maybe a close cousin of a question, which is not one of my rapid fire, but

Are there any properties, characters? stories that you're not thinking of pursuing yourself. That you just hope someone excellent out there. makes into a film or some type of immersive world outside of its original format.

I love how you said film or some other type of immersive world. I think that's very savvy, by the way. And we can get into that in the next discussion because I don't believe launching the next universe is gonna happen like Marvel did through theatrical film. I think it's gonna start with something else. And and most likely will because of the way the world has changed. So I think the question and the topic

As a tease for this next thing, when I left Marvel. I had to figure out who I was. From a person point of view, like would people still want to talk to me if I wasn't running Marvel Studios, right?

But I still be able to go to restaurants and things like that. Who my real friends were. And then from a business point of view, what would Catch my eye. And what I'd say is because

Of Marvel within Disney. And the power of the two together, and because of how well Kevin has run Marvel since. Marvel's gotten so big. That the bar to launch a new universe. Has gotten so high and so much tougher.

Because now you're competing. Against Marvel. So when I launched in two thousand and eight, Iron Man We had DC as a competitor. We had the Marvel licensed movies, you know, Fox with X-Men. Sony with Spider Man.

They were not just competitors, they could use the Marvel Grand. So they were like weird competitors. We were scared about all these people. But in retrospect, we had a relatively open playing field'cause we didn't have ourselves to compete with. The version of Marvel today?

Лич дом'ссома, Streaming. We didn't have as much social media. All these other distractions on people's time and It was tough, but it's like in you know, it's the old saying, like how good we had it, you know, we didn't realize

Still very tough, but Now it's even harder, so something that goes through the filter you're talking about. Has to і прити спешо To

hop into what you would call a universe category or major potentially new mythology. And I'd love to talk about that more because it is something That a lot of people do ask about and a lot of people are focused on. Obviously, DC just hired a new person. To run D C after twenty years of

Of us being able to do what we did at Marvel David Zaslov when he bought Warner Brothers from ATT. Said, I want to copy Marvel. I want to do what Marvel did. But we did that fifteen, twenty years ago. So it shows you even DC hasn't gotten their act together.

In the same way. And that's a very well capitalized company with a large number of properties. So It's very hard. For

a new universe to get created. I don't think it's impossible. But it's gotta be differentiated from Marvel. So that there's a reason that it exists. I think it has to Be introduced in new ways that you sort of tease With new technologies and new ways of storytelling.

Probably has to be way more primal. And visual so it gets People's quick attention, they can see what's there. I think it has to have great meaning, Tim. Marvel had a good meaning in that it's great to be a hero.

And I think People relate to something. That they feel is adding to their lives and somehow whether they Sense it or it's just subconscious.

That's what all mythologies from Greek and Roman onward have done, or before even Greek and Roman mythology. And it has to be something I think James Cameron with Avatar. has probably done the best since Marvel came out. With

Big cultural moments. Now he does things every ten years though. Right. But That was an original idea. I think the next thing Probably

Is a legacy property. But it's still like Marvel, it had history. But it People could discover it together. So it was the perfect combination. And I think people love to discover something with their friends and

The new band or something. in new technology, like there's just something great. You know, I hear you and Kevin talking on podcasts and Two friends discovering things together, whether it be pipe smoking or whether it be something else. And it's like

Hm But there's something fun like pipe smoking is a good example. That's a legacy activity. That we understand our grandparents did and people before them. But it still felt new when you talked about it with Kevin. You know, and Marvel was legacy.

But for most people, they never read the comics. It was new for them to talk with their friends. Did you see Iron Man? Did you see all that? It's like the youngsters these days running around with Nirvana shirts on. I mean it's there's really been this resurgence of grunge popularity. I'm like, Wow, didn't see that coming. That's wild. Yeah, and if there's no legacy, then it's just purely new. Like you can't you don't get into like the geekiness of Like with pipes, how was it done a hundred years ago? And look at this pipe is

Collectible or whatever, you know? Like you don't have all that. And if it's completely legacy, but it's so big. Then there's no thrill of discovery, right? So It's the balance on the scale of those things. You know I think did a really nice job, uh this is within

serialision, but stranger things because they were Tapping into all of these Hot button passions from decades ago. But

at layering on top of that. Novel storylines. I I thought it was executed extremely well. I haven't watched beyond season one, but I I thought, wow, that's a really smart Combination. So I think we just answered the question about new universes by comparing it to pipe smoking and so

Yeah. Any other questions? So David, it's there. I'm gonna I'm gonna skip my other question. I'll save it for next time, which is the billboard question. I'll advise you in advance. So that you have some heads up. But is there anything else you would like to add? Before we Come to a close. Anything else?

You'd like to make a request of the audience, comment, recommendation, philosophical Note or two, anything at all. I appreciate that. And I will think about that also for part two, but I think We went into a lot of details about

What happened in two thousand three. Through the sale to Disney in two thousand ten. Whether it be financing or distribution or the sale. And I think stepping back for a second There was also a simple

Pursuit. Uh Something you really believed in and that you're passionate about in When I think to myself What happens if I

didn't go to Marvel, or if Ike didn't take that meeting or didn't hire me, or if I took the Michael Michael Jackson didn't get arrested. Um Thank God for the timing on that one. Yeah. Not being halfway through that. You know, the butterfly effect of No new Marvel studios for Disney to have, um for

No Avengers movie because one of the things we didn't talk about is If the movies are all licensed at different studios, they never get mixed together. So to create Avengers to mix the characters. We had to own and keep the rights ourselves. And so Just legally.

These character would never be mixed together and there wouldn't be this interrelated universe and And the ripple effect and everything else is so big. And I do think as people think about their lives and they think about their decisions You know, we all have that butterfly effect somehow.

You know, almost every day. And that might not be as evident as no Avengers movie or something as big culturally But it's exciting to realize that your life Has that potential.

In your own personal life. You And you're Focus on health. Had a butterfly effect on me.

Getting healthy recently in these past six months and And a mutual friend hearing that story and introducing us, right? So Even this podcast comes from that. Chance.

event happening. And I Think that's one of the big lessons from that. And

Even if you are just with your family or your friends, like the effect of your actions and everything else. does create all these cool things in life and it creates wonder and awe about what life can be. And sometimes, you know, real Passion and sort of dreams can become reality and

In this crazy world that we live in. That's probably the The the big biggest sentiment I can say to people. What a great place to wrap up also. Here, here. So thank you, David. Uh makes me want to get out there, get after it. Or just sit down and do some doodling because you just never know where it's gonna go. That's true. And these these huge things often start off just as a glimmer. In some handful of neurons and then

Look at where that's led. What a wild story. And people can find you I'll link to all these in the show notes, but on social and other places, they can find you on Twitter at Maze David, that's spelled M A I S E L. David.

D A V I D you they can find uh ecos genesis at Ecos Genesis on Twitter, EKOS Genesis, for people who want a preview of part of what we'll be discussing next time. And the website for that is ekos.io. And so nice to spend time with you, David. I really appreciate you. Blocking at the time. To have this conversation. I I s I feel the same. It it's been a pleasure. Talking through this stuff and um

I look forward to part two. Yeah, more to come. More to come. And for everybody listening, as always, we will have show notes, links to everything we discussed at Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time. Be uh just a bit kinder than is necessary, not only to other people, but also to yourself and As always. Thank you for tuning in.

Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts. guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something think about. If you'd like to try it out Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim dot blog slash.

Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L M N T. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious sugar free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike. And I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low carb, or paleo diet. Or if you drink a ton of water and you might not have the right balance,

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