Hollywood Box Offices Are Back

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1:28Can stay vital, stay you. Visit VitalProteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. He's a Hollywood machine. He is his own Hollywood machine. He's the individual behind our screen time world, behind the screen time newsletter. You can sign up for that at Bloomberg.com slash screen time. We're talking about Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg News, managing editor of media and entertainment.

2:04He joins us from our Bloomberg L.A. situation. Lucas, it's like always sunny and nice out there. So I know you come to New York sometimes, but L.A. is home. But we appreciate you joining us. I want to talk about people going back to the movies this year because this something something interesting is happening. You wrote about this recently. And I'm wondering, one, why people, in your view, are going back to the movies. And two, whether or not this is sustainable. First one is tricky to answer. You know, the good slate of movies, things that people were very excited about. So you had probably highest volume of high caliber summer blockbusters in a long time.

2:48We tried to capture the lessons from those in an essay for Business Week. And it's everything from having an appropriate window, delay between when a movie appears in theaters and when it's available at home, to bringing something fresh and different to the table, which sounds trite and obvious. but Hollywood has been in this pattern of releasing cinematic universes for the last 10 years. And you look at what a lot of the things, a lot of things that worked this year are either new movies that haven't been around in five or six years, something that felt fresh. In terms of whether it's sustainable, I think that just depends on whether Hollywood learns the right lessons from this, right?

3:27You know, are they going to see obsession and instead just make a million different deals with other YouTube filmmakers? Are they going to find the right filmmaker and put the right infrastructure around them. Yeah.

3:39Lucas Shaw:And we're still down a lot, right? From the pandemic, Lucas. Yeah. The, uh, the sales are off. I want to say 10, 15%. Um, the, I should say the revenue is off the ticket sales are off considerably more, but one of the reasons why revenue has recovered is higher ticket prices, the popularity of IMAX, you know, one of the things that seems to happen is there's a little bit of a, enthusiasm around being a cinephile in filmmaking. People are excited about going to see a Christopher Nolan movie in 70 millimeter or going to see Ryan Coogler and IMAX. You said, yeah, you said, in other words, as you write, being a film nerd is cool again.

4:21Yeah.

4:22Lucas Shaw:I have to say, I haven't seen Odyssey yet, but I want to get to it. I'm going next week. I want to get to it in the theater. I really don't want to see it at home. Yeah, but it's 70 mil or just normal IMAX. I don't know. What should we do? You've seen it, right? I saw it in 70 millimeter, no IMAX, which is not what Christopher Nolan would want. I may go see it again in 70 millimeter IMAX. But there are only like 40 screens in the country that have that. So you come to New York, Lucas. Okay. That's what we'll do. There's still. Hey, listen, what I really think is cool is in this story, Businessweek actually polled people, studio chiefs producers talent agents filmmakers analysts and diehard filmgoers on the lessons and one of the things i did think was i want to go to the first one young people still want to go to the theater so it is interesting like we talked about this being kind of cool but it i think we keep thinking that some of these trends you know young people are going to be doing things differently but we still now hear like they weren't going to buy houses well now they are maybe going to buy houses if they can afford them but same thing for the theater they're going back yeah I look there's a feeling that there was a feeling that young people would not be going to the movies anymore uh and that has I think mostly dissipated that was like a that was one of those pandemic era moments where because of the popularity of video games because of all these other entertainment offerings at their disposal people thought that that young people had had moved on.

5:51And I'm still reluctant to say like movie going is as popular with young people as it was before. But I think the notion that young people are just not interested in movies was clearly false. They just are interested in particular types of movies. You know, making Minecraft, which is a property that they love, was something that could get them to go to the theater and get them excited about it. What about this idea of like the YouTubers starting to get into films and these one-offs and if they are one-offs you mentioned obsession uh directed by a 26 year old youtuber back rooms directed by a youtuber i haven't seen either of these films i've heard about especially heard about back rooms um but i'm just curious lucas about what that tells you about where the industry is and and if there's like this if this there's a new route to the big screen or if this is just like this is a you know kind of a one-off yeah i mean look there's a you know, a saying in journalism, three is a trend.

6:48And so if you look at this year, you had this movie Iron Lung from a popular YouTuber named Markiplier that he mostly self-distributed earlier this year that did really well for kind of that type of property. And then you had both Backrooms and Obsession. And so you had three YouTube adjacent films in a row. It's tricky because there have been filmmakers discovered on YouTube for a decade now, if not more than that. So the notion that there is a crossover potential is not new, But I do think when you have three movies hit in the way that they did at the same time that some legacy franchises like Star Wars or DC Comics underperform, it certainly opened Hollywood's eyes.

7:28They were, you know, a lot of producers trying to find the, you know, the next Reddit meme or 4chan meme that could become a movie or that next YouTube star. You know, the truth is, is that each one of these stories is distinct. But I think that for me, the biggest lesson was you took kind of talent and IP that resonated online, that knew how to speak to an audience, and then plugged them into the system in a way that gave them the freedom to sort of stay true to their vision, but had all the intelligence and bells and whistles of a proper Hollywood release. And to me, that's the right formula.

8:09Lucas Shaw:Do you agree that audiences really want happy endings? I mean, I kind of do. I do. I do, too. I feel like there's enough stuff in this world that kind of stresses me out that when I go home, I want a happy ending. I think that Hollywood fell in love. Part of this was a result of television where, you know, particularly after House of Cards on Netflix and maybe Breaking Bad, but I'll get back to that. People fell in love with this idea that, like, nobody had to be likable. And it was fine to make projects about all of these kind of loathsome figures. But if you think back, and this is more television than film, if you think back about the antiheroes of that first era of the golden age of TV, Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Walter White from Soprano's Mad Men and Breaking Bad, respectively, these were folks who were very flawed and in many cases kind of despicable.

9:05But you were rooting for them. The series did a really good job of making you care about them. And you almost like felt bad, but you couldn't help but kind of want to see them succeed or do well. And I think we tilted too far away from that, where there were projects that were just very dark and bleak and depressing and where nobody was redeemable. And that just ultimately is going to turn people off. It doesn't mean that everything should be sunshine and rainbows, you know, look at all the problems in the world around us. And I do think people are craving stories that reflect some of those. but they don't want to walk out of the theater constantly feeling depressed.

9:39Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk sports and the connection between sports and Hollywood. You reported this week on Bob Iger and Josh Kushner and their huge purchase of more than$12 billion of the LA Lakers. What was your first reaction when you saw these two? We know these guys are close and Iger's been an advisor to Thrive, But what was your reaction when you saw this duo team up to buy the Lakers? I mean, my first reaction would involve an expletive that you're not going to want me to say on the show. So I'll just skip that one. Really? Let's just say it was a surprise. I'll leave it a mystery as to which one, which four-letter word.

10:20It was a surprise. You know, Mark Walter had bought the Lakers just less than a year ago at this point. and I think Laker fans which I am more excited about the idea that the owners of the Dodgers and the Dodgers have been one of the best run franchises in all professional sports since the Guggenheim group took over that they would sort of apply that formula and fairy dust to the Lakers because the Lakers had struggled a little bit the last few years it's hard in pro sports being owned by kind of a family where their entire net worth is tied up in the team because they just don't have the resources that some of these massive new ownership groups have.

10:58At the same time, my main takeaway was, man, Mark Walter must be in trouble because there had been reporting by Bloomberg and by others about some of the investigations into his kind of insurance company and how he was moving money around. And I just find it hard to believe. And again, I don't have the inside track on this, but I find it hard to believe that he would sell the team that quickly if there wasn't something precipitating that. And we've had reporting since then on kind of his need for cash. As for the Kushner-Iger duo, you know, we knew that they were trying to get an NBA team and have been trying to do things in sports.

11:35It's a little bit of an odd combination. You know, in particular, like when I think of Bob Iger, he's probably one of the most prominent Clipper fans in Los Angeles. So the idea that he's now going to be the owner and face of the Lakers is a little odd. But we also know that he, as the former CEO of Disney, was sort of looking for that next act in some way to stay in the public eye. And this is a good one for him.

11:57Lucas Shaw:Hey, before we wrap up, just got about a minute or so to go. Bloomberg Screen Time, the live event coming up. Yeah. September 30th, October 1st in LA. We're going to be there. One of our favorites. I think it's fair to say. It's an incredible event, I have to say. It all kicks off on the evening of September 30th. Anything you can tee up for us or how you're thinking about kind of content and the creators of content and how it's delivered and all that good stuff? I mean, look, we have one of our certainly one of our best lineups yet. We've got a couple of returning champions or guests, Netflix co CEO Ted Sarandos and NBC use Donna Langley.

12:34We've got a bunch of new people like Dana Walden from Disney and the head of HBO, Casey Bloys and Jerry Cardinale, who's involved in one of the biggest shareholders in Paramount. So I'm sure the Paramount Warner fracas will come up quite a bit. You know, we've got one of the mayoral hopefuls in LA. So I imagine if the ramen, so I know we're going to talk about sort of production flight leaving Los Angeles and what the city and state can do to leave or keep it there. You know, we'll talk about AI music with the CEO of Suno, Mikey Shulman, who's someone that my colleague Ashley Carmen and I just profiled.

13:05So we'll touch on a lot of different topics.

13:07Lucas Shaw:All right. Well, we're certainly looking forward to it. And thanks so much for carving out some time as we get ready to head into the weekend. Lucas, be well. Thanks. Yeah. Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg News Managing Editor of Media and Entertainment joining us out there on the West Coast.

13:25Next week on Leaders with me, Francine Lacroix. I speak with Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill about what CEOs need to know to be successful. It really is not about them. It is about the organization. About how to lead in the age of AI. That requires a lot of confidence. And why great leaders embrace conflict. You need to amplify difference. Listen and watch Leaders, the podcast with me, Francine Lacroix, on Bloomberg TV or wherever you get your podcasts.