Netflix Says AI Will Make Films 10% Better. Meanwhile, New Study Reveals Bias Against AI Involvement

0:00In this episode of the Denoise podcast, what Netflix thinks of AI. Do people really like AI-generated stories? And what Ryan Coogler's special sinners deal means for Hollywood. Let's get into it.

0:14Hello, Eddie. Welcome back, Joey. Thanks. Good to be back here. Another week. You see this story about a humanoid robot half marathon in Beijing. How could I not see it? It's all over the internet. Yeah. Yeah, they ran a race with a variety of different humanoid robots. 21 robots ran along with thousands of people at a half marathon in Beijing. The winning robot came in at two hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds. That's pretty good, right? If you compare it to a human runner? I think, I don't know, average. I mean, this was a half marathon, not a marathon. Oh, half marathon at two hours is probably not that great.

0:49I mean, I'd say that decent-ish, you know, for a casual runner. Good job on the robots, but good job on the people that had to like basically run with the robot with a leash and kind of keep up with them. also apparently there was a battery change as well okay i was just gonna ask i was like that's great battery technology right there yeah yeah what do we think of all this joey i mean it's just progressing you know like it's a humanoid thing that can move i would say a marathon is not the i don't know what it's really testing it along from durability and endurance yeah even with that the battery power wasn't long enough to keep going but why do these things happen in china and not here i think that's a better question i think yeah why are we not just having fun robot marches the closest thing we had was like deadly robots that fight each battle bots battle bots yeah like after battle bots like what 10 years ago we saw the the vegas show there was the vegas show with an ai they have a not a dinner show but a vegas night show now that spun off from the re-emergence of the tv show but i when i was watching it i did feel a little like ai the movie when you know in that scene when they have like the robots like fighting each other and you kind of just feel bad for the robots and like watching this now after like ai and robots and everything which like i feel kind of bad i yeah and then uh did you see that video of like a humanoid robot that a bunch of office employees were kicking around oh yeah i was like what yeah and i see that's the trade shows too with the robot dogs and like they're like look how durable it is they like they're kicking it in the hot in the in the aisle way and i was like i get you're showing the durability but i still i still feel bad yeah also i'm just trying to keep in mind that you know in the future with the robot overlords that you know they remember that i did not kick the robots the memory it's all in cloud storage somewhere it's not going anywhere also yeah speaking of that the uh you see the other story about please and thank you oh with uh sam altman and chat gpt yeah that he was saying that people saying please and thank you in the chat is costing them millions of dollars of compute power okay because i'll well yeah that's probably in the millions if not billions yeah but i just want the door to know that i was nice and polite in the future again like sorry it's costing more compute power but i want them to know that i was being you know polite A couple of things here.

2:54First, do you think there will be a PETA equivalent for robots, human robots, when, like, in a society we have enough robots and you see mistreatment of robots, do you think there will be a bunch of humans that are like, yo, man, stop kicking those robots? That's a good question. Yeah, probably. I mean, especially too, as like with the rise of AI and these like kind of AI relationship chatbots, like horror happens and people will fall in love with AI. And, you know, if you put the AI in an actual like humanoid robot. Then you start to have real connections. Yeah, I could definitely see a robot PETA.

3:27On the flip side, do you think there will be the sort of destroyer of robots society? Yeah, that will never go away. Yeah. Still 100%. If it's not robots fighting each other or some like mech suit kind of thing. I mean, it's the same thing with humans. We have MMA, you know? Yeah. Okay. It's like chicken cockfighting. Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe that's like arguably worse because it's like, well, you know, and dogs and that stuff. They're not consenting to, you know, wanting to be in a fight. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the humans, it's like, they know what they're getting themselves into. Yeah. Okay.

3:55Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. It's a big denoise tangent. Feel free to edit this out. No, we'll keep the riffing in here. But all right, let's go to our actual first story. Netflix Q1, they came, they had their earnings call, you know, the numbers and stuff. But the interesting thing was a couple of comments from Ted Sarandos. So in the earnings call, someone did ask about AI and what their thoughts about AI. And they also referenced the James Cameron. Okay, I see the quote here. Yeah, they referenced the James Cameron podcast interview where he said, you know, he wanted to use AI to reduce costs by 50%, not reducing staff, but just to reduce your overall production costs.

4:27Yeah. Ted Saranda said, I remain convinced that there's an even bigger opportunity if you can make movies 10 % better and use AI to make movies 10 % better. Their talent today is using AI tools to do set references or previs, VFX sequence prep, shot planning, all kinds of things that make the process better. And he also gave an example of Rodrigo Prieto. On the de-aging and face swap. Yeah. And how when they did it with the Irishman five years ago, it was extremely cumbersome, expensive. Yep. And then now they just did another shoot. Was it probably metaphysic AI, I'm guessing? I don't know. I don't know if they're just their own process or something that was a fraction of the time using AI power tools.

5:03And I think the 10 % number is such an understatement for an organization like Netflix. They can easily achieve a higher efficiency number with the in-house investment in AI that they already have. You know, you talk about, we talked about just like assembly cuts being put together by AI. I think just that in itself will get you like a few percent efficiency. Yeah, especially for a show like their big marquee shows, you know, like Love is Blind or Love Island is Not Enough. Yeah, they have a lot of reality shows. Yeah, at which they shoot tons of cameras, tons of footage all day long. And so like being able to sort through that faster saves production costs.

5:41And then, yeah, on the more sort of nuanced, complex VFX work, I think the jury is still out on what the actual number is. and a lot of VFX artists will push back and say, okay, AI is not the answer because how do you clean up AI versus you have full control over traditional computer graphics because you can go back to the geometry, adjust the geometry, go back to the shader, adjust the shader. But if something is generated, how do you regenerate it with that fine, small control nuance? Yeah, the jury's still out on the VFX side, but I will say there is so much tedious work. Like I talk about rotoscoping all the time and relighting.

6:17there's room for a few percent efficiency in VFX, a few percent in pre-production, and a few percent in editing. Yeah, and ultimately, I mean, it's interesting his argument is like he wasn't talking about numbers, he was talking about like it'll make it better, but I think what he means is like we can make either the same or better films and reduce our costs. 100%, and then, you know, tying it back to what James Cameron said about making movies at 50 % of the VFX cost, like that is so accurate unfortunately in today's landscape where we just don't have a box office right so everything overall has to just come down to a new ceiling however the audiences are really acclimated to the quality we've been delivering as an industry for the last 30 years with traditional vfx all of a sudden we can't have a 50 reduction in quality we need to have the same output one thing exactly yeah we're expecting the same but the money is just not there to spend on the same And it also ties into what we talked about last episode too, when it was Davy Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, people being like, you know, look, this looks so great.

7:20Why does it not, you know, this was 10, 15 years ago. Why does it not look like this today, you know, CG? And it's like lower budgets. Yeah. Not enough time. Exactly. Not enough time that they gave them to do that. Yeah. I mean, you go back and look at the box office for Pirates of the Caribbean, like the first or the second one versus like the latter ones. I'm sure there was a little bit of a drop off there as the market was adjusting during that franchise. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that made me think of too, because you can make the same film, maybe with a smaller budget, but hopefully that also opens up opportunities if they're still doing the same annual spend that they can make more content or acquire more content.

7:54Yeah. And one interesting note that they dropped in the call, they said the most buzzy titles that you're hearing tons of conversation around, those still drive less than 1 % of viewing on Netflix. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so that sort of led into, you know, the discovery recommendation abilities are really critical you know for them to surface content to people and what they want to watch yeah but i thought yeah there's something that like everything that's still just how massive their library is and how varied the viewing is and that even the big title films projects 100 series that you hear of is one percent of their viewing yeah if you look at the latest like whatever stranger things newest season or you know one of their big original properties newest season people binge through that in a day a few days and then what and then you have to still fill their plate if you will for the next 29 days of the month and so netflix just needs to just keep feet yeah and a lot of people won't watch the same film twice now that there's so much selection yeah netflix is known about the turning game yeah for a while and you know that's why they built up so much content because it's like yes they need to keep people sticking around after they watch stranger things or whatever new season is out if something they wanted to see that they don't cancel their subscription and wait until the next time which i think is an issue that like apple tv had where it's like you know people wanted to see severance but it's like they don't have enough stuff to keep people sticking around so people cancel their apple subscription and then now apple i don't know if you saw this it pops up on your iphone apple's like bring bring us back sale or whatever it's like 2.99 a month for three months because it knows you canceled you watched that last show no i didn't get that i didn't i didn't because you're a subscriber i supported okay but they also got me with the bundle they got me with the bundle thing that one apple tv or apple yeah i know the music the tv the it was like enough like i don't use the fitness app it was like enough things bundled in it where i was like it seems like it you know the iCloud storage it was like enough things where it's like okay you got me with that where it's like yeah it makes enough sense uh rather than buying each thing individually uh just a quick shout out on the bundle verizon has a amazing bundle for i think 20 a month where they put in like hulu netflix and a couple other things so check it out if you have a rise and shout out to your former uh you're still you're still in the Verizon mode.

10:04I think I still have the employee discount. And yeah, there's a couple other interesting things to just talking about acquiring video or if they would get into the video podcast space. And yeah, they also said some interesting stuff about YouTube because they're asked about kind of creator-led content and what we've talked about before with YouTube for taking watch time on TV, you know, versus Netflix. And it's not necessarily Netflix versus other streaming platforms, but Netflix versus YouTube. Yeah, it's an interesting delineation. And I think Ted Sarandos is so smart to draw just a clear line in the sand saying that, hey, YouTube can have the user generated content.

10:40That's their game. And obviously, it's going to be bigger because there's just a ton more UGC out there. But we're going to stick to premium storytelling, you know, stuff that's made, quote unquote, professionally. And that is our game. And, you know, we always wondered, like, you can put premium content on YouTube as a creator. You can charge subscriptions for it. YouTube tried their originals once or twice. I remember that, yeah. Yeah, YouTube read. You don't see it the other way. Like Netflix is not experimenting with user-generated content. No, I mean, they're in that space more purely from a marketing perspective.

11:13Like same with their kind of podcast. You know, they have podcasts, but they tie into Netflix series. They have a variety of YouTube channels kind of focused on verticals and niches like anime and maybe true crime. Yeah, they have a platform. Comedy, big comedy platform, Netflix comedy platform. But it is content in itself, but it's like it is only serving the purpose to drive people to the full platform on netflix yeah and uh i think it's called to doom they have like a whole yeah they're like a newsletter and uh like that's its own youtube like universe and by the time a podcast like maybe one day we'll be on netflix by the time a podcast gets to netflix it is no longer user-generated content it's polished as heck you know it's as professional as it gets yeah yeah it still feels like youtube is the feeding ground you can yeah launch you could generate i think there'll be more opportunities because the tools and what you need to make something look professional yeah is getting more and more accessible yes obviously as we're talking about with ai and all that the tools that are being available so you know if you have a good story to tell if you're a good storyteller you don't need to have a huge budget to do cool things yeah but i still think it will probably be like you can prove yourself on youtube there are definitely plenty of monetization options to build a full-fledged media company and survive on YouTube.

12:26You can never have to touch Netflix. You can just be on YouTube. And then when it makes sense, you know, if Netflix does come knocking or something like Amazon with Mr. Beast, and it's like, oh, we'll just give you like more resources or a bigger platform than, you know, you'd normally have. And, you know, maybe that makes sense. Like there is Miss Rachel, which went on to Netflix. Yes. Makes sense. Lily Singh was on Netflix. Yeah. Yeah, she had a show. She had a late night show. Okay. Might have to fact check that one. I know she definitely did do like, I think it was like one season. It just didn't work out, but it was like a late night talk show.

12:58Maybe she had a standup special or something. So, I mean, with everything Ted Sarando said and what James Cameron covered in the Boss podcast, what are your thoughts on where we're heading? It's more of the acceptance of AI as a tool and figuring out how this can fit into existing pipelines and how it could be used to speed up artisans. You know, I don't think anyone wants to replace or like lay off people. Right. They just want to make more. Make more. With the same resources. Yeah, cost. I mean, maybe it just is like less work time or production time, but they're still kind of similar size crew.

13:29But yeah, it's like all of the talk, none of the talk is like nothing that anyone is saying is like, oh, we're, you know, we're going to use AI to, you know, generate a fully personalized short form series on Netflix, like just for you. And it's just going to be a AI generated program just for you. You know, none of the talks around that. It's all just like, how can we fit this into our existing workflow to just make things run more efficiently? Yeah, it feels super short term and financial goal oriented, which is, I think, very in line with what technology can do today. And then speaking of AI, our next story.

13:59Okay. It's interesting. So there was a study where basically they were asking people, would you prefer a human ridden short story or an AI generated short story? And people overwhelmingly said they would prefer a human ridden short story. Of course. But when tested and given short stories, blind sample studies, and not told which one was AI generated and which one was human generated, they could not tell the difference and did not have a preference. Yikes. Yeah, I mean, depends on the level of storytelling and the type. Yeah, there's a lot of caveats here. I think like those romantic novels that are just, authors are just pumping out one book every week.

14:36Or the real short stuff, the vertical cinema stuff, telenovela stuff. Like, yeah, that can be written by AI. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I know those are still, I believe, human-ridden. Like, you need that, you know, you need to make sure you nail those hooks and get people sucked in correctly. There's definitely an art to making it really well, but at the very basic level. For me, it just doesn't say necessarily anything about the story itself. It just feels like this negative bias around anytime people hear something like AI was used in something. Yeah. Like we saw with the Brutalist and Respeacher.

15:09Yeah. You know, like we've seen with other things. And I think what this just sort of confirms and what I think is going to happen is just, you know, like the Netflix and the, you know, they're going to keep experimenting and trying to use AI tools. They're just not going to talk about it because why are they going to talk about it if like, Like, people have a very little understanding of how this stuff actually works. And if they just hear AI and then they instantly have a negative reaction to it and are like, nah, this must be crap. This is an AI slop. It's like, you don't know what you're talking about.

15:36Right, right. No, it's almost like a cultural bias that's prevalent throughout society at the moment. Yeah, there's just this sort of backlash against it without understanding anything that's going, like what the actual process was. I mean, I'll say like, there is a lot of AI slop out there. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of AI theft out there. All the Studio Ghibli stuff just didn't do AI any favors. No, no. And that, yeah, that doesn't help either. But it's, and I think that, you know, it comes back to something I've been saying a lot, where it's just like, you know, we also just need better language to clarify, like, you know, AI generated where you're Studio Ghibli-fying something and it's just like a complete AI output versus you used it for rotoscoping, you used it for, you know, modifying some speech or you used it - Pika editions.

16:20Pika editions, right. where it's like just yeah you know this thing in vfx like the octopus thing we did on the table like i went over this like that would take somebody weeks yeah and yeah it's still i mean it was a demo like test shop but like yeah if you're like actually filming your story or doing something it's like oh i need to add a spaceship here and it's like you know i could not afford to do that yeah you know it's like i'm using it as a tool as part of my bigger story exactly the whole film was not AI generated. Yeah. Or taking an existing story and using AI to accentuate, you know, arc act to add an extra character or like modify things that you otherwise wouldn't have time for or just need to hire more people to do.

17:02I don't know. Yeah. And I mean, I've talked about this too, where it's like, I think a lot of times when it comes down to like smaller productions or other things, and it's, you know, using AI in the process, a lot of times it's not like, oh, it's like uh are we using ai or are we like gonna hire someone to do it you know a lot of times like there is no money to hire someone no and so it's either like we either don't do it at all yeah or we we can't hire someone and so you know i think like ai i see it as like like a solution for a lot of things where it's like you just couldn't afford to do it any other way yeah it goes back to the robert robert rodiga's seven thousand dollar budget full air mariachi he was on the lex friedman podcast he talked about it again he was like i only shot one take and i had no idea what the exposure of the film looked like and that's all i had the money for so you have indie filmmakers that are literally put into a corner they either make this movie and make it in general or they burn out or it doesn't exist yeah so those for those folks i think ai is absolutely going to be embraced yeah for sure and yeah i think across the board it's just like the very like high scale It's like we have the stuff, you know, Cameron and Sarandos were talking about.

18:10Yeah. You know, but yeah, for on a more accessible scale for the YouTube creators or even just independent filmmakers. 100%. And, you know, a movie studio business like Netflix or, you know, Disney, like it's still a business and businesses still have people that look for efficiencies and reduce costs. And of course, they're going to look at it in that lens, right? Which is the 10 % number and the 50 % number. Yeah. I would rather we lean into AI more and figure out a way to use that to also bring back production to LA than have some complete anti-AI stance and then also watch all of the productions leave California because they're going to cheaper tax incentive.

18:49Yeah, that's such a good point you bring up. I think the only way we'll be able to do that is if we have true AI movie leadership here. And as far as like, you know, who's the Ryan Coogler of AI movies in the next 10 years? Is that person here in LA now? Are they talking about their ideas, exchanging information here in this town? Yeah, I'm sure they are. I mean, we've seen a bunch of AI-centric studios. I know AI LA had a whole report released of like AI-centric studios. and, you know, I mean, a lot of them, I think the ones that are going to work are people that came from a more traditional background, you know, because it's like now, it's like the AI tools are getting good enough, but you need to bring in that traditional understanding of just, you know, good storytelling and good, you know, being able to direct using the cinematic language to make a film.

19:35And you're just, you know, instead of filming or, you know, creating every shot in Blender or something, you're, you know, using a combination of AI to help speed up the process. Yeah, LA is by far the Silicon Valley of the movie industry. And what I mean by that is like, we're technologically like years ahead of any other region in the world as far as M &E tech goes. That's why you and I are here. We're doing this podcast here. So I remember riding this wave in virtual production back in 2020, right before the pandemic, even end of 2019, when the Mandalorian season one was being built out. They were putting up the stage in Manhattan Beach.

20:11I remember a few of my friends leaving their current jobs going to ILM for this new thing that they weren't able to talk about I mean we were like two three years ahead of you know somebody in South Korea getting a stage somebody in London getting a stage and all that stuff being built out around the world I see the same with the AI you know we have the AI LA we have like guys like Dylan and the wizards that can actually make AI movie making happen. The Netflix AI engineers, I'm sure a lot of them are around here. We're going to be a few years ahead and then that'll get scaled and deployed to the rest of the world.

20:47Yeah. I think AI itself is such a broad category, broad application. Obviously it applies to way more stuff than M &E, our little tiny bubble. But I don't think the productions are coming back. I think the adaptation of AI in a professional filmmaking workflow and to make it work is going to happen in LA. I agree with you 100%. Just like, you know the automotive industry like once the factories leave detroit it's not coming back to detroit but detroit is still the epicenter of the automotive industry like have you been to the detroit auto show like that is the number one auto show for the industry and then all like even hyundai kia whoever develops uh prototypes and cars they always have detroit plates on them because they're registered to michigan you know all of the r &d a lot of the r &d is still doing it there yeah yeah I did the Ford factory tour when I was there.

21:34Like, yeah, I, I like, you can't fight the tax incentives by putting on our Texan. It'll help, but it won't bring it all back. Cats out of the bag. Yeah. But I would still rather fight for that. Yeah. A hundred percent. Like it shouldn't be an unfair fight. You know, like we should have equivalent tax credits and the production should choose. Yeah. Right. It's an option. Sure. A lot of times it won't make sense to film here. Right. You know, like the Rob Lowe thing. yourself out it's just crazy yeah like that shouldn't happen yeah where it's cheaper to ship the entire team to ireland to shoot something shiny floor show or that has absolutely nothing to do with any word production any location geographic location it's just you know physically cheaper to be there yeah yeah the one of the last thing that has come up with me with ai too on the flip side is or two things one is general public now just groups ai with cgi like i've talked to so many like a handful of people just like non-film people and you know whenever they're talking about a visual effects scene or something, they're just like, yeah, you know, I don't know, there's like AI CGI thing, like the wild robot, you know, like, oh, yeah, was that AI?

22:40Oh, no. And so that was so handmade. I think in our industry, you know, we do get very tied up on the specifics of the lingo and, you know, AI and what, you know, where the artistry comes in. But general population. Yes. Does not know or care. I mean, did they enjoy the story? You know, did they like the movie? It still comes down to like, oh, did you enjoy it? Yeah, right. Did they really care how it was made not so much yeah yeah that's i think as we transition into more ai tools the general public honestly won't know the difference yeah so you know maybe the ai label does i don't know affect some people's projection but on the flip side on cases where there is no ai involved at all uh people think there is ai which has also happened on some project we're working on now some client projects and we just use some stock footage for like a placeholder for something And then we get a comment like, I removed this AI image.

23:31And it's like, it was just a stock photo. But now people, you know, now like perception of like what's real, what's generated is just completely going out the window. Yeah, we need like a label like Fairtrade AI. Where it's like a little beautiful sticker like Starbucks has on their coffee or something. This is originally human generated. I mean, that's what Asteria is doing. You know, Moon Valley Asteria. Like they're calling their model clean AI. Like that's a thing that they're rolling out as a marketing thing. Oh yeah. Or like you're talking like Firefly. Yeah. I don't know what Firefly, they don't call it clean AI.

24:04They say commercially safe. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Like all those things could be bundled into like. Yeah. Or on the flip side, the Adobe, the content authenticity program to like verify that things are actually shot in the camera. There's another company we interviewed, videos coming out or is out, Open Origins. Okay. Where they're like basically same idea, like run images or run, you know, pictures that you take out of a camera tied into the blockchain a bit. But I think that stuff will come back into play, like we've talked about with NFTs and some of these ideas from Web3 that were kind of like crazy-ish and didn't really take off.

24:35I think some of them will come back. And this was Open Origins was a company that you can run your images or photos through their platform and it gets tied to the blockchain so that you can verify. Yeah. It does like a, it creates like a 3D depth map. You can fake an image, but you can't generate the depth map from a fake image. You can generate a new depth map, which will match the older. That sort of becomes the signature of verifying the image. And then it gets tied to the blockchain. Yeah. And it gets tied to the blockchain. Okay. So people are trying, you know. It's a good attempt. Yeah. It's like, you know, we're going to need it.

25:04Yeah. You know, especially for journalistic endeavors and stuff. Ultimately, like an AI authentication mechanism will have to be rolled out by a giant player in the VFX ecosystem, like Autodesk, Foundry, Adobe, which ties into the tool sets that everybody's already using. Yeah. And then it goes also back to the camera manufacturers. And yeah, I mean, it's going to need to be an industry-wide adoption of protocols to, you know, everyone to be on the same. So maybe it's like a safety or an HPA or industry body like that, that just kind of pushes it out. I'm sure that was, I hope that will be coming in the next few years.

25:38Awesome. We're going to need it. Okay. And then the last story, probably to continue our Sinners trilogy. I mean, we're going to watch Sinners soon on this show and we're going to talk about it. I've been holding out to see it in 70 millimeter IMAX. Okay, I'll just see it in general. I don't care. I'm being picky about this one. But also, I was texting some friends and they're like, oh, you know, we can see it here at 70 millimeter. And then he's like, I watched the Ryan Coogler, you know, 10 minute Kodak film. Like, this is what he recommended. And I was like, wait, no. But that one is a 70 millimeter cropped.

26:13The IMAX is the 70 millimeter uncropped. And he's like, wait, what? There's two different. like it's not as wide it's more of a uh four three aspect ratio it's four three combined with the widescreen panavision so different sequences will like cut between yeah the the aspect ratios but yeah there is a second version of 70 millimeter but the entire film is cropped to the 248 or whatever the no bueno wide screen yeah but i'm like even my friend who is in the industry got confused he's like this is the most confusing way to figure out how to like watch this film as far as all the million different format options.

26:47I just love that the movie switches from like a 4-3 box to a 16-9 box to a one, you know, it's like, I've never seen a movie do that. Even more narrow than 16-9. Yeah. I mean, the Nolan, the Batman films do it. Oh yeah. But not the Panavision wide, which is a much more like an anamorphic, I don't know if it is anamorphic, but it's a much more narrow. 2-7-8. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, the story has nothing to do with that. Ryan Coogler's deal, when he sold the script to Warner Brothers, basically says that he gets to the copyright of the movie reverts back to him after 25 years. That's cool. I've never seen that crazy deal.

27:21Yeah, I think there are a handful of people. I think Tarantino early deal deals with Miramax and then that maintained through when he did Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Okay. But besides that, extremely rare. And I mean, the reason is like the studios, they want their money by building up a library. Yeah. And owning the rights to these films forever and monetizing these films forever that's kind of their business model and so there's like some freak out of is this the end of the studio model because come on because ryan coogler's getting his copyright back to his film how many ryan coogler's out there uh 25 years yeah there uh there's only one ryan coogler yeah yeah i mean i think this is a deal that only a handful of top a-list directors could even get and a lot of studios turn this down yeah because they didn't you know that they didn't want that part of the deal.

28:07Warner Brothers went for it because they're in a position. They outweigh, you know, they did a calculation. They're like, we need this big box office hit now, forget. Yeah, they needed something, you know, they needed a good hit, a good film, and were willing to take to do that. So, yeah, I don't know. What do you, what do you think about it? Again, I see a lot of doom and gloom Hollywood reporting, which, you know, of course, has its grain, you know, truth all embedded in it like yes the industry is in a downturn yes the overall financial model of the studios are in limbo yes people have been laid off yes jobs have been reduced having said that like filmmaking is not dead there's still tons of films being shot even here in LA like you can drive around you see production trucks everywhere I was just at a big uh studio backlot last week and they were shooting another big Amazon show there while I was like, it's still happening.