Our 2025 Winners & Sinners, Plus Box Office Guru Kevin Geotz

24:40He romanced Cynthia Erivo in Wicked for Good. You could argue whether that was effective or not, if you like. But he still gets the win for that. And he looked really cool and smart and had a good time in Jurassic World Rebirth, another huge blockbuster. So we look forward to him.

24:59Ryan Lattanzio:Two terrible movies. But yes, he is. And he's an out gay star. So that is that is both ways. Yeah. Yeah. And so that is unusual. You know, it was a good it's been a good year for in spite of everything going on from a legislative point of view, however you want to diced that. It's been a good year for gay content. I'm sure you've heard about Heated Rivalry. Cannot wait. Nora was halfway through it already, so we couldn't watch it on the trip. Yeah, yeah. To me, that is a YA series that has some prestige sheen to it. I don't think it's that deep or especially well-made, but the actors have really good chemistry.

25:38Ryan Lattanzio:Could TV count as a winner or no? We're just doing film. I actually have a winner that's TV. All right. I'm going to say Heated Rivalry. That's a winner. And that's a winner for the LGBTQ community as well. And a win for hot sex on screen between men. I really am looking forward. That's like my top of the list. The other winner is Focus Features. They not only have Oscar contender Hamnet hanging in at the box office, but they're making some money on mainstream Clara Pleaser Song Sung Blue, as we discussed. And they collected some tidy grosses for Downton Abbey this year, 102 million worldwide.

26:15So they're doing okay.

26:16Ryan Lattanzio:I'm going to say a big loser, Snow White, which at Disney lost the studio reportedly$200 million. Reviews were terrible. It seemed, you know, accusations that it was laundering in a kind of quote unquote woke agenda. I think probably that might have turned some people off. I don't know how online the target audience for the movie is to even pick up on that stuff. But you can see some of those elements on screen. I just there was no reason to make this movie again. and it didn't work. It wasn't really funny or entertaining. The new songs weren't good. It was visually garish, unpleasant, and a total box office bomb, big loser.

26:58I think the reason it did so badly was that as old as it is, it's old-fashioned. It's an old-fashioned movie. It is what it is. They didn't do anything to make it different or to make it better or to make it sing, for a contemporary audience. So they really failed on that front. My sinner is James L. Brooks.

27:21Ryan Lattanzio:Oh, yeah. Yeah. The man should have quit while he was ahead. Old Fashioned, speaking of which, and tone deaf, Ella McKay, is one of the worst movies of the year, a reminder that even the most talented filmmakers often lose touch with the audience. The man behind Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, The Simpsons, has certainly earned whatever gratitude Disney wanted to extend him, but nobody in their right mind should have greenlit that$35 million movie about a rising young politician, British actress Emma McKay. Only Albert Brooks scrapes by. You didn't ever go to it, did you? No, but I am looking forward to it in a campy sense of the way of watching it on a plane.

28:05Ryan Lattanzio:I'm sure it's headed for Delta any day now, So watch it there on a lorazepam. So you have one more? Yeah, my sinner, this one's a little bit cruel because I don't think it was entirely his fault. But I am going to do one more sinner, which is Koganada for the movie that I don't know that you saw either. I don't know anyone who saw it but me because I was assigned to review it, which is this film, A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey, which was a horrible, saccharine, romantic fantasy starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell that involves them time-traveling with a 1994 Saturn SL that has a GPS that is sentient and guides them through all of their formative memories of the past.

28:49Ryan Lattanzio:It's incredibly cheesy. It looks, I don't know, it looks like a commercial. There are even moments that feel like it's an ad for Burger King, which is a main character in this for whatever reason. This movie cost$45 million for Sony and it grossed$20 million. But this is worldwide because it really did badly in the United States. So it's a big bomb. And he didn't Koganada, whose last two movies after Yang and Columbus were both excellent. And he directed a lot of episodes of Pachinko. And so this man has done nothing but spectacular work. And while this does feel like a for hire job, it was written by Seth Reese.

29:25Ryan Lattanzio:He didn't write this one. I mean, he has volition here. He chose to direct the project, so I am going to point the blame at him. Okay. Well, sometimes people make mistakes in a foreign language. I mean, even the great Luca Guadagnino didn't quite recognize what the limitations of After the Hunt were for whatever reason. He didn't see it, you know? But Coconuta's last two movies were also English language. And they were good. Yeah. Okay. All right. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are my last winners. the creators of South Park. And they not only commandeered a massive billion-dollar deal at Paramount for their long-running animated comedy series, but they proceeded to flip the bird at Paramount CEO David Ellison's buddy Donald Trump over and over again, putting him in bed with his tiny penis with the devil, grabbing more attention and eyeballs than they've had in years.

30:25Ryan Lattanzio:Very good, Anne. I couldn't have said it better myself. Is that it? Are we done? We did it. All right. This week on the podcast, we're welcoming as our special guest, Kevin Goetz, the research guru of Hollywood. He was really, you know, remarkably informative and candid about the state of our industry and why things are going the way they are. And so check out our conversation with Kevin Goetz.

30:56Please welcome a man I've interviewed over the years, Kevin Goetz, the CEO of movie testing company Screen Engine. He's worked on thousands of films and is the author of Audiencology and How to Score in Hollywood, which just was released by Simon & Schuster. That's the book right behind you. And he's also a fellow podcaster as the host of Don't Kill the Messenger. Kevin, I have not heard this podcast. I will now check it out. Oh, thank you, Anne. First of all, it's so good to see you. And you and I have had some great exchanges over the years. And I have great respect and admiration for you and what you've done and your contributions to our business.

31:35Thank you. Well, I want you to meet my co-host, Ryan Latanzio, who's in New York at IndieWire. And we're going to pepper you with questions. So you're going to have to bat him back.

31:52Ryan Lattanzio:Well, great to meet you, Kevin. And so my first question for you is, over your career, you've tested something like 5 ,000 movies, is it? Maybe even more than that. How has that process changed over the years? And do you feel that it's, at this point, do you feel it's more or less accurate? it? And especially once AI has entered the picture, is that something that is a sustainable model to replace it or supplement it in some way? Sorry, that's a few questions in one. Right. We call that a double-barreled question in my neck of the woods. Look, I don't think it's changed all that much, meaning, as you know, theatrical moviegoing has not changed all that much in its DNA, meaning people going into the dark, watching what might have started as a square screen moving to a rectangular screen and having a shared experience.

32:45Maybe the seats have gotten better, the snacks have gotten better, and of course sound like that, but nothing really inherently has changed that much. So the testing process is basically polling people on what they think and feel about a movie on a given night in a given location. And it's highly diagnostic and very, very helpful to create the best version of itself. That is the idea of what a test screening is. I do want to just disabuse you of one thing. And, you know, although that audienceology focuses primarily on test screenings and that kind of playability, part of the life cycle of a movie, How to Score in Hollywood focuses much more on the pre-green light.

33:40And Screen Engine is a company that does many, many things, one of which are testing movies. We actually have a slightly larger TV practice. We work in adjacencies. I have brands and a gaming practice and sports, financial services. It's a large company. I have 300 employees and with international offices as well. So I just want to say that we touch many different areas. And the book itself, although it's my expertise and lens is in movies and my first passion is in movies, this really applies to anyone entering a business, this book, and the principles you'll get from this book that's an entrepreneur starting a business.

34:30Because what it really boils down to is asking the right questions before you shoot a frame of film. That's what the thesis of the book is. So to answer your question, though, about test screenings, I don't think it's changed all that much. But the methods of which we collect the data with mobile devices as opposed to paper and pencil has changed. The probing, using AI to go a little deeper into the probing of questions is a benefit. So I think we've gotten a little smarter and a little more sophisticated in how do we uncover some of the reactions. But essentially what you're doing is you're getting reactions of people, how they feel about something, and are they going to advocate or be evangelists for a movie.

35:21So one of the reasons I'm so excited about talking to you, Kevin, is that you really are very, very knowledgeable about our business and how it has changed over the years. And I know you've observed many things. And what your book is doing is helping people to figure out what are the right movies to make in the first place, right? So what do you think Hollywood is doing wrong in terms of the movies that they're making? I know that they pay you to work for them sometimes, so you're going to be a little unwilling to be horribly critical, but we have to observe that sometimes they're not meeting the audience where they should be, I think.

36:03Well, I think that it's not really, I frame it differently and I don't think that's really a fair comment because I don't think they're doing things wrong I think the people that are more successful are the ones that are paying attention to the customer and the consumer more than the people who are trying to live in an old construct and so let me unpack that for you a little. So let's take the series of disruptions that have occurred in our industry over the years. So we start with silence to talkies. That was going to end the movie business. That's how big that was at the time. People don't want to hear them speaking.

36:52It's going to give you too much information, whatever they said at the time. Then it was radio, and then it was television, and then it was Betamax and VHS and DVD, and all can be the death knell of our business. And what happened is more movies begot more movies, and it fed the system. But at the end of the day, even through the cable proliferation of cable and the fragmentation. What happened was the studio, the system was in charge of the consumer's decisions, meaning that these three movies are opening this weekend. You don't like it, lump it. These four video titles are hitting this street date now, and they'll be available at Blockbuster.

37:44If you don't like it, you know, forget it. That's all you got. This is what you can watch on television in the early days of television, three networks, then four networks, then the cable, and it became like, wow, there's so much choice, until the streaming disruption occurred, which I believe changed the fabric of all the disruptions before it, and not necessarily for the worse, but what What it taught me and what it should be teaching the industry and those who have responded, like Netflix, Ted Sarandos and Reed and folks like that, they didn't cause a problem. They listened to the consumer and they were the first to do it.

38:29So look, the consumer is now in the driver's seat. Three things occurred, and I talk about it in the book, three things occurred that had never existed with the confluence of coming together the way that I've seen in ever, which was cost, convenience, and choice. Cost, the value proposition of what does it take to decide if something is worthy of leaving your home and seeing it in a theater, that benchmark has risen dramatically. The idea of cost wasn't even in the conversation 20 years ago. It was, we were brainwashed, and it was true, the lowest cost of entertainment outside of the home. And it might still be, but that doesn't mean it's cheap.

39:23It's expensive to see a movie, A family of four,$80 approximately with concessions and tickets and babysitter or parking. There's other, you know, the whole drill. That's kind of the average point. It's a high 70s number. You could buy four or five streaming services a month for that. So therefore, you're going to be formally judicious in what you're going to want to see. People still want to see movies in theaters. I'm on the board of the American Cinematheque. I love the movie-going experience. I think it's the fundament of the hierarchy, if you will, of our movie business. And I'm hoping it's like that for many years to come.

40:04Is it going to be? Kevin, we have a situation here. No, no, hold on. I don't think it ever comes back to where it was. It's just going to morph and change. Like opera is not dead. Ballet is not dead. Instead, vaudeville, you could say, died, but it moved into theater. I'm just saying there's evolutions, but people still like leaving their homes and going to a movie theater. But, and capital B-U-T, they're going to see far fewer films. And the films that they're going to see, and what I talk about consistently, is the films that are elevated. Now, I'm not judging this. I was just criticized by somebody for saying that elevated movies are the only things that are working.

40:54Well, it's a fact. It's not my opinion. I'm not advocating. I'm not happy about it. In other words, I love seeing the more independent-minded movies. That's my idea of an event, by the way. But most people's idea of an event happen to be big special effects, big sound, big epic adventure, things like that. But elevated could be an elevated drama like Oppenheimer, an elevated horror movie like Sinners, an elevated animated movie like Zootopia, elevated movies, an elevated musical like Wicked. That's why those movies do so well in theaters because they are experiences. businesses. They give the consumer a reason to say, I want to go out.

41:44I'm going to make a date. I'm going to go to see that movie. Remember, you and I, Anne, growing up, were about going to the movies. We had a nostalgic relationship with the experience of going. On a Saturday night, you didn't even know what you were going to say, but we're going to go see a, we're going to have dinner and a movie. People don't do that in the younger generations of Gen Zs and millennials, by and large. They go to see a movie, a title of a movie. And that happened also 15, 20 years ago with television. And people stopped watching NBC or CBS. They watched that show on CBS. They watched that show on NBC.

42:23They watched that show on that cable network or that movie. So the idea of cost, which I just unpacked and I think it began with 3D and with large screen formats where you suddenly were aware of the fact that there is a surcharge for different things. That was never a thing until it was a thing. So that cost became an issue. The convenience, I don't have to tell you how easy it is to watch great content and that leads right into choice. There is so much good content. And people say, well, that's not content. Stop calling it content, Kevin. It's the younger generations who call it content in because, I mean, not that word, but that's how they see it.

43:10They see it as an ecosystem different than the way you and I may see it. They see it as something I want to watch. I want to watch Wicked. I want to watch Stranger Things. They don't necessarily see a difference between those two things. You know, both provide great value and entertainment and joy and fun for different reasons. But it's the ecosystem that I think the ones that are embracing this new ecosystem will survive. The others will be behind the eight ball.

43:40Ryan Lattanzio:Well, as we're talking about attrition in number of films and how that's going to drive audience preferences and the other way around. and movies that are, you know, you named like Wicked, which is a kind of experiential movie that, you know, people went out to see. What were your takeaways from this year at the box office? You know, there was a lot of sequels that didn't work. Something like Tron Aries that didn't land here. You know, something like Predator Badlands that did really well up front and then dropped in the second weekend. And then obviously there were a lot of sequels that did really well.

44:15Ryan Lattanzio:But what were your takeaways from 2025? Here's the skinny, I think, on that. Quality is the new table stakes. The idea of great has taken a different definition. Good is not good enough, which is why our testing business continues to rise, quite frankly, because in the advent of so much content produced, both on the streamers and for the studios, the benchmark raises because nobody wants to see subpar content on any platform. There was a time, and again, Anne, I refer to you because we go back a lot of years, when there was direct-to-video or movies that were a guilty pleasure. Those are few and far between now because there is so much better stuff out there.

45:14You go to a dinner party now. Go around the table. Say there's 12 people around the table. And you go and ask everyone what their favorite show is. 20 years ago, half the table would agree on one show. Now, you're lucky if Half the Table even knows the other shows that people are mentioning. Because everyone has a favorite. And it's really high quality. I don't have enough hours in my life to watch a third of what the people that I love and respect are recommending to me. So I have to be very judicious about that. So quality has taken on a whole new level. So the movies that you're discussing and so forth, you have to reach for what we call top 10 % targets as opposed to norms.

46:02Norms, which we've used for years and years since I began in the business almost 40 years ago at NRG, were essentially a C grade and still are. Norms, that's what it is. Average, C. Well, when is a C good? I don't like using norms. I haven't liked using them forever. There are a couple of studio chiefs right now who won't, don't want me to use norms, don't want to even discuss them. And I have respect for that because they want to look at the top 10 % targets. What should I be aspiring to and towards? Not what can I settle for? That doesn't cut it anymore. So if you can't reach those highest levels, you are at a disadvantage in terms of sustainability legs right there is a correlation between the definite recommend of a movie and the legs that it has in a in a in a theater once it releases so that is to say that if you're at the norms i'm making this up just because it differs on genre, but if you're at a norm, let's say, of a definite recommend, that may be a two and a half times multiple.

47:17That means if you open at 10, you're going to do 25 in your domestic life, right? Two and a half times 10. But if you're 10 points above that norm, you may be at a three times multiple. And if you're at 20 points above the norm, you may be at a four times multiple. Do the math, and that travels through the rest of the ancillary and additional windows because it incrementally gets higher. You're talking tens of millions of dollars. We're not there to try to torture filmmakers. We're there to try to maximize and leverage every ounce of revenue we can get because it is a business. And innately, and I want to say this very clearly, I'm an artist.

48:03That's my DNA. And I hate getting criticized for thinking like, Well, how could you boil it down so, you know, dollars and cents? Well, it's show business. It is business. It is business indeed. So how do you explain, Kevin, the reduction in the number of films that the studios have been releasing over the past few years? I mean, there was excuses from the pandemic. There were excuses from the strikes. But we're way past that now. Well, I think, yeah, I think what I think what's happened with the studios is that it's expensive to make a big movie and it's hard to find a big movie. And the infrastructure of the studios has to be met with a number to meet their – just to pay their bills that requires them not making$5 million or $10 million on a picture.

49:04They need to make$50 million on a picture,$75 million on a picture. So the opportunities are larger swings and bigger returns. And that is, as a result of that, you see more movies that would be made pre-pandemic not being made today because they are mid-range movies that are not going to produce the kind of results that are going to add to the bottom line. So the studio business is very, very fractured in that there needs to be big swings and hopefully there'll be enough of them. But as I said, if you believe what I said, that maybe even more people will go to the movies, but they're going to see far fewer movies, the attention needs to be on creating the best versions of the biggest product from the studios.

50:07That doesn't mean that there's not a great opportunity for the smaller minis and for the smaller distributors to bring content that many of us want to see, but you can't spend a lot of money marketing to them because you're not going to make your money back necessarily.

50:23Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. Well, to that point, you're talking about the mid-range movies. What kind of happened to those? Those are the movies that, I don't know, I personally, I really miss a lot. I think Anne does too. A lot of those are kind of the movies that you're talking about. Right. Those are the ones I'm talking about that are probably not coming back theatrically because they're not events. They don't warrant the consumer in the driver's seat saying, I need to leave my home to see that. Now, you can't say this genre is dead. This genre is dead. Then you have that Sidney Sweeney and Glenn Powell movie that came out and suddenly the romantic comedy that was dead is no longer dead because it did so well or it ends with us despite all the lawsuits and the bullshit.

51:10It was very big at the box office. And it made a ton of money. So you can't say those movies are dead and then have those appear because for whatever reason, they were events. So you've got to, and this book helps try to identify what makes an event an event, what makes a movie elevated. And I thought that was interesting. I thought that was worthy of my second book because I would watch, as you said, Ryan, 5 ,000 plus movies over the nearly 40 years, watching time after time, seeing movies and going, why did they make the movie for that much? Like someone's going to lose a shit ton of money. Someone's going to lose a lot of money here.

51:48And why is that? What are the questions they're asking or more importantly, not asking prior to Greenlight? What could they do better? And spending more money beforehand to save money either in costly reshoots or not leveraging it enough to get a better return is foolish. So I am going to go back to the reference I made earlier and ask you, because you knew we were going to ask you this, what is your take on the possible Netflix takeover of Warner Discovery? I'm going to say that I absolutely cannot and won't comment on that because I am an optimist. And I'm just going to say I believe it's whoever gets it, whoever gets the studio, it will be a positive thing.

52:45I really do. I know our industry is hurting and reeling. And I'm just on the other side of that. I think that there's so much positive that could come out of this. And I'm not being Pollyanna. I have my own feelings about personal feelings about it, which I don't feel comfort bearing because I don't want to influence any side. but I do feel that I am not in sync with others, that it's a disaster. I don't think that's true. I think we're going to find the positive and if not even the positive, even a more robust ecosystem. Because we have to evolve. We have to figure out what works. We have to figure out how to survive, right?

53:35I'm telling you, it is not the death knell. There's opportunity that exists. The scarier play is not about who's going to get the deal at Warner's and what will happen. I think that whatever happens is going to happen. And it is going to be a positive thing because nobody wants to kill that business that's working. I mean, that would be silly. But, you know, and consolidation probably is, you know, in order. But AI, to me, is the bigger unknown that everyone's talking about, but no one really knows what to do with. The fact that I see it every day of my life and have to deal with it every day of my life, I mean, it makes me think like the internet when the internet first came on.

54:26Because remember, I was at NRG for 16 years and left NRG to join a company called OTX, which was doing online testing exchanges, what it stood for. We were the first people led by Shelley Zalas to do and conduct research online. That was done in malls and telephones. And suddenly it was done online. And you had to not only teach people like, hey, come work with us, but you need to eat the other white meat. So we had to train people to also trust that these Internet are as wacky or as good people as they are in malls and on phones, which was hard to do. And coming from that whole experience of online testing and being at that forefront, as challenging and as difficult and as much as you had to pivot, is child's play compared to what I think is going to happen when AI really takes over.

55:31I was with Charlie Rifkin the other night, head of the MPAA, and we were just chatting about at a political fundraiser for Sherrod Brown what the AI legislation should look like. Should it be run by states or should it be run by the federal government? And my comment was, this is international stuff. This is not state level stuff. This is, there's a moral component. Have you seen Catherine Bigelow's movie? Of course. Well, I mean, I was riveted by it. And it's terrifying because that's how AI can be used to the extreme of the negative. But imagine what it's going to do for my mother who never had a cure for MS and died at 59.

56:27or for every disease and cure that could come from it. It's staggering to consider. And entertainment is just a cog in the wheel of all of this craziness. So when we start seeing the possibilities, Anne, Ryan, it's going to disrupt the business. It is going to disrupt it in a way that none of us can even foresee. I'm in the business of having to try to be a futurist, trying to be a visionary because that's my survival. Like I have to think often for people who are in the mud every day, in the weeds every day, and here's what you should expect or think. So that's part of my stock and trade. But man, it's gonna be a disruption like we've never seen.

57:21And I am positive about it. I think that it's gonna be, if you have the right sort of regulations around it. Now, you know, I don't support this notion of any time overtly lifting, stealing IP. That needs to have very strong regulations immediately. Like, if you're going to absolutely rip something off, you know, like you cannot, there's no negotiation there. People have to be compensated for their, you know, what they've created. Well, the question is, where are these regulations going to come from, just as you said at the top? And I don't see where the answer to that is. I don't see the federal government having much to do with it, honestly.

58:04Well, but it's going to be in international IP protection, and it's going to be in what is permissible, and there has to be governing bodies, because how could you do it on a state level? I don't understand that. How could you say, but in Ohio, you can't take this, but in Oregon, you can do this. It doesn't make sense to me because it's all part of the ecosystem. If you look at the satellites in the skies, in orbit, then you get that sort of visual and you say, oh, yeah, that's a little tough to do. So, yeah, you're right. I don't know who's going to do it either. But it has to be broad and and we're sort of all trying to let it shake out a little to see where the most pressing issues lie.

58:55So, Ryan, how should we wrap this up? Thank you for giving us this time, Kevin. I appreciate it. What's our what's our last question?

59:02Ryan Lattanzio:I guess I'm curious to know, OK, so we were talking about Warners earlier and you said you were not going to make a comment, but you kind of did in a way. But unrelated to the potential merger, Warners had a really strong year with Minecraft, Sinners, obviously one battle after another. Superman. Superman, even like Final Destination Bloodlines, Conjuring Last Rites. Obviously, the quality of some of these is objective, but these were all box office successes where we saw Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi make a lot of risks and investments that really paid off after a kind of patchy 2024. so what did you make of this kind of great run of theirs and what other studios might be able to learn from it well number one that mike and pam are pretty fucking smart i mean and they're and and jesse and the other folks that work with them i mean seriously let's just say what it is uh you know and every studio goes through stages of being uh smarter than others.

1:00:02It's cyclical, as we know. It's hard to maintain. But they're both friends of mine. And so by the time that I kept hearing all this negative press that they're going to be out, they're going to be out, they're going to be out. And suddenly they turned it around was so great for me. I felt so good for them. Didn't you, Anne, too? Oh, absolutely. I felt so good for them. I was like, good for you vindicated um it's a hard business you guys it is tough and my small place in this discussion is as an audience advocate and all i can tell you is that they listen to audiences and if you don't, you do so at your own peril.

1:00:52And know that that's how I approach my commentary, my perspective, is trying to be the voice of the voiceless in a way and to say, you know, get smart about the kind of decisions you're making and this relates to the Warner Brothers question. They did. They thought through white spaces. Listen, there was a degree of risk, no question. But, you know, this business is innately risky. I'm trying to, in this at least how to score in Hollywood, I'm trying to mitigate that risk, at least to a certain degree. I kind of talk about the pre-green light is about a 30 % risk mitigation if you comp correctly.

1:01:42Look, when art is created, when you're creating art, it's between the creator and the universe or the creator and the gods. It's not meant to involve an audience, nor should it. But the moment you memorialize it, the moment you have a beat sheet, a treatment, certainly a script, bring the audience in, get their feedback on what you have so that you could size the audience better, thus creating better comps, more accurate, comparable data. So you can budget your movies in a way that is going to bring return to you, more likely bring return to you. Get where I'm going? And some you take risks on, more risk because you have a relationship or want a relationship with a filmmaker because you want them to direct your next movie.

1:02:35I can't speak about that kind of stuff. But I can tell you that audiences won't tell you exactly how to fix something. Steve Jobs was famous for saying, the audience can't tell me, my customer can't tell me what they want. No, maybe not, Steve. May you rest in peace. But they can tell you what they don't like. And they can tell you that this isn't working. And I'm not feeling this or that. And my job is to just elucidate, illuminate those kinds of things so that I can raise pink flags, not necessarily red flags. I can identify yellow flags, not necessarily green, so that you can make more informed decisions.

1:03:19I mean, there is a big debate, and you know this is true, about testing and whether someone like Pam and Mike are actually using their gut, using their instinct, using their taste, God forbid, to make some of these decisions. I'm not so sure that the best decisions are always made in the world that you're describing. They're a combination, Pam. Let me just say that. Pam and Mike are perfect examples, of course. They listen to the audience, but they've got great instincts. But if you're going to just say, dismiss the audience completely, you do so at your own risk. I agree with that. Well, that's what I'm saying.

1:04:01I didn't say anything beyond that. I said that it's to ignore them, to have the arrogance to think that I know all of them. And the old studio muggles did say that. They didn't rely necessarily on, because it was a less complicated world. It was a world where... It was Harry Cohn's ass, right? Well, exactly. Or where you could get away with movies that were good movies, but not great movies. Now you've got to really aspire to that higher threshold. And in my world, it means are people going to advocate around it? Are they going to rally and evangelize for you? That to me is the measure of saying yes to something.

1:04:43Thank you, Kevin, very much for coming. Thanks, Kevin. It was great to meet you.

1:04:47Ryan Lattanzio:Great to meet you, Ryan. Thank you, Anne. Have a good holiday. You too. Bye, guys. Bye-bye.

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