It’s So Not Over for Hollywood (with Devindra Hardawar)

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29:10To the it's over for Hollywood mindset, most often that comes from people who are already invested in AI, either literally in a business sense, financially, or I don't know, ideologically, they're just big supporters of AI and they think that's the way. And you can see the kind of the tunnel vision that would make them say that. But there is pickup. And it's like, I think about Runway, which is a company that we cover that is an AI video generator. They partnered with Lionsgate, I believe. Sorry, a bit of a tangent here is you just mentioned that it would be better or more ethical if these AI video generators were working off their own training data and not stealing it from other people.

29:59And Runway, the story that we did is that they massively, like we proved that they massively stole training data from just like nobody, YouTubers that have like 100 followers, they're using them in the training data. And I believe there was some sort of story where Lionsgate was like, okay, well, we need to not do that. We need to work with our own library of movies. And they realize they don't have enough in their library to provide them with good training data in order to generate videos. So it's not clear how sustainable that business model is unless they determine legally that it's okay to steal from the internet.

30:37The point is Lionsgate, which is a real company that makes real movies, they made a deal. They think that there's something there? Do you think that is just placing a bet that they know that might not work out? Are the executive disconnected from the actual movie market in terms of what people want to see? What do you make of the fact that it's like people are making deals? It's like, we can talk about how much we think this is garbage, but it's happening. I mean, I don't think they know what those deals actually mean, right? Like the entire thing around the industry right now, it's pure FOMO.

31:12It's all FOMO. And especially it's rich people being like, Like, am I missing out? Am I losing because I'm not investing in AI? It feels similar to the whole Web3 and crypto boom and NFT boom from several years ago where Matt Damon was out there selling NFTs, like selling crypto stuff. I don't know how much they care about that right now. They got paid for it, you know? But we saw game studios and even, I think some movie studios, consider the idea of crypto stuff and what they could do there. And it just felt like fun, right? None of that led to anything useful for society or their art. It was just a thing they kind of explored.

31:48I think, have you seen the movie The Congress? It's something I keep coming back to. Isn't that the Israeli director? Yes. I have not seen that, but I'm a big fan of his earlier work. So yeah, The Congress, 2013 movie by Ari Fulman. And it's a really interesting film because it's like a weird, like partially sci-fi thing that becomes like partially animated because it's what he does. But it's about this world where artists, where the actors essentially sell their faces to this sort of like AI company. And once they license their likeness away, they cannot act anymore. It's illegal for them to act.

32:22And something happens and this leads to a whole dystopian society. But I keep thinking back to that movie and that idea because it seems like that's what we're building towards, right? Like we have seen actors sell their likenesses. James Earl Jones licensed his voice to Disney to be used as Darth Vader after his death. We're going to see more of that. Val Kilmer's likeness is going to be in a freaking movie, which was approved by his kids. We're going to see more things like that. Yeah, I think these studios want to experiment with it because they're all afraid of missing out on whatever this is.

32:56And the whole thing with Disney and OpenAI was just wild because it's like, that's the ultimate thing. That's where Disney, of all companies, is afraid of missing out on some aspect of the AI boom, that they'll sign a billion dollar deal with this company that is only a few years old. That just seems wild to me. So this is a good segue because it's like the other thing I want to talk about what I think are the two biggest stories in AI and the film industry. One of them is definitely what you mentioned about the deal between OpenAI and Disney. To recap, OpenAI launches Sora. Sora is an AI video generator.

33:33It's a good one. It's like the higher quality type of video generation. and then shortly thereafter, Disney announces that they made a deal with OpenAI. I believe the terms of the deal are like, Disney is going to give OpenAI a billion dollars, which OpenAI needs every dollar they can get because all this inference costs a ton of money that they have to keep raising money to support. And then the most baffling part of the deal to me was they out the gate said, yeah, and we'll have Sora content in Disney Plus, which is like the app that I opened to show something to my son, which I found to be insane.

34:17Now, we should say, since then, this whole thing fell apart. Sora is gone. Open AI shut it down because Jason just published a story on the site about how the cost of compute is really reaching a point where the AI companies can't fuck around anymore with these little tools that don't generate any revenue. so it's like they shut down Sora because it costs so much to let people make videos that have no value and the deal I didn't even know you could do this the deal is gone it's like they're not getting the billion dollars and they're not Disney just like the whole thing is over it was a surprise to Disney too like they were surprised it's a decision we should yeah this is important it's a decision from OpenAI it's not as if Disney said like what are we doing we need to walk away from this OpenAI said like we actually can't afford this we can't this is this is a this is a fool's errand to like make this video generation profit generating thing for us so to start with like the craziest part it's like ai generated video in the disney app i think there was also some allusion to the fact where it's like you would be able to use our characters right so it's like yeah generate your own marvel stuff what do you think what is the mentality do you think at like the biggest media company in the world where they even entertain this as an idea What came out of Sora and some of the other models is that people found, I think you guys had noticed some of this too, they rendered licensed characters already.

35:41They were doing gross, disgusting things. So I think Disney is just like, hey, they already have our stuff. They have our characters. Let's at least have some economic tie to this usage. And maybe it could be a thing that boosts viewership in Disney Plus or something. But something I've learned, having covered the technology industry for 16 years now, full time, And I'm like, a lot of these people have no idea what they're doing. No clue what they're doing. And that goes doubly for anything around OpenAI, which was the company started from like a sham idea, the sham idea of a nonprofit being created to stop evil AI from Elon Musk and a whole bunch of people.

36:21And they just kind of stumbled into this, right? It was the invention of Google's Transformer model that kind of spearheaded all of this, like launched all of these things. But before that, OpenAI was like nothing. They had nothing going on. But they were lucky enough to stumble into that idea of the transformer model. They had AI researchers. They were able to build a thing that became eventually ChatGPT. And that became a really powerful use of this particular model. They have no idea how it works. It is a black box. And this whole thing of like Microsoft and all these companies like just throwing billions of dollars at OpenAI, who has no idea really how their technology is working.

37:01They're still messing around with it. It's like when they released GPT-5 and people were mad that it didn't do some things that the earlier models did. Yeah, they didn't know. They don't know what's actually changing, even though they say some aspects of it are improved. I think we're going to see a reckoning for all these companies that have jumped on to OpenAI and all these other folks. So Disney probably got off scot-free here, right? It's a deal that just ultimately died. Didn't affect their business. they didn't have to deal with any like weird content that appeared on the Disney Plus app.

37:31Microsoft is fully in bed with OpenAI. Like their investment in OpenAI is like practically 50 % of like whatever the for-profit side of OpenAI was. Microsoft's partnership is like they're putting Copilot and everything. They're doing all this. Satya Nadella is fully on board with it. My conversations with Microsoft executives have gotten really weird over the years where I'm like, you guys are making Copilot and this AI stuff, the centerpiece of Windows 11, it's like a calculator that's wrong sometimes. If I had a calculator that was wrong, if I had an employee that just delivered bad answers sometimes, I wouldn't use it.

38:08It seems like a bad tool. And the executives just keep saying, oh, it'll get better. It'll just get better. And it's this weird thing where they're fully invested in something that they know is broken. And they're starting to feel the pain from that right now. They just have to release that. they basically issued an apology for Windows to Windows users for what they've done with Copilot and everything. They're kind of pulling back in Copilot and Windows 11. They say they're going to be a little more thoughtful about getting those features out there. But yeah, Microsoft is just so desperate. Like they missed out on so many big tech waves.

38:41They're like, we're going to be first AI. We're going to be a partner with OpenAI. We're going to make it a big thing. And it worked out for them for a little while with the initial like Bing chat launch and all the Copilot stuff. but I think ultimately it's going to hurt them. Like we're seeing in many ways, this over-reliance in AI is not helping Microsoft at all. So that is my thing. Disney, Microsoft, all these companies, it's all FOMO. They just want to get some AI partnership to feel like they're not actually missing out on this. But the reckoning is coming. Like the fact that these tools often don't work well, cost a ton of resources, are turning off users.

39:17There are so many reasons to tread more carefully here. everyone's talking about Apple being slow to AI and being bad at AI. I feel like they have a perfect response here because they're just like, they stumbled into the fact that they were a little late to it, but also maybe you shouldn't rush into this. Maybe you should be more thoughtful about how you implement these things because it matters. The minor errors Apple encountered like notification summaries, not a big deal. Copilot producing bad information for Windows users, that could affect lives, that could affect people's finances. That's a much more horrible thing to deal with, I think.

39:51So I think our regular listeners would know that I pretty much agree with all of that. But when I thought about the Disney opening idea, and I always tried to examine my blind spots and think, okay, well, let's assume these people are not stupid and it's not just FOMO. What is going on here? and i guess what really shook me is the idea that you and i look at this tom cruise and brad pitt scene and we kind of laugh and mock it and we consider ourselves movie buffs and we know movie history and like we whatever we appreciate the form and we're like this is garbage obviously this is garbage but then maybe disney which has its tendrils in all parts of the media industry is looking at the data and they're like, look, man, we're investing all this energy and paying artists and taking bets, not as much as they used to.

40:54Obviously, it's like, you know, the industry is very homogenous and Marvel and Star Wars and all that stuff. But it's like, we're trying to make stuff, right? Even if it's the Super Mario Galaxy, we're trying to make things. And it's like, we're looking at the data and it's actually people, the way they spend most of their time is they're scrolling TikTok and TikTok is full of this garbage. so it's like what are we doing like yeah yeah so i mean isn't that like a valid business decision you know what i mean it's the the kids that are wrong uh kind of perspective of on things yeah for us like we think we should think that i don't know it's i can see the business case i can see why they did it like listen i talked to you freaking remember quibi you know like i i talked to jeff katzenberg i sat down i talked to jeff katzenberg around quibi and i was grilling It was like, this seems like a bad idea.

41:43I don't think people are actually going to sit down and watch long-form content on their phones. I don't think they're going to be turning their phones. And by that point, they had gotten$2 billion in funding. Jeff Katzenberg and Meg Whitman. And they could just be like, well, we are successful. We have made money before. I'm a Hollywood titan. I'm going to take this investment and just make this bet to make this thing. Because yeah, kids are just watching stuff on their phones. Quibi barely lasted a month. you know like there are these weird wild bets out there at least Quibi was like human created content but if they had survived I'm sure they would have like tried to do the AI stuff but it's like a lot of people are taking the wrong lessons out of things and I think we see that happen time and time again we see that in Hollywood we see that in big business and in media and in everything so I would not blame these companies for like dabbling a bit in the AI stuff and seeing like what you can build around that.

42:38But I also think this is a time for a lot of companies to like really look at their strengths and look at what they can do very well and kind of double down on that because we're seeing younger viewers like Gen Z folks want to see movies in the theater. We're still seeing people show up for like event films in the theater. I don't know how the hell Barbie and Oppenheimer, how Barbenheimer happened, but that was the thing. I didn't even like Oppenheimer that much. And yet somehow that became a hit, a talkie movie about the birth of the atomic bomb. It's people in rooms talking. It made a shit ton of money.

43:11I don't know how that happened. There is hope out there for Hollywood, but they're going to bet. They're going to make these bets and it's going to look really stupid. The key is not to make too big of a bet. I think Disney got us scot-free because I could have seen that AI deal going badly so many ways for them. Let's talk about the other huge business story, which is the acquisition of Warner Brothers. initially it seemed like Netflix was going to be the buyer yeah politics the machinations of the Ellisons and and and the White House and so on that's not going to happen Paramount there was just a story today that the Warner Brothers investors or shareholders agreed to the acquisition and yeah Warner Brothers is going to at least at the moment it seems like like Paramount is going to own it I think you're a lot more plugged in like I'm assuming that you notice like what movies come out of what studios and which production companies and so on.

44:06There was a lot of panic about this. Even putting the politics of it aside, do you think like the average person who let's say streams a lot of stuff at home but maybe goes to the movies like once or twice a year, are they going to notice the impact of this at all? And if so, how? I mean, they probably won't notice. I don't think most people really follow directors or studios or things. They follow franchises, right? They'll follow actors and visible names. I think people may eventually start to notice where less interesting things are making into theaters. This is a really sad situation because when this whole thing was first announced, where Netflix seemed like the big thing, I did a lot of research around there and I talked to people in Hollywood.

44:47And I really came to the conclusion where like, this is bad. Like, this is bad no matter where we go. The Netflix thing could have been interesting, at least for the landscape of Hollywood and kind of what they're doing right now. All the Ellicens want to do is build a media empire and essentially a right-leaning conservative media empire. And they don't care about much else, right? They want to make money. I don't think they care about the art form. I don't think they care about movies. I don't think they care much about Hollywood. It's going to be a really sad state for these studios. And I don't know what they're going to do.

45:18It's just tremendously sad. At least like if it was Netflix getting Warner Brothers Discovery, that's a newer sort of tech-focused company that could be doing something interesting. I could have seen it like there's a potential where that led Netflix to taking theaters more seriously, which is a problem right now because some great releases are not making it to theaters and that's a damn shame. The theatrical stuff around Paramount and Warner Brothers, actual movie releases, it's just going to lead to like more right-leaning garbage slop. Maybe people will notice that eventually, but I think this is one of those insidious things.

45:52These things happen at the top. These mergers happen. These deals happen. most consumers don't understand how this affects their content. So it's up to the journalists and the media to shout it out. It's sad. All I can say is it's sad. And I'm worried about what this means for the future of Warner Brothers, which is such a storied studio and their whole back catalog and everything. It's not going to be in the best of hands. Yeah, I was trying to look at what they've put out because I'm not the kind of person who could tell you off the top of my head. but didn't they put up a lot of the Nolan movies?

46:24Isn't that them? Yeah. So I'm just thinking, it's just like, if you like Christopher Nolan, you know what I mean? It's like, if you like Inception or Oppenheim or whatever, it's like, that's where he lives. And I don't know, that seems, it's like, doesn't bode well for that. I'm sure he can make movies. I'm just saying, it's like the type of studio that funds that work that people think is like a pillar of like modern cinema. He had a big falling out with them, I think, because of the whole HBO same day stuff. So Oppenheimer was universal. So he kind of flipped over there. Yeah, yeah. But again, like it's that sort of thing.

46:58Artists are tied to studios. They like to work with specific studios. I'm not sure how many people are going to be excited to work for the Ellisons and, you know, the Ellison owned Warner Brothers and the Ellison owned Paramount. Yeah. So last couple of things I wanted to talk to you about, and I'm just going to indulge myself because it's something that I often wonder when I listen to you guys. You guys watch a lot of stuff. Mm-hmm. You have a full-time job. You have two kids. I often wonder how you make it happen. It's hard. Let's talk about at home, right? It's like, what is the setup? Where are you watching movies and when?

47:34It's almost always after the kids are asleep or when I have pockets of time, maybe during the workday. But it's also, sometimes I can watch a thing that is both applicable to my work and gadget, it because it's a movie I'll be reviewing there and a movie will be reviewing on the film cast. And that's, that's gold. That's like, oh man, I am producing so much content from this time. But yeah, we have a house outside of Atlanta. I'm lucky enough to have like a projector and a big projector screen in my basement. And that is my like little personal movie theater. It's nothing fancy, but it's, it looks good.

48:05And I have my surround system there. But we also have like, you know, a large TV in our family room. And that's where I watch stuff with my kids. I'm sad to say, like I do like to watch like little short form videos with my daughter because it's just like a thing we do sometimes to pass the time during bath time or whatever. And you know, that's like the minor thing. But most of what I watch happens after the kids are asleep. And thank goodness they're getting better about sleeping. But I am somebody who can like drive to the movie theater after 10 p.m., still make it through a movie and still make it back home.

48:34It was so much easier in New York where I didn't have to drive. But that's typically what I do right now. Or I'm watching a movie late at night at home. You know, I've talked about this. Sometimes you don't feel like moving if you're a parent. Bedtime is done. Bath time is done. You just feel like collapsing in your bed or whatever. I will watch stuff on my phone. I don't typically watch movies on my phone, but I watch TV shows on my phone because it's like, I don't have to move. But I can veg here and I have a decently large OLED screen inches from my eyes and I can watch a TV show and still have a full sense of how it's made and how it looks.

49:07So I watched a lot of the pit that way this year and it works for the visceral nature of the pit. You know, it's not the best viewing experience, but it's one way to do it. I'm surprised you said projector. I assume you would be an OLED guy. I would assume you would look down at projectors. I have OLED everywhere. Like, listen, I understand the differences. I report on like TV stuff and projector stuff, but I have a, it's a laser short, ultra short throw projector. So it's like one of those things that's like sits close to the wall and spits out a 120 inch image. And I'm sorry, but, For OLED, if you want over 100 inches, you're spending tens of thousands of dollars right now.

49:45TVs are getting cheaper. I'm seeing some wild deals out there right now. So if you want a mini LED, a not-so-great mini LED, but at 100 inches, you can get that between$1 ,000 and$2 ,000 right now. Older OLED sets are also coming down. So right now, we have a 65-inch mini LED in our family room, which I think is perfectly fine. Large enough for the kids. Maybe a bit too large. But I'm like, these 77-inch OLEDs are getting down to like$1 ,500, which is insane. And I just feel like at some point, we're going to make that move when I feel comfortable having a TV that large there with the kids. So that'll probably be something right now.

50:21If anybody's in the market for TV, look at slickdeals.net right now because the deals are insane. I would say go to Best Buy. I bought my first new TV in like 20 years. I had a Sony Bravia I bought in 2010. And I used it up until this year. And it was totally fine, 1080p. And then I went to Best Buy because I very much was like, okay, if I'm going to get a good TV, I'm going to get the best quality. That's what I care about. I want the best quality image I can get. I don't care about the size as much. You will. The more you sit with that TV, you will be like, I could actually fit a 77-inch in this room.

50:5277-inch TVs are actually not that large anymore. So you can make it work. You can get one for like$500. Best Buy is good if you can fit into your car. The really clutch things are like, there's so many of these deals where it's like, you get free delivery and you get free setup. and that's like the best thing because what you don't want to do is be a novice handling these massive screens which can crack really easily if you unbox them badly. When you get the install service, it's super nice. They can even wall mount it sometimes for free as part of these deals too. So I would say take advantage of those things because these things are very delicate.

51:26So the less you put your hands on it and set it up, sometimes the better. Yeah. The price of everything obviously is going up. Somehow TV is cheaper than ever. I don't understand it. Well, they're getting a new stock. The new stock of the units are coming in. So this may be the cheapest TVs are for a very long time. Who knows what's going to happen? But yeah, the old stock is being replaced right now. So I think LG and a lot of folks are trying to clear things out. Okay, that makes sense. So I guess the other thing is, speaking of kids and not having time, I have a two and a half year old and I came into parenting and screen time extremely blase.

52:05Yep. Yep. My opinion on that changed immediately. Like I grew up and we were allowed to do anything with screens. I was like, whatever, he can do everything. And then I saw how he reacted to the phone. yeah i really didn't like that we curbed that and now we are trying to like build a healthier relationship and i think it's working but i'm wondering like how how are you approaching it like when did you introduce them to full movies or did yeah did you try how are you picking stuff are you like consciously trying to like raise film fans absolutely yeah so tell me what are you doing It's all a conscious effort.

52:43I will say for parents, there are enough studies out there that screen time before 18 months, definitively not a great thing. So if you can try to avoid that, that's a good thing. Once you get to two years old, then you can start to have a little fun. And around two to three, I was like, okay, what am I going to introduce to my daughter? We're going to be her first things when it comes to media. And a lot of that ended up being Miyazaki movies. And I'll say, My Neighbor Tortoro is a perfect film for children. like perhaps the ultimate, the best kids film ever made. And the dubs are great too. So the Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, really fun, really great, really sweet.

53:23Ponyo on the Cliff is like a little more grating. It's not as good as like a Totoro, but it's still Mizuki. It's still fun. And then you can expand from there. And I try to avoid things that have too much violence and stuff. But my daughter has seen a bit of Nausicaa. She's seen Porco Rosso with me. I try to be really careful about how some of that stuff is. Cartoonish violence, I'm not too worried about. Realistic violence, I am like more concerned with. But the Miyazaki stuff has been a good thing to lean on. And then from there, it's just like great kids movies, great kids show that I really enjoyed.

53:57Bluey came out at the perfect time. Bluey is just like a perfect, perfect thing. Short episodes, really inventive, really creative show. I am very careful about the media I introduce my kids to. My wife is less careful. So that's how I find like, oh, mom, my son is watching Vlad and some, like these Russian kids who live in Dubai or something. I'm like, how the hell did this happen? What are we doing here? I do try to avoid that. Some of that stuff is real bad, but you can be thoughtful, especially if you're a parent who likes to watch shows, likes to watch movies and stuff. You can't be thoughtful about it.

54:30You can bring your kids into it. My thing right now is like, I'm very purposeful about like the other types of movies I'm showing my kids. So my kids really want to see some Marvel stuff, They wanted to see more superhero stuff. Like, how do I get into the MCU? Iron Man is not a great movie for kids. Maybe not the best. Like, you probably shouldn't go in chronological order. And the best introduction ended up being Spider-Man. Ended up being the Tom Holland Spider-Mans. So Homecoming was like a good one. I fast forward scary bits. I fast forward bloody bits. But my kids love Spider-Man. But I actually started, even before that, I was like, we're going to get to Raimi.

55:07If we're going to start, if we're going to go down the superhero path, we're going to, it's going to be Sam Raimi. You're going to know Sam Raimi's Spider-Man before anything else. We watched Spider-Man 1 and they loved that. And that introduced them to the idea of like sitting down and watching live action stuff more. We've watched The Princess Bride. We've watched like a lot of the classics too. I'm being very careful about it. Star Wars is the one where I'm like, how do I introduce this? Because there's so many ways in and I kind of just want to do A New Hope. But I go where the kids are interested.

55:37And right now, it's been like superhero stuff. It's been me as hockey. And it's worked out pretty well. My son was in an all-encompassing Pixar's Cars phase. Oh, man, that's rough. I've seen the movie a million times. And I could do a four-hour podcast just about the logic of the Cars universe. Logic of Cars is insane. Crazy. But it's funny. You said Totoro, that is the thing that broke the spell. I put that on. Yeah. And I've watched the big canonical anime movies, but I'm definitely not that guy. And I did not get Totoro. It's a movie made for kids. It's kid logic purely throughout. It is. It really is.

56:20And I really appreciate it. I could not appreciate it until I watched it with a child next to me. Same. It's nice for me because I'm rediscovering Miyazaki through this experience. if I may how do you literally put something on for them which by which I mean what I found to be different from my experience of watching movies as a kid and my kids experience of watching movies is how malleable the content is because it's like I grew up with like a VHS and lots of movies and I can put on whatever I wanted and all that so it's not like I didn't have access to stuff I definitely did but like when he was in the cars phase for example he even at 2 realized that initially he watched the movies and he just watched them through and then he was like you know what I really I like this part of this movie and I like that part of that movie and I know that I can pick and choose what I want because it's all on the screen and it's all you can scroll through the movies and he can pick whichever movie you want and he doesn't have an understanding or access to TikTok but it is kind of a TikTok logic of like I can immediate gratification to whatever I want immediately and I'm wondering A if you've noticed that and B it's like have you found a way to bypass that like I've seen some people and I find the idea a bit twee but it makes sense to me where people are like I have a room set up with VHS tapes for my kids.

57:57It's like, I understand that now. I understand why you would want to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's really, I mean, that's really cute. What I've noticed is that every kid is different. Like every kid has different demands. My son has different demands than my daughter. And my daughter is the one who's seven. Watching stuff with them, a lot of it comes down to being like, hey, let's sit down. Let's take a look at this. Or if it's, they're not listening to me. Like if they don't want to like sit down, I just start watching something. Like I just start watching it while they're playing and they will like they'll start watching whatever you put on the tv and i kind of get them in and get them distracted from whatever else they're doing my daughter is an ipad kid unfortunately because she's um by like three to four like she just got really into minecraft i'm like you know of all the things to be into as a kid minecraft is kind of a really wonderful thing because it's pure creation i love minecraft i i didn't play minecraft at all.

58:48When I was like, I was not that age for it. I was like an adult by that point. But I am discovering Minecraft through my daughter and learning about it. We saw the Minecraft movie together and like kids are so spoiled. Like they can watch those clips however they want now. They have instant access to all this content. Minecraft is like something that's pure creation. My kids don't ask for specific clips, but we certainly they know we can always just rewatch a movie from the beginning. so I think they kind of treat it like VHS right rather than ask for specific scenes they're like okay we're halfway through the movie now let's start back from the beginning let's just let's just start again so that's how I ended up watching like The Incredibles and all these other things like hundreds of times like my kids are big into the Pixar stuff too for sure okay Devendra I could keep talking to you about this for many hours but we should wrap it up thank you so much for coming on thank you this is great please go listen to the film cast support their Patreon on.

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1:00:23I'll see you next time.

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