Paramount’s New Playbook Unveiled and the Taylor Swift Podcast Bounce

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2:02It is Thursday, August 14th. It's the question that dominates conversations all around town. What is Paramount going to be exactly? David Ellison now owns the studio and he's got his Skydance media team running the film and TV groups. But we haven't heard a lot about what kind of movies they want to make, where they want to put those movies in theaters or on streaming, and whether the shows on CBS and Paramount Plus will change that much. Yesterday, I trekked over to the Paramount commissary on the lot. The cookies were very tasty. And I sat with a bunch of other media to hear directly from Ellison and his team.

2:36That included Jeff Schell, the company's new president, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are running the studio, the streaming chief, Cindy Holland. She's in charge of Paramount Plus and Pluto, and she came from Netflix. Plus, George Cheeks over TV, among others. A lot of it was kind of meaningless platitudes. Ellison has his talking points on hot-button subjects, like he's for truth and unbiased news at CBS News, without many details about how he'd handle thorny political subjects. And he wants to work with the best creators and artists and top-level IP, a few specifics about the types of artists or what budgets he's comfortable with, or how he intends to reinvent the pretty stale franchises at Paramount.

3:15And he refused to talk about the rampant speculation that Paramount will now go after other companies, specifically Warner Brothers or TikTok. My sources say he's interested in both of those. But we did learn more about the studio strategy, specifically how they intend to release Paramount movies in theaters with varying levels of exclusive windows, some details on the content plan, more content, they say, and they really want to keep Taylor Sheridan, even if it means spending$20 million an episode for his shows. A lot of other stuff from the presentation as well. So I've got Brooks Barnes here to discuss it all.

3:48Brooks covers Hollywood for the New York Times. He's been on the show before, and I accosted him before the presentation yesterday to come back and talk about David Ellison and the big Paramount reveal. So today, it's the Ellison Media Tour, what this studio is actually going to be and how he's doing so far. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

4:13Okay, we are here with Brooks Barnes, returning champion on the show, staff reporter at the New York Times, veteran coverer of All Things Hollywood. Welcome, Brooks. Hello, how are you? I am doing well. Good to see you in person yesterday at Paramount. You know, I don't love these things where you're sort of like cobbled together with the more loathsome members of the Hollywood press corps, but... I think hives. Hives is sort of a good word. Shiver, oh my God, that person. Yeah, so, but it was very nice to see you and Nicole. I wanted you on because I wanted to get some unvarnished takes on the Paramount situation and the kind of handling of this first week of the Ellison era.

4:59They did the big presentation in New York where they were mostly asked about CBS News and Trump and that stuff. And then they brought the roadshow to Hollywood yesterday where they were asked a little bit about that stuff, but also grilled on plans for the studio. and I want to just go through the topics that they touched on and kind of get your take on what they're saying, what they're not saying, maybe some of the half-truths and some of the spin that we're being subjected to and that is making it into the media. But first, I want your overall vibe of this presentation on the Paramount lot. What did you get from the Ellison team?

5:40My biggest takeaway? Yeah. that they refer to the streaming service as P+. Is that like a home pregnancy test? I'm not sure what that is. Yeah, that was funny. And clearly certain members of the team, namely Cindy Holland, who runs the streaming services, and I think George Cheeks and some of them, they are less enamored of doing this kind of press hit event than maybe some of the other members who are more used to it or kind of in selling mode like Ellison and Jeff Shell. Don't get me wrong. Ellison looks like this is not his favorite thing in the world to do. But why do you think they're doing this?

6:21That's the better question is most of the time with Warner Brothers, when they took over, when the Discovery people took over, they did a couple press things. They did the Times. They did a couple of things, but they did not just have a free-for-all on both coasts where 30 journalists in a room are just allowed to grill and then go to lunch and grill some more. Why are they doing this? I thought it was smarter than to do it, actually. And you're right. Normally, there's a way that these new regimes come in. It's clearly a strategy by Ellison's new head of communications, Melissa Zuckerman, one of the best in the business.

6:57Yes, that's a bit of a suck up. I know, gunning for an exclusive. But also, it's true. It's true. Yes, it is true. She is great. To be fair, Ellison was going to come on the town and talk about this. But since he's doing all this, we're going to push that to some other time in the future. So why are they doing this? So they want to get the Hollywood press on their side to show definitively that it's a new day. There's no way that those executives wanted to sit up there and field questions. But the fact that they did told me that Ellison is listening to the people who are willing to listen to the veterans he's put on his team to allow them to do their jobs.

7:35And that, to me, is encouraging. Yeah, and they were clearly media trained and coached. We heard a lot of the same platitudes from him. You know, we're seven days in and I am not going to be in the business of doing XYZ. And we are here to accrue value for our shareholders. Like just a lot of that kind of stuff that clearly was put into their heads. There were two David Ellison's I felt like, you know, there was the version that said the corporate things that you say when you don't want to talk about something, you know, we're only seven days in. well, you've had a year or more of thinking about this and planning, like I don't believe for a second that you don't know.

8:17Well, and it was clear on day one when they put out that whole Jerry Maguire style mission statement about what Paramount is and what they're going to be doing. That felt like it had been workshopped and focus group and tested 25 different ways to put out a positive statement that the world can see there's a new sheriff in town. Yeah. And, you know, to some degree, what do you expect? Right? Exactly. You know, one note I would give him is to the question about the Barry Weiss talks, you know, we're not going to comment on rumor and speculation. That just makes reporters want to claw your face off.

8:54Like, it's not rumor and speculation. Yeah, it's been reported many times. We all know that you're negotiating. And yes, I agree. There were many instances during this hour-long Q &A and lunch thing where I was just like sitting on my hands frustrated because I was like, okay, there's like five follow-up questions on this. You want to say that CBS News is going to be right down the middle. It's like, that's easy to say. but when 60 Minutes is doing a hard-hitting piece on the Trump administration, sometimes there aren't both sides to a story. And sometimes it's much more nuanced than that. And we weren't able to get to the nuance of the questions.

9:35If you notice, there were protesters outside the gates about the Trump deal, which, you know, that's not going away. No. And if Ellison thinks it's going away and he's not going to be asked about whether there's a side deal with Trump until he actually says there was no side deal and Trump is wrong and lying, he's sorely mistaken. I will say, though, when I said there are two sides, the other side, the side that I thought was really impressive, was when something changed in Ellison's eyes when he started answering a question about technology and how poorly, he was very blunt about how poorly the company has approached technology.

10:16I mean, I guess you can be. There's no other way to say that very bluntly. But that look in his eyes and the way that he sort of explained it in a way or spoke about it in a way I have not heard other CEOs in Hollywood talk about it told me that he could win. Yeah, no, it's true. There were clearly things that he felt comfortable about. I felt the same change in him when he was talking about talent and his relationship with talent, particularly Tom Cruise and some of the others. like he knows how to talk about that. He knows that you have to constantly praise the talent. And it meant, you know, we are just in awe of Tom's immense talents and his partnership has been so meaningful to us.

10:59And yeah, it's platitudes and we're not hearing anything new, but he likes that aspect of it. And everything I have heard from the talent community is that Ellison is very good in a room with big talent and he is approachable and they feel like this is a guy who is doing this, I hate to use a bachelor term, but for the right reasons. He's not doing this to flip and make a buck. He's doing this because he actually likes movies. I think that's true. I mean, one takeaway is that they seem to know that they could have a Taylor Sheridan problem. I think he called him a genius. Yes. Like, you know, Steven Spielberg's a genius.

11:36Taylor Sheridan sort of strikes me as a runaway train. Oh, how dare you? How dare you? Steven Spielberg is not churning out 20 scripts a month. Anyway, you know. No, but I, I followed up with that and this was all on the record so I can talk about it. I asked Cindy Holland. She has never met with him. She has no relationship with Taylor Sheridan. She's now ostensibly his boss. And she said she was looking forward to having a relationship. And I said, you know, he's a very prickly person and a very particular person. And he knows his value here. And she's aware of that. And they are making inroads and trying to have that relationship.

12:12Ellison, I think was a little bit more confident in his relationship there and the ability to manage him. But yeah, they know that he is by far the number one piece of talent that they have on their roster. And they need to manage that expertly or else it could blow up in their face. I think Cindy Holland's a rock star. I'm really looking forward to what she's going to do there. Oh, interesting. Why does she impress you? One, the track record. Yeah, just for context, she was the original Netflix head of TV, and she was responsible for a lot of those big, noisy hits like Orange is in Black, The Crown, and was involved in the early days of setting the Netflix template.

12:52She was pushed out when they went a little bit more commercial, brought in Bella Bajaria to essentially broaden out the slate. And she was very much fired. And she will tell you, if you meet with her, yes, I was fired. And I think she's still got a little bit of a chip on her shoulder about that. She brings it up a lot. that's part of what makes me believe in her. You know what I mean? You want some of that. Yeah, you want a spite store. You want someone who wants to get in there and prove somebody wrong and beat somebody. I asked her. I heard that she's going after Netflix talent, specifically the Duffer Brothers who did Stranger Things and wants to bring them over to Paramount+.

13:30She would not go there when I quizzed her on the specifics of what I heard she is offering the Duffer Brothers. But, you know, I would not be surprised to see her try to poach some big Netflix talent, talent from everywhere, to try to bring them over. She's clearly going to get some money, right? That's one thing that they weren't specific, but will her programming budget go up? One word, yes. Yeah. So that's one of the topics I want to get into, and you sort of already started, the streaming strategy. Cindy said on the stage, we want to entertain all audiences around the world. and you know that's an easy thing to say unclear what that actually means she says they're going to start buying shows from outside studios paramount was not doing that and that's an indication that they want the best stuff and the most commercial stuff that they can bring in from anywhere it's good news for outside producers she told me she as i said hasn't met with sheridan she basically was saying she wants to do shows that are complementary to the audience that they have, meaning the Sheridan audience and the NFL audience and the people that are there for the CBS Next Day shows, but to focus on areas that they don't currently have within that adjacent content.

14:43Not sure what that means, if it means more female-oriented, more prestige. People seem to think she's going to do more prestige stuff. Not sure about that and not sure whether that would necessarily work on Paramount+. She did shout out some of the Star Trek shows they have. There's been speculation that they might pull back from that. I don't think they will now. The Star Trek comment did make me sort of want to cover my eyes. I'm just, I'm not a fan. It feels like wallpaper at this point. Please do something interesting. I think they have the audience for that. I mean, it's been reported around town that the priorities, quote unquote, are Star Trek and Top Gun 3.

15:22And I think they mentioned World War Z. but those were in response to specific questions from journalists. It wasn't like they voluntarily said, we would like to make more Star Trek. It was a question from people saying, do you care about these properties? And then they answered, sure. Yes, we care about Star Trek. We care about Top Gun 3. I mean, duh, obviously they care about Top Gun 3. Are you like, what are they going to say? Oh, actually, you know. We really care about Smurf 17. Right. The highest grossing movie in the history of the studio. go, nah, we don't really want to do another one.

15:56Like, I don't know. That was kind of silly. Interestingly, they did not talk about an overall deal that they have signed with Will Smith that I reported on a couple weeks ago that has still not been announced there. And I think they were trying to set the agenda with this Timothee Chalamet, James Mangold movie that they talked about. This is my second topic here. I want to talk about the projects they specifically mentioned. And they were going on and on about how proud they are to be in business with James Mangold and Timothee Chalamet and Dana Goldberg, who runs the film studio at Film and TV, she sort of used that to position them as like, yeah, we want to do high quality movies.

16:32And this is an example. Do you get the vibe that that is going to be the Skydance way at Paramount Pictures, Timothee Chalamet, James Mangold movies? I mean, that project, how much did they spend on it? They've heard a lot and there's no script, right? But I think that was strategic, right? If you look at the movies that Skydance has made on its own, for the most part, they've not been very good. And if you're going to go from eight movies a year to 20... Yeah, they said 15 and then 20. So we should see 15 in the next year or so, year or two. And then they say, hopefully, up to 20. That's almost two movies a month.

17:15It's a lot. then what's the chance that you can make one good movie every six months you know and they said the right thing there right which is we believe in talent we want paramount to be home to the best talent part of me the cynical part of me was like there are no new strategies there are only new executives because you hear that always right yes of course and new stars and talent and there you know if they have an eye for this stuff but as you said not only have they been making movies that aren't very good, they have been mostly making movies for streaming platforms. If you look at their slate, Old Guard, Netflix, Fountain of Youth, and The Gorge at Apple, like those are movies that I don't think would have performed in theaters.

18:00And yet now Paramount is talking about doing all their movies for theaters. Cindy Holland basically said, I'm not pursuing direct-to-streaming movies. So what is going to change at the Paramount studio that is going to turn these mostly streaming movies into movies that feel theatrical? And I asked Ellison straight up, and he went back to the whole talent thing. We want to be in the business with the best talent. We want to have the best IP. And I said, you know, listen, a lot of your IP is pretty tired. You're going to do another Terminator? You're going to do another, you know... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

18:36Ninja Turtles, exactly. A lot of this stuff has been scraped bare by the previous regimes. And he went back and cited the example of True Grit, which was a very tired Western that hadn't been made in a long time. And it was one of the first movies that Skydance invested in at Paramount. And he said, everybody told us that it was stale IP, that it wouldn't work. And it did. And it got Oscar nominations and made 200 and something million dollars. So he believes that he and his talented executive ranks can breathe new life into some of these franchises. We'll see. Yeah, I was impressed by what Dana had to say, Goldberg.

19:16I thought that she was thoughtful. And at this point, the journalist sort of cynic side of me, which will be happy to write whatever we see. but there's also a bit of, you know, you have to root for them because I'm a little tired of writing the, you know, Hollywood circling the drain story. I know you can call up Barry Diller and he'll give you quotes on demand about that. God bless him. Yes.

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20:28All right, so the third aspect of the presentation I thought was interesting was on whether they are selling assets. And the speculation has been that these cable networks are for sale. BET, Comedy Central, MTV, that they will either spin them off and send them, you know, to the floating, melting iceberg that is Versant. and Warner Brothers Discoveries cable networks, or that they will sell them off individually if people are interested. They've had offers in the past for BET and for Showtime. Previous regime didn't do it. Shell basically said they're not selling. They're not selling BET. He said, we want to keep these assets together.

21:09Ellison basically said that he didn't promise, but he said to Sherry Redstone that the plan is to keep this company together. Did that surprise you? So it surprised me that he said, I forget who said, that BET is going to be an important building block of the streaming strategy. I did think that some of those cable networks would still be for sale, and they may still be, who knows. But, you know, I think they shut some down. It sounded like they're not really showing their hand. It's only the seventh day. Yeah, I know. But it sounded like moving them to a very much more streaming-focused, streaming-first position.

21:53Like they brought up Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon just debuted its first show on YouTube. Oh my God. Right? It's unbelievable. The fact that that's just happening shows how entrenched in their legacy ways the cable networks have been. The squandering of these brands in streaming is one of the great failures of the media business history. These brands in particular. These brands in particular. You had youth-oriented brands that, in the heyday, Viacom was the young cable company, where they had these brands, MTV and Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, that meant something to young people. And the inability to transition those brands over to digital is just a huge failure.

22:38Inability and also just refusal to acknowledge the greed. It could go on and on and on. Oh, I mean, we don't have to relitigate the history of IACOM. It's sad and depressing. And there's lots of crooks involved, most of them dining at restaurants in the greater Palm Beach area these days. But the path going forward is like, what do you do with these brands now? And I think that they are essentially saying we're not going to sell them, but we're open to ideas. Like I could see them bringing in partners who say, OK, we have an idea of what to do with Comedy Central and turn it into something that matters in the digital space and let us do it.

23:21Give us a stake. Give us the green light and we will turn this into something. I could see deals like that happening. Could MTV be a channel on TikTok? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of amazing that these brands aren't leveraged on Paramount Plus on their own outlet. Well, they could be, but you can't find it. That platform is so terrible. I mean, the tech there can only get better. It doesn't work. I know. It's embarrassing. The windowing question was a big one. That was my last topic, the thing that they did make news on. and Jeff Schell, who was the architect of the crunched windows at Universal when he was there.

24:04They used the pandemic to essentially take what had been a 45-day across-the-board industry-wide exclusive window in theaters. And he blew that up, said, we're going to do windows at as early as 17 days that will go to our streaming platform. Not for every movie. Others will take longer. but the speculation has been that he is going to bring that to Paramount. And I think he basically confirmed it. Oh, yeah. He said, I don't think each movie is created equal. Different movies deserve different windows sometimes. I think we're pretty united up here in terms of theatrical being critical and it has to be part of the equation, but we're also going to be much more diligent about looking at the value.

24:46Yeah. Universal now, as he set it up, has a 17-day window for things that open, what, below$50 million or something. Wicked had a 40-day window and made, what, I believe,$100 million, they've said, on P-Vod. Oh, that was just in the first few weeks, or I think the first few days. But yeah, I think Universal has done the best job of the studios, at least from what we know, in extracting revenue on different platforms, from theatrical to P-Vod to streaming, their their own service, and then licensing out elsewhere. And I think Shell wants to bring that in a more aggressive fashion to Paramount. And that makes two studios that are going to be entrenched in that strategy.

25:35So any hope that the exhibitors have of clawing back some exclusivity, I think, is toast. Well, Shell said he has a good relationship with the theaters, and he was just on the phone with my friend Adam Aaron at AMC and they're pals about this. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, they're all pals, right? Everybody's a pal. Well, listen, 20 movies a year in theaters would be a big deal for these exhibitors. So it's a trade-off. Maybe you get 20 movies a year, but 15 of them are on streaming after 17 days and then five big ones are where you make your money. Right. And I think that that's consistent.

26:15There are others at Paramount who have not believed in this kind of a system, and they think that it's confusing to audiences. It trains them to just think that everything is coming to streaming early. I don't think those people are going to be long for this world at Paramount. One thing he did say right about the layoffs is that they would happen in one fell swoop. It would not be a company that you would see layoffs coming in every month, which seemed to be like a hard stare toward Warner Brothers. Yes, he even said it. I think he said Warner Brothers has been doing these rolling layoffs. Maybe I read it.