Still thinking the business is just going to snap right back in a few months? Back to 1997, maybe?
It's hard even to add up the toll brought upon the industry with the sweeping waves of change in the past few years: The Streaming Wars, Consolidation, Falling Box Office, Rising Tech Companies, Me Too, Oscars So White, the COVID shut down . . . . That’s just off the top of my head.
Some of these changes are immensely for the better and long overdue. Some of them, well, we'll have to see how they play out. But there's no question now that things will be different. As great as the upheaval has been, the bill for much of it is still outstanding.
Starting this week, with the latest studio to submerge under the waves of our changing times. What's it all mean? In the big picture, it's hard to imagine that the architects of these changes even understand themselves what they have wrought. But for our part, let's pick away piece by piece and see what it adds up to.
On the menu today: The Goodbye MGM Blue Plate Special!
• Circa 1990 to about 2017, coverage of the tech industry was by and large a magnificent brew of fan worship and utopian fantasia that made trade reporting on Hollywood look sober and measured in comparison. Then the tide turned and we've seen a steady stream of stories about the various horrific side effects of the tech utopia—from the destruction of democracy to the ruination of dating and romance.
Just last week we saw another amazing account of the Amazon effect, as The Information reported on the spate of traffic deaths directly linked to the company's relentless delivery needs.
Since the worm has turned, former wunderkinds Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al, have been recast as callous, even creepy, villains, undermining all they touch from within.
But the minute a deal like this is announced, all that goes out the window, and the media's inner fanboy surges forth again. Oooohh, look how big it is! Amazon's going to have so much!
Slight murmurs here and there pop up about: Well, they might have some antitrust speed bumps, if some senator is feeling grumpy. But as with the Warner-Discovery deal, the press sees its major role as to stand in awe of such wonders to behold, a deal the likes of which our forebears never dreamed!
Completely unexpressed is the question of why a $1.6 trillion company—one whose effects on our world are still being sorted out—needs to be any bigger. At this point, should we just let Amazon buy every company? Or if we’re feeling magnanimous, maybe we let Amazon and Apple just split all the companies between them?
The reports have focused narrowly on why Amazon wants to be bigger, which is interesting, to be sure, and I've got a few thoughts on that, too. But let's not forget here, being that we're still a titular democracy, when it comes to monopoly powers, there are other questions beyond how bad does this goliath really want this new thing?
Why at this point, as this piece asks, should Amazon be allowed to buy anything is a question bigger even than entertainment or the fate of Kevin Ulrich's portfolio.
• As for the meaning of this, it's like buy a ticket and try your luck guessing the weight of this deal. The massive 4,000 film library! Oceans of untapped IP! Bond! Robocop! Give people something to watch on Prime! Get people watching something on Prime so they'll buy a subscription to Showtime from Amazon! Or they'll pick up a glow-in-the-dark backyard trampoline! A vote of no confidence in Jen Salke! A vote of confidence in Jen Salke! Leave Apple in the dust! More expertise! More production facilities! They have $70 billion in cash, so why not!
All true! And equally not true.
Thing is, we've been trying to figure out what the meaning of Amazon's strategy is for years now. Most of the answers are about as convincing as throwing darts at a board of business rationales and reading the random answer.
What could inspire a company to overpay by tens of millions for quirky indie comedies AND devote their resources to making the most expensive TV series in history, an adaptation of JRR Tolkien novels that were just massively adapted a few years ago?
To make moves that big, from the company that invented shopping (or so you’d be forgiven for thinking), there surely must be a brilliant, secret strategy at work! A master plan about to reveal itself!
Ankler Rule #19: There are no secret plans.
Corollary: Because if anyone has a plan that makes a thimble full of sense, they are so proud of themselves, they are putting out press releases and getting book deals to tell the world about their brilliant mindstorm.
There is no plan. There is an industry-wide will to reverse engineer some sense onto the only two things we know for certain here:
– Jeff Bezos really likes being part of Hollywood.
– The Cult of Bigness demands that services grow by any means necessary, that Big will rule.
So yes, this will give Amazon a bigger library to offer Prime customers. Yes, it will give them more of a foothold in production, with facilities and expertise. It will drive people to spend more money on Amazon. It takes a pawn off the board, out of reach of competitors. All true!
And it's a Big Move that announces to Hollywood: Hey, we're a player in the Game of Big, too!
An old sage/man of a certain profession not to be spoken of once explained his core philosophy to me. "If you see something, take it," he said, and then he continued. "Because even if you don't want it, somebody else will and then you can deal."
Bigness doesn't get hung up on how things fit together or whether these pieces belong together. And swallow the world.
• Congratulations to Kevin Ulrich. In the long long long long line of rich men—dating back to Joe Kennedy and Howard Hughes—who decided what they were really meant to do was be movie producers, Ulrich walks away as the very rare mogul who beat the house. And he's got the red carpet photos to prove it. Boy, are the guys going to be jealous at the Hedge Fund club!
But it’s hard to walk away from the tables when you think you’ve got the hot hand. Word is that having, shall we say, acquired a taste for this lifestyle, he wants to double down his genius by starting a new production company.
That is why the house always wins in Hollywood.
• Also congratulations to Kevin Ulrich – and to Jeff Bezos – for accomplising what Kirk Kerkorian and all the other luminaries through whose hands MGM has passed could not. They have finally, just shy of its 100th birthday, ended the existence of MGM as an independent studio.
• Not discussed enough: Jeff Bezos now owns The Apprentice outtake tapes. There may be clauses in the ownership agreement saying that he can't release or distribute these tapes, but is there any clause saying the owner can't look at them?
More specifically, the owner of The Washington Post now owns The Apprentice outtake tapes.
It's hard to imagine though that puppet master Burnett would leave the door open to an arrangement that would expose his longtime partner, friend, and collaborator.
• Which leads us to the fate of one Mark Burnett, having overturned the ranks at MGM to remake it in its own image. The "fox in the henhouse" line comes up a lot in the stories. In general, someone with a reputation as a brazenly aggressive, backstabbing destroyer of one's colleagues isn't the sort of profile our new utopian tech overlords seek out.
But as has been noted, the WSJ story on the Hollywoodification of Bezos opens with a little vignette in Mark Burnett's living room, so the hidden hand here may have a few moves left.
• Is there any greater siren call in all of entertainment than the lure of spinning off a bunch of TV series and other movie characters from James Bond?
Every time this comes up, there's this expectation that Barbara Broccoli will greet her new partners and say, "Oh my God! 007 in high school! Why didn't we think of that before!? I mean, we'd thought about other stuff, but never thought we could do it, but if the richest man in the world thinks it's a good idea . . . !"
Somewhere out there, a billion Gen Zers are hearing grandpa and his friends making their plans for James Bond and rolling their eyes. As beloved and pristine as the franchise is, is there one person of the TikTok generation who gives a damn about James Bond?
• There's lots of hyperventilating about the 4,000 film catalog that Amazon would take possession of. To a certain degree, maybe that's a good thing for the world. Amazon will no doubt have those films uploaded and available to subscribers seconds after the deal closes. In contrast to, as Ankler friend Jack Woltz points out, the Fox catalog. Good luck finding it on D+ or Hulu.
So yes, it's more stuff to throw at subscribers, but are old movies (or old reality shows) what's moving the needle in the streaming world? I don't see Netflix desperately trying to build up their collection of old movies. You could make a lot of brand new stuff for eight billion. Will a bunch of old movies really outperform whatever you could make with a year and a half of the Netflix content budget?
If you want to take a closer look here at this one-of-a-kind, historic film treasure trove now available to Prime subscribers, you move very quick past the classics like Moonstruck and A Fish Called Wanda and move right down to the Cannon Collection, the AIP golden hits, the depths of Polygram and UA. Prime subscribers will go nuts!
• As for the IP value, Mike Hopkins explained, “The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of [intellectual property] in the deep catalogue that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling.”
Really? So there's so much great IP waiting to be plugged into the reboot machine sitting around in the MGM vaults that they just never got around to doing anything with? And that's why with limited resources, they were getting into bidding wars over new scripts, because they never thought to ask, hey, what have we got just lying around here?
More to the point, as another Ankler friend points out, I know corporate-driven reboots is a thing you can do. Definitely slot them in the boost-up-the-projections seven years out. Problem is, the corporate-driven reboots fail just about all the time.
Star Wars—and Disney Plus—were saved with Mandolorian because Jon Favreau was sitting on the beach in Hawaii and had a crazy idea that he wrote on his own without any impetus from anyone and dropped it on Lucasfilm's desk.
The Rocky "Universe" isn't a going concern today because someone uploaded the Balboa IP into the Reboot Data Processor. It is a success only because Ryan Coogler had an idea all on his own that he badgered MGM to let him do for years, before they came around. Then he went out and executed it beautifully. Without him and his inspiration, there are a lot of other ways attempts to resuscitate Rocky might have gone, and you only need to glance over at the Rambo revival project to get a taste of that road not taken.
• Of course, that's what it's like when we mere mortals try to make movies and revive franchises. When buffoons like us who have spent our lives monkeying around with mere entertainment all this time. Now we can stand aside and let the grown-ups show us how it's done.
In the new book, Amazon Unbound, reporter Brad Stone recounts how Lord Bezos revealed the results of his analysis of what it takes to make entertainment:
After more debate, Bezos boiled it down: "Look, I know what it takes to make a great show. This should not be that hard. All of these iconic shows have basic things in common." And off the top of his head, displaying his characteristic ability to shift disciplines multiple times a day, then reduce complex issues down to their most essential essence, he started to reel off the ingredients of epic storytelling:
A heroic protagonist who experiences growth and change.
A compelling antagonist.
Wish fulfillment (e.g., the protagonist has hidden abilities, such as superpowers or magic).
Moral choices.
Diverse world building (different geographic landscapes).
Urgency to watch next episode (cliffhangers).
Civilizational high stakes (a global threat to humanity like an alien invasion - or a devastating pandemic).
Humor
Betrayal.
Positive emotions (love, joy, hope).
Negative emotions (loss, sorrow).
Violence.
I mean, come on guys, how hard is that?
Especially if we stop treating "love" as its own thing and just throw it in the bucket with other "positive emotions." Think how much more efficiency you get right there.
In the meantime, Lord Bezos might want to have a little chat with Lord Stankey about how, now and then, a Great Man's understanding of How Entertainment Is Done can lead you down some funny paths.
• That said, I am excited and hopefully they will quickly revive the Golan-Globus Cinematic Universe, so we can see new, modern takes on classics such as these gems like THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS now sitting in Jeff Bezos' vault.
I don’t say this lightly, but if you dig deep, the amount of Lou Ferrigno-based IP Amazon now has in its arsenal is nothing less than staggering.
• There have also been eyebrows raised in much of the reporting about whether a freewheeling executive like Mike DeLuca can and would want to survive in the regimented, data-fetishistic world of modern tech goliaths.
The question I wonder about more is whether the regimented, data-fetishistic world of modern tech goliaths can support the sort of executives who can create great, rule-breaking, paradigm-shattering hits under their roofs. You look at Netflix and the jury there is very much still out.
• All in all, the big winner of this week has to be Jon Feltheimer. If you want to get into the building a massive library game with a wave of your wallet, there's only one stop now.
(Yoda voice whisper: No, there is another.)
• Convincing spin of the week: Kenichiro Yoshida insisting that Sony Entertainment is not for sale. "I think our strategy of creating content as an independent studio while working with various partners will work.”
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