I need sports to have to play the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan.
I am an editor at theRinger.com and joining me in the studio, taking himself to Madison Avenue, into any degree world. Hey, hey man. If I'm making advertising jokes, you know we're talking about upfronts this week. People love upfront talk.
We're gonna talk a little bit about TV industry talk today. We're also gonna do a little bit of Android lessons we've learned from the Android, that maybe the industry can learn, or maybe they won't learn. So we're gonna talk about the ripple effects of Android as a kind of entity within the larger storytelling, corporate enterprise, right? Maybe a little bit of Last of Us because we didn't get your thoughts on.
Oh, thank you. On the WFLF this week, watching Liberation Front. And I just wanna tell everybody that you can watch us on YouTube, bring your dash TV as the channel. You can also watch us on Spotify where you're hopefully listening to us.
You can hit us up in our email. It's thewatchatspotify.com and follow us on Instagram at thewatchpod.com. Can I also do a little bit of housekeeping? This might be breaking news for Kai as well, but I believe we've decided we will be putting up our next episode on Tuesday, right?
Next Tuesday, yeah. So it'll be next Monday. I will be out on Monday. Yeah, just I need a little bit of a long time with some other people.
I heard it was my birthday. So you were like, I got a really good mistake. This trip was made up very long time ago. Had I known it was your birthday, I probably would still go, but I would be much much much much much more.
To be clear, no matter when you chose this trip, my birthday was still my birthday. But what's my birthday? What's my birthday? And do you have it like where you're like, we can't do that for Thanksgiving because it's CR's birthday?
Yes, first of all, it's never Thanksgiving or birthday. It's just the one way. It's the next week though. Yeah, which is a perfect time to do things.
But you do care about your birthday. No, I care about you, Karen. Yeah. I'm passive but judgmental.
I'm the best person to celebrate birthday with. Can I also address the other elephant in the room? Which is. Is that how you feel about the last of us?
The last of us? That's why I have the career though. Yeah, that's true. It's true.
We were in a different studio today. Oh yeah. So people were watching, might notice this. It's a little strange.
It's a little, a lot of air in the room. I feel like I've referred that to the small cave that we were in for a while. I like to be able to focus. This is very, it's also very bill coded.
Yeah, we can bring our own stuff in here. If you want to have like a little picture of like, Terriers' ratings for 2000. I actually do have a picture. It's right behind the rock and soccer robots.
Yeah, just like maybe we can put up a big, you know, poster of the Americans or something, whatever you want. So you want to make, because I said, we walked in, this felt like Rantland days. You feel like we should have only content that we've heard of Rantland. Yeah.
Just don't nappy. Merch, rust from True Detective. That's your guide. Yeah, man.
So I wanted to talk to you about upfront. So for people who don't really follow the trades and follow the way these things work is the networks traditionally go to the store. Advertisers and say, hey, here's what we have coming up for the next year. Please buy some ads on our network.
Now it's become a little bit more of, I think, a play to the street, that being Wall Street, trying to entice Wall Street, Goose Stocks. Talk about what you've got coming up, but so many of these quote unquote networks are also technology companies. You see a lot about iterations that they're making in their products as well as Netflix, for instance, did an upfront and Sean McNulty, who writes a newsletter every morning called The Wake Up Through The Anchor, is really good at sort of summarizing a lot of this stuff. And he noted with great interest that Netflix was largely about their ad suite.
They were like, we have a lot of a content coming. Like I believe Sean used the word tonnage, but the most important thing is the ad suite. And it was like an ad forward. Like here's how to buy ads here, here, here, and here.
I mean, that was the room for it. They also say like two more seasons of Bridgerton and Diplomat is coming back and four seasons. We're going to be eight seasons. Yeah.
But two seasons of television. Two seasons of TV, but eight seasons of a year, unless they change the format. And it becomes more of an indoor thing. And it's like five years, but each episode is a year.
Oh my god, right. And it's just like two years BBB. And it's before the Battle of Brunch, because that's the stakes. That's right.
That's right. Amazing. You didn't finish that, did you? I've still got a season to go.
I would say the stakes get larger. Oh, yeah. I actually have a feeling about those stakes. OK.
I could see it coming a little bit. Part of my passive judgment. I'm not going to react. But the biggest story to come out of up front this week, by far, especially for two guys like us who have been there since, you know, since when and just like that was actually sex in the city, you know, that's how far back we go, is that Max formerly known as HBO Max is now in the future to be known as HBO Max, because they are adding back HBO to their title.
Now, there has been a few different variations on this in terms of what is just the streaming service called? Is there a bifurcation within the network or within the streaming service for popular fair or populist fair versus the prestige scripted and sports and documentary content that HBO is so well known for? Ultimately, I think that this is, I guess, a good thing. It's a good thing.
It's not like I was like, I just gotten used to Max. I reorganized my tiles on my Apple TV. No, tell me what you think. I actually still have the HBO Max tile.
So I wonder if it'll just fire back up again. I think I do still have an HBO go tile. I have an HBO. Yeah, I mean, HBO now, I think.
So I like to hold onto my tiles. Right. Goes to show you never know. It's true.
It's true. I think something. What else is going to come roaring back? What is it there?
Like a Twin Peaks line about that thing you like is going to come back and stuff. Gum you like. Gum you like. Yeah.
There is a. That's streaming service. It's going to come back and style. There's a Twin Peaks line.
You hear this news. Yeah. That's Charlie Rose. And you say, OK, well, I'll say that Charlie Rose did it.
Oh, yeah. And you've never seen me do Charlie Rose. I stopped doing it because it became inappropriate. But he became inappropriate.
But I was like, his whole thing would be like Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson. And he would be like, he writes the script. He gives it to you. And you say what?
And then it's pretty good. And he leans over goes. And you say what? By the way, it's OK to bring that back now.
HBO Max is back. Also, racism is back. You can say anything now. So you can.
It's cool. You can be Charlie Rose. It's fine. OK.
As a white man in my 40s, I give you permission. Thank you. It's OK. Thank you for seeing me.
This is a safe space. That guy agrees with me. Anyway, well, it's interesting. So our buddy Casey Boyes, the chairman of HBO and Max content, was on, we talked about this on our pod.
He was on Matt Bell and his pod. And he was talking on his podcast, The Town. And in retrospect, he must have just been biting his cheeks the whole time because clearly he knew this was coming. And you can sort of read the tea leaves of what he was saying.
We commented on it, right? Which is that the bet on renaming the service Max after the discovery merger slash acquisition was that this would be the new catch-all for an entire suite of entertainment from your Game of Thrones, your Dr. Pimple Popper. Is that the only discovery show you know?
I think it's the funniest one to mention. He mentions it. I believe there's also a bunch of Magnolia type content. Yeah, it's like what are those called?
What are those called? What are they all these? Well, I did with Larry Mcmerchery's library. That's my favorite.
That's true. You just see like kindling in a boutique hotel. Great. Is that a good word for Bible?
Yeah. That's the word you own. That was the play. And I thought it was interesting.
And we commented on our pod that Casey was like, the data has proven otherwise that this is no longer a competition for first place. That is really a Netflix. Netflix was there first and they're parked there. That it's really competition for runner up.
And the best thing going for them is the HBO content. That is what drives subscriptions. The other stuff might be nice. There are certainly people who watch everything that's available on Max or multiple styles of shows.
But the HBO prestige television stuff is what drives the brand. So you could read the tea leaves on that. Putting HBO back in the title is kind of a no brainer. Sure.
I actually feel like it's kind of another half step. Just call it HBO. One of the other takeaways from this week was that ESPN is launching its direct consumer service. And it's just called ESPN.
And this is kind of like a galaxy brain zag that makes sense. I don't think I'm going to sign up for that. I'm still so mad that I think I'm getting charged like three times for ESPN plus. Oh, I definitely am.
And also there was that period where I was. I still can't sign in to read like mock drafts. There was like six months ago when I was in a real pickle. And I think I probably texted you my tech support guy where I was like, how can I watch this Monday night football tilt between our Philadelphia Eagles and whomever.
And what I did in order to watch it was sign up for field gates insight into like draft order in 2027. So I was able to read our old pal Ben Solak, but I still couldn't watch the game. Right. So I messed up.
Right. Anyway, this is all headed towards that place. Right. But I think that the I think the market has decided whether the brand value of HBO still matters and whether it has been diluted by the Big Bang Theory sharing screen with it.
And I think the answer to that is no. I think a lot of the sort of fixed brain stuff that that legacy media brands have held on to for a long time. Like Disney saying, oh, we can't have swears on a network with Disney in the title. They've let that go.
And now eventually it'll just be, yeah, do you subscribe to Netflix, HBO, Disney, kind of where it always ought to have been headed, right? Yeah, I think if I had one thing just as a common man who's not in these boardrooms, doesn't go to lunch, you know what I mean? Like, nobody asks me to go to lunch. But if I had to give one piece of advice to all the non-Netflix streamers is clean it up.
There's just too much confusion about what is where, when it airs, how many of them are going up, and where I find it once I turn the thing on. And I just say that as somebody who professionally covers this and follows this and watches as much as I possibly can. I think when you start getting into this is a tile inside of Disney. This is a tile inside of Max.
But we know that the reason most people are coming to Max is actually for Last of Us or How Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Although they'll have to wait a while for that. I think that anything that these companies can do to disentangle themselves from a lot of their corporate tech speak infected a lot of these, basically a lot of these services from the get from the get go would be really beneficial. I do want to throw something at you though.
I was just doing a rewatchable the other day. I guess I can just say it was close encounters because you've got to announce. But we were talking about how we are farther from close encounters in the movie now than the people in close encounters were to World War II. I guess World War II comes up a couple of times in close encounters.
And I was thinking about this in relationship to a lot of the way that we talk about television, the way that we talk about these networks where are we actually getting to a point now where when we're like, what's NBC doing? It's like actually no one cares. Like there are most people in the world do not have a relationship with NBC as a place where they go to get comedy. So what's more important is that they get peacock to work.
At this point, but that's actually more like sunk cost fallacy, right? We botched that. Like the Paramount Viacom spent years ignoring Comedy Central MTV and now they are dead brands. That's gone and you can't really bring it back.
I think that it's actually, I think we're saying the same thing because I think that Warner Brothers discovery, now there's a secondary level of intrigue about this that like putting HBO back in the name and sort of divorcing a little bit of discovery. Is there gonna be another sale or split in that? That's very possible. We certainly have no idea about that.
But yeah, leaning into what you do have rather than nostalgia is important. But HBO still does seem to have some sort of connection for something, not just us. And it means something. So lean into that because Max is a nothing.
Yeah, it's a meaningless thing. And that is the bigger lesson. It's funny you're talking about things from decades ago because what we were just saying about people getting precious about, well, we don't want our legacy brand to be tarnished by this new media play or whatever. And I even kind of parroted that line when HBO Max became Max, which was I tried to see the logic behind protecting HBO.
Sure. We recently, well, I did and I was texting you like some images from the old way back machine about old days at spin.com, 25, 26 years ago. And that was, the only relevance here is not how much you love the band party of helicopters. The only relevance here is it's that.
So I was nominally like the editor of spin.com. And the people at spin magazine were like, we want nothing to do with you and your grubby little computer site. So we were essentially running our own pirate top 10 list of what was good that year. Shut up, Ronald scream exterminator.
Completely divorced from the content of the magazine, which was a loser for all sides. It's just you kind of have to roll with it and allow the thing to become what it's going to be. I think there's a lot of intelligence stuff happening across the board. You can see the pit, for instance, is going to be airing on TNT in the fall.
Yeah, that's right. And or aired on various Disney terrestrial networks at one point over the course of the class. You know, you have tried to do it. People are doing smart things with multi-platforming and getting the shows in front of people where they think they might enjoy them.
But I think what gets complicated is when, what would be a good example of this? I think actually the Disney Hulu FX stuff is the stuff that's probably most confusing because there are people who are like, well, FX is still a cable channel, but a lot of stuff that FX does is only on Hulu. And Hulu is Hulu, but Hulu is also on Disney+. Like that is a message that I don't think you're ever going to be untangle, able untangle, except for the possibility that you can still sort of sneakily sell Hulu to people who would get Hulu anyway if they just had Disney+.
Like, I don't know exactly like how many childless people out there are like, I don't want any access to the original Trilogy of Star Wars. You know what I mean? Wasn't that bill until like last week? Yeah, but like we're not actually good barometers of this because like we are like, I need to be part of all of this to see where it's going.
I think for an average person who's like, I got like 50 bucks maybe to spend after Netflix. Like, I don't know. Well, one thing to think about is this is not necessarily saying that we should be, you know, this is not a play for sympathy. But the the Byzantine way these companies were set up and structured and restructured and sold means that there are a lot of like vestigial departments that are still actively functioning as different arms of what is increasingly the same company.
So the FX programming team who we law constantly John Landgraf, Nick Raj, you know, Baylion, they are programming FX and sometimes FX goes on Hulu. Hulu has its own programming team that has nine perfect strangers, season two coming, you know, and that is not, they don't touch each other. There's a larger argument to be made and maybe we can get to it later when we talk about Andor that like, when you ask the question, is Andor a success, my head theory is that it is very successful and important to the larger Disney corporation, more so than it is to the Lucasfilm project, which is distinct within that larger ecosystem. Yes.
And we're talking about confusion. So at the up fronts this week, we learned that the Greg Daniels penned office spin off slash off shoot, I think the poster says from the universe of the takeaways clearly that it is like the documentary team is doing this again. That will be premiering on Peacock this fall. We also learned that there's a new Tina Fey executive produced show with Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe called the fallen rise of Reggie Dinkins, great name.
And that's an NBC original comedy. Yes. You will be able to watch it on Peacock. Sure.
Will someone who likes one likely like the other in the same way that they liked watching 30 Rock in the office back to back on NBC? Probably. The fact that they are completely different with different expectations and different headwinds. I don't think that matters to your friend Joe 50 bucks, but it does affect his story for being friends with a common man.
You're like multiple streaming services. Josh Hawley. I would be really into a senatorial commission on streaming services. I would watch that on C-SPAN or on Peacock wherever it happened.
We wouldn't be able to find it. But I mean, most senators are over the age of 70. Yeah. So would it be like telling my parents about slow horses, in which I explain in like beautiful granular detail.
And they're like, more or less, this sounds like a dream. Like this is everything I would like. And they say, what channel is it on? I know.
And then I'm like a whole house of cards. My mom has Apple TV. And I have given her access to any streaming service that she pretty much wants. And she still uses her Samsung's voice command to open up, like, expedited on demand to watch anything.
And I'm like, Mom, you know, you can watch like all of Andor. Anything basically ever made in the history of your life is right in this little black box. And she's like, I understand what time does Andor come on. You know?
That's beautiful. That I told you that I recently heard from my mom. She called on the landline to tell me that she had gotten into you. Her's that she had gotten a new iPhone.
I was like, great. Yeah, great. Do you are going to store it with the last three that you bought over the last 15 years? But once they battery died, you never turned on again.
And she's like, well, I'm very excited about this new one. I was like, OK, great. Are you into the Gen Mojis? Like, what's the deal?
And she said, do you like I feel that? She said, well, with a new phone, it can play music, not just have a telephone ring. Wow. And I was like, sounds good.
Be sure I'll be sure to keep on you on the landline. Just send me some playlists. Oh, no, be so sick. CR is hardcore playlists 2025.
Yeah. It's going to be great. Any other. Yeah, I want to talk about the Seven Kingdoms moving out of 2025 to 2026.
And so you're without thrones. I mean, without thrones. And also the thing that the biggest shows on TV now fall into, which is like, you just can't run every year. So you're basically going to have the pit, the industries, like the shows that are like about people doing pretty normal jobs in places where you can film that don't involve a tremendous amount of VFX.
But I wanted to know whether or not this felt to you like, it's not ready or we could use it more in 2026. One of the most valuable things that Casey said to us when he came on the show was the long-term thinking he's responsible for in terms of the schedule. So that when he's looking, when we're like, oh, I wonder what's coming on in the fall. He's thinking about the fall of 2027.
Does this strike you as something? Because the whole, I thought, value proposition of the Seven Kingdoms was that it's essentially like people talking underneath of trees and meadows and stuff. And like walking around a lot. So.
Sounds amazing. Sure. But like, do you think this is a, hey, we could use this more next year or is there. I don't know.
I have no insight or intel about this production. And I think that what we will end up probably getting fed is whatever spin is most suitable. Like maybe this is because of production issues. But they'll say, what's great about this is it can be a, like a ramp up into House of the Dragon season two.
So we can connect the two shows and viewers minds and they get used to it. Or it's to say this way we can get into production on season two faster and then it can be a little bit more reliable. Now that we figure out how to make it, I don't know. I think that generally the best case, I mean, actually I was about to say one or the other, but in fact they're almost always connected.
Like if there are production problems, then I think Casey and his team like Fran Newers here are like, okay, well, what are the advantages here? How can we play this late for advantage and plug holes in the schedule? I thought it was gonna be this summer, which is why it was surprising. It was apparently originally supposed to go later in the year.
Yes. So maybe it's not that significant of a jump in the first place. I think the thing, they had it in the coming soon on HBO Montage, so I think everybody's surprised. I think it was a surprise.
But I think the, not to, I think Kyle laughs when I say this, we're not to glaze them too much. I got a little one. Is, I've been counting by the way. We've been doing pretty well today, but I think you're ahead of me.
I have a mic now too, by the way. You have a mic now? I do. Yes, I love the most of Silas.
Yes. And he thought so, Charlie Rose guy. And he thought on Sanitorial hearings. Oh, I just lost my mic.
Oh, weird. That I think that the long-term thinking that is gonna be most crucial going forward is to have a balance, is to have a schedule that has enough dependable meat and potato shows that can run every year to allow you the luxury of the every two year heavy hitter or summer blockbuster type. Yeah. HBO seems to be pivoting into that, into that rhythm successfully.
If you look at someone like FX who, you know, as we often say, we talk about FX, they don't have the same budget as HBO does. Shogun, I believe, is going into production. Sorry, introduction. No, I think it's in pre-production.
I think it was just announced that it's going to production in Vancouver at the end of the year or even. Oh, I thought they were like, we are now in production on Shogun. You're probably right, given the global warming. You kinda need to have like a, you know what I mean?
Wow, you are political today. No, I just mean like it's like, Shogun doesn't feel like a very summery show if you were shooting in Vancouver in Japan. Like you'd probably wanna have like some foliage and stuff. I guess you could put it in.
No, they're shooting in January. January in Vancouver. Anyway, if they're shooting in January 26th, that means- I think we're being honest, it's 27. And so much of the rosy glow of effects of the moment has been like, oh, what an incredible year they had last year with dominating all the categories.
The Emmys in Shogun is repeatable. It is an ongoing series. Yeah. But three years between seasons, you need to fill in the margins around it.
So, and obviously they've announced other things too. And they have the shows, but like, but having, I think it's increasingly obvious that you need a pit in order to do a house to drag. I continue here my last thought that I just wanted to throw at you. This is kind of adjacent to what we're talking about, but before we get on to Andor and other shows, I just wanted to say this.
You know, I think sometimes we have these conversations and I'm like, is this an interest of a larger community of people who are like, what did you guys think of last of us? I don't really care what you think of Wall Street and Tack and all this other stuff. And I think that's true, but I do think that these things affect how people watch things. And I also think that it, how people watch things and how they're programmed by these streaming networks tells us something about how more the majority of people who watch television watch things.
Like I was thinking about, it's been brought up a few times. Why hasn't Netflix done more internal verticals? curation being like, this is this, this is all Netflix original global. You can find things by category, but they haven't really like- They branded their Cristitos.
Yeah, right, exactly. And clearly, like Netflix would do anything if they thought it would drive their stock price up, bring in subscribers, create more value. They obviously don't want to do that. Like they have several of the biggest shows on television that they release in one night because they know that's how people want to watch them, regardless of whether it frustrates people who talk about people watching them.
So obviously Netflix has kind of the inside track on like how people are actually watching television, thinking about television, what they care about when it comes to, when they open up the app, what they want to see. And so when we get into these conversations about like, well, it's still complicated to find the English teacher. I don't know. I mean, maybe it would be make more sense if everybody was just like, here's all the shows we have.
And that's how people actually want to receive this stuff. But I think the other takeaway from this week is that for as much as we have spent over 10 years talking about a very particular segment of television, the prestigious stream year kind of fair that engages us, I think that we've often, I don't know whether it's a strong man or just sort of a point on the horizon. We said, but it's worth noting that the Dick Wolf franchises are still dominating on NBC and get large audiences and et cetera, et cetera. And the idea that there's some sort of still foundational beach head of a certain meat and potatoes, I've used that twice, so it must be hungry, but like television that exists.
And the main takeaway from this up front felt very existential because with the shift in sports media rights and the result in the ripples that the world's talking about. And the legal agency for the purposes of this conversation. Yeah, so the purpose of this conversation, NBA spent billions to bring the NBA back to its airwaves, not just airwaves to NBC, to peacock across its platforms. And one of the first dominoes from that is massively fewer television shows.
In fact, I think the only scripted stuff on NBC right now, I mean, aside from the tracing work, then you just mentioned is Dick Wolf's universe of Chicago shows. And long order shows. Yeah, I think it's like pretty much, it's just like the voice, reality stuff and sports now. And that's what's left.
That's radical. And then you hear Jimmy Kimmel always does a bit. Or Seth Meyers usually does stand up at the NBC Universal Upfronts in Jimmy Kimmel. It's about Disney Upfronts.
And if you read or I don't think you can see, but you can read some of their bits. It's rough. It's to be kind of being like, you guys are all morons and we've got nothing left for you, basically. This is it.
Yeah. It is, I mean, the positive spin is that it is existential shift in the industry. And it might quote unquote work, but it does sort of redefine what TV is and what it's going to be. It's hard for me to imagine a world in which even if it is somehow better than the office, the paper ever achieves the kind of impact the office.
It can't because of the opportunities people will have to watch it and engage with it. It does mean it's not going to be good. In fact, I'm secretly kind of bullish on it. But maybe this all speaks to our larger point of, let's be honest, about what we're capable of doing what the reach is, even if that means reducing our expectations.
Wait, isn't that what Trump said about the economy? This is actually a very appropriate way to segue into Andor and into the sort of ripple effects and the lessons of Andor because let's be honest about what the reach of that show was and let's be honest about whether there's anything replicable about it. Obviously, you did a lot of like, I think kind of shoe other journalism about this. I'm making it a little since here.
So I'd love to kind of just clear out and set some picks for you here. But I think we could start here is, you know, we're going to try not to spoil too much of Andor, but I would recommend you watch the show before you listen to some egg headed conversation about what it meant. And we won't, I don't think we'd use spoiler at all, but I also don't even know if we officially said, I'm sure if you're listening or aware, but we did have Tony on earlier in the week. That was a full like hour long conversation.
So if anybody is interested in that, that one up on Tuesday night, corresponding with the last three episodes of the series was the Inor a success or is Andor a success. So I think this is the toughest question to answer. And it's still kind of premature. And to your point about doing shoe other journalism, like I did talk to people in the industry, not people directly involved with the show, of course, but like what the perception of it was.
And you know, it is worth noting, not in terms of it's like, it has nothing to do with any shows like bottom line or budget. But there are certain shows that shoot through the quote unquote industry at whatever that may be at this moment, like wildfire, and do impact people's thinking. And I think I referenced that that like three or four weeks into the pit, people were talking about it and referencing it in conversations and in pitches that had nothing to do with medical shows that were attempting to recreate the 90s. Andor is definitely at that level of conversation.
One of the executives that I spoke to who works at a rival company finished the season alone in his office yesterday morning, so you don't want to be left out of the conversation. The question about whether it's a so what I did though, I basically, in considering that question, I came up with four reasons why this can ever happen again. And also four reasons of optimism of what can be brought in. Fantastic.
For your question about success, I sort of what I said before about I think that the impact of the show and the success of the show creatively, which is undeniable and the conversation. And then hopefully the award chatter and nominations, which do matter internally to companies, I think is enormously valuable to Disney and its larger, small screen-scripted project. I think that it's a challenging question for Lucasfilm because it is so profoundly one of one because the bulk of Lucasfilm's business, and I don't say this pejoratively, is maintaining and propping up a legacy brand that sells a shit ton of merch. That is historically for kids, not adults in the way that Andor is for.
It kind of deviates from the brand's core purpose in ways that thrill us, but maybe even leave the most optimistic, sympathetic, even fanboy-ish people within the company being like, well, what are we going to do? I don't think that's necessarily a failing. I think the question about whether it's a success will be, we'll actually be born out by a lot of the award stuff and what happens, although I did get the sense that the long gap between season one and two was beneficial to the show and to the show's bottom line because just existing on the service next to a new hope and everything generates interest. Yeah, I think it's a steady performer, I think, on the service.
We're seeing this in contemporary film with centers where the miracle of film that doesn't have a 75% drop from its first week to its second week because people are telling their friends you got to check this out. So it's still making $20 million a weekend, at least. I don't know that Andor could be considered a blockbuster on those levels, but I do think that Andor is a word of mouth success and that people are making a project out of watching it or probably watching Rogue One or spending a lot of time on the Disney app like connecting the dots. So yeah, I'm sure it's got some value in that sense.
So let's go through this list. So here are the things that make this show completely unique, irreplaceable, Black Swan event. Sorry, but let's enjoy what we had it. Number one is that this show was not developed.
What I mean is most projects that get to our screen almost always it's like a spark of an idea in the brain of a creator, of a writer or pre-existing IP or whatever. But everyone involved, I think that sincerely with good faith, takes a lot of pride within this industry of we developed it together, we attached talent, we gave notes, we sort of steered it in the right direction and that gets a lot of buy-in from the executives and even the most thoughtful ones. We got it over the finish line together and a successful dish as many cooks and many authors or whatever. This is not that, right?
This is a God-level creator in Tony Gilroy saying, hey, there's a clear baton pass here. I can do this relay race. I can take the baton from this movie and create the character and get him to the end of it. And that's the assignment.
As he said to us on Tuesday, that's what he said out to do. And then he did it in ways that are just mind-blowing. But just that simple fact that he just basically, as he said to us, he wrote an email saying, well, here's what you do. And then they were like, OK, better go do it.
That is very, very unique. The second one is that it fell between the errors and imperatives of streaming in a way that won't be repeated. Again, he talked to us about this. But when he wrote that email, it was go, go, go.
It was a gold rush era. And everyone was trying to establish a foothold and prove how serious they were about shifting their entire business model on the fly. And so when you have a smart guy coming with a good idea, they were like, great. And then also this.
And then also this. And then you get a movie and you get a TV show. That entire ecosystem changed. I mean, that was also pre-COVID.
Let alone pre-strikes. Pretty much. But it was just like, let's the money faucet is on full blast because the more we spend on stuff and the more stuff we have, the more Wall Street likes it. It's growth growth growth.
That all changed radically while they were in production on the first season, which is why this went from being a five year project to a two year project. Now, Tony has also said he didn't think he had the horses to do five years. And he keeps referring to Diego's face. That's like moving in the wrong direction.
And I'm like, I will go down that direction. That is a very good direction. If I could look like Diego Luna five years from now, I would probably erase and or from my mind. If I could just like, I don't see the issue.
But I can't even grow beard. You know what I mean? But so that hitting that timing is so unlikely. And it'd be very hard to go back to that this place where it's like, go as big as you can and just trying to break too much on the way out.
Like that attitude has definitely gone from all these corporations. Three, and I feel like this one is kind of controversial, but might be surprising. Kathy Kennedy, who is on her supposedly although we don't really see the timeline, has said she's retiring from Lucasfilm. Yes.
There's been some competing reporting about that. But much vilified for her tenure in charge of this company and a lot of the blame for the, I mean, we certainly feel creative failures of the new trilogy theater. Yeah, ultimately the rush starts at stops of her. So yeah.
Yeah. And some of the other TV projects. I'm not here to overly praise or overly bury someone who I still never actually met or engaged with. But if you look at her track record and her success record in Hollywood and also why she got the job, it is very old school, a pretty surreal career.
She's worked on some of the biggest movies with Spielberg and Frank Marshall in the 80s and 90s. And the job is to get everything to yes, to help creators get to yes on everything. And reputation has been tarnished a little bit because of the fall outs that she seems to have had with various directors on various projects. So whether it's Colin Trevero on Rise of Skywalker or Miller on solo, a lot of announced, but then never realized projects with Ryan Johnson and Dave Benioff and DB Weiss.
If you were a catty Jenkins, if you were a catty Jenkins, you were a catty Jenkins. Well, Squadron is still flying around out there somewhere. Yeah, but you said the death starts to exist. So look, I think that the argument for the catty Kennedy apologists would be she completely trusts and empowers directors, so sometimes she trusts and empowers the wrong ones.
Now I'm not saying that to be any of no knowledge of any of those interactions. That was what an apologist would say that like you have to know, you basically have to know how to drive the sports car you're being given the keys to. Right. Tony knows how to drive that car.
He is a Academy Award nominated writer and director and had a vision and has his team and has been in the industry since that era and worked with a lot of, like he's working Jerry Brokheimer, he's worked with the big, big dogs of old Hollywood. I imagine they have a great relationship. And if her legacy at Lucasfilm on the plus side of the ledger is she empowered this guy to do this thing? It's pretty good.
Yeah. It's pretty good. So it was a good match, let's say. None of this happens in a vacuum that seemed like a very good producer-creator match.
And obviously not reputable. The last one is that, and I really want to hear what you think about this, but like the idea that all of these massive IP universes are flexible enough to allow different shades of storytelling within them, that adult storytelling could exist and or proved adult storytelling could exist within Star Wars. But does it also suggest or imply that adult storytelling could exist within Marvel or DC or Lord of the Rings? And my gut reaction is no, both because of where those IP universes exist in terms of the bottom line of those companies.
Like Marvel needs to get Avengers money rolling, assembling again. It's not about like, oh, that's really humanized shield or what was it? Jesus, I had it right there to my tongue. Damage control.
We're going to fix the rubble. The other thing is that though the nature of those universes, particularly Marvel, kind of invalidate the premise of Andor, meaning a spy series set, not even director bullshit spy series, but like, OK, let's really talk about the CIA in the Marvel universe. It kind of just gets undone once Professor X is like, actually he's lying. You know what I mean?
Where the Star Wars does have created, and this is something that Tony took advantage of, a universe where there are billions of people, some of them are walruses and maybe 17 of them have ever seen a lightsaber. So OK, there's a lot of space there. There's no story. And I don't know if that's true.
I want to know what you think about that. That's a great question. Marvel has tried to do that. I mean, that's secret invasion.
That's what secret invasion was supposed to be. And you can make an argument that there are elements of that in Falcon and the Winter Soldier that they wanted or have talked about. Winter Soldier being their 70s conspiracy thriller. I think that's Congressman Soldier to you.
That's true. You know, I can never get away from the hero part of Superhero movies. And that ultimately, not only are they going to be super and Trump, whatever, like, basically work a day, conflict, trial and error, you know, drama that's happening on the streets of the world that they're talking about, that they can just fly in literally and stop a building from falling and then fix everything or read somebody's mind. But that ultimately Marvel is positive these people is heroic.
Now, and or culminates with several of our most beloved characters doing capital crimes, which is totally like my shit. Yeah. But it's hard to sell. I mean, that is the adult part that you're talking about.
It's like, can you leave this theater or this TV show with mixed feelings about what you've just seen, mixed feelings about characters that you've invested in? I happen to think that that's how you deepen your relationship to those characters is to be able to see them not in the best light, to not always be making the right choice, to not always save the day at the end. But, you know, it wouldn't be Empire Strikes Back if it happened all the time. And that's the thing.
It's like, we talk about like, well, we want this darkness and we want to have this edge and we want to have this kind of like melancholy or sadness or like, you know, feeling that things aren't going to work out so that when they do work out, it's really, really e-walk time. You know, like I think Marvel has not quite gotten there outside of infinity and then game. Yeah. And it did.
I mean, I like those movies generally. But in terms of the aim of the project and the capability of the project, it does make me think a little bit about it. And we don't need to get too into it. But like the Superman trailer, the drop, the new Superman trailer.
And I've been pretty bullish about this project. And the reason being, I just had a feeling that James Gunn gets what makes the character unique and interesting, which is kind of what Kevin Feige has done repeatedly with even obscure Marvel characters. If you can just communicate it, the audience is on board. This trailer is the first thing that gave me pause because this trailer is the first thing that made me realize that this, there's no universe, certainly not the DC universe or our universe, where this movie can just be about that one pure idea.
This is one of the busiest trailers I've ever seen. Isn't that the disease of modern life though? It certainly isn't that like you went to Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees be the Yankees. But instead you get sold like all this other stuff and all these other experiences that you're supposed to have.
Isn't Superman's not enough? Because if Superman's not enough, nothing is, right? And that's kind of that I think that's I can't say any better than that. There are moments in this trailer where I'm like, oh, truth, justice, heroism, also just like the physicality of like him being so strong that when he falls like the sidewalk crumbles, like it's cool and the visuals are cool.
But also he's a beacon of truth and justice in the common man. But also he's an international criminal. And also he has an army of robots and a dog and seven other superhero pals. I was like, this just feels I just feel stress thinking.
But you already started thinking like this movie's going to be how long? And I guess I have to watch it to watch the next seven movies. But like that kind of fatigue when usually the opportunity is to do one good thing to start. And this isn't meant as a criticism of Superman.
It's again, a reinforcement of the idea that for as much as a show that costs hundreds of millions of dollars and had like multiple night shoots in Valencia, Spain, like this was kind of under the cover, under the radar of the larger project. It didn't have to teach us what the future of the Jedi item holds, right? It was just about connecting these particular dots. I think there's even more just even speaking from the artistic creative side of it.
There's a significant difference between characters and pieces on a chessboard of a shared universe. I've seen a lot of people very rightly be like, man, I would love to see a prequel about X or a sequel about Y or like what about what's happened to these characters next. And I understand that desire because I have it as well. But these people were not extensions.
They were characters. Like, and so when you watch a Superman trailer and you're like, that is a lot of fucking villains or allies that they are introducing when it really does seem like Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, and Superman are pretty solid foundation to build a movie off of. It's happened before. I think the Marvel disease, the not disease, but the Marvel issue and maybe even the DC issue is that you're making a movie to make more movies.
Andor was made to tell a story that had a very fixed end point, which was the beginning of Rogue One. Yeah. And I think that that ties into the things that I think should be lessons learned from it. Although I do just want to reiterate, one of the most shocking things that Andor has done for me personally is that 100% made me a fanboy kid again in such a pure way.
It's actually been a problem. Like I should not be thinking about Star Wars this much right now. But I just so purely and so naturally found myself watching those last few episodes and we're not spoiling the show here for people who unfinished it. But I was like, OK, but really Alexander Skarsgard could do the Loosen Flash show.
Right. I'm like arguing with myself. I'm not arguing with myself. I'm dreaming about it because how cool would that be?
Now, it won't happen. And it shouldn't happen to the point that you made. But it's pretty exciting that the show that is supposedly engaging with our cerebral adult selves can also reawaken the other part of us. OK, so here's the four lessons.
And I please thoughts and comments. Number one, and this might be one of the hardest ones for executives, is trust the ones who deserve trusting. Now, maybe knowing who to trust is accurate for the rebellion and also for veteran executives. OK, maybe that is the special sauce that the people who have been together for decades like the HBO team or the FX team have.
But I think the hardest thing for smart execs to do, even while meeting ones, is to get out of the way. And if you have a writer's room of super-elfas, like two Gilroy's Bo Willman and Tom Bissell, let him cook. If you hire Luke Hall from Chernobyl and you see what he does in season one, honestly, give him his own corporate card. Because it's worth it.
It is. I don't think he was doing his own expenses. No, I can't say let him build what he needs to build. Because he is the best at what he does operating at the peak of his craft.
And again, we talked to Tony about this. He was an EP on season two, which is not standard for production designers, but is well deserved. Well, it sounds like he was also the first person to talk to Tony about. Yes, physical spaces.
OK, you've written it. Let's start building out what Mon's wedding looks like. Let's start building out what are the nooks and crannies, of course. Let's start building out what a person looks like.
And if you're talking about the Gorman-Town Square, which is all you can afford to build, how do we maximize it? How do we maximize the story and the drama from the location or from the stage set? I just think it's a hard lesson to learn in anything management. Sometimes it's the meddling you don't do that matters the most.
Two is kind of what we're speaking of. Adults want entertainment, too. And I don't just mean within IP universes. Because I think the curse of handholding, of forequodrant thinking of how can we make this busier, pop more, in a way, kind of what we're saying about Superman, I think that is a disease that has infected almost all of our entertainment.
And you see it in, and I think even the casual fans are starting to see it with every show beginning with three months earlier. The most interesting thing happens. But that's not where our show begins. Begin your show at the most interesting moment.
Do that. We don't always need handholding or explanations. I think that, also to that end, reference points for what shows could or should be don't need to have only an 18-month tale. Meaning when we sit here and we talk about Andor, and we get excited, we're talking about British miniseries from 1981, or French films from the 60s, or novels or history books.
Like if something excites you or historically has excited a group of people, it doesn't lose its special sauce, just because it's not within a streaming window. The Bear baby reindeer are exceptional television shows and connected with people. But other things have connected to people, too. So if those can't be the only two shows that people are throwing around as reference for what they want to do with the medium, I feel like when someone comes in, and there's a lot of this seems to be like, no, it's for executives.
But I think it's for creatives, too. People should trust their passion more, honestly. And I feel like you probably see this too in podcasts, re-watchables, when you guys talk about things that you guys care about, even if it's not a nine on whatever on run tomatoes, people will respond to the passion more than the specifics. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's something that was happening maybe 2015, 16 to about 18, 1920 that we saw were technology companies starting streaming networks and kind of not knowing what to do with their money, so allowing people to kind of pursue passion projects.
What those passion projects want of being, whether you're talking about something like 0, 0, 0 on Amazon or I made a destroy UNHBO, can sometimes be construed as people want international global crime. Or people want true stories from underrepresented voices who are talking about trauma. They want point of view, right? Like they want things to feel at once different, but interesting and familiar, because that's what the best stories do.
You open up a book and you start reading, Anna Corinna or you start reading Alan first and you're like, I'm immediately thrown into this world and I'm thinking like these people and thinking about the choices that they're making and the circumstances that they're facing. But that's not necessarily like replicable on a cookie cutter way where you can just decide like a programming strategy against it. And so it's really interesting to think about a trend coming out of Andor being like more espionage sci-fi shows based on previously existing IP. Maybe that would be cool.
I mean, it's not like we haven't had that though. Like one of the funny things that's been happening to us over the last 24 months especially is we keep getting shows where we're like, is anybody else in a simulation where they're making TV shows just for you? And then you get the show and you're like, that was okay. That was pretty good.
And it's not that there's anything wrong with the intention of the creation of the show, but making TV is really hard, making anything is really hard. And making stuff on this level starts to become kind of like, can you hear Jimmy? Like, are you really like, do you know what I mean? Like, I guess my major point is it's about voice and it's about depth to me.
And that is the hardest balancing act. I mean, I didn't even put that on the list. I was trying to find a way to articulate it that I think you just did so well. Andor was about everything in one thing, in every scene.
And only old Jedi masters can do that. And I think that the lesson that I put that is kind of an offshoot of that is if you have to air on one side of the other as a creator or as a developer or whatever, always air on the side of people. Always. Like you cannot say, very few people can do a Tony did and say, I'm going to make a show about revolution.
And then also have it hit as hard as it did. Because I think also if Tony was sitting with us, he'd say, well, no, I got to make a show about revolution, but the sign was to make a show about casting Andor. And I feel like I did that too. He is a good writer because he writes people first.
I think that we keep getting farther away or forgetting the idea that if the show's not fundamentally about people, if it's about an idea or a God forbid, if it's just about a world, then it's a documentary where it's a video game. And there are people who love certain types of video games where you wander open space, you know, universes and you're like, wow, now I can see the sunset over this hill and watch the world. I'm not sure where to last of us right now. For all, like whatever I know.
But I'm happy for you, but that's not the same as drama. Yeah. Show me a person in that world and tell me you can care about that person and then film background. And that's essentially what makes something good.
I went back and started watching some of the older episodes for, you know, obviously in researching the second season, talking to Tony, but just even before we had this conversation, I went back and especially watched the Aldani sequence of episodes from the first season and the Narkeena season of episodes or sequence of episodes. And I was really struck by how brave it was to start Cassium where they start him. And he's basically like a petty thief when you first begin the show. You get flashbacks that suggest his origins and like what difficulties he's faced.
And obviously like when Marva comes into it, you have like a warmer feeling towards him. But if you start to show off, just make much of the same way you start the movie off when he's basically murdering someone to get some information. You know, it gives you a real cold feeling about the character and watch him not only like, I mean, this is just really sturdy writing. Almost every single character from the number one on the call sheet to people who are in the background of most of the first season, who then become major players in the second season has an arc that you could easily diagram for people where it's like he starts here and then he gets a promotion and then he gets a demotion and then he gets a promotion again.
But then all this time his relationship to his mother is like this, his relationship to his lover is like this, his relationship to his work is like this. And Cassium is actually like the Chitician in schools to start somebody who goes from like thief to mercenary to prisoner to spy to rebel captain. To hero. Yeah, to hero to martyr is a pretty remarkable piece of writing.
I mean, it's unbelievable. And you think about like, first of all, you were talking about all the people in the background. I was like, the other geniuses you need to let cook or casting directors? Yeah.
Because think about how much casting mattered on the show. Like every single person, I just believe is the single best person that could have played that part. And I mean, you go back to the prison episodes, every single face in that person, you're like, who the fuck is this guy? And that person has a story.
And like there's a level of, I also always want to try and be fair minded. Like the best stories are always just overwhelming with specificity and decision making. That said, not every show has this budget. Not every show has this deep bench of imagination to draw from.
But very few shows would give us an alien race in revolt and take the time to invent a language for them, the way they do on Gorman, you know, or the celebration in songs. And morning songs that are in the first season, you know, in the Aldani celebration or what happens at Fair X at the end. Like this is what you're making a show about people in revolt or about a culture. Then you have to service culture.
Most of you shows don't have that luxury. But if we are moving into a bifurcated and maybe a healthier ecosystem where some shows take longer and some shows don't. And they're the right types of shows to take longer and not like a medical drama probably shouldn't take $200 million in two years to make a season. But if you're, if you have a healthy balance in your diet as a network or streamer, some of that production money, yeah, you had dragons take a long time, but so did building real culture, real life investing it with something more than just, you know, vis effects at the peak of its powers.
The last thing on the list was just that I was thinking about, when we talked to Tony, one of the things that really struck me was how much he brought from his movie career to writing for TV in a good way. In the sense that he's really said to us about like the number of the page numbers on page count. He's always cutting. He's always cutting because you have such a little real estate.
His response wasn't cracking his knuckles and being like, hell yeah, we're gonna do, we're gonna take eight episodes to get this thing moving. Now obviously there are budgetary and story concerns. But so much of TV is so poorly paced and plotted. And a lot of that comes back to the original sin of, oh, now we have room to explain everything.
And that in fact movies do with prequels and origin stories and blah, blah, blah. But like if you watch it back on Andro, which you've been doing, I think you're seeing in real time how every single moment matters. Oh, dude, I mean, I was actually thinking about this on my drive in, I was listening to, I was listening to Big Star, which is this fan. You guys should all listen to Big Star.
But on, I think it's on Kangaroo, which is one of their big songs, Steve Cropper, who used to be in Pukur-Tuny MGs plays on it. Right, and he plays like six notes. He apparently was just like, you guys are way too whacked out, like I can't do this, but plays like seven notes on a telecaster. And the writing on Andor is basically like that.
It is, what is the bare minimum that people need to have an emotion or an idea communicated to them, but has also got style and swagger. I don't, we don't really see Luthan that much in the second half of the second season. But think about how impactful his appearances are. Yeah, every choice.
And we also in every one of those scenes are like, oh, that's what he's been up to. And I think that it is, I mean, everybody's just making TV for streaming services while the world burns like get it. But at the same time, I think that one bit of service is incumbent on the creative industry is to do everything we can to try and re-educate people towards accepting uncertainty and nuance and shadow in art. And then maybe go for it in life as well.