← The Town with Matthew Belloni
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- [00:00]
A
If you care about Hollywood, and I assume you do, if you're listening to the Town, you should really be getting the whole story about Hollywood. That's what you get with Puck. I'm a founding partner Puck and I write a newsletter called what I'm Hearing. It's got exclusive news for insiders and analysis of the biggest stories. Puck has a bunch of great journalists. We just hired Kim Masters who also covers Hollywood from the inside, plus media, sports, fashion, politics and finance. It's a must have for plugged in people. Fans of the Town get a discount on the description page of this episode or at Puck News thetown. Go further into Hollywood by becoming a Puck member today. This episode of the Town is presented by FX's the Lowdown, proclaimed a gloriously off kilter noir by Rolling Stone. The series follows Lee Raybon, a citizen, journalist and self proclaimed Truthsorian, as he exposes corruption and unearths the cities hidden rot from acclaimed Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo and starring four time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke. TV Guide raves the Lowdown is easily one of the best new shows of the year. The Lowdown premieres September 23rd on FX, streaming next day on Hulu. This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New Film Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Don't miss the movie critics are raving is the real deal. An intelligent, deliberately paced journey into the soul of an artist. Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere Only in theaters October 24th get your tickets now. It is Monday, October 6th. There aren't many meaningful brands for a movie student. After all, what does it mean to be a Warner Brothers movie? Or Paramount or Lionsgate? But you hear a 24 and you kind of know what it's going to be. Quality. Boundary pushing. Cool even. For more than a decade, A24 has built a brand as the studio that releases the indie movies that if you care about such things, people you know are talking about. They've had two best picture winners, moonlight and Everything Everywhere, all at once. And they've cultivated a hip New York image, complete with the viral marketing stunts, the logo hats. They just bought a performance space in the West Village and they're opening a restaurant. But that's kind of changing in reality. As we've discussed on the show, 824has always been a private equity play. Initially backed by Guggenheim Partners where co founder Daniel Katz worked. It's raised millions from institutional investors a few times over the years. Launched its own production studio and TV division. Got backing from Josh Kushner and Thrive Capital a few years ago that gave the company a $3.5 billion valuation. Last year that was up 40% from a 2022 raise by investment firm Stripes. And with that new money has come a slightly new and different mandate, Namely bigger movies, more produced in house rather than simply picking up US Distribution as was the model. For the most part since then, there have been hits. Civil War last year cost about 50 million and grossed more than 120 million. This summer, the materialist grossed more than 100 million and cost in the 20s. But some of those bigger budget bets haven't worked. Eddington. The Ari Aster Western gross just 10 million domestic and cost around 30 million. Death of a Unicorn with Paul Rudd did 13 million domestic and cost around 20 million. And the big one, the Smashing Machine, starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson and directed by Benny Safdie. That one cost between 50 million and 70 million, depending on who you believe. And it absolutely tanked this past weekend, grossing 5.9 million domestic. So what does that say about the A24 strategy? Hollywood cemeteries are littered with small distributors that overextended themselves. Is a 24 on that path or is this just a blip? Lucas Shaw is here to discuss it's the Smashing Machine box office aftermath. A pricey lesson for a 24 and the strategy when an indy power decides to go bigger. From the ringer and puck, I'm Matt Bellamy and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back. Lucas, how much money did you spend this weekend on various limited edition copies of the Life of a showgirl?
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B
$475.26.
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A
It would be the best Bloomberg expense report ever if you had to buy them all to just for research.
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B
You know, now that you say that I, I should have done it. And then the. And then on the side. Although I would get in real trouble if I did this. Like sell them for more on the Internet.
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A
You should. I know you say this is normal and every artist does it, but Taylor Swift is especially good at milking her core fans for all they have on these physical copies. I mean, I know she does it so she can pad her opening weekend stats and say that she is, you know, potentially breaking Adele's record for the most sold in the first week, but I mean, I would love to see stats on the number of people that are Buying these things because I am betting it's the core group of 75,000, a hundred thousand super fans that are spending hundreds of dollars to make sure Taylor Swift breaks a record on opening weekend. All right, enough Taylor Swift. We are talking about 824 today. And Craig was shocked that the Smashing Machine cost as much as it did. 60 million is what I have heard. The official budget they put out there is 50 million. I've heard as high as 70.
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B
It's 51.75 million. Right. They have to be really specific now.
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A
To make sure that you don't question it. The box office spin has to be very specific for people to buy it. But regardless, it's a giant disaster. I mean, you do not want to open a Dwayne Johnson movie to $5.9 million. And they can blame Taylor Swift. She took some of their large format screens. But the demos on those movies were very different. Taylor Swift was 90% female this past weekend and Smashing Machine was more than 70% male. So different demos.
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B
And had there not been the Taylor Swift movie, I bet the PTA movie would have taken a lot of those larger format screens. Even if it was weekend two, that movie did better than Smashing Machine. And that does have a lot of the same demo. A lot of like middle aged men who want to go see it.
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A
Yes. And there was a B minus cinema score on this. So shocker. People who went to a Dwayne the Rock Johnson movie and got a very gritty wrestling drama where he doesn't even look like himself were disappointed. So not good. But I want to talk about the larger implications here because A24 has shifted its strategy. They got a bunch of money. They got a $3.5 billion valuation. And since then they have started to release and make more of these bigger budget movies. So first explain to us why 824 is doing this. Because they got to that valuation based on a model that was pretty disciplined. They didn't spend a whole lot to release these movies. They picked up mostly North American distribution for these movies.
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B
They hit a lot of singles, unorthodox marketing campaigns. Their whole shtick was we can make a movie feel like it's a studio release with a marketing budget that's considerably smaller.
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A
So why not? Why change that?
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B
Because they want money. They're at this point a an investor backed, venture backed company, right?
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A
Well, they always have been. It was Guggenheim from the beginning.
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B
No, but I mean they have continued to raise money. And so if you want to be worth the 3.5 billion and I think they would like to one day be worth 5 or 8 or 10 and sell for some huge sum. You have to grow to get there. And the truth is, is that their valuation when they were just a distributor was also inflated. Right, because they released a lot of movies that got positive attention and buzz, not a lot of big commercial hits. Everything everywhere, all at once was, I believe, their first movie to cross $100 million at the global box office. And if you spend more and you also are the studio, meaning you're financing the movie, it is a higher risk, higher reward strategy. And you're hoping that you can make a bunch of movies that gross 100, 200, 300, far more. Right. You cast the Rock in an expensive movie because you believe that much like Warner Brothers did with Leonardo DiCaprio in the PTA movie, he can deliver a bigger hit than you're used to getting for that type of movie. That's why they have a Timothee Chalamet movie opening later this year that also is at a much heftier budget than a 24 usually does. And if you're the studio that finances from the beginning, you can control it. You take worldwide rights. You just. You're building a library of some value. And it's a big, risky swing that they've taken. And the early results this year are kind of middling at best.
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A
Yeah, I noted the Materialists did well, but that was more of an international hit. Hit. And Sony has that international. By the way, I mentioned last week that Sony would kill for a movie like the Materialist. They actually had international on Materialist, so apologies to Sony for that one. But they have had others like the Ari Aster movie Eddington. That was a big, expensive miss. They did the Paul Rudd movie, Death of a Unicorn. That was a big miss.
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B
How dare you? Forget about the Legend of Ochi.
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A
Oh, I did forget about that one. What is that one?
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B
It was the movie with the little animal. It had Willem Dafoe in it. Anyways, I'm gonna admit that I did not see that movie.
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A
All right, well, first of all, A24 has always released a bunch of turds that nobody hears about, knows about, but they didn't cost anything. And they could get away with that because they had others that did hit and others that were buzzy and got awards. So, like, the only difference now is that they've upped the budgets and the landscape of Hollywood is littered with the corpses of studios that tried to do this, like Overture Films, won Best Picture with Spotlight and was out of business A couple years later, even Miramax with the Weinstein's, I mean, they started as the low budget art house place and then all of a sudden bought by Disney and they're making 50, 70, $100 million movies and they got over their skis. So is this what's happening here or am I missing something? Is it just that A24 is now playing a different game or is the kind of shine off of the toy?
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B
I think it's a little early for that. I mean, the thing to remember about A24 is they have a deal with Apple that pays them a amount of money to produce movies, put them in theaters, and then Apple puts them on the streaming service. The new Spike Lee movie was, was one of those titles. They have a television division that has had a few decent hits. And no matter what, given the way the television business is structured right now, you have limited upside, but you're not losing money on those.
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A
Yeah, they got Paramount to buy a new package with Nicole Kidman today. Some of the trade announcements were pretty euphoric about that deal. I have heard that it was actually a struggle to sell that project and that they packaged it up with so many elements that it was so expensive it was hard to get anyone to bite. But they have had hits in TV and, you know, it's just a really, really tough business.
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B
But I think it's too early to say that the bloom is off the rose or, or whatever your, you know, preferred adage.
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A
Did I say Shine toy? What was that?
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B
I don't know what, I don't know what you were going for there. But there are real reasons to doubt whether a 24 can pull off this transition because it is really challenging to go from being a company that is thriving in the 50 million box office range to a company that's going to release, you know, be, I don't know, Lionsgate, where you're going to be releasing. They're probably never going to get to the level of, you know, making movies that compete with Disney or Universal or Warner Brothers. But can they get to the level of movies that make 100, 200, $300 million at the box office? That's that. That middle is really tough place to be. Lionsgate itself has had a pretty terrible couple of years.
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A
Yeah. And then you get into the star business. The rock is an interesting one here because a 24 had actually been laying the groundwork for a few months. It felt like that this was going to be a commercial play. Smashing Machine was going to be a commercial. Try to get it to a big opening weekend, which you kind of have to do at that budget and then boom, it goes to Venice and it's positioned as a art house awards contender type movie. The Rock cries after the screening. 15 minute standing ovation, yada yada yada. We've discussed all the nonsense at the film festivals. I wonder if the Rock demanded that.
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B
Demanded what?
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A
The Venice hoopla and the Oscar campaign and the entire thing around that movie.
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B
Well, don't you think this was always going to also be an awards movie with.
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A
Oh, so the key is also they want it to open and then I think based on opening, go for the awards. And now they're in a predicament because they probably promised Dwayne Johnson an awards campaign. They're going to lose a bunch of money on this movie and then he's going to want them to spend five to $10 million more on a big splashy campaign that can reposition him as a serious actor.
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B
Yeah, that is the problem with working with talent. You need the movies to deliver.
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A
I should note that the movie did have a bunch of foreign pre sales so they got some money back because of those. But clearly a 24 spent on marketing. Not enough, but they did. I think they bought additional TV spots when they saw the numbers kind of cratering and they did run during football and other sports stuff trying to get that male demo.
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B
And it's. This is also an interesting year for them because the Safdie brothers, who they've had a, a close working relationship for a while, have split and made two different movies. And it'll just be really interesting if one of them hits and one of them doesn't.
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A
Two different movies yet both star driven sports dramas about obscure sports that are coming out within three months of each other. Kind of amazing. Marty supreme is a ping pong movie.
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B
You know, they may not want to co direct anymore, but they clearly have similar tastes.
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A
Yeah. Are they? I, I have heard they are feuding. I think it's probably more nuanced than that. But I don't expect to see them hugging it out on a red carpet anytime this season. But yeah, Josh is probably kind of loving this. If they are feuding. I'm sure Josh is loving that he doesn't have to live up to some huge opening weekend where The Rock delivered 25, $30 million to an arthouse movie.
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B
If you're a 24 and I'm sure one or both of us will, will hear from them after the pod, will they look at it and say because you talked earlier about how hits can disguise misses. Right. Will they say, look, we had the materialist. That was a huge win. We had warfare that did okay. And that makes up for the fact that we had three or four movies that didn't work.
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A
Yeah, we're not talking about that. That's every studio. Every studio has hits and misses. We're talking about the strategy. And this is a company that took a moderately successful strategy, certainly a successful brand building strategy, tremendous brand building which.
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B
Enabled them to get a valuation that far exceeded what a company with like similar financials would have gotten.
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A
Absolutely. They sent Craig an A24 hat and he wears it like, those are cool. That's not easy to build over 10 years. A company where 30 something urban dudes want to wear your hat.
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C
That. That's what my Twitter bio says. 30 something's urban dude.
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B
30 something urban dude.
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A
You know what I'm saying? All right, so let's get to the point here because the distribution landscape in movies is pretty interesting right now. I mean, we've been told that, that other than a 24 and maybe neon, that this area of art house lower budget movies is kind of screwed, that all those movies are going to streaming. The traditional studios are focusing on their IP plays. And if you want to make money, you got to at least get a streaming output deal. By the way, HBO does have a 24 movies. So a 24 has an output deal with HBO Max, which is pretty lucrative. HBO kind of stepped up there and that is another big revenue stream for them.
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B
Analogical brand fit for them.
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A
Yes, exactly. So the question I have is why are these other distributors getting into the game? We see Mubi now distributing movies. They're the streamer that has a. You know, they release the substance and they're getting into more distribution. This new company, RO K, which is private equity backed by, they are launching and they wanna release 10 movies a year. I've heard there's a couple other distribution plays that are in the works that have not been announced yet. Why are people gravitating towards this challenged space?
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B
For the same reason people always gravitate toward it. It's sexy, it's fun. I think the primary reason is vanity, which is that because in terms of the money coming in. Yeah, you wanna be around movie stars and famous directors and get invited to film festivals. And it's not that if you have a starting one of these companies doesn't cost you that much. I also think there's a feeling that there's not enough movies, like you could get away with arguing that there are not enough movies being released right now. And so do you want to be one of the companies to come in and also think about where we started, a 24, whether or not they get the exit. The fact that a 20 Ford is now valued at billions of dollars. You have Neon out there that's worth several hundred million dollars. Like, people see an opportunity.
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A
Yeah. What the hell do they know that? I don't know. If I'm Megan Colligan, who's running this new company, Roquet, it's like, well, I could do that. I know it's good. I could sell scented candles on a website.
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B
I think if you were to talk to the movie people, for example, they would say, as a 24 goes for bigger and bigger projects, that creates an opening for someone to make the movies that A24 was making.
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A
Exactly. That's the thing is, I think people see a potential lane here. I mean, Media Capital Technologies owns this company, RO K, and they're backed by MassMutual, which doesn't seem like the kind of company that would be into a vanity play. But Chris Woodrow, Raj Singh, like, they are the principals and maybe they are, but you know what I'm saying, Like, there is money coming into this space. And what I think is happening here is something that was on display this past weekend. There just aren't that many movies in theaters anymore. If the studios are going to back away and if there are going to be fewer big titles, there are going to be weekends where there are opportunities. If Taylor Swift had not dropped onto this past weekend, the overall box office domestically would have been under $50 million. And I think these companies see that and say, okay, there are opportunities now. Whereas five, seven years ago, you couldn't get a release date that didn't have some big studio movie on it to compete with. And if the studios are going to abdicate that role, then others are going to come in, whether it be stunts like Taylor Swift or like Demon Hunters a couple weeks ago where they. Netflix put a movie out in theaters just for a stunt, and it was number one at the box office. We saw Disney do it with the Hamilton 10th anniversary. They're doing it with the Avatar re release. If there aren't enough original movies, maybe there is. Elaine here.
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B
Well, we talked about. I think it was last week. We talked about Warner Brothers doesn't have another movie coming out for months.
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A
I know. Five months almost.
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B
One of the biggest studios in the world has no movies for months.
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A
And we know why. It's financial shenanigans. And they're trying to limit risk and all the other reasons why they or.
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B
Paramount Slate is a shadow of what it once was. And so if you believe that there is still an audience in theaters, why not take a crack at it?
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A
Yeah, I know. It's kind of wild though, because that's not what we have been told for the past five years. You know, Ted Sarandos tells us that audiences have largely moved beyond seeing movies in theaters. You look at the ads during football this weekend. Half the ads were for movies that are debuting directly on streaming. And that's where the audience is going for movies.
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B
Well, the audience is in both places.
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A
For certain types of movies. That's my point though, is that the movies that these new companies want to release and that A24 thinks there is a market for in theaters are not the kinds of movies we have been told work in theaters.
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B
Yeah. Well, Materialists, I'd have to triple check it, but when I was looking at the highest grossing movies for this year, I think Materialists is the only kind of quote unquote indie to hit $100 million. And it's technically right under it, like 99.9. But pretty much everything else out there is a major studio release or like a couple of Chinese movies and a Japanese movie.
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A
Yeah. A24, by the way, picked up your favorite Chinese animated blockbuster, Ne Zha 2, and this movie completely flopped in American theaters.
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B
Yes.
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A
All right, so you are on the board of a 24 and you see these initial results and you are looking at the landscape.
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B
You're a little worried.
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A
You were worried, right? Yeah.
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B
It's tricky though, because on paper they made the right decision. They took filmmakers that they'd had success with, gave them a bigger canvas and paired them with what they thought were bankable stars.
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A
Yeah. What they want is something like Nosferatu, which was a Robert Eggers movie. A filmmaker that a 24 has had a relationship with and he went to Focus and directed a genre movie that was high end genre. Robert Pattinson, who's a star but has also done a 24 movies as well, and it grossed almost $200 million worldwide. They need that. And that justified the $50 million budget. But that is really tough.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Is the idea of an indie. Indie studio growing and increasing their budgets, isn't that kind of antithetical to the original mission statement?
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A
Of course, that's what we're talking about. That's why it's. That's why it's nuts.
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C
What's the natural progression? It's like you build a brand, you have success, you grow, you get more money and then you sell. Like at a certain point you lose the ethos of why you started the company. It's like there's only. There's kind of a natural life cycle to an indie studio. Right. It's like 10 to 15 years. And if you're so successful at a certain point, the budgets get bigger, the bets get riskier. And then is the goal ultimately that like, do you think a 24 will be independent five years from now or will they be a subsidiary of a major studio?
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A
Good question. Their valuation is so high now that I don't know that a studio would want to pay that much for them. Maybe Paramount, if they want a pipeline of movies or someone like that, maybe they go there and say this will be our lower budget movie arm. Doesn't seem like David Ellison's that interested in it. But look what happened to Summit. Summit Entertainment was a independent small studio that happened to release and get the rights to the Twilight books. And they rode that all the way to a deal to sell to Lionsgate and that was their out.
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B
But they didn't sell for three and a half billion dollars. Unless I am misrepresented.
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A
Yeah, I don't remember what the price was. I don't think it was. Maybe it was announced because it was a Lionsgate was public. But yeah. And that was on the back of a huge franchise.
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B
$412 million.
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A
That's what the sale was. Correct. Okay. So yeah, that's not an A24 sale.
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B
So A24 would want a sale of more than 10 times that. And it has never released Twilight.
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A
No, it doesn't have those franchises, but it does have the relationships. It does.
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B
I mean, you brought up Focus in connection to Nosferatu, that also of those sort of independent arms of majors because it's a division of Comcast, NBC Universal, it has a pretty clear track record of making commercial movies.
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A
It does every once in a while. They also have a lot of bombs. But that is okay when you are the arm of NBCUniversal and you have all of these other Jurassic movies to float you in years when you don't have a hit and then you deliver one a year. Or you have Downton Abbey as a franchise or you can release smaller movies like the Holdovers that you pick up from Miramax and then turn into something. Okay. Like it's much easier to operate a Sony Classics or a Searchlight or a Focus Features when you have the cushion of the parent company.
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B
Well, also Sony in particular, releases really small movies.
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A
Well, now they do because they can't buy anything because they're all taken by the streamers.
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B
Right. But they're not aiming for the most part, for movies that are going to make $100 million. Right.
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A
All right, so, Lucas, you have Daniel Katz in a interrogation room and you have given him truth serum. Does he say the goal is to sell in five years, go public, or continue the path?
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B
I think he would say that long term, the goal is to sell for a big number. The movie business is so risky that as a public company, seems insane to me.
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A
I agree.
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B
And so the goal would either be to sell or stay independent. But if you stay independent, it becomes difficult for you or your, you know, your investors want to cash out. So obviously the goal is to have there be some exit event.
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A
So who, who buys a 24? Maybe Apple. Maybe Apple wants that brand.
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B
Well, that was always the hope. But with the amount of money they've raised and the valuation they've achieved, they have, in a weird way, boxed themselves in a little bit. They need the strategy they're they're working on right now to work in a big way to ever think that they're going to get someone to buy them at a premium to their most recent round.
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A
Yeah. And maybe Apple is the only buyer. They have unlimited money. I know, but we can't get into another conversation of what Apple may or.
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B
May not buy, what Apple will probably not buy, because their focus is on their phones and AI and all these other things.
- [26:22]
A
Exactly. All right, Lucas, thank you.
- [26:24]
B
Thanks, Matt.
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A
We are back with the call sheet. Craig, we'll get to SNL in a moment. Our favorite topic, but we're going to add something to the show that a lot of listeners have asked for and it's accountability for my box office predictions. We usually do a call sheet on the box office every week and then we just kind of let it go and don't talk about whether I was right or wrong. And then at the end of the year, you give me a percentage on whether I hit the money or not, we're going to actually mention whether I get it right or wrong. Are you for or against this?
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C
This is good accountability Corner. And now that we have an established track record of you being correct, you know, any between 60 to 70% of the time, it's worth it.
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A
Although this week, so our first one, I took the over on 37 for Taylor Swift. It came in at 34, so I missed on that one. I took the under on, I believe, 12 for the smashing machine. 1515. Oh, my God. It was so high on energy. That one obviously came in lower at 5.9 million. So mixed record on the first week. One and one. All right, so let's talk about SNL. Big season premiere. Bad Bunny. We are not a critical podcast. I thought it was kind of a disaster episode.
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B
It's.
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A
It's not. Not the best foot forward for snl. Love the show, but, man, it was pretty brutal. Let's talk about the new cast members, because we're about career trajectories here, and I want you to give me a prediction on which of the five new cast members you think has the best shot of breaking out.
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C
Yeah. None of them got a ton of run. I would say Cam Patterson got the most airtime because he got his own Weekend Update segment.
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A
Yes. He is the new standup that they hired. And apparently his act was very racy, laced with F bombs. And he did a whole segment on the show about how he can't say F bombs on snl.
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C
I don't think it was the F word. I think it was a different word he wanted to say.
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A
Oh, the nword. Yes, he did want the N word.
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C
But my prediction is that I think the breakout star from this cast is going to be Veronica Slowikowska. I think she's going to be a big thing on SNL and will be around for a long time.
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A
Oh, you love her because she's in Tires, the Shane Gillis show, which we both enjoy.
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C
I. Well, I like her from that, but she's. She got very famous on TikTok, and I think she's very good. And what I like about her, and I think it's why you succeed on snl. She can play characters like Cam Patterson, I think is going to go the Pete Davidson route where he's kind of just kind of be himself most of the time.
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A
Yeah.
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C
I think Veronica can actually play characters, which is very important and kind of like, lasting at snl.
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A
Yeah. Okay, that's good. I'll. I'll support that. I enjoy her on Tires. And she was in this episode briefly. She was in the chat GPT send up about Latino uncles. Yeah. What I don't understand on SNL is so you hire these new cast members and presumably they have done something in their audition that put them over the top that was so funny or so unique or unusual.
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C
Yeah. Like the Will Ferrell get off the Shed. That became a sketch.
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A
Sure. But it didn't become a sketch right away.
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C
No.
- [29:34]
A
And, like, I don't understand why SNL doesn't lace the season premiere with the one funny thing that these new cast members all like Will Ferrell and Sherri o', Terry, when they were hired, they did the cheerleaders at the Groundlings in la and that was a big reason is why they got hired. And then boom, they get on the show and they do the cheerleaders. Why didn't the one funniest thing that each of these five cast members do, why didn't that make it into the premiere for any of them?
- [30:04]
C
Well, honestly, it's probably because there's so much competition because there's 17 cast members they're competing against and there's so many legacy cast members that they probably can't.
- [30:12]
A
Compete with and the writers have ownership and they want to create stuff for people. I, I know there's probably politics and everything. I'm just like, play the hits. If you hire someone because they do one funny thing, put that thing on the show immediately.
- [30:23]
C
I will say I found myself missing, even though it's only been one episode. Like, I, I think the digital short is a necessity for SNL and, and I found myself wishing it was, was there. The Please don't destroy Lonely Island. Like, I, I kind of like what that does for every episode. It's kind of a different vibe. It kind of brings you, kind of gives you a behind the scenes feel. I think they need that and I wish it was back.
- [30:43]
A
All right, well, Craig's wish list for SNL1. We'll see. Hopefully this doesn't get better. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horback, Arter, Justin Lopez, and want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week.