← The Town with Matthew Belloni
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- [00:00]
Matt Bellany
Hey everyone. Danny Heifetz here from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. We're coming to you multiple times per week to tell you who to draft, who not to draft. Honestly, that's kind of most of it. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show.
- [00:15]
Pete Distad
Adolescence has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards including Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Lead Actor Stephen Graham. What have you done? Outstanding Supporting Actor Owen Cooper. I haven't done anything. And Outstanding Supporting Actress Erin Doherty.
- [00:29]
Matt Bellany
You need to sit down, Jenny.
- [00:31]
Pete Distad
Do not tell me Forbes raves Adolescence is an all time technical masterpiece. Deadline declares it a world changing phenomenon. For your Emmy consideration, Outstanding Limited Series Adolescence only on Netflix this episode is.
- [00:46]
Matt Bellany
Brought to you by Lucasfilm. Presenting Andor Season 2 Andor has earned 14 Emmy nominations including writing, directing, an outstanding Drama series. Vanity Fair raves that Andor is profoundly resonant. It's the best television of the year. All episodes of Andor are now streaming on Disney. It is Wednesday, August 20th. Get excited. There's a new streaming service launching this week. No, not espn. That's launching as well. I'm talking about Fox one, the long awaited first foray into streaming from the Murdoch's Fox Corporation. Unless you count Fox Nation, which your angry uncle might subscribe to, Fox One is 20 bucks a month and gets you the Fox broadcast network, Fox News and all of Fox Sports, which includes the NFL Sunday games and the World Series ton of college football among other sports all in one service. Certainly a value to a lot of people, but if that price point seems a bit high, that's kind of the point. I went to a little media presentation last week on the Fox lot and it was clear that Fox does want this service to catch on with consumers, especially the millions of people in this country who either cut the cord or a cord nevers. But Fox doesn't want it to catch on too much, to the point where it cannibalizes from its existing customers. We do not want to lose traditional cable subscribers to Fox one, Lachlan Murdoch said earlier this year. That's because unlike most of the legacy linear television companies, Fox is doing really well in tv. It sold off a bunch of entertainment channels to Disney and now has just news and sports, meaning Fox News, where the ratings are way up and more advertisers are endorsing the content. Plus these sports channels, basically the things that people still watch on regular TV. For that reason, its share price is up 15% this year. But it's 2025. The Murdochs know That linear's days are numbered. They need a streaming alternative to eventually wean that audience over. And there's real appeal for sports fans who finally have that last piece of the NFL on Sundays available on streaming. To that end, Fox is also bundling Fox One with ESPN for 40 bucks, a $10 discount over what you'd pay if they were separate. So it's essentially pay about half what you'd pay for cable and get a lot, but definitely not all the sports. Is that enough? It's a great question. So I wanted to have Pete Distad on the show. Pete is CEO of Direct to Consumer for Fox Corp. And in charge of Fox One. He was at Apple for many years, and before Fox one, he was spearheading Venue, a sports joint venture that got sued and killed before launch. So today it's Fox one and the streamer that really wants to succeed up to a point. From the ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. Okay. We are here with Pete Distad, who is CEO of Direct to Consumer for Fox Corp. And the overseer of the new Fox one streaming app. Welcome, Pete.
- [03:42]
Pete Distad
Thanks, Matt. Great to be here. Appreciate you having me.
- [03:44]
Matt Bellany
No problem. So does it feel weird to you? A little bit. That you're launching a streaming service that your parent company wants to be successful but doesn't want to be too much of a success? Like they want you to have a hit and get a bunch of people to subscribe, but they don't want it to cannibalize the existing business, which frankly, Fox is kind of killing it in the linear business right now when everyone else is having big trouble.
- [04:15]
Pete Distad
Yeah. I'll spin it slightly differently, Matt. I guess what I would say is we're sort of looking at the whole distribution landscape holistically. And so to the extent that we're successful in bringing more people in that are currently outside of the ecosystem, so whatever that everybody throws around a different number, we'll use 65 million for today.
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Matt Bellany
Sure.
- [04:38]
Pete Distad
Unserved customers, to the extent that we're successful in bringing them in and introducing them to these products, I would say no end in the amount of success that we can have there. I think the concern is like, we think the pay TV ecosystem is still a healthy place, especially to watch. It's a great place for consumers to watch sports content. It's aggregated. And so we don't need this. We don't want this to basically take away from that experience for consumers. So I don't think it's that they don't want it to be successful. I think that they just want to be careful to not accelerate what we already think is a great experience.
- [05:13]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. I asked a friend of mine who's a top exec in the sports and streaming world, I said, is anybody going to subscribe to this Fox one? And he said yes, just nobody, you know. Meaning.
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Pete Distad
That's not true, Matt.
- [05:28]
Matt Bellany
No, no, no. But, but it's a compliment to you. It means that you are going after a market here that is not. The people who are obsessed with this and have every service and are, you know, are already subscribed to a lot of different things. These are people who are not even in the linear landscape and want to watch NFL on Sunday but don't want to subscribe to a cable service and never have and maybe never even thought about it.
- [05:58]
Pete Distad
Yeah, it was interesting. Recently I was presenting to a group of college students and I asked how many of them are thinking about getting paid tv and the number of them is really low. But then you ask them how are you getting your sports today? Or how are you getting your news today? And they say I use YouTube TV or I use Hulu Live. You know how to pay tv. Right.
- [06:20]
Matt Bellany
So I think they don't, they don't know that.
- [06:23]
Pete Distad
Correct. But the next generation and the sort of the, you know, the 20 somethings now that are coming into being able to pay for these types of services, they want choice, they want to be able to select where they want to watch it and they expect a slightly different experience. And that's really what we're looking to build. But again, I think the way we're looking at the ecosystem is we're sort of indifferent. We're going to create the best experience we can for Fox one for those digital customers. And then we're also totally fine with having the existing distributors sell the Fox product, which is the equivalent of Fox all of our networks today, or even Fox one. Because our objective is to really get in the hands of customers wherever they decide they want to buy it and how they want to buy it.
- [07:05]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, it seems like there are two distinct cohorts of people who would be interested in this product. There's the sports people and then there's the Fox News people. And I think the Venn diagram of those people overlaps a lot. But there are distinct Fox News superfans and then there are sports people who are completist and say, oh, I'm a streaming person now for the first time I can get every NFL game on streaming. And that's a key thing here. Fox is the last place that had only linear games, and now all linear games for the NFL are available on some streaming service. How are you positioning this product to capture both cohorts there?
- [07:52]
Pete Distad
The good news is we have a full holistic news offering for the news fan, especially news fans that love Fox News. They don't need anything else. They don't need to go bundle something together.
- [08:02]
Matt Bellany
It's their whole personality. Trust me, I have people like that in my family.
- [08:06]
Pete Distad
And so they're going to be really excited about this. We're going to give them the whole product. So I don't really think we have to solve a fragmentation issue. And I think the overlap of the Fox News fan that is a digital first customer, that is probably a sports fan, they've already probably started subscribing to services. So if they're already outside of the ecosystem and they have those things, we really complete that sort of the offering for them from a sports perspective. So that's why when we started the conversation around positioning our expectations modestly, I think it's because the intersection of those two things, we think there's a large audience for it over time. But as an industry, we need to solve the experience for the digital customer. How do you bring these services together, both from an experience perspective, but also how you buy it, how it's packaged? And that's why you're seeing us start to do some of the experiments, like what we're doing with ESPN that we launched, you know, we announced last week.
- [09:02]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, I'll get to that bundle. But I want to first talk about the expectations here. You guys have really. I feel like you've lowballed here. What did Lachlan say, like 3 million, 5 million? What did he say? The expectations are single digit, mid single digits. Okay. Is that success for this product, like after a few years, two, three years? Like, will you be satisfied with mid single digits?
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Pete Distad
I personally would like to aim higher, but again, not at the cost of blowing up the ecosystem. I want to be careful that we're doing this the right way, but serving customers, I think it's really just an element of seeing where the industry goes in the next five years. And that's what we've built this to, to support.
- [09:42]
Matt Bellany
It's almost like a hedge. A hedge against the strong but obviously challenged linear business.
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Pete Distad
I will absolutely not call it a hedge.
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Matt Bellany
I mean, you know what I mean though, right?
- [09:52]
Pete Distad
Yeah, I do, I do. I mean, it's the numbers are the numbers. There's a lot of People that are sitting outside and we need to have multiple options for them to capture them. And the way we're setting it up is give them all the options and let them decide.
- [10:04]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. So Bloomberg Intelligence did a survey and they asked whether the launch of Fox's streaming service, Fox One, would be of interest to people. 56% of the respondents to the survey said that they would be very interested in a product like Fox One, but pricing $20 a month, only 9% said they would pay that amount. How did you guys land on the $20 price?
- [10:32]
Pete Distad
As you know, most of the other entrants in this space came in quite low and then basically did continuous price increases. Number one, we want to do that. We wanted to price it at a number that we felt is a great customer proposition and basically a fair return for what? The amount of live content that we're putting into the service. So we first looked at it from like, hey, can we create a sustainable business here? And are we getting paid for what we deserve to be paid for for our content? And then we also looked at it and said we want to be in a world where we build a sustainable, profitable business here. We don't want to just chase subscriber numbers and then ultimately have to to increase prices. So those two things are obviously related to the first point I made. But our goal here is to create something that allows us to continue to basically be able to continue to invest in content profitably, regardless of whether the customer is watching on YouTube, traditional cable or digital. We're sort of indifferent, and we recognize that some customers won't be willing to pay that. But they also want to watch the NFL and they want the NFL to be healthy, as do we. We want the leagues to be healthy. So it's a trade off. You know, this stuff isn't free.
- [11:42]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Moffitt Nathanson, the analyst firm, put out a research note saying that Fox's strategy for Fox one appears carefully designed to minimalize cannibalization risk. And that's the price. If it was too cheap, the adoption might be too much, and you don't necessarily want that. They are saying that a 5% uptake would yield about 3.5 million users from those 70 million homes outside the pay TV ecosystem and around $800 million in annual revenue. Sound right?
- [12:15]
Pete Distad
Well, I'm not going to get into our financials.
- [12:18]
Matt Bellany
Sure. Of course, I don't think we're really.
- [12:19]
Pete Distad
Looking at it holistically as a cannibalization risk thing. We're basically looking at it and saying we're certainly not going to undercut the pricing that we give to our existing distributors.
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Matt Bellany
Right.
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Pete Distad
It'd be unfair to us to come in for the exact same product and sell it for less. It means we mispriced our product. And we also believe, like, hey, we want to like the reason we've been sitting out of this business for as long as we have is, like, we want to make sure we can enter it profitably.
- [12:44]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
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Pete Distad
And continue to invest in the types of great programming and content that we have been in sports and news and entertainment. We're okay with not going out publicly and saying we're going to have a hundred million subscribers or 50, 50 million subscribers. We want to have a profitable business that enables us to invest.
- [13:01]
Matt Bellany
How are the conversations with the NFL about this? I went to your presentation this week on the interface. It looks great. I like the emphasis on live. I like the fact that you can turn it on and it shows you the scores and it feels like a dynamic service. But for the NFL, this is the last element of the required Linear Bundle subscription that is going away. Now, all, as I said, all the NFL games are available on streaming, and the NFL is pretty invested in that Linear Bundle. Do they express any fears about how this service could be the death knell of the Linear Bundle or anything like that?
- [13:42]
Pete Distad
Not yet. I mean, we've obviously been in discussions with them and gave them a heads up of what we're up to. But I think they also recognize that they're going through the same challenges we are with the linear ecosystem. Like, they want to have as many healthy partners as they can. So I won't speak on their behalf, but my sense is they're supportive.
- [14:01]
Matt Bellany
Well, and the NFL has always been about reach, about getting their product in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And this is another option. I'm sure there are people that just weren't watching the Fox games on Sundays because they are Cord Nevers, cord cutters, and it wasn't available to them. And now there's an option.
- [14:18]
Pete Distad
Yeah, there's one way to look at it, which is, hey, this wasn't available. There's another way to look at it, which is now these customers can put together a full package and get access to NFL games. Granted, it's not super simple right now because you get to subscribe to four to five services, but it's, you know, at least it's accessible in a way that it wasn't before.
- [14:37]
Matt Bellany
And that gets us to this bundle that you guys did with Disney for the Fox One ESPN offering for 40 bucks, you get Fox One and you get the ESPN standalone subscription service, which on its own is 30 bucks. So you save 10 bucks if you go with that bundle. I know you can't talk about the split on who gets what of this, but, but what value do you see in attaching yourselves to a nascent product like ESPN rather than going with some other bundle on an existing service like Peacock or Max or even Netflix or Amazon?
- [15:19]
Pete Distad
Yeah, listen, I think we're sort of open to trying different bundling options for customers to see how they react. And I think the likely customer for this bundle is somebody that may already have Peacock or Paramount. Plus they're interested in us or they're interested in espn and we're just making it easier and a little bit more cost effective for them to take that on. I think ultimately the problem that exists out there in sports is the fragmentation. Right. So we're just hopefully bringing the customer slightly closer to a non fragmented sports experience.
- [15:51]
Matt Bellany
Slightly. It's still pretty fragmented.
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Pete Distad
It's very, very fragmented. I mean, but we're bringing them, we're at least giving them a little bit more value in the event that, I mean, you've seen publicly some of the success that's been noted with the like the Max sure. Bundle.
- [16:06]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, Max and Disney have had success there and it, and it reduces churn too because the more you're subscribed to, the less likely you are to cancel if you feel that there isn't enough on one of the services.
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Pete Distad
Yeah, you know, we're doing some tests here with them. We're open. We're going to continuously looking at other potential bundle partnerships over time. I think ultimately the goal is just simplifying the customer experience and getting closer to something that is giving them a holistic product. And I think our products are quite complimentary. When you look at college football, you look at the NFL, the NFL content, I think we have pretty complimentary products.
- [16:42]
Matt Bellany
This is very similar to Venue, which was. Was it Venu or Venue?
- [16:48]
Pete Distad
What's Venue? I'm kidding.
- [16:50]
Matt Bellany
Venue was the effort by Fox and Disney and Warner Discovery to bundle their sports channels together. And it was sued and ultimately abandoned. But what was interesting to me was that this Fox ESPN bundle is $40, whereas venue was going to be $43 and include the Warner Discovery content. And my colleague John Arand at Puck has noted that that really tells you all we need to know about what the value of the Warner Discovery sports content was.
- [17:23]
Pete Distad
I don't think I would look at it that way. But I. No, I would say that obviously the ESPN products changed quite a bit even since we were looking at doing venue. And that is definitely not how we backed into the pricing.
- [17:36]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, okay. And that was when Warner Discovery had the NBA and they don't have that. How do you think the NBA coming into the streaming ecosystem here is going to change things up? That seems to be the biggest question of the fall and winter is what is the NBA going to Amazon and the NBA going to Peacock in addition to espn? How is that going to scramble the sports streaming universe here?
- [18:01]
Pete Distad
I think the same challenges that exist today will continue to exist from a fragmentation perspective. It puts more pressure on figuring out how both the pay TV industry and the traditional distributors bundle their content in the digital content. It also puts pressure on the digital side to figure out how do we simplify the customer experience so they can quickly figure out whether it's on Peacock or whether it's on Prime. And, you know, I think to some extent we can help solve that on the individual apps. But it's also going to be leaning heavily on the platforms to put together experiences that quickly get the customers into the appropriate app and make it seamless. Because I think the apps can only take it so far.
- [18:46]
Matt Bellany
This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Your home is more than a space. It's where you express yourself. Like, we've all got our movie night set up. I definitely do. I've got my chair, I've got my popcorn. I've got my nice drink area. Everything's set up perfectly. Whatever your vibe, Wayfair has every style for every home. They've got all your home essentials, storage solutions, decor and more all in one place. I recently got some great stuff from Wayfair. Ordered some nice outdoor furniture. We got a rug that looks nice with the fire pit. We've got some flower stuff goes all around the outdoor barbecue. Very cool. Lots of entertaining this summer. Wayfair, big part of it. Get inspired with room ideas and easy to shop collections, all with everyday ways to save. Shop everything home@wayfair.com with free and easy delivery straight to your door. That's W A Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by FX's alien Earth. From creator Noah Hawley and executive producer Ridley Scott comes the first television series inspired by the legendary Alien film franchise. A spaceship crash lands on Earth, bringing five unique and deadly species more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined. And a technological Advancement marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. FX's alien Earth, all new Tuesdays on FX and Hulu. You're also involved with the Tubi group. Tubi, Fox's free ad supported streamer. How is that going to interact with Fox one? You mentioned at the presentation that it might be used to upsell people to Fox 1. That seems smart to me. You use it as kind of a top of funnel and get people in. Is that the only aspect of intermingling?
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Pete Distad
I mean, obviously we work, you know, Anjali, who I know has been on your show and I work incredibly great guests.
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Matt Bellany
She's in, she's in the hall of fame, I guess. She was great.
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Pete Distad
Oh boy, that's a high bar. Okay. No, I mean we work really closely together. Obviously it's a different audience. They're leaning a lot heavier on entertainment. We've done some stuff on sports that's been incredibly successful on the.
- [20:47]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, they had that pre show for the super bowl that I thought was good.
- [20:50]
Pete Distad
I mean we literally had the whole super bowl and the viewership was insane. It was the most streamed super bowl ever. That actually was comforting for me. As we look to bring on, you know, we're using similar infrastructure. So I would say two things. One is the technology and the foundation of the technology from a streaming perspective. We're sharing whether it's the back, how we're doing the live streaming, how we look at a lot of the technologies from a strategy perspective. I primarily do look at it as a funnel. A lot of people ask, why wouldn't you just go integrate this into Tubi? And I think one of the magical things about the Tubi experience is that it's free and there's no paywalls jumping in front of customer. It's just basically like, it's just content. You just watch it. I think if we were to try to seamlessly go in right now and integrate it, it could have a negative impact on the Tubi engagement and also probably a slightly different audience. So I'm looking at it as a, you know, I think publicly we've said we've exceeded 100 million monthlies on that service. Like I'm looking at it as 100 million people, 60 plus percent of them are cord cutters that I should be talking to at the right times to expose them to this particular product.
- [22:00]
Matt Bellany
And no original content on Fox 1, is that correct?
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Pete Distad
No original content at launch. I mean, the way we're looking at this right now is we've got a lot of. We're really leaning in alive, as we had mentioned to you before, Matt. And like we've got a lot of great live programming on the news, sports and entertainment front. So we're going to integrate that. We're going to watch the audience, we're going to see how they respond, see what they're centering around. And then the beauty of it is we'll just work with the existing teams to figure out where we make more investments in content and where we don't. I'm not going to build a huge content organization because it turns out we have a number of them world class content organizations at Fox already.
- [22:38]
Matt Bellany
Well, that's the thing. And a lot of the Fox broadcast content will go to Fox 1, right?
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Pete Distad
Basically all of it, yeah.
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Matt Bellany
Well, what about the stuff that's not owned by Fox? Like obviously the Simpsons is on Disney and Family Guy. Those are Fox shows that are owned elsewhere.
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Pete Distad
Anything that is broadcast on the network will also be broadcast live on the service.
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Matt Bellany
Oh, so including the Simpsons, most of.
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Pete Distad
The content we'll have like current season content for that's on entertainment. And we'll also have the ability for customers to record as they're watching the show.
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Matt Bellany
Okay. But not library stuff. You're not having all 30 seasons.
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Pete Distad
Yeah, we will not have all 30 seasons of it. There will be some content, limited amount of content that we will have prior seasons for, but it'll mostly be live and in season programming.
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Matt Bellany
And what was interesting I thought is that you also are working to get the local Fox stations on this app. So if I am in in love with the morning show hosts at the Chicago Fox station, I might be able to watch them via Fox one when I wouldn't be able to via Linear because they do not get broadcast to my area.
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Pete Distad
We are basically following the same rules. So what we'll have at launch is if you're in the Chicago market and we've got a local Fox affiliate, you'll get access to the linear.
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Matt Bellany
Oh, so you won't be able to see out of market.
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Pete Distad
You will not get out of market.
- [24:01]
Matt Bellany
That's a bummer.
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Pete Distad
Well, however, we do have a solve for that that we will be bringing in the future. We do create in all of these markets a fast channel.
- [24:10]
Matt Bellany
Oh, right.
- [24:11]
Pete Distad
For each of the local markets that we do make available and our plan over time is to integrate those into the product. We'll have a solve for that. It's just going to take a period of time for us to get it put in the product.
- [24:22]
Matt Bellany
So big picture here, are we any closer to A unified experience of sports viewing in the digital landscape that will someday rival the convenience and accessibility of the cable bundle. Are we any closer?
- [24:41]
Pete Distad
Well, tomorrow will be a step closer if this works.
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Matt Bellany
We are a step closer.
- [24:47]
Pete Distad
Yes, we are a step closer. Because for the first time, you will Basically, between us and our friends in Bristol, all of this content will now be available to these customers. Now we just need to solve the user experience challenges on how you subscribe to it, how it gets bundled, how it gets brought together. And as you know, there's a lot of people spending time on that, trying to figure it out.
- [25:07]
Matt Bellany
Well, what you really need to solve is how you get your friends at Max involved at HBO Max, and how you get Peacock involved and Paramount plus and Amazon prime and Netflix. Those are the services you need to get into a bundle so that the NFL fan can pay one price for everything.
- [25:25]
Pete Distad
We should have that solved in 48 hours. It sounds pretty easy.
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Matt Bellany
Easy, easy fix. Especially Netflix. They would love to do something like that. No, I know it's a huge cluster, but ultimately that is what the consumer wants. And hopefully, if the market figures itself out, it will ultimately someday provide this to the consumer. Maybe we could call it cable with a capital K or something.
- [25:49]
Pete Distad
I mean, it is the thing that got me the like, keeps me really excited about what we're working on. It's a very complicated problem that when we started Hulu in 2007, we were having similar conversations about similar problems, and they're still not solved. And so, to me, this is the exciting part of. One of the exciting parts about what we're doing is like, this is a massive problem that needs to get solved because it goes through the whole ecosystem, whether it's how you're paying the players, how are the distributors making enough money, how are the programmers making enough money? How do the leagues make money? And obviously, the rates haven't been going down. And so it's a big challenge, but it's an exciting one, and I think we're definitely very focused on it over here.
- [26:30]
Matt Bellany
Did Paramount overpay for ufc?
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Pete Distad
Here comes my. My politically correct answer, man. I actually think it's incredible programming. I think it'll prove out over time. I think it's going to be. It's a. It's a big move. I think making it available digitally is also going to help all of us that are on the streaming side of the business, because, you know, a lot of customers are going to want to have what we have, and then they're going to also want to have Paramount plus, so I don't know. I know it's a non answer, but like it's, it's obviously a lot of money, but it's a super valuable product.
- [26:58]
Matt Bellany
Hmm. All right, well, I appreciate the time. You're well on your way to hall of fame status. I appreciate the answers.
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Pete Distad
Thanks, Matt. Talk soon.
- [27:07]
Matt Bellany
We are back with the call sheet. Craig, have you been following the saga of the Duffer brothers and their journey from Netflix to Paramount this past week?
- [27:16]
Craig Horbeck
Yes. Which they had a lot of things already lined up with Netflix. Right. They had a movie that Steven Spielberg was supposed to produce called, I think it was called Tailspin. Are all the Netflix projects still happening? They're just now moving to Paramount in the future?
- [27:28]
Matt Bellany
Well, that is a good question. I broke the news on Twitter last week that the Duffers, who famously created Stranger Things for Netflix, arguably its most successful show, they have done, what is it, 34, 35 episodes of television over 10 years. Not a lot of productivity from the Duffers, but when they do release a new season, as they will the fifth and final season this fall, it does huge numbers. And there was interest at Netflix in keeping them when their deal expires in early 2026. Paramount, emboldened by the new money from David Ellison, came in and not just offered them money. This is a nine figure deal, according to my sources, for four years, but offered them theatrical and the opportunity to make movies as well as TV for Paramount. And that's very intriguing to talent. As we've said many times on this show, Netflix has refused to offer theatrical releases for movies. And here we go. They just lost arguably one of their biggest creators to Paramount. But to answer your question, those projects that were at Netflix will continue to stay. This is a Ryan Murphy situation where obviously he famously, he left Disney for Netflix, but his American crime story, American Horror Story, all those stayed.
- [28:54]
Craig Horbeck
By the way, it's not called Talespin. It's called Talisman and it's a Stephen King adaptation that Spielberg.
- [28:59]
Matt Bellany
The Talisman. Yes, the Talisman. That's a famous book. I don't know whether that's moving forward at Netflix, but in the release that they put out yesterday, they, the Duffers specifically said they're excited to do more Stranger Things. They have spinoffs and stuff plan. They've also got a project called Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen and another project called the Burrows. So the interesting thing about that is that Netflix has obviously seen those projects and knows where they are going and wanted to re sign them. So Netflix at least thinks that the Duffers have more than one hit inside them, and Paramount obviously thinks that they do because they are going to enable them to create new franchises and probably attach them to existing franchises. But the question is, are the duffers a one off? Are they flashes in the pan or are we talking about the new Spielbergs here?
- [29:52]
Craig Horbeck
Well, I think that's a stretch. I will obviously take. I'll take the field if the bet is are they the next Spielbergs. But I feel like it's hard, right, for TV showrunners to transition to making multiple hit movies. It does not happen a lot. I mean, you could look at somebody, I guess like J.J. abrams, who hasn't made a ton of original stuff, but he's kind of handled a lot of big ip Star Trek, Star wars and made it work.
- [30:12]
Matt Bellany
That's what Paramount is hoping.
- [30:13]
Craig Horbeck
Yeah, I could see them going down that route of like handling really big IP and kind of like applying their style to it and kind of being trusted in that sense. But I mean, I them just cranking out original hits. I mean, who could. You can't predict anybody who's going to do that.
- [30:27]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, and if Paramount gets a Costco brand Spielberg, then they'll be very happy about that because that's what they want. And my prediction today is actually that Paramount has not said it yet, but that they are going to attach the duffers to some big existing Paramount franchise, whether it's Transformers or whether Ellison will do another Terminator, he did the previous ones, or whether it'll be some other franchise that means something to them from the 80s or 90s. But the Duffers will get some big franchise in addition to probably being enabled to do their own original stuff. But that's why you pony up for them in addition to hopefully getting new stuff. But the challenge here is the Ryan Murphy challenge, which when he was at Netflix, he still had his Disney FX stuff going and he was like stretched pretty thin working on the stuff that he left behind in addition to the new stuff. And honestly, the theatrical thing, like that's not going away. I know Ted Sarando's like, you're married to. That's not our model. But if you wanted to keep the duffers, maybe it should have been your model.
- [31:30]
Craig Horbeck
I continue to think the Greta Gerwig limited theatrical run is a big deal.
- [31:34]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. And everybody saw that. It was very well publicized and we won't stop talking about it. So that's. I mean, it's out there now. People know there are options. And if you got a big player with big money coming into the market and they're able to give you theatrical. That's pretty compelling. We'll see how it turns out. Netflix still can deliver the biggest audience around the world and can turn things that wouldn't otherwise be hits into hits. So that's a compelling argument, too. All right. Good luck to them. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Pete Disstad, producer Craig Horbeck, artist Jesse Lopez and I want to thank you. We'll see you one more time this week. Mama papa, mi cuerpo crece a un ridmo alarmte y la ropa que compren muy pe quena, muy pronto. You say you'll never join the Navy, that you'd never track storms brewing in the Atlantic and skydiving could never be.
- [32:34]
Pete Distad
Part of your commute.
- [32:36]
Matt Bellany
You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or fly so fast you break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your journey@navy.com America's Navy forged by the sea.