THB #830: A Visionary Passes
I have been in a bit of a mood lately. Part of it has been my sleep schedule, to offer too much information. But I think the bigger part of it is a kind of ennui that I have settled into (and can’t wait to escape) about the state of media bubble in which I live and work.
It’s become clearer this week (with better sleep)… we live in a moment, both in the filmed entertainment and the real world, in which there is a distinct lack of visionaries.
Ted Turner passed this morning at 87. He has been sick for a while, suffering from Lewy Body dementia for almost a decade, so the physical loss is not really much of a surprise.
Ted Turner was a visionary. Ted Turner changed all of our lives. Not always for the better (see: colorization of black & white films), but always with the best intentions and a relentless gusto.
He didn’t start with nothing, but he built a media empire out of a billboard business. When cable television launched around the country, he was the one to invent the “superstation” to make a national channel out of a UHF also-ran. When he didn’t get home in time for the national news (and probably went to sleep before the local news at 11), he came up with CNN, the first 24-hour news channel, at a time when an equally famous cable phenom, HBO, was still not broadcasting 24 hours a day.
He tried to buy CBS in the mid-80s, which seems a bit ironic right now, and when he failed, he bought the carcass of MGM/UA from Kirk Kerkorian and, with vision, kept the MGM library (pre-1986) for himself. He sold UA back to Kerkorian and pretty quickly sold off all but the library to others, eventually all being re-consolidated by Kerkorian until he sold them all again.
That MGM library became the basis for creating TNT, to be sister to TBS: The Superstation, and eventually spawned Turner Classic Movies.
Turner also made wrestling a part of his media empire, buying what would become World Championship Wrestling, the top competitor to what was then Vince McMahon’s WWF (now WWE), competing enough to end up with WWF buying Turner’s wrestling business in 2001. (I had the weird pleasure of floating around that WCW world as they shot in and around LA a lot in their last few years when I was working for TNT.)
And of course, there was Captain Planet, voiced at the start by Tom Cruise, who left before the episodes aired over “creative differences.” Were those differences, in part, stemming from Turner’s effort to make a peace with Russia, back in the days when the war was cold and peace seemed a long shot, but actually possible? Maybe.
And all of Turner’s stuff would eventually become part of Time/Warner, which is why the Turner television and theatrical assets are part of Warner Bros still.
Turner was a true environmentalist, putting his fortune where his mouth was (“the mouth from the south” was a nickname), buying 2 million acres of land that was used for all kinds of benefits to nature, escaping overdevelopment.
I didn’t mean to do an obit here, but even this brief look at the man explains how influential he was, not with his words, but with his actions. A visionary who acted on his vision and succeeded more often than he fail, often to spectacular results.
So as we stumble through this moment in the industry, which is not as painful as it is constantly made to sound, with many very, very brilliant, capable people still filling screens, large and small, with series and films and ambitions… I wonder… where are the visionaries?
I really don’t mean to drag a lot of super-smart, hard working people who make changes to this industry (and this world) by moving forward and doing their jobs at exceptionally high levels and making things better… almost always unappreciated by those of us in the media space.
But vision in this industry has almost always been driven by the fear of failure… not only failure, but permanent failure. Sound, color, unique screen formats… all a function of fear of failure at movie studios, trying something new and innovative that made the experience better because the alternative was bankruptcy for the company that first took the leap.
The last major innovation in this industry was streaming. I know that the story of how Netflix got into streaming has been written… or mythologized. The decision and the execution and the adjustments all deserve enormous praise, no question. But what I cannot pretend not to see is that the initial innovation of Netflix, the red envelope mailed to their customers, was a great idea taking advantage of circumstances that served the young company well… no flat dvd, no inexpensive US mail, no internet, no Netflix. People forget that Netflix tried to break through in the originals business back then and failed. The opportunity didn’t quite fit.
When Netflix started streaming in 2008, they had about 7.5 million subscribers and just over a billion dollars in revenues. No small success. But the DVD market was already deteriorating and no one was in a better position to see than than Reed Hastings & Co.
But there was another big problem. The international mail was not as consistent as US mail, so expanding the red envelopes to the rest of the world was also a capped reality. There were many blockades to servicing the rest of the world - aside from the US - but there was and is only one delivery system that could work for Netflix for the distribution of movies and tv shows…. streaming. Countries could block the internet and slow internet service was the norm, even in the U.S. But there was a future available. And Netflix took it. Which was brilliant. I don’t really believe that this was always Hastings’ vision… but believe what you like.
Still, the internet, which had only become widely available in 1994, mostly via dial-up, was still pretty crap in 2008, at least in terms of delivering filmed content. YouTube didn’t launch until 2005 and in 2008, had 780p as their highest quality and still had a 10 minute time limit. Watching a streaming movie on Netflix was cool in concept, bit painful in function. But the tech improved with time.
In 2011, Netflix had more subscribers, 20 million, and revenues of around $2 billion. Great. By the end of 2013, they had 30 million domestic subscribers… but much more importantly, 10 million international subscribers… revenues of around $4 billion.
The company is now grossing about $47 billion a year, with somewhere between 55% and 60% from outside the U.S.
It would be ridiculous to say that Hastings & Co just lucked into the international business that is still what really separates Netflix from every other streaming company to this day. And it was ridiculous that all the legacy companies that got into streaming in late 2019 and 2020 seemed to miss the clear importance of the international market to make streaming successful. At that point, Netflix’s sub count was only 58% international and 42% US & Canada. But their businesses were not shaped like Netflix, even then and even now.
Instead of focusing on international as an absolute necessity, the legacy companies focused on the mythology of having to spend like Netflix to compete with Netflix. This would be a mistake than cost scores of billions of dollars, if not more than a hundred billion all combined (fully encouraged by Wall Street know-nothings who still pretend to be insightful on TV and elsewhere).
Where was The Visionary, in an industry universe of very, very smart people, who could see past Wall Street and the stock analysts and the media and really understand the math of the conversion to streaming, the downside of undermining cable, and the international plan that would make the conversion to streaming profitable instead of a loss leader for years?
Where was the fucking Ted Turner of streaming?
Same thing on the movie side.
If you are still spouting the same crap that we have all been hearing for decades…
“The kids have too many other distractions.”
”Movies are too expensive.”
”People have movie-theater-like experiences in their living rooms.”
”Being in public makes us vulnerable to rudeness”
”Movies just suck now.”
”Anyone who wants to see a movie when it opens will pay premium prices to see it at home!”
… are just lazy thinkers. Sorry.
You may be one of those people who feel any number of these ways. And you aren’t wrong to feel what you feel. That is not what I am trying to say. And for the record, I feel some of these things at times too. But thinking something as a single consumer is not the same as considering the industry as a whole.
But if you are in the business of actually figuring out what is happening at the movie theaters, these excuses are as old as the hills. They weren’t key points when they started being thrown around (almost always as an excuse for poor performance… you never hear people involved with big hit movies making these claims) and they do not explain the box office of the post-COVID era. Again, that doesn’t mean you don’t personally feel them. But how YOU feel personally doesn’t mean shit in the big picture, anymore than how I feel personally does.
Also worth noting… the is not THE Answer. There are many answers and many problems and they all live of a shifting scale.
I am hoping that Masters of The Universe does great (and is great). But He-Man is not Super Mario and it is not Dungeons and Dragons and it is not Conan and it is not Minecraft and it is not Mortal Kombat. That is not to say that comps that seem somehow connected to each movie are 100% irrelevant. But the journey of each movie, especially major studio wide release movies, is singular as well as contextualized by other similar titles.
I just went nuts yesterday talking about how the take that “Meryl Streep is Back!” or that “Older Female Leads are back!” because Prada 2 opened is INSANE because Meryl Streep hasn’t been in a theatrical release in 7 years. SEVEN years!!!
The movie star known as Sandra Bullock has been in TWO theatrical releases in the last decade… and both did over $100 million domestic. She’s been in, literally, ONE movie in the last 15 years that didn’t gross $100 million domestic. What idiot is betting against her? Practical Magic was box office soft the first time around, 28 years ago... so that is an issue. But if this one hits, should it really surprise anyone? She is an underused asset.
Ans with respect to “older” women, there aren’t a lot of Meryl Streeps and Sandra Bullocks on the planet, who are actual bone fide old school openers.
But I really digress…
The point is, where is the vision for the movie industry?
Adam Aron is the manager of the biggest chain in the world right now, AMC. And he has been innovative in certain ways. But he has also been an unmitigated failure as an industry visionary.
Why is he seemingly incapable of saying something like, “The ecosystem of the theatrical business works best with a healthy, consistent window, first to PVOD and then to SVOD (Netflix. HBO Max, etc). AMC will not play movies for more than 7 days that do not agree to a 60-day window to PVOD and 120 days to SVOD.”
If you want to take the softball road, make it 45 days to PVOD and 90 days to SVOD. But Aron will not do even that.
Lead, man!
I like his efforts to embrace what I call Stunt Releases… short releases for films or other events with an intense and focused audience. He wants to do concerts? Great. He wants to tickle Ted Sarandos’ balls? Great. He wants to believe David Ellison? Okay. Ish.
But AMC has over 7500 screens in the United States… more than 20% of screens. Regal has over 5000 screens. And Cinemark has over 4000. Marcus has over 1000.
If these chains won’t play your movie, your movie has a hole in its box office opportunity. They represent about half the screens in America. They need to lead.
But like it or not, it starts with Aron and AMC. And Aron seems almost giddy, pissing his colleagues off, left and right, looking like some kind of iconoclast. But he is not an iconoclast. He is a cock blocker.
He’s not stupid. But he plays stupid on X.
A 49-day window to Netflix or any SVOD is NOT traditional. It’s a long way from traditional. 45 days to PVOD is the new (too short) norm, as reset by Universal.
David Ellison committed at CinemaCon to 45 days to PVOD and 90 days to SVOD, which is what Paramount+ and Netflix are. So this window actually undermines the 90 day SVOD window, which should be the absolute minimum for SVOD. As noted before, it should be 120 days. That’s not like it was before COVID.
Good Boys, for instance, opened in August 2019 and landed on SVOD in April 2020. Dora The Explorer premiered in August 2019 and landed on SVOD in August 2020. Pokémon: Detective Pikachu premiered on May 10, 2019 and landed on HBO on Dec 28, 2019.
No one is expecting a year. No one is expecting 7 months. But no one has, in publicly at least, seriously analyzed what the best window to SVOD would be to create the healthiest window architecture for the life of a piece of filmed entertainment. I’m good with 4 months. I am horrified by 2 months. 49 days is, with due respect, an abuse.
So where is the leadership… never mind the Visionary?
Adam Aron spent the week with his colleagues, particularly the other 3 1000-screen chains, at CinemaCon and THEN, after they parted, decided to write his little love letter to David Ellison, warning no one, acting out of concert with the Cinema United organization.
If this is how he feels, it is how he feels. But he has the largest chain in America (the world, really) and when he spouts off, it makes it very hard for his colleagues, basically the opposite number to distributors like Paramount, to take contrary positions in public.
Onanism is not vision.
And as I keep saying and thinking about David Ellison and the transaction to take over Warner Bros Discovery… saying you are going to make happen what everyone wants to see happen is a long, long way from making it happen. I would love him to be a visionary. But he has shown no signs of that at this point. I don’t want to insult the man. I don’t have personal animus against him or his company.
In order to claim that Paramount is releasing 15 movies into theatrical in 2026, the studio is re-releasing Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick?
THOSE DON’T COUNT.
If this is how David Ellson makes good on his promises, the industry is, to not to put too much shine on it, fucked.
I wouldn’t scream if Ellison said, “Hey… we just started and we can’t get to 15 new releases this year. But we have 13, which is better than last year. We’ll get to 15 in 2027.” That is the truth. Doing 2 stunt re-releases and adding an international comedy that opened in Ireland in January with no plan to release the film in America (now opening against one of your 2 straight comedies this year) to get to what may be 16 releases (If Heart of the Beast actually makes year end) is not an achievement or the truth. how much marketing budget will there be for Savage House will there be after they didn’t even show the trailer at CinemaCon?
PARAMOUNT THEATRICAL 2026
Primate - January 9
Scream 7 - February 27
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D - May 8
Top Gun 2026 Re-release -May 8
Top Gun: Maverick 2026 Re-release (40th Anniversary) - May 13
Passenger - May 22
Scary Movie - June 5
Savage House - June 5
Jackass: Best and Last - June 26
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie - August 14
Street Fighter - October 16
Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol - November 13
Focker-in-Law - November 25
The Angry Birds Movie 3 - December 23
Mr. Irrelevant: The John Tuggle Story - December 25
Heart of the Beast - Unknown Fall
It doesn’t really matter that David Ellison achieves 15 releases in 2026. But it feels like checking off boxes, trying to prove the point, instead of real leadership.
Right now, it feels like this for a lot of the industry. Dog paddling. No claim to be able to see the land that we all must be headed to. DeLuca and Abdy did a bit of it at CinemaCon… some future-looking rabble rousing as we all pretended that there wasn’t a giant size 108 billion shoe hanging outside the Dolby Colosseum, just waiting to drop as they spoke bravely of 2027 and 2028.
Are 8 episode seasons really what we are going to get for the rest of our lives?
Have the studios, tv and film, all decided that 1000 voices that are indistinguishable markets just the way that 20 that are distinct do?
Is Wall Street really going to be left in charge of an industry they know nothing about?
Why does Kara Swisher want to live forever?
How high can we build the sand castles before they fall and crush a bunch more of us?
We need Odysseus. We need Malcolm and Martin. We need Lew.
We need leaders who are willing to and worthy of breaking the rules. Visionaries.
I’m so ready to believe. I’m so ready to have the fear of great ambition and not the fear of a slow nagging death. I so ready for real life to be as passionate as great art… or even mediocre art.
I watched the California Governor’s Debate on CNN a couple nights ago. The 2 Republicans are right out of dumbass casting. But damn… the Democrats were not much more impressive. The only idea the Republicans had was to blame the Democrats and to complain that they were blaming Trump… the irony that they were pointing fingers at the incumbent power in California while hiding behind the incumbent power in the White House never struck either of them, not the not-most-interesting-man-in-the-world-who-doesn’t-know-it or the cut-rate racist cowboy who teaches his kids to ride their bikes by kicking them each time they pass. But again… the Democrats couldn’t score on the charisma poll much either. They were either attacking one another or defending themselves with the very rare moment of actually trying to talk about an idea.
I’ll be voting for a Democrat. Either of the Republicans winning would be like a return to either the stone ages or a bad episode of Falcon Crest. But I was waiting on someone to emerge. Someone to command the moment. Someone who said, “Yeah… I got it.” I only wish Katie Porter could have waved her finger at the boys without adding, “That’s why I’m not so bad!” Oy.
Depressing.
No one was interesting enough to hate, much less to love.
“There's gotta be something better than this
There's gotta be something better to do
And when I find me something better to do
I'm gonna get up
I'm gonna get out
I'm gonna get up, get out, and do it”
But I’m not.
I actually love what I do. And I do it well enough to scare the shit out of a lot of people who should be embracing me… and even some of those who do.
It’s just that some of these days, it feels like screaming in to a canyon, known for its great echo, and instead of hearing your voice back, you hear, “Yeah… got it… agree… but it’s too much trouble to bounce your voice back. How about a Snickers bar as a replacement meal?”
I dislike Tom Brady. But Let’s Fucking Go. This is a time for heroes. This is a time for Ted Turners. This is a time to fight for a future that may or may not be better, but will be as alive with ambition as we think our teens and 20s were.