Disney's Biggest Swings and Misses, Plus Iger vs. Eisner—With the Acquired Guys

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So cut the bullspend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash the town. That's linkedin.com slash the town. Terms and conditions apply. It is Friday, August 28th. The Walt Disney Company, is in a pretty intriguing place these days. It's considered the most stable of the legacy studios thanks to its valuable brand and the massive theme park business. But the stock has essentially been flat for a decade. The TV business is crumbling and the streaming business is barely profitable. And those parks are booming thanks in part to price hikes that are papering over stagnant attendance. All problems that the new CEO, Josh DeMauro, is trying to fix. But these are nothing compared to some of the existential crises the company has faced. Going all the way to the end of the year, going all the way back to when Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney started the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studios in 1923 in Hollywood, California. We think of Disney as iconic and rock solid. It's worth $185 billion as of today. But it's kind of amazing how many times in its history it almost went bankrupt. Not just when Walt decided to go all in on feature animation when no one else was, or building an amusement park in some orange groves, or later when Disney was attacked by corporate raiders and Comcast. All of which I was reminded of in an amazing detail by the Acquired podcast. It's one of my favorites. They devote hours and hours to one company. And the recent Disney episodes they dropped offer a great education on one of the great American companies and a perfect jumping point for an episode of The Town. So I invited the show's hosts, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, on the show to talk about it. Not just the history of Disney, but where it is today, and most importantly, how it's positioned for the future. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town. Okay, we are here with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, the hosts and founders of The Acquired podcast. One of my favorites. Welcome to the show, guys. Thanks for having us. You can imagine my delight when my Acquired podcast feed populated with a Disney episode right in my wheelhouse. I love talking about the Walt Disney Company. And I was amazed. I actually learned a lot from your episodes. I mean, obviously, it's eight hours long. So there's going to be a lot of time to discuss things that I maybe didn't know and that you will not find on Wikipedia. How much research did you guys do for these episodes? I mean, we make eight episodes a year. Disney was two of them. And we don't do anything else other than record the episodes. And so it's about 12 weeks for two episodes. And so, yeah, at 60, 70 hours a week, for 12 weeks. Yeah. And we knew we were going to do this. So we were preparing in the background for a few months ahead of time, too. But you actually got access to Josh Morrow, Bob Iger, the Disney executives. They let you into the vault, the whole thing. Yes, we found Mickey sort of trapped in the back screaming. It was a whole scene. No, did you see Walt's severed head? That's the big rumor. Is Walt's head. Oh, man. They swear it does not exist that that is a myth. Oh, man. You are confirming right now that it does not exist in the vault. It does not exist. That is the line from the Walt Disney Company. After having done this, and I think for our listeners who are familiar with Disney, I think the way. The question I want to open with is what surprised you most about Disney in researching this project? For me, it was something we arrived at at the end of part two, which is unlike other studios, Disney has a hidden form of leverage where people actually are fans of the studio more so than any individual property. And so that can be a real advantage where whenever they release something great, it deepens the brand love, but it also works against them like any form of leverage when they release a string of bad hits or bad movies, kind of early 80s of animation or sort of the pre-Pixar years at Disney. Disney animation, the late 90s, early 2000s, it cuts in both directions. And so, you know, my favorite quote on this is what's your favorite Universal song? Nobody. Yeah. It's so illustrative of the point. No, it's the brand equity. And that's been. It's always been the biggest asset and the biggest problem for them when they do something like launch Disney+, which is a great product, but because of the Disney brand, it's been very difficult for them to sell it as an everybody service because, people have an association with Disney. And, you know, and I've had conversations with them about animation even too. You know, Netflix will point to the success of a movie like Swapped on Netflix, which is an animated movie they released. And I talked to somebody at Disney recently, they're like, if we release that, the knives will be out for us. It's just not good enough for us. Yet, Netflix can put it out and people will watch it on Netflix. And it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. Exactly. Because there's no brand expectation there. Yeah. I think that was, for me, that was the other thing that was hugely surprising in the episode is how many times Disney animation almost disappeared in history, which is crazy. Like, Disney animation is Disney. It is the most unique, special thing about Disney. And multiple times in history, it almost just disappeared. So when do you think the most precarious moment for the company was? Well, there's a lot of entertainment reporters who would say something like, today. Yeah, well, we'll get to that. Trust me. I don't think, I don't think that, spoiler alert, probably the early 80s before the Bass brothers came in and basically bailed them out. I mean, it's pretty wild that the company was in such dire straits. There were all these corporate raiders coming in that the only way to save the company was to bring in their own corporate raider, issue a ton of new shares, dilute everyone, almost like a poison pill. But now they've got these brothers. Texas guys, yeah. who own 25% of the company that you now have to answer to. It's almost like your friendly, benevolent dictator shareholder. And then the only way now that you've shored up the shareholder base to save the company is to go and recruit, not internally, but a chairman and CEO from Paramount and a president from Warners and make that the new leadership of your company. And now everyone reports to them. And this all happened in like two months. Right. How old are you? How over a barrel do you have to be that that's your best option? And to completely change the direction of the company and have it be general interest content rather than family content. Because that to me was the key point in the early 80s when you had the founder was gone. The brother was clearly not up to it. It was languishing under family control. And then it enters what is, I think, the Disney we know of as today, which is acquisitive and ambitious and growing and growth-oriented rather than simply resting on the legacy of the creator. Yep. And Michael Eisner deserves a ton of credit for that. So much credit. He took it from Walt Disney's Disney into the sort of empire Disney that we know today. Can we settle this debate for now and forever? Who has been the better CEO of Disney? Michael Eisner or Bob Iger? Okay, so how do you judge a CEO? What is the scoreboard that you judge them on? You guys are the business experts here. You guys compare Disney to many other companies. So, listen, Eisner, I think, can be credited with saving and modernizing the company and turning it into the Disney we know today. Iger, I think, the big, you know, he rode a lot of the cable fortunes and was able to do a lot of what he did via the cash cow of ESPN and cable television. But he did position it, at least from where we stand, for what the future is going to be, which is streaming and parks and all of the IP strategy that they have employed. I don't know. I would probably say Eisner. Yeah. Just because of what he inherited versus what he turned over. He probably wins on that subjective sort of soft analysis that you did and on the raw numbers, just like how did they do with returns for shareholders. Michael, 22 and a half, X'd the stock price. in his 21 years, and in Bob's 21 years, you know, excluding his little step out, step back there, or if you just count it as continuous, the stock price was a 5x. And, you know, that's not the only way you should judge a CEO, and it's not even really the only financial way you should judge them, because you kind of have to wait another 10 years after they leave to see, hey, did the company get much more set up for success from their actions than the stock price at the time would have you believe. A great example of this is Steve Ballmer was actually a much better CEO at Microsoft than the current stock price when he left would have you believe, because he invented the enterprise, which became their entire model for the future, and he started the Azure project, which is now where the majority of the business is. And so. It's kind of like the old argument about presidents of, like, if you like the first two years of the term of one president, you should really thank the previous administration for that. Yeah. So, you know, there's some world where Josh has this, you know, exploding out of the gate first decade, and a lot of that credit actually should go to Iger. But what we do know for sure is Michael Eisner bought ESPN. David and I tried to do some napkin math. We estimate that ESPN did about $75 billion of operating income for the company over its period from 1996 when they bought it as a small part of the capital city's ABC acquisition. That whole acquisition was $19 billion. And just that little part ESPN has in the fullness of time, which again, still prints $3 billion a year or something of profits, has spit off $75 billion of operating income. So. And Eisner gets credit for that, even though the point of buying that company was ABC, and they just happened to get 80% of ESPN with it? Yeah. And it's not surprising that the reason that they bought ABC and not another network was because they knew cable was going to be big, and because ESPN was already showing signs that it was going to be the dominant cable channel. Yeah. And not because the others turned him down. But yes, the motivation was by a broadcast. Whatever. That's fine. You get credit. He can take a bow. When I came into this business in the 2000s, I don't think I appreciate it. The role that ESPN and cable in general was playing in these companies because Disney didn't really talk about it. They tried to hide it. They were obfuscating it every way they could. You'd see it on the earnings, and you would see it in how little the movies actually mattered. They would release Prince of Persia or Tomorrowland and take a $300 million write-down on the Lone Ranger, and it wouldn't do anything to the stock because the movie mattered, obviously, in the IP creation and the flywheel. But the only thing that mattered was when, in 2015, they acknowledged that ESPN was losing subscribers. And then all hell broke loose. And I actually want to ask you guys here about maybe the biggest missteps of the modern era. And I think the biggest misstep on Disney's part is not planning for the streaming future before 2015. Yeah, that really struck. Because for everything we know, they saw where everything was going. Jeff Bukas at Time Warner was moving to break up the company and sell it off because he saw what was happening. Others did as well. Netflix was pretty big by 2015. But Disney did not move to create their streaming future until they saw that they had to acknowledge ESPN's weaknesses. Do you agree there? I'll say I agree with some but not all. I don't think I would have done anything different with ESPN. I think it was so smart of them to plan for but not go all in on ESPN streaming until they did recently. Just because it was this cash cow that funded everything else and that there's no point in cannibalizing it until you need to. But you think it was smart until 2018, 2019 to have their biggest movies on Netflix? No, that's probably the thing I would have done differently. Had they launched Disney Plus earlier. Well, two things. One, we heard the comment during research that Disney was selling. the bullets to kill them to Netflix. And they're like, why are we selling these bullets to our enemy? That they keep shooting us with. Yeah. Yeah. So that wasn't great. And then two, you're right. They're probably five years too late to launching their own streaming service. Because imagine the subscriber count that Disney Plus could have been at. Let's say where they were. COVID accelerated a lot. So let's not say five years, but let's say they could have been at the beginning of the pandemic, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's one of the things I would have done differently. And then the other thing is that Disney started doing this bundling thing that they're obsessed with now and that everybody's getting obsessed with now earlier. And assuming the future of Netflix and the future of Disney are both being the distributor and then getting other people to distribute their content on their streaming bundle, they could have been in a better position. Whereas now it feels very reactive. And there's a danger that it is creating brand risk to put all of these people close to Disney IP. I think maybe put differently, Disney didn't realize, and I suspect very few people in Hollywood realized that streaming is a scale economies business and actually has very little to do with content. And if you just look at Netflix's profit margins versus any other player, it's like so clearly a scale economies business. And that just all comes from Silicon Valley and tech. Yeah. And the funny thing is, is that Hollywood had Hulu. Hulu was supposed to be that. It's just when you have multiple companies all owning a stake of a streaming service, and they all have their own ulterior motives with their cable, very profitable cable television business. It was doomed from the start. Yeah. Wasn't Hulu called Clown Co. for a long time in the industry? It was. Yeah. Jason Kylar was the CEO and he was sort of trying to pull them all in one direction and they were going in different directions. You know what? The funny thing is, is when, when do you think CBS All Access launched? That was the CBS streaming service. Ooh, this was the predecessor to Paramount Plus, right? It got merged into Paramount Plus. I'll tell you, it launched in 2014. So there was an example in the market of a network, a broadcast network that had a streaming service of their own and Disney just didn't do it until later. It's tough, man. You know, when you're making those profits and the decisions are so good and you're literally financing all of the acquisitions that the company has done, like it's, it's tough to make that choice. To paint the other side of it though, like, uh, if Disney's whole strategy is get as many people as you can to fall in love with the IP, go to parks, give us tons of profit dollars there and buy consumer products and give us tons of profit dollars there. So I am very amenable to the argument. Why would we constrain our content to a place that's owned and operated streaming service when we could get way more exposure by putting it everywhere? Yeah. Well, listen, I had a guest on last month who says Disney should get out of the streaming business now and that the stock price languishing is a sign that it's just not an efficient business and the margins are never going to be as good as television. So just become the world's biggest arms dealer and get the most money for your content everywhere. I don't necessarily, I don't agree with that. I think it, no, absolutely not. I think it diminishes the brand and Disney's biggest asset is its brand and its ability to compete in streaming is because in part of that brand. So I don't agree, but it's an interesting argument. Also, that's pining for a future that is not there. I mean, that's an argument that gosh, we should go back to the fat profits of the late nineties. Well, yeah, we should, but that's not an option. I mean, this is not the world that we live in today. Streaming is Disney's future. And unfortunately for the whole media these are just not as good a businesses in the streaming era as they were when you could have some cable networks that were minting money and you could be, uh, uh, doing box office premieres when everybody wanted to go to the movies and then you could rerelease it seven years later and still generate tens of millions of dollars. And then you could release it on home video and make, you know, many hundreds of millions of dollars in pure profit. Like, oh man, the stories we heard about the DVD era in research were, oh, it was wild, man. Those were the days. Those were like $2 million premieres and just like crazy, crazy stunts. They were doing all the time because you could not lose money on movies. Yeah. Jeffrey Katzenberg was on stage with a lion that attacked him. I mean, bring back those days, baby. I know the Spider-Man two premiere was on the Santa Monica premiere on the Santa Monica pier and they shut it down and had a like full on carnival. Amazing. All that said though, that reminds me the most surprising thing to me in all of our months of Disney research that we discovered was the Lion King musical. Okay. So you guys have made this claim. I, I, I, I am on board with you, but I think there may be a little more nuance there. You, you claimed on the show that the Lion King is the most profitable entertainment entity of all time because it has made $11 billion as a franchise. Am I characterizing that correctly? Yes. The, The highest revenue generating single static piece of content. okay so you're not counting the mcu you're not counting uh you know the parks or something like that you're saying no one single production one single production yes the lion king musical alone not the movie just the musical has made 11 billion dollars right which is three times as much as like avengers endgame in its full theatrical and uh home video and streaming revenue the only question i have about that is i don't believe the lion king is a massive consumer products property on the level of some of the princess stuff or cars for instance or some of the other ways that dizzy makes money yes correct this does not account for uh merchandise but not bad the other thing that is uh uh doesn't account for is several video games are larger but they're not static it's like um like candy crush has made more money than the lion king musical but it's always changing i wonder how much julie taymor made she you know in broadway when you direct the broadway play you get a piece of the production so i wonder how much she has made over the years not insignificant something i'm sure this episode is brought to you by disney what does it take to build a world people never want to leave in disney world builders academy award and emmy nominated filmmakers leslie i works takes the audiences inside the creative journeys of some of disney's most influential storytellers featuring exclusive interviews with james cameron john favreau kevin feige and more this documentary reveals the imagination innovation and storytelling that continue to inspire generations and shape entertainment now streaming on disney plus this episode is brought to you by boar's head it may have been years ago but i still remember the feeling of unpacking my kids lunch boxes after school and to find that nothing left as a parent that's a total win boar's head maple honey ham american cheese maple honey turkey all-time greats in the school lunch game it's real quality protein that tastes great so you can feel that winning feeling all term long whether you're doing wraps sandwiches or a quick snack box boar's head makes packing school lunches easier you'll be proud of what you pack they'll be happy to finish it fuel their school day with the premium choice boar's head for lunchtime inspiration visit boar's head.com back to school or head to your local deli counter evening buyer's remorse buy a new car i'll be moving in let's get started sorry i think there's been a mistake i bought it from carvana you what yeah great price i even have seven days to love it or return it so there's no no no buyer's remorse more like buyer's rejoice i guess i'll let myself out congratulations i mean it buyer's rejoice buy your car today on carvana limitations and exclusions may apply see our seven-day return policy at carvana.com let's go back to the missteps are you in the camp that believes buying fox was a misstep for disney yes i'm even in the camp of pounding the table to spin many of the fox assets back out oh wow see because i've been a defender of that deal and so give me give me your argument why well okay so i think the inarguable thing is it's the lowest roi of any of the acquisitions espn has a lot of acquisitions and it's a lot of acquisitions and it's a lot of capital cities pixar lucasfilm marvel uh fox also the most expensive by far and and it got run up to an astronomical price whatever they thought it was worth they paid 19 billion dollars more than that that is the inarguable thing on the table right 71 i believe was the total not totally fair because you have to back out the piece of sky that they sold and all the regional sports networks so it ends up being like high 40s or something like that i think it's a complete mismatch with the there are a few things like reuniting the x-men like avatar that makes sense i think it is the wrong strategy for disney to be uh ever more tightly bundling disney plus with hulu and family content and the whole fox library i think eventually where this leads if you really are following though we need scale economies we need to build this giant streamer you merge those brands like eventually this hulu stuff kind of goes away and the lowest friction thing is to not have a second app to put everything in disney plus in most of the world it's just disney plus and it's fine and they make this argument that like oh people are actually totally fine with that uh i think this is something that shows up as an issue on the sort of three decade timeline not on the three-year timeline i think it's a degradation of the thing that makes disney different than other studios and others see i i And ESPN and FX now, they're just kind of owned and operated properties. They can, I think, coexist, even though the service is called Disney+. I think the audience is okay with that. You think the Plus can do a lot of lifting there? Especially in this modern ecosystem where HBO Max does a lot with the Max. And Paramount+, well, Paramount doesn't mean anything, so that's not a very good example. I hate it, though. I want HBO to mean HBO. I mean, I think I'm 35 and I'm like 60 in terms of my preciousness about content. I see where you're coming from, but if you want to be one of the four, five companies that makes this transition into the streaming age as a destination and a survivor and something with the scale to compete, I don't know that you can do that. You can do that with just the family content. Yep. I'd buy that. My grape with the Fox acquisition is the more standard one you hear. I just don't think there was that much good stuff in there. I think they wildly, wildly overpaid for it. Avatar, great. Simpsons, great. Reuniting the MCU, great. What else you got, you know? I mean, it's not Disney, but FX is great. Yeah, people say that, though, but then all of a sudden, they pull a Devil Wears Prada 2 out of their butts or they're working on trying to do a Home Alone reboot now. And that stuff, I think, will continue to manifest. And, you know, FX maybe doesn't quite fit because it's so edgy, but there is enough in there, I think, that just gives them, especially when they were launching Disney+, it just gives them that ammo that it is all additive. Yeah. And to your point, the more you can bundle together, the lower churn is going to be because people are going to view it as their one-stop shop and they're not going to think about it too hard. I think without it, maybe Disney's ultimate destiny would be a tile on Netflix. And I don't think they're going to be a tile on Netflix. I pine for the version of Disney that doesn't have the kitchen sink of content, but I think perhaps in my analytical mind, I'm with you, Matt, and I agree. You need to in this day and age. All right. So, best acquisitions. Best acquisition in the history of the Walt Disney Company. What would you rank your top three? Oh, easy. Not even close. With all due respect to Bob Iger, it was Cap Cities and ESPN. There'll never be another acquisition like that. Can I just make the argument for Pixar? Sure. Oh, I would love to hear that argument. Well, I mean, if you look at where Disney Animation was in the mid-2000s and you look at the value that they got, not just out of the Toy Story studio and having all those titles, but of the management that came with Pixar, the ability to not just reinvent computer-generated animation, but also spread that across Disney Animation and completely revitalize the traditional studio, that, as you say on your show, is the heart and soul of the Disney business and its entire flywheel. And the impact of that Pixar deal is still being felt to this day. Absolutely. We got to go. We got to go. We got to go to Pixar and just see the campus and talk to folks and meet everybody. It is such a special place. Like, it really is. Although they're annoyed these days. They're annoyed by the layoffs. They're annoyed by the micromanaging from Burbank. Sure, yeah. But it's still, there's no place else like Pixar in the world. It's more than just, you know, Disney propagandizing itself in Pixar. It really is a special place. Wait till Josh Jamarro tells them to make their $200 million movies for $100 million. Which is coming. That's going to be tough. We know that's coming. Yeah. The interesting thing about Pixar is they have continued to make films more efficiently, but the complexity of films has risen at exactly the same rate. Like, I think their person hours on films has dramatically dropped, but wage inflation basically perfectly counteracts that. And the films continue to come out for the same dollars and less personnel. So, you know, it's tough. And they make them in California. For, you know, lack of a better word, like, not outsourcing can add to the cost. Yeah. They're the last animation studio that doesn't outsource. I hope they figure it out. Pixar is the only other one you can argue, and it's the exact point you made. To the extent that it's true that everything good at Disney is downstream of creating beloved IP in Disney animation, then, you know, it's a little bit of a different story. I think it's a little bit of a different story. for the company long term to have Disney Animation work and pixar characters sort of brought into that fold but espn funded buying pixar exactly and espn funded everything like everything profits made it it's so that disney could do this uh d to c transition better than anybody else there's been carnage everywhere but espn was this sort of stabilizing force that enabled disney to stay independent make decisions judiciously uh and not end up in this like let's combine things that don't make sense era right so i'm going to agree with you espn and cap cities abc that was the 75 billion in operating profit come on yes i i am going to agree with you i just wanted to make the pixar argument and i yes yeah i'm glad you did let's talk about the disney of today and where they sit how precarious are is the moment right now are you worried about disney let's see let's answer this division by division i think the giant amount of capex that they are funneling into uh experiences into parks and cruises yep 60 billion yeah safest place you can park money in the world it's just this proven thing that people will pay ever more for uh with the rising uh global inequality in the the rising uh amount of global wealth there are huge amounts of dollars that you can continue to extract for decades uh to go to disney parks and cruises so i think that's a durable smart safe investment i think the thing that concerns me about the core is what is the next frozen because out of disney animation and pixar it's now been nine years since they had a box office smash of something that was not a sequel or not a um reusing existing ip and it's fine to not have that for two or six or maybe eight years i think once you start going over a decade then you start kind of wondering okay we need we need something to feed the flywheel here for for decades to come so that that would probably be if i'm in josh's shoes my biggest thing is or is that over you know hoppers was pretty damn good yet it got to about 400 it was good that would have done six seven in the pre-covid era if it was good you know that and maybe if they released it in june but like maybe that era of creating new franchises in theaters for animation is over that i think is terrifying if you're the walt disney company that you they you don't get all these great downstream effects without creating that shared cultural moment and maybe it doesn't need to exist at the box office but i think it's really hard to make it exist on on streaming in a way that you know we we need those 1977 star wars moments yeah i think a big test will be when they get around to doing an incanto sequel because that movie shares the dna of the movies that are that do become disney franchises such a good movie because it's it's huge on home video on disney plus it's got very popular music it had a hit song on it and it's something that there will ultimately be nostalgia for incanto so how disney handles that i think it's a big test i think a big test will be when they get around to doing an incanto sequel because i think it's a big test i think it's a big test i think it's a big test and whether they can produce a sequel that continues that franchise i think maybe they have an opportunity there will there be nostalgia for k-pop demon hunters yeah i think so that's the one netflix movie because of the music it took it out of the realm of something you watched on tv and brought it into your regular life and you could not go to an elementary school without hearing that music it took over the culture for a few months and that's when those they put it on the internet and they put it on the internet and they put it on the internet and they put it back in theater they put it in theaters to capture that momentum so i do think there will be nostalgia and when the sequel comes out it it will become a cultural moment i believe netflix will put it in theaters now i've convinced myself that netflix will put the demon hunters sequel in theaters because of that so that that is the counter argument that this can still exist even in the streaming era and k-pop demon hunter sort of proves that you can create these emotional sort of shared cultural frenzies that are around something that aren't ugc sort of creator content that may be the exception that proves the rule but for disney i do think that that doing well enough in theaters with some of these and then having them explode at home that could be the answer and then the one more division though for the state of disney i think espn is actually a bit of a sleeper now within disney you think it's bottomed i i think it's yeah bottomed and coming back up and i think it's not in as bad a place as you might necessarily think on the surface why is that it's not like sports rights are going to get any less expensive well i think the leagues are incentivized to keep it around as a viable bidder because they're as terrified of the tech companies when it comes down to it as the media companies are uh so i think that when you saw the nfl network that they did with the nfl that was a that was a big moment for espn still maintaining relevance and for the nfl to take a 10 stake in the network yeah espn essentially is taking over nfl network yep yep and then i think you look at the standalone over-the-top streaming services that all the leagues have whether it's mlb tv or um uh nhl has their or nfl has their own nba has nba tv etc etc espn and disney operate hockeys the nhls themselves they obviously used to operate based on the nfl network but now they're taking over the nfl network and they're because bam tech came from baseball i think there might be a future where they get deeper partnerships for streaming with actual leagues themselves oh that's interesting all right and here's the other argument why um uh espn is has has bottomed today it does somewhere on the order of three ish billion in operating income in their absolute heyday 2012 13 14 they were doing call it 4.7 4.8 billion so it had to come down and they had to come down and they had to come down like the market clearing price for what people would pay for espn uh is not as high as the incredible rents they were extracting from 100 million people paying for cable but between the direct over-the-top service and all the bundling they're doing it is still some very high number that people are willing to pay for espn and it was just about finding what that sort of new new bottom was listen guys your show is great i love the acquired pod it's a very accessible business podcast for people who are hardcore addicts like me and even casual observers of these companies it's a really great show so congratulations thanks for coming on thanks appreciate it we are back with the call sheet craig a really interesting weekend at the box office for late august this is usually dumping ground time and i guess it kind of is but we're not going to talk about the ridley scott movie dog stars um sad for ridley scott he's getting dumped in late august why aren't we talking because it's i want to talk about the other movie but it's at 14 million i mean do you care about this movie 70 million dollar budget it's a disney movie through 20th like i think it's going to get it's not going to get there i think i take the under on 14 it's just a remarkable it's a ridley scott movie with jacob alorty josh brolin and margaret qualley wikipedia says the budget is 110 is that not correct that may be the gross budget i don't i don't know what it netted out at but honestly let's talk about coyote versus acme that is the interesting movie here this is the movie that all of hollywood is rooting for right this is the movie that david zasloff when he took over warner brothers he killed it for a tax credit it's a victim of the corporate overlords which is funny enough the theme of the movie the acme corporation is basically warner brothers discovery and this movie was written off and then taken by ketchup entertainment which is an independent production production or independent distributor they paid 50 million dollars to get this movie and they think they can make a profit on it and the tracking not super great it's at like 15 i've seen higher this is going to be hard because the internet wants this movie to succeed so much that it might be like tainting the tracking numbers so yeah i think like the media community is so loud in support of this movie that you see so much of that support online that it's hard to tell what normal people actually think about it like the rotten tomato scores are outstanding but that doesn't necessarily accurately portray whether it's good we don't know i know it's so funny because the david zasloff team when they came in there they were quietly whispering that these movies that they killed like batgirl and the scooby-doo movie and coyote versus acme they were actually pretty bad and we were embarrassed by them yeah and then here it comes out it has a 10 times better score than most of the warner brothers movies this year what do you think david zasloff wants this movie to open to zero what will make him have zero dollars i know what i'm saying like what what number will piss him off like how high does it have to get where he thinks he made a mistake 20 if it gets to 20 then it'll piss him off because that that's that's where you know with a decent overseas number and a good multiple it could approach like making its money back if they agreed to make it to release it and you know the marketing for warner brothers probably would have been bigger and better than the marketing from ketchup entertainment so it's not apples to apples apples but if this movie gets to 20 great i'm going to take the over on 15 i think this that the the ground swell online is not totally real but it will have some impact and i think it'll get above the tracking this is probably the definition of an opening weekend swell that won't have a ton of legs also 15 i feel like is on the lower end of the prediction i feel like everybody the tracking is usually in the 15 to 22 range so 15 does feel low if we're picking that as the number as the line well but it's i'm using i'm going by nrg with some influence from some of the others i have seen as high as 20 the problem is is like this ip is so we don't know how much people really care about that anymore right now like personally i do not feel compelled to go see this my 10 year old knows about looney tunes and he doesn't really he knows wiley coyote does he knows him from space jam sure okay yeah he knows him from space jam and like i caught him watching on some like linear channel like the tune network or something not cartoon network there's a lot of people that are watching on some like linear channel like the tune network some other tune channel on linear and he was watching old looney tunes stuff so i don't know that may be anecdotal but i agree with you it's a tougher sell this is also not it's like a legal drama it's not not a drama it's a comedy but it's like it's got procedural legal elements that are not necessarily conducive to kids viewing but whatever yeah i'm gonna take the over i want this movie to succeed just so david zaslav has to send some email saying congratulations and then back girl is next no they will never talk about this movie again the warner brothers even if it's a big hit they will never mention it again so we'll see i don't know i don't know where it'll stream i don't know if it'll go to hbo max actually i gotta check that out all right that's the show for the day i want to thank my guests ben gilbert and david rosenthal producer craig horlbeck artists jesse lopez and stefano sanchez and i want to thank you we will see you next week endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with 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