What Will It Take to End the Paramount–Warner Bros. Standoff?

This episode of The Town is presented by HBO Max. HBO Max presents the pit, nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. The staff of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, Juggle Personal Crisis, Workplace Politics, and High Emotions in this Emmy-winning drama series. Don't miss the series USA Today called The Absolute Best Show on TV. The pit is now streaming on HBO Max. It is Monday, August 17th. It's been about a week since I first reported it in my puck newsletter that David Ellison told his key staff he will move Paramount out of California. He doesn't get a settlement with his state attorneys general over the Warner Brothers merger by October 1st, at six weeks from now. And almost immediately, the topic became pretty much the only thing people in town want to talk about. Everyone has a take. Ellison is either a spoiled brat, threatening to collect his toys and run home. I got a lot of that, and you see it a lot online. Or he's doing the only thing left for a guy whose merger has been approved in nearly 70 countries. And he can't even get a meeting with the California Attorney General, Rob Bonta. Something David is just a pawn for his father, Larry, who already moved Oracle to Texas and Tennessee over taxes and regulation in California. Or the Larry is having second thoughts about the whole $110 billion deal. And the move is a cost-cutting effort to keep the transaction alive. Lots of movement and rumors and gossip in this debate. Today Paramount filed a motion demanding that the states be required to put up a huge bond for the order, keeping the merger from closing. It's another escalation of the fight. So we've got Lucas Shaw here to discuss. Today is the Paramount Exodus question mark. How real is the threat to move? The settlement calculus and what would Ellison need to sell to get a deal done? From the ringer and puck, I'm F. L.A. and this is the town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw, our normal Monday guy. Lucas, I'm very sorry to report. I hate to have to tell you this on the show. But I am going to need to relocate this podcast from Los Angeles to Nashville. If my demands are not met, how does your family feel about that? I guess I should wait to hear what your demands are first. I am going to need a competent closer for the Dodgers, okay, by October 1st. Matt demands the first pick in every box office draft for the next five years. That too. I'm going to need a number one pick so I can get Spider-Man and every year there's a Spider-Man movie. If not, sadly, I will need to move to Nashville for tax purposes. They are offering generous subsidies to take the town to Nashville. Well, you should take it up with Bill, right? Bill loves a good tax break. He can just relocate a lot of the ringer. Bill Simmons, yes. He would be supportive of this move, I'm sure. All right, I'm joking. But obviously, the news of the past week, everybody's talking about this threat that David Ellison has made. He's going to up and take his toys elsewhere if he does not get what he wants, which is a settlement by October 1st of the Warner-Math litigation. Now that we've seen all the posturing and all the op-eds and everybody commenting one way or the other, do you think that my initial report and the discourse over the past week, do you think this has ultimately helped or hurt Ellison's ability to get a deal here? I feel like you should ask his camp since I. No, obviously they're going to say, yes, nobody was talking about this and there was nothing else they could do when he was sitting there at a standstill with the state, right? So they tried to achieve leverage. I get it. Yeah, and now a week later, Bonta has been asked about it on stage at a political event. And now, Javier Basera, the incoming governor of California, has expressed his desire for a settlement. We have all the reports about Gavin Newsom, the current governor wanting a settlement. It's now become this thing that people have opinions about. I think it is hard to distinguish that threat from the larger pressure campaign that the Ellison's have been waging. Okay, because there was reporting about Gavin Newsom trying to get involved in this before, well, all this stuff has been happening at the same time, I guess, because there was the initial stuff about Ellison threatening to leave came out about a month ago or whatever it was in summer for. I feel like it's tied in with their efforts to lobby different politicians and industry figures and basically say, like, we need you to try to bring Bonta to the settlement talks. The same stuff with the theater owners that they've done, they're trying, they're using a similar playbook that they used in the case of the Netflix deal, where they, like, they sort of lost something that they didn't think they were going to lose. And so then they try to mount kind of an unyielding pressure campaign through friends and allies to get what they want. And publicly, remember Ellison put out those statements saying that, you know, you have to deal with us, you know, you didn't call me back. You go through me on text. I still think that the Nashville threat does as much harm as good. I don't really think it, it helps him. Also, other than villainizing Ellison himself. Right. Because it undermines the deal that he is the whole rationale for the deal he's proposing. I can keep position himself as the Hollywood savior as a savior of Hollywood. I want the two studios to live under one banner, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So I don't think that this helps his case there at all. I think it also probably feeds into the political narrative that he doesn't like, which is it'll make him again look conservative because he is railing against these like crazy leftists in California, even if he is more moderate politically than his father. I think this will, because it is repeating a move that his dad has used, it will kind of more closely align their politics. See, I disagree a little there. I think that the political narrative actually helps because it it frames the entire transaction as simply a political fight, rather than some of the legitimate concerns about the size of this merged company and the power that it would have. I think Ellison and his allies would rather have the political conversation than they would the anti-trust conversation. Yeah, that's probably true, but I all because they've been spending the whole time making it seem as if this is a political witch on Thames all about CNN, even though they have provided almost no evidence of that. So yes, they might want to have the political argument. Well, the evidence is in the politicians citing that. I mean, people like Elizabeth Warren and even Rob Bonta have talked about the concentration of media power into these Trump billionaires hands. That, to me, seems like decent evidence that the Democrats don't like this deal because of CNN. I think two things can be true. They cannot like the deal because they feel like it is a Trump allied figure or aligned figure getting a major news organization. It can also be true that there are aspects of the deal that sort of like would naturally open themselves up to an anti-trust review. True. And people always cite Fox Disney where there was no pushback really to that deal. And a lot of the same concerns were there. Not the news concern, which is interesting, but the studio concern was certainly there. Right, but you could argue, couldn't you argue that the result of that deal, which is essentially the elimination of a studio, is one of the reasons why there has been more vocal opposition this time. Yeah. And why some of these interested parties like the DGA and IOTC in their statements have put out certain conditions that I think are the result of what they saw happen with Fox Disney. Right. Because you know, it's a good segue into talking about that because the guilds here have had very different positions on this merger. WGA absolutely hates it, writer's guild. They don't want it. They've every opportunity to attack Ellison. Sag is opposed to the merger. But DGA and IOTC put out this letter that essentially gives a path for a settlement in their eyes of what they think should happen. And some of it is the 38 movies a year. The stuff that Ellison has already agreed to. But some of it is stuff that he's probably not going to agree to, like keeping these studios separate and having their back offices still remain separate. And making sure that, you know, yes, that they stay in Los Angeles. But also that there's a production commitment that they make the movies and shows in the US that there is, you know, a they want 120 day exclusive window before subscription video on demand. That's not what Ellison is offering. He's offering 90 days and they want licensing to happen both inside the studio to third parties and taking content from third parties and running it on their platforms. It seems a little onerous. Well, it's a starting point in a negotiation. Yeah. I think they know that they're not going to get all of those things. But I could be wrong. Yeah, it has been interesting to see unions, movie theaters, all these different organizations sort of divided over how to respond to the deal and I think that the generally Do you have sort of the average worker being really opposed to it in some of the kind of larger, wealthier entities saying, "Let's just do it." Although Ayatsi is the below-the-line union, I think that was the surprising one. Yeah. Because you would think, as the teamsters were very opposed. And Ayatsi has a lot of below-the-line workers, you know, visual effects artists and, you know, people who work on sets and different, different below-the-line constituencies. I'm surprised a team with the DGA on this. Why? Because they are just people who wouldn't normally be aligned. Because the DGA has a reputation as being more studio friendly. Yeah. Often, they are the first to settle their deals with the studio. Christopher Nolan, you know, he hasn't said anything publicly, but the president of the DGA is said to be a little bit more, a little bit friendlier with David Ellison and to see this not as the WGA does, which is a threat to the overall industry. It surprised me that those two would align. Yeah. That makes sense. One thing that is absent in any of the DGA and Ayatsi requests are structural remedies. And that's where this deal is going to get done, right? One of these behavior, Rob Bonta says, over and over in interviews, that he is not interested in settling this matter just with an editorial board at CNN or with a commitment to release 30 movies a year. He wants divestments. He wants a change to this deal. And I wrote in my newsletter last week that the Ellison's keeps saying certain things are not on the table, you know. All of these reports, CNN is not on the table. But at what point do things get on the table that were not on the table? There's no way for the Ellison's to say definitively that they will not sell CNN because they haven't sat down to negotiate yet. Yeah, sure. If they're willing to walk away over CNN, great. But this is all posturing. We don't know what's on the table yet. Yeah. I mean, agree. Both sides have spent the last few months posturing, trying to, well, other than the suit itself, of course, trying to maximize the odds of them getting their outcome. And I don't think we know what the settlement can be. We don't even know when Bonta says that there has to be structural remedies if he really means it or if he is just doing that to, again, maximize the leverage he has on whatever settlement talks. The question for him, I guess, is what this has all been about from the Ellison side is getting him to the table. And this will sort of get at the idea of how strong Bonta thinks his case is. Because if you really believe that the deal is illegal, you have no reason to settle, right? But if you think you're going to win, you say, you know what? I don't care about these international territories. There's no antitrust case in those. These are not big businesses over there. This is all about the US. The federal government didn't do their job, so we're going to go after it. But if he has any doubt in his case, or if you always have doubt, but as a litigator, you always have doubt. There's no sure thing. If he has sufficient doubt plus sufficient pressure, that is what makes him go. You know what? Fine. Let's like figure out what could work. And just looking at this from above, there's sufficient doubt. I mean, maybe not at the trial court, but you get this in front of an appeals court. And the argument that these three markets are distinct markets, there's weaknesses in all of them. You know, they're trying to define the market for theatrical films without including Amazon MGM, Lionsgate, or H24. They're trying to say that the market for cable channel distribution is distinct from streaming. When you look at the cable distributors these days, they're also distributing the streaming services. You can get Disney Plus and HBO Max with your cable provider without paying extra money in most cases. So the channels there have competition. There's weaknesses in all of these arguments. And then you look at the pressure side and we have this guy's boss, I mean, not technically, but the guy that's about to be this guy's boss, Javier Bacerra, is saying that he wants a deal. You know, boardroom's not courtrooms. I think that what he is saying and what you hear some people say and feel is, I don't like this deal, but I don't think that it will ultimately be found to be illegal if it's going to happen. It should happen now as opposed to six months, the year, 18 months, two years from now, because the longer it gets drawn out, the worse it is for everyone. So you sort of, it's a double loss because not only does the deal end up happening, but you weaken both of these companies in the process. Yeah. And that's a narrative that I think is getting out there now. There's an op-ed in the early times this weekend who knows if Paramount was behind that or not, but this notion that in delay, everybody loses. And we saw that in the time Warner merger that was held up by the Trump administration for almost two years. And by the time Warner closed with AT&T, the streaming wars were over and Netflix had gotten so far ahead that, you know, I don't think AT&T would have been the company to battle Netflix regardless of when they closed their deal, but it was even harder two years later. And we're seeing that now. I mean, just the decisions that are being made at these companies, they can't, their hands are tied. So they've got executives whose deals are about to run out, Casey Boyz's deal at HBO is up next year. Are they going to have to figure out what to do with Casey Boyz before this deal closes? And is he going to want to stick around for that uncertainty? All across the companies, they have these problems. And it just, it does beg the question, what is this combined company going to be even if and when Ellison gets it? Well, that's, I mean, that gets at another kind of fun argument debate in this whole process, which is the one that, that are a manual. I mean, a lot of people have put out there, I mean, Ellison has put it out there for some reasons. The ARIA bet is stuck in my head about sort of, basically, if this doesn't happen, then these companies will collapse. And like, we must do this to save the industry. Right. Which I don't believe. I think Warner's could survive. Both companies could survive. There was a really good, I forget who sent it to me, but sort of the argument that like, the Ellison's bought a really weak company in Paramount, right? And so they had two options, and we've talked about this. They could have chosen to invest a lot of money into Paramount and to stabilize it. And instead, before doing that, they decided to go and swallow something else and thinking that's wishing it together. But I think if the Ellison's had adequately invested in Paramount and Warner had had an owner that wasn't just loaded up with debt, both of the companies could have survived. Would they be thriving? Would they be, you know, a bigger streaming service than Netflix? Of course not. But that's not necessarily what they have to be. There's a version of this of HBO Max that is still very profitable and very successful. Now, if you decide that they're better together, that's fine, but we've also seen this happen a couple of times with Warner Brothers where it gets bought. Someone says, this is the solution and it ends up not being the solution. Now, this is different, younger guy, lots of money, long term commitment. So maybe this is finally the correct answer. But we have generally seen that big deals don't tend to solve things, they tend to complicate things. True. Two things there, though. First is, at least from the Paramount point of view, they don't believe that any investment is going to scale the company. And they probably should have bought it at this point in the streaming wars that Netflix and Disney and Amazon are so far ahead that they could spend hundreds of billions of dollars on content. And yeah, it would raise subscriber numbers, but it wouldn't raise them to the degree that is necessary to compete. Plus, with this deal, they take out one of their competitors, you know, they acquire one of the competitors. They're not going to make that argument in court, but that's a factor here. They're not going to have to compete against the HBO Max of the world. So that's one. And then the second argument, I think, is yes, Warner could survive. But the way that Warner Discovery is set up right now and the incentives that its shareholders and board have put in place, it's going to be sold again. I made this joke in my newsletter that David Zazov is the terminator of getting paid. He will not stop until they find another deal. And yes, he's working on behalf of the shareholders and the shareholders get a big premium in this deal or potentially in another deal. But this notion that this deal falls apart and Warner Brothers is just going to go back to its old self and continue chugging along. No, this entire transaction with Discovery was set up to flip the company to somebody else. They wanted to bolt their dying TV company onto a better, actually don't, I actually don't think that's true. I agree with the second, the first point you were making, which is that, you know, the notion that you can, and I've heard this from people who are like loudly against the deal. They've acknowledged that if you block the deal, you can't just go back to normal. They don't really know what the alternative is. But I don't think Warner Brothers Discovery was set up to just sell it. three years. I think that David Zazlove really wanted to like run the company and be the king of Hollywood and enjoyed that and it just didn't go the way he wanted it to. So much is, I don't think AT&T bought Warner Brothers discovered or time Warner at the time to spin it in five years. They had a plan, they tried to execute it, it didn't work. Well, but that's a different company, they're much larger. I do think that they saw where the line was going and that they would eventually need to sell to a tech company. They thought or maybe combine with a rival. I think that they needed to, I think that it was simpler than that and that they needed to merge with something else to save discovery and hope that they could figure it out. And if they didn't figure it out, they figured they could flip it. But I don't think the intent from the beginning was to flip it. It became clear pretty quickly that the numbers were not working as much as they cut. But I believe David Zazlove and he tells people that he did not want to sell. That's why he was doing the spin instead of trying to sell it. I think he liked running Warner Brothers. I think he was doing the spin to sell the studio separately. And he knew that Netflix was sitting there at one point that they were going to buy it. But that's separate. Now, Warner could survive, but don't you agree that there's going to be some deal. And that's the element of the anti-merger argument that I've never been able to square is I'm not hearing alternatives that their alternative would be let Warner remain Warner and legally prevent any other buyer from engaging. Well, I wouldn't legally prevent any other buyer. But I also think that I've seen that argument. That's like a total straw man argument. But that's only if you believe that there's no that if Paramount can't do it nobody can. Paramount basically runs the exact same business. A merger of two companies that do the same thing. Of course, there are a lot of other businesses that that would not combine two studios would not combine two bundles of cable never. And we've seen two other bidders already emerge in Comcast and Netflix. I agree that there probably will be some kind of deal, even if it's as simple as the the spin. But I don't think that this I don't buy this argument that if Paramount can't do it nobody can. I agree, but that's separate from the argument that there are no suitors out there. There are other companies that would emerge for some or all of these assets. Maybe not taking the cable networks, but those could be spun off or bought by somebody else. There's a lot of companies that would like to own HBO Max and Warner Brothers. Yeah. We saw two of them emerge last time. Maybe this time there will be more. Maybe the price would go down because the Ellisons are not in it as a bidder. I think you and I both still believe that this deal is going to ultimately happen, and there will be some kind of settlement, and it is sort of a matter of when. But yes, if it got blocked or if David Ellison decided to pack up his tools and go home, I'm sure other people would emerge to buy HBO and Warner Brothers. This episode is brought to you by Hulu. Jimmy Kimmel Live is nominated for six Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Variety series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety program. The number one show in late night is also the winner of the Critics Choice Award for Best Talk series, and a 2026 P-Body Award winner for reminding us that comedy and satire are vital forms of democratic speech for your Emmy consideration in all categories. Do you believe the conspiracy theory that Ellison wanted to move Paramount out of state, and this is all a pretence that he's essentially blaming this on the litigation when either from the beginning of the transaction or during the process when the cost started to mount that the economic analysis suggested they need to move the headquarters elsewhere to make this deal work, and now this is all just kind of scapegoating, not really. I don't think so either. I mean, he did move from New York to LA and he could have moved the headquarters elsewhere. I have heard that these costs are meaningful. He's got some of the most expensive lawyers in the country working on this case, and the delay is causing extra costs, and obviously the ticking fees will be added in there. I think he thought he was going to get the deal done. That's why he agreed to this very owner's ticking fee. The calculus changed as soon as he realized this wasn't going to happen as quickly as he wanted it to, and there may have been conversations about this. There may have been people over his shoulder, whether if folks in his dad's camp or his lawyer in politics camp. Why are you moving from New York to LA? We can make this deal cheaper if we move it to Texas. But he was able to dismiss that as long as the deal was on track to get done in time. As soon as it was going to cost extra hundreds of millions, maybe billions, and you're in this kind of drawn out political fight with the state of California, then you start to say, okay, you don't want our money. We're going to go somewhere else. But there's a question, by the way, he told his staff, he would say $500 million a year in taxes. One of the analysts has put out something saying that that's actually not the case, and it would depend on very generous tax incentives from other states in order to get anywhere near that, that it's not actually $500 million. You and I have not done that analysis. Let's say we get to October 1st, and there is no deal. What odds do you have that they actually begin the process of moving to Nashville? Great question, because that's six weeks away, and even if they start negotiating soon, like probably not going to be done. I think A, it depends on the status of the negotiation, whether they are in constructive talks, close to the finish line, it's getting there, or whether they are still in some kind of a standoff, you know, they-- Okay, let's do both. If they're in productive talks, then the odds of it are quite low, I imagine. I agree. Yes. But if they're not, if they're at a stand still, if they are in the same situation they are now, what would you say the odds are? I'd say the odds of starting the process 70-80%. So you think it's high. You think that this is more than posturing that he's really going to do it. I think it's both. It's posturing, but he would follow through. I mean, that you could be bold. And listen, there's degrees of relocation, relocating the headquarters to Franklin, Tennessee, or Austin, Texas. That's relatively simple. You move your C-suite, you move a bunch of key people on the business function there. It's a couple hundred employees, right? That's very different from moving the guts of the studio and the infrastructure and the ad sales people and the heads of the streaming units, all of the business there. That's thousands of people. And I don't think we'll get to the thousands of people until it's clear that this is not going to be a deal. Even moving the corporate function there is incredibly disruptive and will be not useful for retaining talent. No, but the studios wouldn't move. No, but Cindy Holland at streaming and George Cheeks at CBS. But if David Ellison is based in Nashville and has to be and has to bless a lot of stuff and likes to be super hands-on with everything. I know. Listen, he's got his plane, a lot of flying back and forth, a lot of video conferencing. I know. It would be such a joke. It would be, and I know his wife's the country music singer and she'd probably be happy about it, but the whole thing would be a farce. That's why, and also like, it just kind of villainizes him with a round town. That's the other element here. I'm sure you are hearing it the way I'm hearing it. People are pissed about this. He is leveraging the lifestyle of his employees, their personal connections and family connections to the place where they live, and he's using it as a chip in a negotiation. And people don't like that. It feeds into basically everything that the critics and skeptics have said about him, his family, and the steel. And despite the savior and narrative he's put out there that this is the best outcome and I'm the hero coming in to save these studios. He's essentially taking the mask off and we see the ruthless Larry Ellison behind the mask who is here to consolidate and do whatever he can to create an Netflix competitor. Yeah. Look, better to see it because we know that it's true for pretty much everyone. Nobody is actually out there to like, I shouldn't say nobody, but very few people are acting first and foremost with the interest of a broader industry on their mind. They're mostly acting in their own self-interest and that of whatever business that they have. That's true. Including this podcast, which is why you'll be moving to Nashville, which is why I'm going on a fact-finding mission. Even David Ellison can bring the Hollywood Revolution to Nashville. You can start a honky-tonk band. We'll have a meeting in a booth at the Craig's. I'm sure Craig is lobbying Craig's the restaurant tour. Not Craig Horbeck. I'm sure Craig is lobbying for the move. It would be huge for the Craig's business in Nashville. So structural remedies here. I know everything's on the table. What should happen here? Are you still in the just spin-off Warner Brothers camp? Because I don't know that David Ellison's going to go for that. I mean, obviously if they say do it or the deal's dead. Well, I'm not in any camp. I just think that that would solve the problem. I'm aware that he's not going to do that. - Well, at least not now, maybe at some point he would. But what else? What other structural remedies do you think would be satisfactory to Rob Bonta and palatable by the elephants? - When we're talking structural remedies, we're just talking asset sales. - Yeah. - So we know, I think obviously Warner Brothers would get it done, I think for political reasons I've discussed CNN would get it done, and honestly would-- - Oh, you think so, just CNN, not all the cable television networks. It shouldn't, based on the actual import of CNN to the broader cable portfolio, but I do think that that would be seen as such a win for Bonta that he could probably wrap his head around it. See, I think it would be so overtly political that they would require all of the cable networks to be sold. - All of the time Warner cable networks? - Well, I mean, or spun off, they could have an interest in the spun off company. That would be great for them. Sell the one, the thing you least need. I know they want the cash from it, but-- - They need the cash, and they would have to redo the economics of the deal. - Fair. - But it would essentially be the deal that Netflix wanted and didn't get. - Why do you think would be a meaningful structural remedy? - I think the TV networks. I think we're headed to a deal where they spin that networks off. They can have an interest, but not a majority interest in it. Maybe some other like joint ventures or things that would kind of reduce their power or control or bring in another partner on other stuff. I think it'll be complicated because these are sophisticated deal makers on the paramount side, and they will propose complicated remedies. But some kind of a sale will happen if they want to deal. - All right, Lucas, thank you. - Thanks, Matt. - We're back with the call sheet. Craig, are you sad that we missed the D23 convention in Anaheim this weekend? - I barely knew what was happening, so no. - We were invited, actually, to come down and witness all things Disney for three days. Dizzy fans are amazing. They pay 300 bucks up to like 2,500 bucks to sit there and be marketed to for three days straight. It's like Comic-Con except only Disney products. It's kind of amazing. - That's kind of everything now. I hop on Instagram just to be marketed to for 20 minutes. - Oh yeah, it's great. No. Dizzy fans love it. There were some news there. The big news, they announced a bunch of movie titles and projects and Harrison Ford came out. It's the usual stuff there. But the thing that was interesting to me was on the parks side of the business 'cause obviously Disney's parks are going nuts revenue-wise. They're basically keeping the company afloat and the past earnings call, they reported 10% increase in revenue in experiences. When Comcast, the rival, the park owner, they reported a decline in attendance in Florida. So Dizzy is doing something right while Comcast is struggling. And during the announcement, they was served Saturday night for the experiences announcements. They had some news there. They said that at Dizzy land, they are putting off the avatar themed land that they had planned for California adventure. And instead, they are prioritizing working on redoing tomorrow land at Dizzy land first. - Okay, big stuff, you're mocking me. But the reason I think that's interesting is my predictions day, avatar land will never happen. - So avatar land was supposed to be where California, in California adventure? - Yes, they were getting rid of the Hollywood land area of California adventure, like further taking it away from the Michael Eisner vision of a theme park based on California. They had a whole Hollywood land area where there's a monstrous ink attraction now and some other stuff. And they were going to put an avatar land similar to what is it, animal kingdom in Florida. They have a big avatar attraction. And the reason why I think it's never going to happen is a, the movies just aren't as popular anymore. And there's not the affinity for them that they're once was. Jim Cameron is even talking about how avatar four may not even happen. Or if it does happen, it'll have to happen later after he does another project or at a lower budget, because the last one only got to about 1.5 billion down from 2.2 for the second one. So that's the first thing. And secondly, these parks are kind of always in flux. They've announced attractions that have never happened before. They've announced things were going away and they reverse scores. So they really try to give themselves flexibility. And I think that's what's going to end up happening here. They're going to get into the tomorrow land thing. They've already got an Avengers campus redo coming at California adventure. They've got a cocoa ride that is coming for California adventure. I think they're just going to prioritize elsewhere and the avatar land will not happen. - Yeah, it's tough because it takes so long to build these lands that avatar needs to hold its cultural relevancy. And I feel like that's been waning with every movie that comes out. You predicted six months ago that you think avatar four will happen. I do think it will happen. I don't think it'll, it may not be Cameron's next project. He may do something in between, but I do think it will happen. I think he's got enough juice to get that over the finish line, even though they may have to reduce on the cost. I mean, these movies still make money. $2.5 billion is nothing to seize at. And yes, it was hugely expensive. But they can bring down some of that cost. - But your prediction of the avatar land will never happen. I mean, it does speak to kind of like the weird lack of cultural relevance that avatar has despite how much money it makes. - I know and we've debated this. And yet the avatar attraction in Florida is still very popular. - Well, and to be honest, like the visuals and the design of the avatar world does lend itself to a live in person experience. That would seem cool. - And you don't need the movies to be firing on all cylinders to have a good theme park attraction. Like Disney has the Tron roller coaster in Florida. Tron's not super relevant in the last movie bomb. - But it translates well to a ride, yeah. - Totally. And you know, they can make it cool. It's just, are they gonna prioritize it? - Yeah. - It was already being kind of snugged into California adventure, which doesn't have a lot of space. Are they gonna prioritize that? I think they are gonna push it and push it and push it. And then in seven or eight years, they're gonna be like, you know what, we're just not doing it. - Well, if I can one day fly on one of those like giant banshee dragon things at California adventure, I would do that. - Yeah, they have a motion capture ride. Or a motion, what do they call it? Like a 4D ride at in Florida. And then they also have a boat ride that's like more immersive. - Well, we'll do a live town from Disneyland one day. - From inside the Avatar attraction. No, yeah, I don't think we're getting that invite anytime soon. But we'll see. All right, that's the show for today. I wanna thank my guest Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horoback, artist Jesse Lopez and Stefano Sanchez. And I wanna thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week. (upbeat music)