Why Can’t We Build More IMAX Theaters? With CEO Rich Gelfond

this episode of the town is presented by hbo max hbo max presents hacks nominated for 25 emmy awards including outstanding comedy series in the aftermath of mistaken news reports that deborah passed away she and ava returned to las vegas determined to secure deborah's legacy as a comedian don't miss the series variety is calling one of tv's best comedies ever hacks is now streaming on hbo max this episode is brought to you by netflix presenting the diplomat now nominated for seven emmy awards including outstanding drama series variety laws at the finest chapter of the diplomat to date and afi hails at the tv program of the year starring emmy nominee and actor award winner carrie russell alongside dynamic performances from emmy nominees lead actor rufus sewell supporting actress allison janney and guest actor bradley whitford with emmy nominated writing from deborah khan decider calls the diplomat a master class in storytelling it is wednesday august 12th the box office has been on fire lately thanks mostly to spider-man and the odyssey but if we're going to put a dumb name on this season i'd argue it's hot imax summer craig will probably tell me that's cringy but if you look at the numbers imax is really overperforming this past weekend the global box office hit 52 million dollars in the format the fourth consecutive weekend over 50 million the first time that's and the odyssey the first movie shot entirely in imax it's about to become the highest grossing movie ever in the format the stock price is up about 40 in the past six months and the company is for sale or at least it's entertaining options still a lot of issues with imax as well namely there aren't enough theaters to deal with demand when big movies come out and there certainly aren't enough 70 millimeter imax film theaters in operation only about 41 worldwide so it becomes a frenzy when something like the odyssey premieres and disney was so fed up with the imax shortage and being unable to secure imax screens for avengers doomsday that they made up infinity vision their own name for the other premium large format screens spider-man brand new day generated a 360 million dollar opening weekend without any imax screens not a good fact if you're out there trying to sell the company to disney or another potential buyer a lot going on with imax so it seemed like a good time to have rich gelp on a very savvy observer of the box office today it's the hot imax summer and why the heck can't they make more 70 millimeter projectors from the ringer and puck i'm matt bellany and this is the town all right we are here with rich gelfond ceo of imax returning champion to the show rich i have some bad news to start off with this podcast is now being presented in infinity vision so that i think it's a perfect match matt so congratulations oh it is that's you're digging you're talking about the low quality video that i am providing on this show youtube quality i'm not going there matt you said it all right well but it does bring up this issue that i've been joking about you've been joking about but it is a real business issue disney has essentially decided that they don't like that you did an exclusive with dune for the imax screens and they would very much like people to see avengers doomsday in premium formats so they just made up their own title for it is that do you see that you gotta see that as a little bit of a threat to you i don't matt i i think it's not that they didn't like it which they obviously didn't i think it's that they couldn't have it and you know the disney organization pretty well they like to have a lot of things it's why they've done such a great job and just going through the history for a second avengers doomsday was supposed to come out over the summer it didn't for whatever reason oh we know it's two words the russos okay i'm not going there either then we had um um we had dune 3 i think it's going to be an amazing movie denis is filming it in part with imax film cameras you know zendaya and timothy chalamet i mean it's a big deal movie and then oh yeah the footage at cinema con looked amazing spectacular and then they dated right on top of it and they said um by the way they were very gracious they said you know they understood that we you know they dated second and they couldn't do it but looking in their own mirrors they said it probably would be great if we could have imax but we can't so what's the closest thing we could do and they came up with this idea and the idea was to take pre-examination um large format whatever that is so everything with an x and then put a uh secure process of certification which is in a black box i i don't know what it means but oh it's bullshit it's whatever plfs they can get that are of the higher quality plfs and then they'll call it you know infinity vision so we're playing avengers doomsday in china i hope it's a great movie i hope it does really well but no i'm not looking losing sleep over it and by the way the last four weekends we did over 50 million dollars a weekend and we never done more than one in a year and that's in a world where infinity vision and dolby and a lot of other things exist so no i'm not losing sleep over yeah no i i didn't mean it that way i mean it more as a marketing story it's a good way to get people to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get people to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it and it's a good way to get them to watch it for the studios disney's doing it right now if you look at the billboards for the ridley scott movie dog stars has imax all over it and disney's been very aggressive in promoting imax and that's great for you because it increases the brand equity and the differentiation in the market but now they've decided to throw their weight behind this other name and i wonder if that works if that will become their primary way of promoting the event status of their movies so i don't think so matt because you know we've talked to disney a lot so next year with disney we have a lot of movies including star wars with ryan gosling one of their premier and by the way at the end of next year we're doing avengers oh you are oh that's fun we are so and we're re-releasing avengers endgame this year which they are in in infinity vision so i think they've determined it's in their best interest to market it as a separate event and lean into imax for their big tentpole movies and i think we view it as you know fine if they'd like to do it great and they're leaning into us as well so it's we're fine with it okay so no hard feelings um you mentioned it but you are on a roll this summer for record weekends and the box office in general is going nuts right now it's got to be a good time for you to sell the company i mean we saw a few months ago that you've engaged some bankers and having talks don't necessarily need to sell of course but where are you right now in the sale process for the company who's going to buy you well as you know matt um we don't comment on rumors oh yes you can no we can't my lawyer is sitting next door and he'll barge through the door and yell at me but we said at our investor day last year that we're running the company to maximize value in in in several ways one we're generating more earnings more cash flow things as you said are going great and at the same time if something comes along and it happens to be a blow away number and it happens to fit we consider it and that's kind of what we're doing and the story was an unfortunate leak by people who weren't fully informed and there it is i predicted two years ago my puck newsletter that you guys would sell and you came on this show and said it's too early but you're not really saying that anymore you're saying if the price is right and i like there's a button there's been speculation we did a whole episode of the show speculating you can find that you know maybe you can find it on the show you can find it on the show you can find it on the show maybe apple maybe amazon maybe disney or comcast nbc universal sony is the interesting one because they are moving more into exhibition they bought alamo draft house they just uh said they were taking over the cinerama dome i've heard that sony is working on some big deal right now is that big deal buying imax as i said mad i just can't comment okay but you but you could say no i have to say you're incredibly good at like incrementally getting there you could say no though and you're not saying no because i don't want to establish a precedent of commenting on these kinds of things okay all right that's fair sphere is an interesting one because sphere could start playing imax movies in that format if you worked it out in their gigantic you know mega imax format actually i'm not sure they could map they couldn't we've looked at it a lot and we've looked at it a lot and we've looked at playing sphere movies in imax and thought it was a way for them to amortize oh like wizard of oz right but that's not the direction that they want to go but we did you know kind of smell around about that idea but as you know it's such a different model the sphere costs over two billion dollars to build there's one of them in the world you know imax costs a million or two to build there are almost 2 000 in the world you know the sphere although i admire it and it's great is not close to profitability you know we're very generating lots of cash flow lots of earnings it's just a different business well and you're not i mean just to be clear if you haven't listened to previous episodes about imax you are not building these theaters yourself for the most part you are a technology company you license your technology to the theaters that build them themselves and can then call themselves imax theaters and that brought up that brings up a pretty big topic that has been going around this summer you went a little bit viral for one of your red carpet comments on on this subject and that is why the heck are there not more 70 millimeter imax film projectors that can project in that 1.43 aspect ratio that christopher nolan loves there are 41 in the world and clearly the demand is there because the demand is there and the demand is there because the demand is there and clearly people are selling these tickets for three four hundred dollars online for opening weekend why can you guys not help them build more projectors so first i like to say we we are to some extent because okay oppenheimer only had 30 now we have 41 so that's roughly a 30 increase second thing is basic economics one film print at one theater costs fifty thousand dollars so you go to city walk you go to 68th street each one fifty thousand dollars they also have a trained projectionist there um it costs a lot to film with the cameras so the economics only work in a in a select number of really high-end theaters meaning you know as you know we're sold out until september mid-september in a bunch of places so you really need high occupancy places big boxes the tcl in l.a is about three million dollars in the last four weeks chinese crazy numbers so you need big boxes you need big box office and you could do more than you do more now but you can't put them at every corner it just doesn't work the numbers don't work and there aren't that many releases that justified is what you have said before yeah that's correct but i think it's a little bit of a of a you know chicken and egg thing where if there were more then there would be more incentive for filmmakers to film in the format and studios to green light more of these event style movies and release them more year-round right well the good news for you matt is next year we'll have um likely four or more of these movies coming out next year we'll have um likely four or more films that are imax film release released on film which are those i don't think we've announced them yet um oh you can do it here i i know you know you're so generous the way you offer it it's incredible i'm just curious listen people want to know this stuff you know you know a lot more than you say i know you do well i pay my legal department a lot to keep me quiet so you know all right well thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today we'll see all right well thank you for taking the time to be with us today we'll see worthwhile but then why were you able to go up 30 from oppenheimer to odyssey if you were able to in three years go up 30 why can you not go up 30 by the time the next nolan movie comes out well as i said we might be able to go up you know a small way like that because what we do is we scavenge the world for imax film theaters that are out there and we um a lot of them are theaters that closed a decade ago or something like that and then we rebuild them and we we find the parts we make the parts nobody's manufacturing this from scratch right now that's the problem what chris nolan should do this chris nolan should start a factory and he can sell you all the parts and the projectors and make a fortune chris nolan is doing a lot for us i think he's helped us enough but um but the point is we have thought of a new idea and this we haven't talked about before where we may be able to get you know another maybe 10 or maybe another 10 projectors or another um 30 percent sometime next year but no i can't talk about it yet we haven't figured it all out 3d printers you're just going to have 3d printers maybe elon would help you if you said you that he you would play his historically accurate version of the odyssey in imax he would probably make some projectors for you you know somehow i don't think that will be a threat to nolan's odyssey probably not but it will be hilarious to see this episode is brought to you by hulu another year another murder in the building only murders in the building is nominated for five emmy awards including outstanding comedy series an outstanding lead actor in a comedy for martin short roger ebert.com says the cast can quote make any punchline sing with the daily beast adding martin short is at the absolute top of his game with additional nominations for casting costumes and production design only murders in the building is for your emmy consideration visit hulu.com this episode is brought to you by fx's the bear with season four now nominated for eight emmys including outstanding comedy series the new york times declares the series from comedy director emmy nominee christopher peace the fourth season of the acclaimed series features emmy-nominated performances from iowa debory rob reiner and jamie lee curtis all episodes of fx is the bear are 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inquiries a lot now from filmmakers who want to shoot entirely in imax now that nolan has done it well we've had inquiries throughout the year years and remember the movie is just out for a month so we've gotten some and some people that we're shooting in digital have raised the subject and but we have a concerted effort we're actually trying to persuade filmmakers to do that we put together a little reel and we're doing a little road show but as i said next year there'll be more film releases than there are this year and we do have some things that are being filmed now with imax cameras but uh you know it's a process it doesn't happen overnight as you know filmmakers plan out films for years before they go into shooting but i i think that that will happen why does someone like dineen not shoot dune 3 entirely in imax give us a sense of the added cost like on the odyssey how much more did shooting entirely in imax add to the budget of the odyssey so the cost i don't think is a big deal i don't think it's a big deal i don't think it's a big deal but i think it's a big deal man i don't know the answer but i would you don't know the answer like is it tens of millions of dollars extra or is it a couple million extra single digit millions okay at a cost so that's not the obstacle i think some filmmakers are just adverse to trying something new so if you shot with a sony red your whole life you know you're not gonna switch to doing a film camera the reloads as you know it has very short times until you have to reload the the noise was a problem until you know what chris is urging we invented a quieter camera with a an accompanying blimp so you could do real-time sound recording and the cast can act like they would in front of every camera it's like a silencer yeah that's a good way to put it it has some alloys that we developed um we worked with elon and we went to distant planets and we brought it back i made that up um but but you are you are trying to innovate here yes so that the filmmakers can feel more at ease to use it because i've seen some shots of nolan you know on the greek islands and it's a beast that imax camera it's a pain in the ass to film with that so uh you know i obviously i've never filmed with it but chris has said to me it's one of the best cameras he's ever filmed with and he loves doing it and it's not a compromise for him you know and hoyta his dp you know that they love it and i think danny likes it quite a bit um when um one of the bonds was shot by kerry fukanaka using our film camera he said it was like flying first class and i was sad when i had to go back to coach so i think the people have ventured out um ryan coogler in sinners he had an extremely positive experience and i'd be surprised if he didn't use it again so i think you know the negative um bent around it is highly exaggerated is danny gonna use imax cameras entirely for the bond movie i hope so you must know he must have told you i don't know you don't know i mean he's busy finishing dude three you know i have talked to him about it but i think that you know his script isn't done yet he hasn't cast it yet so i think we just have to see interesting by the way apropos of nothing where are you on the warner brothers paramount merger this is going to be potentially impactful to you two big clients or not clients but two big studios that put movies in theaters and often in imax they're merging under the same banner potentially if this is approved does that help or hurt you so i don't know i mean and if you and i have learned something together over the years it's that people who are predicting the future are usually wrong i know but that but we do it anyways remember when streaming was going to put theatrical out of business and you do remember that you know i think you pitied me when you put me on this podcast i was like the lone voice saying theatrical isn't dead and i also um um remind you when we talked about the paramount merger when it first came out i said i wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of consent decree come on around it and that's what they're talking about now well ellison would very much like a consent decree the state attorneys general don't seem interested right now but not not horsing around i don't think we know so um does paramount sell the physical studio to someone else and is that someone else who does a lot of films how to the streamers react to the theatrical windows you know how does ellison react to so many more blockbusters we have too much content now more than we can play yes it's easy to see how one studio is isn't as good as two on the surface in terms of content but there's so much change going on the industry i'm not smart enough to figure out whether it's good or bad it's more like the release calendar i think might be impacted where you certainly wouldn't have a situation like dune three and doomsday if they were coming from paramount and warner brothers going up against each other like that and you you know imax might be able to portion them out better if they're both under one studio yeah that's a good point of unintended consequences and you just it's hard to tell you because that's your big problem right now you are you're you're too popular amongst the studios they want to secure those screens as fast and as early as they can to make sure that they can muscle out competitors and i've said this before with you it must put you in a pretty awkward situation sometimes so the problem matt is being too popular i know i know but but it is an issue for you it's it's a good problem to have although on the opposite side there sony got to 360 million worldwide for a spider-man movie with exactly zero imax screens yeah i'm sure you've read the data but their plf indexing was way below um what historically movies of that type of done and i'm sure they would have liked to have had us and um you know we're gonna do the beatles with them where we will have that is it true that all four beatles movies are coming out on the same day in 2028 you probably have to ask tom rothman that question well but he's told you um he may have but i have a premature dementia oh stop i have heard that which sounds insane to me but maybe it'll happen you know lots of things in the movie industry sound insane like how about um people online making youtube movies making hollywood movies you know lots of insane things work so i wouldn't um i wouldn't sell them short on that idea yeah that's probably true this notion of imax as a premium product do you ever worry that it is becoming too premium that the theaters are charging too much for it to be a premium product do you ever worry that it is becoming too premium that the theaters are charging too much for it and that it's essentially getting to be a different tier where if it's not the gotta see spider-man odyssey movie of the weekend that people consider your product too expensive i mean i think we could empirically say that's not an issue because our best year ever was 2024 then our best year ever was 2025 and clearly we'll be back in the break that this year so on a global basis and i want to underline that because i think people forget we're in 92 countries and we have you know almost 2 000 theaters you're heavily invested in china um we are but people pay for imax tickets they are so i don't think we priced ourselves out of the market as a matter of fact you said this earlier uh scalpers online are selling them for many multi-billionaires so what we're selling them for for the right movie i'm talking more like for dog stars or for these sort of lesser draws it's still the affordability issue is real um why i was surprised to see the numbers in china on odyssey the previews there were insane i think it's going to do really well there is that surprising to you nothing in china ever surprises me let's it just seems weird like why this like it's such a western story but heimer did pretty well there and you know a black and white movie about a physics guy you know working on the atomic bomb and um you know that did really well they're big fans of chris over there um they really like um thoughtful piece historical pieces play well in china so bad things that happened to japan they're big fans of that in china yeah well um i'm not going there no but but i get that at least it's a regional thing i don't know spider-man's also doing well in imax in in uh but that's less surprising in china all right so we're looking forward to 2027 what is going to be the big narrative on imax movies what are some big titles that have the screens already booked like are you going to be able to sustain this kind of momentum so last year in 2025 um we did nezha which as you know well was did like 1.2 billion biggest movie of all time in china yeah how are you ever ever beat that year how are you going to beat the comp and you know what we will be that year by a significant amount this year and i think people are saying this year you have the odyssey what's the next odyssey you know but we also had a lot of movies that didn't work as well as we thought we would this year and we have a portfolio and i think the platform is what delivers the numbers and it delivers them on a global basis so a context last year we had 120 piece of content which is hollywood movies foreign language movies events concerts sports events and we'll have more than that next year but among the notable ones which i'm looking forward to first of all dune will play over into next year dune three um we have the next star wars coming and i've been on set the ryan gosling one and that's a throw back to the harrison ford kind of star wars they hope well they really hope mandalorian tanking did not help that car well mad i'm on a limb on this one i'll tell you take that to the bank that's oh really you're giving me draft advice i think it's going to be good and then um you know you've got frozen three next year i mentioned we're playing avengers next year we've got the thomas crown affairs story michael b jordan what about shrek five shrek five there's there's a lot of things out there and we never had the full year booked in advance but this time we have like two thirds of the year pretty much booked in advance hey matt there's one place you didn't go which is the reason i was most looking forward to going on this call which is at the end of last year you asked me to predict the best grossing movies of the year and i said there was this movie chris nolan was working on called odyssey and you said to me oh um um the barbenheimer effect uh it's a serious movie east coast west coast are you trying to dunk on me right now too yeah already very sensitive about this because lucas took it in the draft oh he did yes but i remember you saying oh toy story what are you talking about but i just you know i thought i deserved i'm done because i want your flowers i love you as you know rich gelfand gets his flowers for predicting odyssey would be a big hit congratulations thank you i appreciate it rich what's the perfect number of imax 70 millimeter theaters that should exist in your ideal world how many would you like to have eventually it's a great question never been asked before i'd say maybe 75 well would that put one in most if not all big american cities well global matt you know like i don't have one in paris what you don't have one in india we don't have one in india we don't have one in china you know there are big swaths of the world where there aren't we have one in australia which incredibly kills it does really well um in um where is it montpellier france we have one and ridership on the metro is up 30 percent since the odyssey opened wow is it too much to ask for one on the west side of la i really don't want to go to city walk it's really awful you have la live now yeah but that one's not the full nolan approved aspect ratio the only one for three is at city walk which is the worst mall in america and i think irvine doesn't have a city walk in america it's a city walk in america it's a city walk in america irvine spectrum regal matt the truth is you guys have more imax coverage than almost every city in the world yeah what without question without question there are so many i mean sherman oaks just opened i don't know if you knew that i did yeah they refit they revamped that i'm not going to the valley though i just want to avoid going to the valley i want one like in my neighborhood take over the old um the west side pavilion theater and build a giant imax so you're welcome to go watch it at our theater at playa vista anytime you want just call me and we'll be happy to show you whatever great uh craig and i will just have you on speed dial whenever we're bored absolutely happy to do that oh listen yeah this is good you'll like this we had lebron came in for screening we've had kamala there for screening of what what is lebron requesting a special screening of odyssey i mean though nice people comes in who else was justin timberlake justin timberlake people they call you and ask for a private screening at the imax headquarters we call it the bellany service no no but really i offered that's a service that's available to celebrities you could just call up and ask for a private imax screening no what we do is we have some friends and family screenings and if people call and say can we see it we screen we squeeze them in to some of the friends and family screenings so we have we get lebron what we gave lebron is mark saying we gave lebron his own well he needs he needs extra room to stretch his leg he does he thinks it's a small theater you know craig and i saw avatar at jim cameron's private screening room we thought that was pretty special no but seriously we have a number of them not just the one you get invited to so if you call us and say i want to see odyssey on film we're happy to find another one we have coming out and put you into it that's more or less what we do well craig's gonna ask to see the invite in imax or something like that so we'll try to make that sold out for two years sorry all right thank you all right thank you take care we are back with the call sheet craig are you ready to go have lunch at the paramount commissary in nashville tennessee the whole thing just feels weird this feels like a standoff and both sides are hoping the other is bluffing oh it's amazing so i reported in my puck newsletter on monday night that david ellison has informed his key staff that if he can't settle the ongoing litigation with california over the warner brothers acquisition remember california is the only jurisdiction now with the other attorney generals backing them if they cannot settle that by october 1st he's going to have to he says that he is going to move either paramount or the combined paramount warner brothers to one of four states tennessee texas georgia or some other state that he has not named yet and my report set off this like crazy discussion debate ellison's kind of getting destroyed online by people who are calling him a billionaire who's gonna pick up his toys and leave if he doesn't get what he wants i have heard from many in the executive class who say good for him that you know the california attorney general is going to jerk him around when 66 other jurisdictions around the world have all looked at this including the eu and uk and said it's fine then if he can't do business in california why shouldn't he leave it's a it's a whole mess do you think the amount of things that david ellison is committing to do if this merger goes through would actually benefit hollywood more than it would hurt it at this point meaning you know he's sent this consent decree proposed consent decree to rob bonta the attorney general where he's agreed to do 12 things to make this more palatable for antitrust purposes one of them is keeping both studio lots warners and paramount operating another is this 30 films a year pledge that he's putting in writing and he's getting these theater groups to sign off on and supporting the merger in exchange for that do you think he'll also commit to filming more in california right well there's a whole bunch of other things in that that i don't know about you know i don't know about you yet and i assume one of them would be committing to shoot more in california but this is all part of what would be in a negotiation and so far the attorney general is not negotiating over this there's been all sorts of pressure on him gavin newsom the governor does you know does not want paramount to leave and wants there to be some kind of a settlement but the problem is the attorney general sees this as a winning issue because progressive democrats don't want this merger to happen and you know they haven't really offered a deal and they haven't really offered a deal and they haven't really offered much alternative here because we know our guy david zaslav he's going to sell warner brothers to somebody right like they don't want the deal to go through why just as a political sticking point because if the deal doesn't go through isn't somebody else just going to buy warner brothers and then david ellison's going to take paramount to tennessee how does california win in that scenario to be fair this merger is going to cause thousands of job losses so imagine if paramount leaves the state of course that's the leverage that ellison has i mean he's threatening here maybe he's going to take paramount to tennessee and he's going to take maybe he's bluffing i think it's going to be very difficult to operate a hollywood studio from the middle of tennessee or texas or georgia but these days people are more mobile oracle run by ellison's father they moved first to texas and then to tennessee oracle the stock price isn't doing well but operationally it seems to be okay they kept the relationship with all the developers in the silicon valley community ellison thinks that he can still do that have the creative hub in la but have the operations and business function of the studio be elsewhere maybe he can do that and he said and he would be saving and he would be saving a lot of money in taxes and in this and in the ability to sell off the lots if he sold paramount and warner brothers he could make a few billion dollars and that would essentially pay for the ticking fee and any other costs of this litigation and that's the economic calculus here and you know what it's unfortunate and i hope that they can come to some kind of a settlement on this but that's where we are so my predict my question for you to predict is do you think he's actually willing to leave california or is this a bluff i do i don't think it's a bluff now will he that's a very different question from will he actually pull the trigger well that's the definition of a bluff if you're not willing to it's a bluff i think he's willing i do think he's willing to move and and there's nuances within that what would that mean because you know paramount used to be based in new york its headquarters were in new york and just the studio operation was in la ellison moved the headquarters to la he could move the headquarters to nashville or austin or wherever and still have a significant presence in la or what i'm told is that there is a five-year plan to gradually move most of the operations and jobs to this new state so there's a lot of nuance there but i my prediction is that he's willing to leave california as he is serious about this whether it will actually happen i don't know but i i hope this causes some kind of movement on this because a settlement where the states get some tangible results whether that's selling off the tv networks cnn whether it's spinning off the warner brothers studio into some new entity whether it's job commitments or layoff reduction or some kind of commitments there is a deal there's always a deal to be made and i really hope that they can make it to prevent what would be a pretty catastrophic event for hollywood and the los angeles southern california economy in general i know can you imagine a world where the paramount's headquarters are in tennessee and warner brothers potentially if they end up winning the lawsuit i mean so it could be two studios elsewhere it's the whole thing is weird yeah and then they sell off the lots maybe maybe netflix buys one but the other is like condos or something it'd be so depressing my god all right that's the show for today i want to thank my guests rich galp on producer greg horlbeck artists jesse lopez and stefano sanchez and i want to thank you we'll see you one more time this week Summer escapes start here. 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