ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Ironheart Producer Sev Ohanian Talks Sinners, Marvel, and the Future of the MCU - Crossover Universe Podcast

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Ironheart Producer Sev Ohanian Talks Sinners, Marvel, and the Future of the MCU - Crossover Universe Podcast See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist. The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Do you have a movie that you think made you want to make movies? Or what was your huge influence on? Space Jam. I think Space Jam. I think Space Jam.

It was 1,000% speak. Space what? Okay. You got to go watch Space Jam, man. Both of them, man. Those are important movies. But I will say, for me, it's honestly back to the future. Nice.

It changes the way you notice stuff. Like Doc Brown, his bandana is his Hawaiian shirt from Part 2. Stuff like that. I'm sorry. What? What? Hey, welcome back to the Screen Crush Crossover Universe podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Heather Antos.

And I'm here with my co-host, Ryan Erie. What a coincidence. How you doing, Ryan? Heather, we got a big one today. Now, see, this is our first episode, right? It was not intended to be our first episode. It wasn't. We were going to stack them up.

And then we got interest from this guy who wants to come on and talk to us. Yeah. We have the producer of such films as Run, Missing Space Jam 2, Sinners, and the show Ironheart. We have Savohan coming on in a little bit. I'm blown away by that. I can't wait to go into the lore of Space Jam 2, personally. I mostly want to talk to him about space jam, too. Even though, spoiler alert, I've not seen a space jam.

I can't. You told me this last week, and I, every single time, I can't. How did you grow up in the 90s, having not seen a space jam? I grew up. You asked me this the other day, and it took me a while to think of this, right? And by the way, when Cep comes on, one thing we are going to talk to him about, in addition to Space Jam 2, is how in the hell my name appeared in the show Ironheart? Am I MCU Canon?

And I have a lot of questions about my MCU character. that I need for the wiki. So I'm going to have that filled out. But I grew up 25 miles from the closest movie theater. So for me to go to the movies meant like begging an adult to take me to the movies. And maybe Space Jam 2 wasn't quite their space jam, if you know what I mean. But at least for the time. Michael Jordan, Bugs Bunny, the Martians.

I mean. I know. I know. And I love Bugs Bunny. And I was a kid in the 90s, so I loved Michael Jordan. It just never happened. And it's so weird to say that because Ironheart has the strong association with Chicago. I was going to say, there's a nice crossover there, yeah. I know.

And I followed, like, I was super, you know, you kind of absorbed who's around you. And in my hometown, I grew up around, like, my family were athlete. I was not an athlete, but everybody else was. So I absorbed all that, like, Jordan coming back and number 45 and all that stuff. Like, I was, I watched way more sports then than I do now. And I just never came across base jam. But it's not so busy. I was busy then.

I'm busy now. I don't have time to watch all the jams when they come out. What's new with you? What's happening at IDW? We're, oh, gosh, it is, it is in pure Comic-Con prep mode. San Diego Comic-Con is going to be upon us in less than a month. And so it's pretty busy prepping for that. For folks who are going to be at San Diego Comic-Con, come stop by our booth.

We're having pinball this year at our booth. It's very exciting, yes. Are you hosting any panels this year? I have five panels I'm moderating this year. So. Yeah, but which one's your favorite, I guess? What's the really good one? What's the really good one?

You're actually looking forward to it. The one I'm most excited about is called Beneath the Comics. And it's all exploring the IDW Dark, our horror line of comics. So we're going to be talking about, yeah, we're going to be talking about the upcoming event horizon, prequel comic, our Sleepy Hollow, Twilight Zone, all sorts of fun, spooky things. So really, really excited to debut all of that material. You know, the thing I love about IDW is you guys, I guess, are best, and at least I first came aware of IDW because of your licensing, you know, Ronan, all the Star Trek stuff. You do some amazing stuff there. But the original stuff's great, too. Like, you have some original horror stuff that's genuinely scary. And I'm not one to get scared when I pick up a funny book. But you guys do great work over there. Yeah, I mean, lock and key, right, which just wrapped up its run on Netflix on the show is there, 30 days of night, right? By 60 days of night. right by Steve Niles, Ben Tufflesmith,

became that great film starring Josh Hartnett in the early 2000s. And last year, we just had our big debut of Beneath the Trees where Nobody Seas by Patrick Corbath, the sequel series, which is coming out this summer as well. So a lot of great original horror. We're not just turtles.

And a lot of work on your part. I mean, that's the thing, too. Like, I do a lot, like, I have like five jobs with the channel, but it seems like everything that must cross your desk, not to mention keeping up with scripts and NDAs and stuff like that. You have an insane job.

You have so many people's dream job. So it's always cool to talk to you about it. Yeah. I'm trying to think that we're here. We're just in prep mode, man. Yeah. Like we have so much. So like we're looking at next month and we're so excited.

Oh, Superman, Fantastic Four. You've got so much. And yeah. And it sounds like it kind of sounds like you and I are just trying to plug our shit. But the fact is I think we just work so much. Then when we have conversations, it's like, oh, yeah, I'm working on this. Oh, yeah, I'm working on this. And Jurassic World, too.

Like, I'm a big dinosaur fan. Yeah. Although I never saw Jurassic Park, the first one, just never got around to it. You never, have you never seen the original? No, I'm kidding. I'm trying to do it. I thought you would, I was waiting for some kind of reaction. And what I got was absolute total stunned silence and disbelief.

And I could feel your respect for me dropping. Like I can see it in your eyes. You're like, I got to get out of this podcast. This is not the way. It's like I thought Ryan was cool, man. We should, I think we should mention something we're going to do later on. That we, that we, it's a segment that we're going to do either with Seve or after Seve leaves. He's a busy guy. He's got other stuff to do.

But we have a little segment. Why you tell them about it? Yeah, we've got our nerd hot take at the end called Hear Me Out, an opportunity for Ryan to convince us of his nerdy hot take, whether it be pop culture based, industry based, or just, you know, fun character base. And then I'll throw one in there too. Not just me. No, it's Heather as well. Like we both are going to come at you guys. I appreciate you putting the onus on me to come up with a controversial take. Well, I was first last time. So it's... Oh, that's true. That's true. That's true. I guess I have to remember what mine is. I think

I jotted it down to you earlier and I have to like cheat and look at my notes. But no, I mean, look, things are good. We're super busy, but I've got a great team here at Screen Crush, a lot of help. Doug is no help. Frankly, he's one of his bosses who just lays there to expect you to do all the work and takes all the credit. We may have a cameo from Doug here in a little bit. I don't know. He's not feeling too well. So we'll see what happens.

Yeah. Allergies. Summer allergies. The worst. Speaking of great team members, should we bring on our special guest of the day? Oh, I think we definitely should. So our guest today, and I still, I should go on the record here. I can't believe this is happening.

I had a call with this guy a couple hours ago, and he's like, hey, how are you doing? And I'm like, I'm weirded out. I'm flat, weirded out that I'm talking to the guy who produced centers, who produced Iron Heart, Space Jam 2, Run, missing, and a million other things. The guy's IMDB page is so, it's heavy. It makes your phone heavier when you look at it. We have Sev Ohanian. Hello, Sev. How the hell are you here talking to us right now?

It's so good to see you and meet you. You're crazy, Ryan. What's up, Heather? I'm the one who's starstruck, man. And, like, Ryan, your voice is a constant in my house. Because I love watching you guys' channel and just, like, just soaking in all the details you guys take all the time to find. So trust me, man, the feeling of respect is very mutual, not to mention Heather, all the work you did, man. And getting me all that homework to do right when I started at Marvel.

So thank you for that, too. I love giving people homework. So really, the pleasure is mine. She's pretty brutal at it, too. She's unrelenting when it comes to giving me back to work to do. I have to say, Seb, I am sure Ryan said this to you when you guys spoke earlier, but you made this man's life by sneaking him into Ironheart. Yep.

What are you guys talking about? Well, in case you didn't know. Now, see, when I saw, somebody was watching the screeners before me, messaged me and said, hey, I think you're in this. And I'm like, oh, that's cute, you prankster. Because, like, Paul from heavy spoilers is the type who will do that kind of thing all the time. I assumed it was, like, a graphic designer who knew. another Ryan Airy. Because there's a few of us. We're not, we're not Legion, but we're out there.

We've all Googled each other. We started a Facebook group. It lit up after this happened, that's for sure. I do want to get to that, but we're not here about me. We can be if you want, but we're not here about me. Seth, I want to talk about you, you know, how you got to this point, your career, and most especially later on, I'm dying to talk about Iron Heart because I just finished the sixth episode. I, I, what the hell? It's like, one of the best cliffhangers since Twin Peaks. So I definitely want to get into that. I really, truly, I don't lie.

I wouldn't even lie to your face right now. If I didn't like it, I would just think of nice things to say. I loved it. And I can't wait to talk more about it. So congrats, congrats on the show. Let's hear about you, though. Like, you have an interesting backstory. You grew up, you were born in Germany.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Army kid? Like, what was your life like and how did you get into the pictures business? So my, I think, background is I'm Armenian and my parents are also Armenian. They grew up in the country, Iran, just because, you know, our ancestors fled Armenia for various, you know, reasons related to the genocide of 1915. And my parents then fled Iran during the time of the Iranian revolution and ended up in Germany as refugees. And that's where I was born while they were waiting to be granted their visa to come to America. But long story short, you know, I'm an immigrant and I'm a child of immigrants, got, you know, came to America when I was only a few months old, ended up growing up in L.A. in California.

And from a very, very young age, I love storytelling. My mom really instilled in my sister and I a real passion for reading books. And my dad instilled a passion in us of watching movies. You know, we would go to Blockbuster and rent as many VHSs as he would allow. And that from a very early age, maybe want to do something in storytelling. And, you know, through a long roundabout way, I found myself going to USC film school. And that's where I met a lot of my collaborators. You know, Ryan Kubler, who I have a company with, called Proxidy, Ryan, myself, and Zinze Kugler.

Also, my wife, Natalie Kasabian, she produced searching with me, missing a bunch of movies. And then also I met my writing partner, Anish Chaginty, who I wrote, searching with and run and missing. And he's a phenomenal director himself. So the film school was kind of where I ended up and where I met this great folks. And, you know, after film school, got started in a very, very small indie space. My first movie was Ryan. And real quick, just so I have a sense of a timeline here, when did you? Did you finish film school? I'm not asking to date yourself, but...

No, no, I can date myself all day. I'm 38 years old. I joke that I, about two weeks ago, I turned 38, and I would always joke that I was 37. But I graduated film school in 2012. That was graduate school. So it's been, yikes, like 13 years, I guess. And right out of film school, I was really fortunate that Ryan Kugler called me. He had graduated the year before me, and he had just set up his first feature film, a very small indie film called Fruitwell Station. wanted to help produce that movie. And, you know, we made that movie on, like, no money. It was Ryan's first time on a movie set as a director, my first time on a movie set as a

producer. Every day on that film, we were being faced with the fact that we probably did not really know what we were doing. But our passion, our, you know, desire to be innovative and find ways to do things that were not necessarily industry standard, I do think helped make that film the special movie that it was. Yeah. Movie went to Sundance, did really well, got into Cannes, had a great release.

I did certainly watch Ryan's career. And just to quickly catch up, after football, Ryan went on to write and direct movie called Crete, which is a really great movie, and it's a spinoff of the Rocky franchise. He was fighting to have me come on and be a producer with him as his partner on that film. And for all the reasons that made sense, it didn't work out.

But it was a great opportunity for me because that allowed me to go off and really kind of cut my teeth as a producer and make a ton of indie films. And I was very systematic about doing the faith, movie doing a manor language movie. I really want idea of how to do the job all while I was really looking to find a project that I could be a lead producer on, whereas those other films I was at the junior, you know, helping others out. I wasn't it. Including Fruitvale? Were you a ginger

producer on Fruitvale? I was a co-producer. I was not the lead producer by any means, you know, definitely, you know, doing the job as much as I could. And I ended up realizing that because of where I was at, because of the indie space, I was never going to be submitted like a really, you know, you know, big writer's script. I would have to find it. And when I ultimately couldn't find one that I just really want to make a tiny movie that I felt could have a big reach, I ended up writing a movie with my writing partner and Eastraganty. We wrote a film called searching about a father looking for his missing daughter. It all takes place on computer screens, not unlike this. And, you know, my first time being a lead producer, I brought on my wife, Natalie, at the time,

girlfriend, to produce it with me. We made that film for $800,000. Cardabal. Went to Sunnance. I got the producer award. I got the audience award. We won all these awards sold to Sony and the movie made $75 million theatrally. So it was like this awesome. I remember. Yeah, I was going to say, I remember when when it first, you know, was hitting like the trailer circuit and everything like that. Like it was revolutionary what you, what you guys did with telling, you know, telling a film Solavia screens and like, you know, webcams and, you know, phones and and all of that stuff. And it's extremely innovative. You know, I'm always as a. As a comic editor and creator myself, I'm always looking for ways to how can we, you know, use the medium of comics and manipulate it to tell stories in a different way. And you guys really found something special with searching. So I think that's really cool. I would love to ask because, you know, Ryan and I, we live, breathe, TV shows, movies, all of this stuff. You know, we know what the role of a producer is. But for folks back home who, you know, producer is just kind of this title, right, that have people. peers in the credits. Can you explain a little bit about what exactly it is your job as a producer? Yeah, totally. And it's, and it's, it's funny how the, it's become so confusing. You know, it's, it's, there's a big movement happening right now actually by a lot of producers, a group called

the Producers United, which is actually trying to undo some of that. Because not to get into too much history in this, in this podcast, because I want to talk about all the fun stuff is the title became something that studios would just offer as a bargaining ship. When you were trying to make a deal with an actor, but you couldn't quite reach their financial code, you would be like, well, I'll just give you a producer credit to sweeten the deal. So the title itself kind of became almost dewatered or watered down in a certain sense.

I see a producer as a creative partner to the director. And it'll always vary that relationship depending on who the director is, the producer is, but think of it as the person who's the director's right hand. And that means supporting them and realizing their vision. I really subscribe to the notion that it's a collective vision on a lot of these films.

I know a lot of the best filmmakers that I work with, Ryan Cooger, they all subscribe to that same idea. It's a collective vision with the director at the lead. Which is interesting because, I mean, Coogler's an Autour usually writes and directs and stuff too.

He used it as a collective like that. Oh my God. I mean, Coogler, Ryan is the most, I mean, he's the most brilliant filmmaker, I think, of her generation, and he also happens to be one the most collaborative people on the planet. And that doesn't just mean

him and his producers. It's him and everybody. And sometimes the job means challenging your director. You know, I think I really see, you know, a couple of analogies I often think about is, you know, it's like you guys are going on a hike together. And the mountain could be treacherous or it could be easy depending on what the project is, but it's your job to keep each other on the path. And some filmmakers are sometimes the relationship is you really got to, you know, drag the person in the right direction. Sometimes you've got to be dragged yourself. And sometimes you've got to be careful not to fall off. It's that kind of collaboration. Another analogy I often use is the director's job is to have like a pair of binoculars glued to their eyes

because they are so responsible for every detail in a project. Whether it's a prop or whether it's a beat and a performance, they just have to be so oriented on what is the beat that we're trying to tell to serve the story. The producer's job, I think, is to be right next to them so that we can be looking at it all. So when the filmmaker is really focused on X detail or Y detail, you can be there to remind them, well, don't forget there's a scene and, you know, we're going to shoot in two days that if we do that note, if that's going to maybe counteract with that note. Or, hey, reminder, we always talked about this team deemed about X,

even though the improv is fantastic. We want to maybe get a take that gets that covered. So it's all about collaboration. Obviously, we also are responsible for the business of it all. Like, how do we pull this off? And we have, there's specific producers called Ryan producers who are so talented. Their job is the budget, hiring, firing, the managing, like that's kind of more their brand. But as a creative producer, we also have to oversee that because sometimes you have to

really be creative even when it comes to the logistics to pull something off. But we're there with the filmmaker from the very beginning up until the very end through all of it, through editing, through post, usually as another voice to help, like I said, support, challenge, and just ultimately realize the vision of the film. I hope that helped clarify some of it. It sounds very simple and stress-free and relaxing and there's never any personality issues that you ever have to deal with, I'm sure. Accurate. Everything I know about producing, I learned from the great 1996 film called Wag the Dog, which I did see in theaters instead of straight-scale.

So, oddly enough, yeah, I can bring it full circle for you. That movie was a great crash course. I think I'd really watch that film. That's it. It holds up. Mike Nichols. Oh, yeah, I think I'm realizing for the first time ever that Argo is like a spiritual successor to that film. Because that's another.

I think that's a great analogy. Yeah, I like that. And now Argo is also about producing. Ryan and I even talk about is his inception is a good film that kind of shows filmmaking. Like if you think about every member of that high screw is a member of a

filmmaking team. There's a production designer of designs that space and you know, George of Gordon Levitt I see as a producer who figures out how to realize the vision. But I'm going on a crazy tangent. No, I love it. No, no, no. I've actually read I've seen, somewhere I've seen video, read something. Maybe Matt Singer

on our website wrote something along the same lines. A lot of Nolan's films can be in interpreted as, you know, a treatise on filmmaking. Same thing with Sodenberg. I mean, the Ocean's 11 films are people planning this operation and everybody having to be in place. And, you know, we have the easy part. I get to sit and just watch it on the screen.

Even with, you know, we did a center's breakdown and just watching all of those making of footage. You told me you snuck in there, right? We got a shot of you in the making out footage. I, like spit my coffee out. Maybe is how you felt when you saw the Ryan area. I was like, oh, shoot, I'm in a screen crusher video. Like, oh, snap.

I thought it was a prank when I saw the Ryan era. that if you did. I'm going to be honest with you now, Ryan, like, that's not you. Oh. That's my friend from high school name, Ryan. It just, I'm totally confused. All right. So everybody, thanks for coming. We're done with this interview. Heather and I are going to talk about comics for rest of the time. Well, you do a cool thing too. It's cool to hear that you watch the channel for Easter eggs and stuff like that because you were saying earlier, you're such a big Easter egg guy. You have an entire kind of movie hidden inside of your other movies just through Easter eggs. Can you explain that to us?

Yeah, man, man, I have so much to say about this. Just using searching as an example. So that was that movie that I wrote about the father looking for his missing daughter. It takes space on a computer screen. And we really strive to make it both cinematic and emotional. Like, you know, if you've seen the film, the opening five minutes often is compared to Pixar's Up for all the right reasons. And we go on this crazy journey with the film. And it's a very grounded, tense, suspenseful film about the worst few days of a father's life.

But by the virtue of that movie being on a computer screen, we had to populate things around it. He might be watching a YouTube video, but what are the thumbnails suggest the videos on the right? Or he's looking at a Facebook comment. What about the posts above and below it and so forth? It needed a lot of time from us to just populate all of that. And as we were doing it, I'm like, man, like,

there's an opportunity here to, like, put a lot of fun Easter eggs and tell a really fun story on the side. And I thought about, and, you know, we made the movie for no money, but I thought about what if over the course of the journey of this film there's an alien invasion movie happening off to the side. And if our viewers and audience members are, you know, clever enough or like positive.

Yeah. Exactly. So we go from this grounded harrowing story about a father's love for his daughter to like essentially Independence Day. And part of it was a business mind for because I'm like, oh, our movie is a small movie. We're going to need all the reasons possible for people to want to see it

or to want to buy it on VOD or to like rewatch it. And I was like, you know, if you do this right, people like write about it and it'll be videos about it. And it certainly was true. But for me, like, Easter eggs is because I didn't grow up with a ton of money. And I love video games. I love, love, love video games as a kid.

And I kind of had no choice but to play the same games over and over again. Mm-hmm. I started to notice that there was a little hidden details that weren't obvious the first time around. And the video game industry is very famous for Easter eggs, similar to searching just by the virtue of the, of being so much content that you have to, like, detail. And I realize that for me, like, Easter eggs are certainly not the priority when you're

telling the story. Even Ironheart as an example or searching. The priority is the characters, the theme, the plot. Of course, that has to be the, you know, the 99% of what you're focused on. But I do see Easter eggs oddly as a form of respect because it says, you know, as the people who put these stories together, it says to the audience, like, I see you. I know that you're in our story. I know you're trying to think deeper about it.

It feels almost like a quiet dialogue between us. And it shows, especially the Easter eggs that are about details, I kind of flesh out the world and show the continuity where you may not realize it's there. To me, it's a way of just kind of rewarding, like, people who care about that stuff. Because it just feels really nice when you watch a movie that feels like it all makes sense. It's all in the same world. And it's just a nice way for us to tell the audience we see you. And what's so amazing about what you guys do, Ryan, you guys and all the guys,

that new rock stars and heavy spoilers, like, you guys take what we do and you share your love of it for another audience who will then be able to further see what we do. Critics serve an important purpose because they analyze a story and people who do their reactions to our projects. So, so important.

But what you guys do is so specific and it's so thoughtful and it's challenging because, you know, I watch what you guys do and oftentimes you guys are siding like crazy amounts of like literature and you're going back and you're showing you done the work. I mean, the stuff you guys, Agatha, oh, my God, I was like... And I take no credit for that, because not only did I not write those scripts,

but we had at the time, an intern, now intern slash freelancer, who happens to know a lot about taro and Wicca. So that was... Thank you, by the way, for that. But staff member's name was Elias. And then Brianna McClarty wrote this video. She also wrote our House the Dragon videos last year. But, I mean, I'm in there.

I'm doing some stuff. but like if normally if somebody's been assigned to write a scripts and if I've trained them up like that, I let them go. I don't like to like influence what they do. I'm pretty careful with Doug, you know, like I'm usually if I'm editing something, it's Doug's lines because he doesn't like to have too many lines, you know. He's like Keanu Reeves and John Wick, right? You're paid per word that Doug is paid per word. Yeah, less is more. Yeah, less is more as far as he's concerned. But again, thank you for all that about the Easter eggs and stuff. We definitely want to get to Iron Heart and Easter eggs in there.

But there's a question I like to ask people who work in movies because you wouldn't be doing this few, like, when you start to have like a movie geek conversation, it always goes back to like, well, what was your movie? Do you have a movie that you think made you want to make movies? Or what was your huge influence on, like, yes, that's, I think Space Jam. I think Space Jam, the first Space Jam. It would be 1,000 percent speak.

Space, what? Okay. You got to go watch Space Jam, man. Both of them, man. Those are important movies. But I will say for me, it's honestly, back. to the future. Nice.

It's like coincident. Good answer. Another fantastic movie when you talk about details. Like, you know, their example is at the beginning of the movie. The whole trilogy. Yeah. The whole trilogy. But like just the easiest example is like where that movie, where they kick off the time travel is that I think it's Twin Pines Mall.

And the first thing he does when he goes back in time is he runs over one of the trees. When he comes back at the end, it's called Lone Pines Mall. And there's no close-up shot. There's no musical cue. It's just there. And you could watch the movie 20 times and never realize it. But if you catch that one time, you just, again, you get that sense of respect. So that movie's so freaking great, man.

Like, it's what I really like movies that deal with crazy, complex themes, but like in a very simple way, that it's really a story about a guy who's trying to get his parents to love each other, but obviously it deals with the spacetime continuum and all the fun stuff. Like that, that movie is such a rich, rich film to watch and watch again. I remember it was one of those things where I think we rented it so many times. We had far exceeded the cost of how my parents just bought it. but, you know, that's the oldenaries. Is that even back when VHS tapes would cost like $90?

Oh, yeah. Because they used to so people wouldn't, you know, just buy them for the video store and stuff. Yeah, definitely. That was a huge one on me. I remember when I finally, when, because I didn't get to see part two in the theater. So I would call my video store about every 10 minutes. Did anybody return it yet? Did anybody return it yet?

And they would hold it for me behind the counter. And the day, one of the happiest days of my life is when I was able to get one, two, and three and watch them in one sitting. Yeah. It changes the way you notice stuff. like Doc Brown, his bandana is his Hawaiian shirt from part two. Stuff like that. I'm sorry, what?

Yeah, if you look closely, the bandana, you know, when he robs them, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the only thing about those movies I always think about in terms of like, oh, it could have been just this little much better, right? Is Crispin Glover obviously wasn't offered enough money,

so he turned down part two and then the unfortunate thing with them stealing his likeness and him winning in court. But Michael J. Fox wasn't supposed to be the Seamus McFly it was supposed to be Crispin Glover which would have been

a perfect you know bringing the whole franchise 360 where his dad in a meta way I guess would have grown up

and then finally taught his son a lesson but instead it's Michael Jake Fox right here or you're doing that accent

you know back then that's so true that's a perfect when you rewatching I do feel like because they shot two and three

together there's a great continuity with those but like his they clearly introduced the character arc of him not one to be called

like that kind of nowhere but I you know you give him a shout off you give him enough of a leeway for that I mean those those and that movie it's so much fun with fan theories like wait did she name her kid like okay wait it this kid looks like exactly like the kid they knew in high school

and she insists on giving him the same name does this George think that's his love child her love child is Marty like it gets deep or the Chuck Barry the time loop the Terminator loop I don't know if she even put any energy towards it, but like that that hand motion

that the kid does in the third movie, like what? Oh, yeah, the weird thing. Kids are just strange, though. I mean, that's where you. Heather, have you seen Back to the Future? Oh, I love. Is that your space jam?

No, no, no, no. I love, I love three. I think I'm the one person in the world that, like, absolutely loves three. I love three. The climax of three is phenomenal. No. Yeah, it's more character-based than one.

It is. You know, well, one is about George. It might as well be called, like, saving Mr. Banks. It's saving Mr. McClay. I will say, though, I didn't love Back to the Future as much as my friend in college's parents who loved Back to the Future so much that they named their kid DeLorean. So. Oh, that is.

They named the boy or girl. Boy, yeah. Boy, they named the guy DeLorean after a car that is notorious for not working. But I'll never forget. It was like my first week of college in an acting class. And I, you know, I meet this kid and he's, oh, my name is Delorean. And I was the only person in the room that was like, like, back to the future? Like the car?

I knew a kid in college named Bobby Nintendo. And he was also the son of immigrants. And they gave him that name because they wanted them to have an American-sounding name. So they named the child Bobby Nintendo. So, amazing. And I'm shocked he's not a rock star. I thought minimum this guy is going to be a rock star just based on the name. Well, that's actually pretty bad.

It is. Awesome. We're going to have to write that character into a book someday. Based not on the real Bobby, but like, you know, just to have that. And I want to rewind real quick, Seth, because we glossed over a lot of your early stuff. Sure. I want to talk, just ask a couple things here about Fruitvale Station, right? You mentioned you felt like you were, oh, my God, it's my first time doing this,

feeling in over your head. I'm, right now, you're a great producer. Like, you look at the stuff you're putting out now. you know, probably hitting your imperial period. But I love when people are starting out and they make mistakes. So looking back at Fruevale, what are some lessons you learned as a first-time producer that maybe you don't wish you could go back, but we're very instructive for you. Man, that's such a great question.

And I hope this is a good answer, but there's a lesson that I learned on Pruevail that I then learned again on Space Jam. I then learned again on Ironheart, that I learned again on sinners. It's kind of the same lesson, which is kind of related to this idea of imposter syndrome. Oh. And where like, you know, when we were working on Fruvel, I had a lot of student films underneath my belt. I had made my own kind of like Armenian feature film, like on no money that I made with, you know, like kind of in my community. Was that a big fat Armenian wedding?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. My big family family. And that basically, the quick background for that is I had made these short films, making fun of my Armenian parents out of love. Like today, they would have been TikTok videos that you often see, like fun sketches. Yeah. And they'd blown up so big in my community

that I ended up shooting a whole movie that I wrote, I directed, I produced, I'd shot, I edited it on my dad's. That's awesome. You know, video camera. And then my makeup artist quit, so then I did that too, and the makeup was awful. But it was a, it was like a really kind of fun road trip movie about like old school Armenian parents

and like their Americanized kids and the culture clash. But, you know, that was like a, micro budget movie like on my my my dad's camera like I said fruval being my first indie film in my first real movie and then you know later space shamming first studio movie and cinders being the first movie that it's our own movie and then iron heart being first you know big tv series like every time these first happen i i imagine this is a very universal thing but i would find myself questioning everything about myself like well i don't you know this is apparently you're supposed to do that way i wouldn't know so i got to trust that process but i think what i learned over and

over again is a validation that like your instincts if you've done the work if you've taken the time to study and read and be thoughtful and you know you know showing up having prepared that's valuable and and and it applies whether it's your first movie period or first studio movie or first whatever basically like learning to to believe in your own instincts and i don't mean to sound like a hallmark card but it genuinely is true it is kind of a piece it has been true over and over again and it goes back to being intentional and thoughtful about it um but you know, even, you know, Fruit Fault Station, it was a very, very low budget film, but clearly, you know, one that was important to us. We were, we were dealing with a very true, true real life story about a tragic murder, essentially, that had happened.

And we were working very closely with Oscar's family. And, you know, I know Ryan, to this days remain very close with them. We then later made a film called Judas and the Black Messiah, which is similar in that it deals with the tragic historical event that we had to reckon with with the film. on Greg Bleton, that movie really insist upon having Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr., the son of Daniel Cleod's character from that film, be very much present with us on set as part of the project and being careful to do right by the real story, but also still make an entertaining film that has to serve its own function. So it just goes back to just, you know, I hate to boil it down to something as cheesy as believe in yourself, but I can't stress enough that

really, really matters. And that applies to anybody, if you're doing a short, whatever you're doing, like you have to have a real confidence in yourself, assuming you've done the work and taking the time to be, you know, as prepared as you can be. I would love to know, you have a very vast resume that kind of bounces all around the place in terms of genre and scope, you know, whether it's everything taking place on a screen as we see in searching, whether it's, you know, aliens playing basketball in Space Jam or, you know, period. historic supernatural period pieces such as sinners to an MCU TV show. But you've said that grounded storytelling is a focus of yours. I would imagine it'd be very easy for any single one of those films, any single one of those formats, the TV shows, to become ungrounded very, very quickly, to let the genre take over, to let the supernaturalness take over, the aliens, whatever.

How do you find the best way to keep your stories grounded in these, you know, super surreal stories? Yeah, man. Thank you for saying that, Heather. And look, in a lot of those films, I was not the screenwriter. I was just a producer. And ultimately, every script is going to have, you know, what it needs to work the best it could. I think Spaciam is probably not as grounded as those other films. But that's by design, just the very nature of it being LeBron.

you know, plus Buck's Bunny on a screen. Space what? It's called Space Jam. It's a cinematic masterpiece. It stars Bugs Bunny. Okay. It's heard of him. I don't know.

I don't know any bunny. I'm sorry. I'm out of this part of the conversation. But like basically like, you know, you got to find that the core root of the story. Like, I, it has to like land on something relatable and real. I think Space Jam, our intention was to tell the story about Black fatherhood. And if you don't think about LeBron James, who's an amazing. amazing person, by the way, like both career-wise, professionally, successfully, and even in real

life, like, he's just such a good dude. And a massive X-Men fan. And a massive X-Men fan. I don't think I knew that about it. He actually is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But he was good. Let the fan casting go. He's also good after, by the way. But he, you know, rooting the story on it around the idea of fatherhood was so important if you're nothing about Lorvonne's personal story, but he's also just a great dad finding what is it about fatherhood that can somehow thematically connect to the idea of Looney Tunes, and obviously sometimes you're more successful than others and Space Show was such an enormous, you know, movie to try and tackle. But the idea was like maybe there's something there about the feeling a son can have about

their father. Is there some connection there to what Looney Tunes can feel like of existing in the 2020s, you know, with how much time has passed? So that's always the idea, like, what can you root it on? You know, like sinners is about so many things. And it's a movie that's on the surface, like, as you said, like vampires and musicals and 1930s gangsters, but, you know, it's a movie that deals with the concept of freedom. Like, what does it mean to be free?

And what does that look like? And how are ways that that concept can be perverted and subverted and, you know, just, you know, violated it when it comes to some of the characters and what they go through? Like, can we root it in that concept? And how does every scene relate to that concept? And how does every scene further the idea of that concept? So you're not just repeating the same notion, but rather growing it and evolving and so forth. That's always the goal for me.

I love it. Well, especially, I'm glad you brought up centers because I was late to the party on centers. I wasn't able to see it in IMAX because I was on tour. So there were a lot of movies and things I missed out on. But as soon as we saw, I saw it, I was like, okay, I missed out the end and explained. But we were so excited to put together the breakdown. And I have this thing where if I have access to the movie, like when it was on digital, and if I have that chance to make a breakdown, we're going to go in.

Like, we're not going to half ass it. And that's why our breakdown was 50 minutes long and it could have been three times longer. Because, I mean, talk about Easter eggs, the insane amount of detail that you and the entire team, I mean, especially when you go into those making ofs, you could just do an hour on the costume department. You could do an hour on the set dressers.

Everything in that was so curated perfectly. And not to mention the technical achievement, but just an incredible achievement for you guys. And I know that, you know, people may not know your face now, but I have a strong feeling they're going to know it next year when you guys were up on that stage at many, many awards. I don't want jakes anything. But that movie was such an achievement.

I was blown away by it. And it was so much fun to make our breakdown video for that. Man, thank you guys for doing her, man. Because look, it's an original movie. It's an all-rated film about the 1930s, primarily black cast. Like, those are not the kind of films that you typically see that kind of breakdown done. But when I saw it, I mean, it was like Christmas for me. I was like, oh, my God, they just covered her film.

Like, screw my responsibility. So thank you guys. Thank you guys for doing that. You guys caught so many great things and you guys got so much right. And then every now and then you guys get a couple of things wrong. But that's okay. Like name pronunciations.

I'm usually the worst person for that because I'll see them in a script and roll past and go, I'll fix it later. I will not lie. Sometimes on your videos, like you guys will say things about my movies and I'm like, we never intended that, but you know what? Now we did. Now I will take that. That's part of the dialogue of it.

You know, like for a star, I don't want to go too deep into Star Wars, but the reason Star Wars fans tend to be so defensive is because it's so personal to us. And I think fans feel the same way about the MCU. And I think there's a whole generation of cinema fans who were going to feel that way about centers. Like you said, it's not the kind of movie, you know, you would have normally said,

oh, this is going to be a blockbuster or big IMAX screens, but it just hits on so many levels. What was the process for that film? How did it come together? Yeah, it's interesting, man, because Ryan is such a prolific, such a successful filmmaker. I mean, just at his young age, the two panther movies making, I think, like, $2 billion or something.

It's just unheard of. It's like staggering the success, not to mention the cultural impact his films have had and just how good they are. We, you know, we have our company, Proximity Media, that we were lucky to partner with Marvel on Ironheart and our upcoming Eyes of Wakanda show. We have so much other stuff going on. We've got a docu series dropping in July. What about these things? about Hurricane Katrina, like looking at it 20 years after the fact.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's right. It's really powerful. We were all at a dinner at October 20, 23. It was around the time of Halloween, just kind of talking about the future and divvying up who's going to be working on, what from our company.

Ryan had pitched me the idea of sinners well before then, almost as an idea of a movie that hopefully he'll one day make, but not knowing when and where or how or if ever. at this Halloween dinner in October, he's like, yo, what if I work on centers? What if I write the script?

And I get it to you guys December. And then we go and take it to the studio in January and then we start shooting in April. And I'm like, okay, so it's October now. If he gets me the script in December, that's one, two, three, four. I started counting the number of months to the following December.

Maybe that's about 14 months to write a script. And I'm like, that's a tight timeline because Ryan is a fantastic screenwriter, maybe the best ever. But it takes a long time to write a good movie. It really does. Like two months is insanely heard of it. And he's a busy man.

He's an amazing husband, father. I'm like, okay, you think you can get a script in my next December? And he was like, no, no, no, I'm saying this December. And my mind was like, wait, what? Is this even remotely possible? So we like, you know, he's like, I'm going to go off and writer.

We're like, great. We started casting the movie with no script. We started looking for music with no script. We started looking for a ways to pull off the VFX. because the twin effect had to be so perfect. And it was. Man, shout out to Michael Rala, our VFX supervisor, James Alexander VFX producer,

and all the vendors we work with. I mean, and of course, to Michael, who he brought that character, those two characters to life. And special shout out to Percy Bell, the body double we had to cast for Michael, who not only had to look like Michael's general build, he also had to be good actor

because he's the guy that Michael's acting opposite from. But just to go back, like Ryan turned in the draft in December, and it was a knockout draft. And part of me feels like the way he was able to make the movie, to write the movie so well is because that story has been inside of him for as long as it was. It's about his family.

It's about his ancestry. I think that movie was like, almost like if you've seen sinners, it felt like the ancestors were riding through him in so many ways. And of course, we did a couple of passes and all that. But we got the movie going so astonishingly quickly. Truly, there's a saying where like the train was on the tracks while we were still building the tracks. In our case, we were truly building the train because we needed our,

our partner Ludwig, our composer and Serena, our Zecta music producer, to have like 20 songs written, a lot of which were brand new original songs before we even shot a frame. I mean, it was generally the final exam of producing for me. Like, it was the boss battle of this thing. And it was, I think the only reason we were able to pull it off was truly the last 10 years of everything Ryan and I had done together with Zinzi, with all of our partners. And putting that film together, speaking of Heist films and Christopher Nolan and Thurberberg, like, it was very much a heist.

Like, you know, Zinzi calling Ruth Carter or a costume designer, can you do this movie immediately? Can you, you know, and getting a hand of beak or amazing pressure center. It was like, everyone had to get on board. And the way filmmaking usually works is you spend a lot of time developing things and trying out a couple of options for the design of the build of the juke or whatever it is. We did not have time for options. So it was like everyone had to nail it on the first try.

And I'm so grateful that they did. Wow. I'm so proud of that movie. And thank you for watching it and all the kind words. And again, for covering it. I was to say that's so impressive because, you know, those aren't small sets. Like you literally have a town, you know, that you guys have. And they're not small scenes, you know.

There's a couple scenes here and there where it's one or two actors, but it's mostly a, like, almost like a stage play, right? You almost have the entire cast throughout the whole, whole film. So to do that that quickly is truly a feat. Man, thank you guys. You guys only hear a fun Marvel Easter egg. Shout out to Marvel Studios. Ruth Carter was working on the Blade movie that ended up not shooting, which I think they're still going to make. I'm not sure with the schedules with that.

But at one point, that movie was going to deal with it. And she's talked about this before. But at one point, that film was going to deal with the past around the same era as what's said. That's cool. Oh, no way. She happened to have a warehouse full of period-appropriate clothes. And it was like, yo, we got to shoot this movie like tomorrow. And Marvel was generous enough and kind enough to let us basically purchase it at price.

Oh, wow. A lot of the background actors in our movie are wearing those clothes. So special shout out to Marvel for making that happen. Especially if actors were rehearsal a Lali size. I think it was all about the background actors. But yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe one of the characters is wearing what they would have worn. I'm not sure.

So you heard it here first. Sinners is an MCU story. I think that's what I've. Yeah, like everybody else, I'm looking forward to the launch of the Center of Cinematic Universe. You know, we've got, hey, we've got, what, 40, no, 70 years to fill between those, the end credits, and there's so many things you can do. We're going to pitch you right now. But no, speaking to cinematic universes, I've waited long enough. I want to talk about Iron Heart.

This show, it surprised me because it was shot so long ago, it seemed like, and then sat on the shelf for a long time, which maybe was Marvel wanting to parse out their release. so they weren't on top of other things. But it shows because the visual effects look amazing. The actors are incredible. And a friend of a friend interviewed some of the cast members for different things a couple of years ago. And she told me, like, no, this cast is excited about this show. And when the cameras aren't rolling,

they don't pretend to be excited about things. You know what I mean? But they were, according to my friend, like, incredibly excited. So that's always made me optimistic about it. I do not, I love, I mean, I cannot believe how much I love this show. the way Dominique Thorne anchored it, she had a true character journey that in a lot of ways

was the opposite of Tony Stark. You know, there's a lot of cool illusions in there about Tony Stark had to get in the armor to feel safe. She has to leave the armor to feel safe. But in ways that didn't just feel Easter eggy, it felt like, yes, this is her character. She is separate from him,

even though they have similar tracks and personalities. So congrats on it. I mean, I am dying to hear how that show came together and then just nerd out about it for a while. Yeah, look, look, I got, I can't talk about the show without mentioning our head writer Chinaka Hodge, who absolutely. This is her first time essentially running a show, you know, running the writing room. She's an old friend of mine in Ryan's also. She went to USC. Um, but, you know,

she, she really had to compete to get the job. We had a lot of people pitching ideas and stuff. And one, one thing that Chinaka nailed so beautifully is Riri's voice. You know, she's still the same character from Wakanda forever. But now that we're home with her, we spend more time with her. Like, You really get a sense of who she is and how she operates. You know, we shot it a couple years ago, but the delay is really just twofold. One, it's the writer, the writer and actor strike really pull the number on this one. Like, just like with any of them, you have to just go down for so long. It's so funny, I've seen so many kind of comments about how great the VFX look in our show.

And again, that's shout out to Greg Steele or VFX supervisor and Dave Bosco or VFX producer. They have not been working on the show for years to get it to look this go. We have the same amount of time. I just assumed I really did because you hear all these horror stories about visual effects artists being forced into deadlines I thought oh good they gave them time it looks great it looks feature film

it looks fantastic and I don't lie I thought it's on stuff I believe you that you haven't seen space sham basically they they really at the end of the day yes there was more time but it's not like that time because time is money and that would happen

I don't know if the show didn't need that time to look this good or to change I mean we people play about people don't realize this, but we only shot two days of reshoots, which is an extremely tiny amount. Wow. You know, you often hear stories, and this is not just a Marvel thing. You'll hear stories about weeks or whatever. This is entirely the strikes and a little bit, I think, of just Disney overall parsing out all their content. You know, I mean, they have, obviously, they have the Star Wars universe and they have all the live act. I mean, there's so many other projects. It was just

probably was some decision about when things should go out. So it really was, it was interesting to see the speculation about all the things. And I really love seeing the response from from fans and regular people being like, yo, this is pretty good. And like, this goes into some interesting directions. And but it's, you know, that's just the internet. It is what it is. One of the things I love so much about Iron Heart is it is even though, you know, we are, gosh,

almost 20 years into the MCU, right? It's still, I just, I think I aged dry in saying that. Um, but we're, it's true. We were almost 20 years into the MCU. This show feels fresh. Uh, it feels new. You know, really developed Chicago as its own place in the MCU. Um, it doesn't feel like a rehash of, you know, the stuff we've seen before.

The, the, the, the, the hood and his crew all feel like unique voices and characters, you know, Ree-Ree and her family. family, her relationship with Natalie, like everything. What is it like getting to develop a brand new corner of such an established cinematic universe? What's that process like? And it's a great observation because so often when you're working on a show like this and pitching ideas and trying to like, you know, brainstorm and blue sky, like, well, if we did this, what if we died? Or, oh, man, you know, because I just didn't even back it up.

Nagelhout is our executive producer from Marvel and essentially lead executive producer on the show and Kelsey Lou was a supervising producer. They're both Marvel legends in my book. You know, Zoe's been there as I think she was the front desk employee at one point and ended up being an assistant working on

Vish. She was the junior exec on Black Panther 1. Kelsey started off I believe as the assistant to the filmmakers on the Marvel, sorry, Captain Marvel and they were like, they were the ones who started this idea. They were the ones who had a crazy idea to make it about tech versus magic to bring in Parker Robbins.

And at proximity, we were so lucky to be able to work with them side by side. And, you know, Brad Winterbaum is the genius who oversees all the streaming. And of course, Kevin and Lou and at the time, Victoria, who overseed all. But being somewhat removed from the rest of Marvel, because, you know, Ryan, Zinzee and I were not Marvel employees in the traditional sense. We would often, I would pitch some cool stuff. I remember this is such a silly, like thing. It doesn't even apply to that and finish show. But at one point, we were like, something, something, something.

flying fortress, okay? And then they're like, ooh, like, Black Widow's going to have something like that. And we're like, oh, okay, can't do that. Like something, something, you know, X or whatever. They're like, Mm, Thunderbolts is going to have a character who does that. So it was like, man, like, usually when you're developing, you kind of have a blank slate.

But with Marvel, you have to not only be careful about what has come before and what is yet to come, but what's fun is like there's ways to remix things. Are there anything, speaking of ideas that you tried to pitch, anything that, I don't know, not a deleted scene. but deleted concepts that didn't quite work that you guys were playing with that you kind of met that would have been cool

man that's a good question I'm trying to think or maybe characters you toyed around with putting in but who either were going to be somewhere else or just didn't fit I could tell you this like at the earliest earliest days

when we were talking about a particular character that shows up at the very end there was a lot of fun ideations of like what could that character do you know where do we see that character and what context do we see that character. So we fleshed out many, many versions until we landed on where we landed, which we're all very happy with. But it's, that's just

the process. You know, we got, we got, we got Chinaka again running this room. We got, we got an incredible staple of really talented writers. And, you know, and what would be really fun is this is during the time of COVID, where very often we have a Zoom meeting with Kevin and Lou and Victoria and Brad. And, you know, like, they're so smart, man. Those guys who, who see it all, like, they're so specific. They're so detail-oriented. And they always have these amazing ideas. I think one thing I learned, Rina, very much from Kevin and Brad in particular,

is that they really are great at, like, pitching things that are just not expected. You know, like, oftentimes you think, you know, where story's going to go, so you kind of naturally will arc it in the way that it wants to go, and they would be, like, do something different. And I think you see that in the amazing movies that they've made.

Like, just Captain America Winter Soldier, like, the fact that, well, we learn what happens with Shield and what it is, like, what? Like, did not see that coming, you know, in so many other films and so many of their, even their other series, They're just, when they're so good, it's usually because they take you in an unexpected direction. And I think that was very much the idea with Reber's journeying the show.

And some of the places, you know, she goes, like, I really love the end of 103. You know, I feel like the show opens up in a very unexpected way. And what, you know, what happens between her and cousin John? Like, you just don't see that coming. And, you know, where you imagine things are going to go with Zeke now. Like, all of that was by design. And, you know, the end of 106 is just such a crazy cool. like unexpected situation where you often see heroes who are faced with temptations and they

always do the right thing. And this is an interesting example where she's kind of going a bit more of an anti-hero path and what are the ramifications going to be. It all goes back to that notion of, you know, telling stories that will surprise you because we've all seen so many at this point, not only Marvel, but audiences have become so savvy over the years. Speaking of unexpected, never in a million years that I expect to hear so many Star Trek references in a Marvel show. So I edit all the Star Trek comics. That's my current day job.

So it was a nice as someone who used to work for Marvel and is now on Star Trek. It was like a weird like Venn diagram coming together of all of my worlds with Rie ReRilliams, the last character I ever expected to be such a Star Trek nerd, but it does make sense in a way. It makes so much sense. Yes. Yeah. And there's so many Star Wars references in the NCU. And I was like, oh, she would be a tracker, you know?

Yes, she loves Scotty. Scotty is her, I have to imagine she, she loves Scotty. That is her favorite Star Trek character. Did she, I don't think she ever exaggerates by a factor of four. She really should have at some point in the series when she was working with the gang. I truly love that. And the card that she sent, Xavier, when he, when he cloded it, of course, I knew exactly what it was from. And it really got me.

That scene always gets me. Our 90% audience is going to understand the meaning of this card, but it works, you know, you get it. And she's, I mean, what I loved is, uh, it just makes sense. She's more of a Treki than a Star Wars person. It just, it's, it's, it just tracks. You can't explain it. And, and I think, I think Kevin's a big tracky or somebody on our producing team

was Trekkie previously that, that, I think that kind of informs some of it, too. And it's one of the reasons he, uh, I'm friendly with Terry Mattalus. And he told me that somebody at Disney or Marvel told him, hey, Kevin's really excited about Picard's season three. And he was like, at the time, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, What? Exactly. Now he's doing a marvel, you know, so hopefully that helped him to get that gig.

And big spoiler warning. Can we, okay, so let's talk about Mephisto. Wait, who? What? What? What? So, finally. What?

I'm curious about something here, right? Before we even get into like my name popping up in the show. Ryan Erie is Mephisto. I am canon as Mephisto. When we were doing Mondevision coverage, right? And we had that show is so great. theories. And you know, some channels took it more seriously than others. I was like, I guess yeah, it could be Mephisto. I, you know, like, because sure, he's a character in the comics,

but fans really grabbed onto Mephisto, right? It seemed like that was everybody's favorite thing. Did his inclusion in this series, was that because the fans were looking at it or it just felt like a natural way for the series theme of temptation to go to? What was the decision behind there? I don't think the fan reaction led to Mephisto being in the show. I think it didn't hurt, you know, for sure. But it's a story about Riri's pursuit of power. It's a story ultimately about ambition. And we see how she goes down that path and see how Parker was in that path. Parker in the comics, you know, traditionally or historically is tied to Dormamo. And early, early days, that was always a consideration too, like how do we bring her mom into this? But it felt that almost

feels more random than Mephisto. And naturally, he's such a perfect fit for this, for the season. sorry, for the show, if you just listen to how many times you talk about the word soul, how many times there's notions about transactions, people shaking hands, talking about deals, obviously contracts, it's just naturally in itself to a character who would be focused on that. And what I also just loved about it, going back to the unexpected thing, had there never been any leaks of any sort, which obviously we don't live in that world, I mean, just imagine how much your mind would be absolutely blown when that dude shows up.

And we realize who he is, it's just so fun. you know like iron heart why is there even magic and why is there this man like it just makes for such a fun experience man again what i think marvel does so well because not only is it a surprise or surprise sake it really does thematically fit the tone of what the show's going for i have to also call out another character from the comics that i mean seeing mephisto's great you know but i was so thrilled that you guys put zelma stanton in their show zelma is one of my favorite characters from the doctor strange And when I realized that the show was becoming, you know, tech versus magic and we see the outside of the Stanton shop, my, my, I freaked out. I might be like one of like seven people in the world, but like I freaked out so much.

I love her so much. Such a great addition. The actress who plays Oregon is literally like off the comic books. She's like, I feel like I'm walking talk like to the actual character. and it's as we talked about it often like you know shuri almost represents riri's like counterpart in tech right they both represent in our ways and it's like yeah that's what that's what she is you know like zelma is basically her if she was a magic person and the way they play off of each other it's so fun and i i mean you know we have a little easter egg about the maggots if you

if you caught that in 104 which is which is what we how we met her in the comics it's awesome and it's it's so fun because like i said when it first started on ironheart The very first homework assignment was a stack of comics a mile high, which I believe Heather, you got a lot to do with and just, you know, reading about obviously all the Iron Harp issues and all the Parker stuff and all the Big M stuff and her stuff in Dr. Shane. So I really hope we did write by those characters. I hope I'm glad you hear you say that.

I hope other fans feel the same way. I like the nod to the Bronx at the end because she's got a Bronx hat on. And at first I was like, why is she? Oh, that's why. Because she's from the Bronx and the comics. It was very cool. I like a subtle Easter egg like that. And also, like, hopefully there's a strange academy show.

I know if you know anything, don't say anything. I'm not asking you if there's a strange academy show, but there are rumors that I know you can't confirm or deny, but it'd be really cool to see her return for that if they're true. I do want to say this about magic in the MCU. I love that this show demystified it again, because all of the MCU movies to make sure they fit with Iron Man kind of made magic a different type of science.

I think there was even that line in Thor of magic as science you don't understand yet. What Mephisto does, and there's references to another realm, another dimension, can be tied to the multiverse. But what he does is freaking magic. Like, he's freezing time and doing this and influencing reality. He's a reality shaper. And I don't think that Riri could understand what he does with science. And I love that.

I love that there is this element of, we don't know how he does it. You just have to go with it because he's the devil. It's fantastic that you guys did that. Yeah, I mean, are there discussions on how to make the magic fit within the universe? There's a great scene in 103 that Ruiree talks to Parker. about like what is the hood and and he you know is it pim tech is it vibranium and and he goes like it's magic and she's like magic but that's just code for i don't know and and that's kind of like a subtle reference to the thor line right we're like what you call magic you know people called

science um you know i i know we we flirted with ideas of like magic is unknowable and and you can't understand it's not something you could break apart as you know we talks about doing the show um i i don't want to speak too much about like what our intentions are and what it means but i agree i think it's i think like what happens in the show is it's at least from our human perception just feels so far outside of any realm of science um it's been it's exciting for sure i mean even think about natalie like as magic you know she's actually not you know she's clearly a piece of tack from the brain mapping but something almost magical happened when natalie came together because of where we was thinking about so we just kept finding places that magic and

tech would bleed together. And one of my favorite, favorite lines in the show. And oh my God, guys, it played so beautifully when we screened the movie at our launch event

last week, which was in 102. And when Ronnie, Ribi's mother tells Ruibi, I met Natalie. She's beautiful. Like, baby, what is this amazing?

And she says, could you make one of Gary, too? Like, at the premiere event, there was a couple hundred people. Like, you just, everyone was like, oh, like.

It hit me. it's it's you know like that's what chinaka in our amazing writers are always trying to touch on like there's this there's like this weird bleeding edge between magic and tack and it's almost unexplainable because you don't know what it is but but yeah that's still kind of you guys to say all that about about what the show's going for on the magic side what what are you guys is there going to be a season two I guess like you end on this cliffhanger but I said earlier reminded me of coop at the end of Twin Peaks you know, bashing his head in the mirror and turning around. I was floored by that because these shows are normally made self-contained. You get six episodes and you're good and you're set up for the next movie. Are there any plans for anything forward going forward with her? I can't confirm or done anything about actual plans, but I will say what's incredible and unique about the MCU,

like truly, truly unique. I guess maybe except for Star Wars, which is now doing the series to movie jump, but those characters can get picked up anywhere. It could be a season two. It could be a different show altogether. It could be a movie. I mean, you know, Wanda Vision leading to Dr. Fingh, too.

I think these events, I have a feeling, you know, that we will probably see these characters and these events carry on somehow and somewhere in some shape or form. That's all I can say. Ah, man, you're a better liar than Andrew Garfield. I can see it all over your face or something in there. So, Sev, can you tell us who Ryan Airy in the MCU is? What is his backstory? Is he a superhero? Well, all right. So, yes, Heather, let's ask this question. In episode two, Rie Rees looking at a list of people in the Chicago area who have black market arms.

Most of the people on the list are Marvel crew members, the owner of the Dodgers, popped up in there intentionally or unintentionally, and my name is in there. And I know you said earlier that it wasn't actually me. It was another Ryan area, but I don't believe you. Whose decision was that to put me in? How did that happen? So it was honestly just for fun I like I said I ever since Wanda Vision I've watched you guys

as breakdowns and by the way you guys are great but like so we're new new rock star I mean I love I love Jessica so I mean Jessica's breakdown of Iron Man sorry Jessica's breakers Iron Heart 1 3 and sinners so good she's incredible

they're all like and your boy Paul like everyone's so good but I've always just like watching you like I just it's it's always just so fun for me to just like click and every time I walk something like get to see what you have to say about and what your team will you guys all do writing getting and putting those shows together I'm like man how fun would it be like just to make I don't know I imagine you watch the shows like on a big screen you know and you're pausing every frame and you're taking notes that's why I

was imagine and I just wanted to like create this moment for you which is like wait what is that me like you did it was incredible yeah I wish I wish you would seen it first before someone message you but it's all good it's still just as fun and it's again it's a slight way of saying thank you for all you do not you know not only for Marvel but for sinners for all the videos and and look as far as all of the other amazing people who do what you guys do who's to say that they will not show up in a feature Marvel project i can't say that but you know i told heather uh there's a star wars short story coming out that's got a character named after me coming out next month so now i've got two stones on the gauntlet and he's got to put me in a star

star trek and any ninja turtles or whatever we got to get all six so i have some thoughts um first of Did my character blip? This is for the wiki, by the way. That's so funny. And by the, that is a question we asked ourselves about every character in our art. Okay, yeah.

You remember there was a period of time where like that was always what things were about. And I remember, because Shuri blipped, we landed on Riri would not have blipped. We were just trying to give them some contrast. But would Ryan area have blipped, I would say probably not. If you've been this busy gathering black market materials,

probably not. Perfect. Okay. Who did I vote for? Ritson or Ross? I believe, based on all the discussions we had very lengthy discussions about this exact fact in the writing room, if you landed on, you were an undecided voter. Voting records are not public information, so I don't think they would know that. Okay, yeah, good point, good point.

Am I from the Chicago area, or did I move there from somewhere else? If I could move from my hometown of Peebles, Ohio, that would be great, but you're the professional, and I'm just the guy covering this. I have good news for you, man. We did, in fact, Chanaka Hodge made it a point in one of the screenplays. It said, note, he moved in from Ohio. Okay, great. Ohio native for the commenters, O.H.

All right, great. That's fantastic. That's all I think I need for now on that. Heather, do you have any other questions? Oh, yeah, important is if Ryan Airy is, MCU official, does that mean he still has Doug in the MCU? It's a great question. Oh, that's such a good. Where to be land on that one? I think one of our directors was it, Sam or Angela, had a

major note on this. What do they say, man? I think, I think Doug unfortunately is currently serving the raft for accidents related to an undisclosed situation. It is fitting. That does feel fitting. his mutated abilities. Well, I'll let him know. He has a hard time even staying home alone, so he's not going to be like,

although I could see him be pretty, I do a pretty good Doug impression, and I can totally see him being like, hey, so weren't you the president? So the guy in the cell next to him. Yeah, that's incredibly what do we do. You want to hear a fun Doug thing from the other day? Please.

Side note, this has nothing to do with you. This is just a fun Doug anecdote. There was a line in a script about Morgan Freeman. Like he said he's a Morgan Freeman, and completionist. And then I improvised a Doug line about where I just did a line from Shawlshank Redemption. Again, I'm doing a Doug impression.

Right. Doug does his own voice. And I just went, uh, I forget what the line was. To this day, I have no idea what them tier Italian ladies was singing about. And then my wife and I could not stop. We kept doing Doug Shawshank lines like off of each. And Doug liked it too, but he's more of a Forrest Gump guy. He thinks that they made the right

choice in the Oscar that year. That's funny. I don't think I I had a feeling you did the voice, but just seeing it live is such a trip. That's awesome. Oh, no, it's a, I do an impression. Doug is his own. Ryan, I think it's time. Should we do hear me out?

Is it time? It is. Is it time for Hear Me Out? So if you can participate or you can react, it's completely up to you on Hear Me Out, it's the segment that nobody's heard of because it's our first episode. I completely changed mine from when we talked about Ryan because of a topic we talked about on this show. Okay, and I don't remember what you said.

Perfect. Great. Well, you go first. Okay. Here's my Hear Me Out. Superman 4, The Quest for Peace, is underrated. In what way? Now, I am not saying this movie is good.

Obviously, it didn't turn out very well. But I think the ideas behind it are exceptional. And I think that today, if they were going to make that movie, right, they would make it correctly. And it's a story that I think enlarged the scale of what had come before, especially after Superman 3. I love the idea of Superman pursuing world peace of like hitting this greater question. And that's why Christopher Reeve agreed to do the movie, that money. He wanted like he was a driving force behind the creative concept of that film. And the idea that this idea of nuclear war being a villain who is personified as this sort of twisted love child of Superman's DNA with Gene Hackman's voice.

So it's a combination of Lex Luthor and the hubris of humanity with Superman's powers is a great metaphor for nuclear weapons. Obviously, there were a lot of problems in production. There were shots that were unfinished or reused. You know, Carol Coe, I think, did it. Like, they had major budget problems from other flops, so it didn't come together well. But that should have been a terrific send-off. And there was a great line at the end of that movie

when he gives a speech to the, I think it's to the UN, which is hilarious. Superman can just walk up and give a speech at the UN. And he tells everybody, I wish you could see the world how I see it, that we're all just one people. And to me, that's the essence of Superman, kind of distilled into a single line that maybe the other films didn't feel the need to go there and reflect.

So I still, I own the first VH. I bought it when my home rental store was selling it, and I still have the first VHS I ever watched it on. I love it. You didn't watch it enough times that you spent more renting it than it was worth? No, no, because I was too busy not watching Space Jam, because it was nine years before it came out. So I didn't have the opportunity yet. All right. What do you got for us, Heather?

Hear me out. All right. So I was speaking of renting films so many times that we spent more renting than buying the VHS itself. He inspired me, Seve, with an old thought I've long had about back to the future. And my Hear Me Out theory is that George McClough, fly has to know that his son time

traveled in the past. Whoa. He has to know because there are so many slips that Marty makes you know while he's back and he has to recruit his dad right to help him

to help him save everything. He mentions Darth Vader which wasn't around yet. He mentions Calvin Klein. He mentions their carpet you know when when that gets set on fire um but george knows that he can't acknowledge that he knows that his sunshine travel because that would mess with the spacetime continuum but that is my because he's a science fiction writer yes

exactly so he knows so that is my theory and i've never heard that before that's amazing said what do you think is it b double t f die hard what do you think about the theory i i i got i just got to go rewatcher now i love this theory that's so cool I love it. That sounds amazing. All right, here's my hear-me-out. It's just, this is off the cuff because I didn't have time to prepare

like you guys. I want to give a movie it's flowers that I think doesn't get all flowers that probably deserves. And this is not a movie that's like underrated. People like this movie

in respect it for the right reason. But just looking back, it's kind of mind-blowing that the movie happened at all. And that movie is X-Men Days of Future Past. All right. I mean, think about it.

We talk about movies like Spider-Man No Way Home because it brought all the old iteration of Peter Parker's in the same movie, but it was unheard of for a film that would equally share screen time with the new cast of the younger X-Men and the old X-Men and totally undo essentially, like, I guess it was X-Men 3 that it undid, is now Seaclops, like, it was like it, it course-corrected an entire franchise without ever feeling like a retcon. And it did that while giving us, honestly one of the better Charles and Eric dynamics in that film because it was them being haunted

by what they could have been like mm-hmm I mean I think that movie is because nowadays it's like so often again Marvel is this beautifully like bringing back these old and new and we saw it with Deadpool I get a feeling we're going to see with the new Avengers films like yeah they set the template with with Days of Future Past yeah

I mean we saw the chairs we know a lot of people are coming back so yeah I do love like when he shows up in the past like he's in this already, like, violent, ridiculous. It's so good, man. Yeah. Yeah, man. And I just love a good time travel story.

I don't know if you guys have seen 12 monkeys. Yes. Started it. It's great. Yes. Not the movie. I've seen the movie. I've seen the movie so many times because I couldn't think of a single movie I

could watch instead of 12 monkeys for the 12th time. Have you seen the original French movie, though, that it's based on? Yeah, no. I have not. You should watch that. I will. I think it was based on a Frenchman. And the original one, yep.

Yes. Well, no, I'm going to watch Space Jam. Wild. Can I watch Space Jam 2 first? and then go back and be like, oh, that was the Easter egg they ever reference either. It's going to confuse me. You have to watch it. You have to respect, you have to respect the chronology, please.

Now, honestly, I'm looking forward to watching searching and missing. You know, we covered, I think it was missing when it came out and we missed the boat on searching. And it would actually, I was telling Heather this, it would stun everybody how few movies I get to see because I'm so busy and I'm also trying to watch TV shows and read books. I bet. I try to read all the comics Heather makes. But this has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on.

I still, I feel like I know you and I'm still on Tim. by your presence. Thank you so much for joining us. Crazy, man. Thank you guys, not only for this, but thank you guys for all you do to, and this goes to you guys, this goes to all the great people at any rock stars and heavy spoilers, everyone. Like, thank you guys for continuing to celebrate not only the Marvel projects, but all the projects you guys cover. And you guys, you know, help shine a light on the hard work that goes in on the behind the scenes that most audience members will never even know to appreciate. So as a fan of you guys and as someone who tries to, you know, put projects together and

and make them good. Like, you know, I feel like we have a great relationship. So thank you guys. Oh, now, again, you make it easy. Thank you so much for the show and everything else you've done. And thank you, Heather, for being here today. Thank you, Ryan. All right, thank you guys.

Make sure you subscribe and do all the stuff and click the links and all the things in the comments and our merch. Thank you guys so much. Thank you.