The Watch - Intellectual Property Won’t Save You Now: ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ Hit Bumps in the Road | The Watch

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

It was announced this week that Benioff and Weiss will no longer be creating a ‘Star Wars’ trilogy for Lucas Films (2:17). The news calls into question the future of the franchise (14:38). HBO is finding itself in a similar situation after cancelling a ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel starring Naomi Watts (26:58). Where will one of the most valued pieces of intellectual property go from here (39:00)? Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I released the book of basketball in 2009. I swore I was done. What else was there to say? The book was 704 pages long. I figured out the secret of basketball with help from Isaiah Thomas and used it to rank the top 96 players of all time. I blew up the basketball Hall of Fame and turned it into a five-level Egyptian pyramid. I figured out the 33 greatest what-ifs ever.

I solved every MVP debate. I made the case for Russell over Wilt. I explained why MJ was the greatest ever. I wrote hundreds of pop culture references, at least 250 inappropriate jokes, and God knows how many footnotes. I even drove to San Diego for the epilogue to spend time with Bill Walton. And when the book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, that was all I ever wanted. I was done. I swore to myself, I would never do a sequel.

Well, I kind of lied. So much has changed in the NBA these past 10 years. I couldn't help going back. Who could have seen the three-point boom come? coming. Curry's Warriors going 73 and 9, the Hardin Trade, the player empowerment error, the process, advanced metrics, the decision, Cleveland winning a title? I repeat, Cleveland winning a title? Well, why write a sequel when I could turn that book into a living, breathing podcast, something that juggled interviews and pyramid podcasts and rewatchable game podcasts about famous games?

What's my top 100 now? What's my pyramid? What's the new biggest what if of all time? Could the 86 Celtics have handled the 17 Warriors and all those threes? What did I learn from spending so much time over the last years with people like Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Kevin Durant, Jalen Rose, Isaiah Thomas, and so many others? Think of it as my basketball book, coming to life in audio form, reinvented, reincarnated, re-tooled, recreated for 2019 and beyond. It's the book of basketball. 2.0. It's launching on November 6th. presented by State Farm. See you there. I need sports to have to clear the room.

Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, his Halloween costume is grown man crying to welcome to the Black Parade. It's Andy Greenwald.

Wow. Look at the way you always wrap your arms around all the salient points of the day. That's great. Did you want me to say as an adult, You were going as an adult man tapping out as Ben Simmons choked him out on the floor? That's how I feel on the inside. There's a couple things at play here.

This is a thing where up from my recording studio, which as many people know, is a office parking lot in Culver City. We're going to talk about the streaming wars, right, and all the different entrants into it and all the stuff going on right now and the Star Wars news and all the exciting things. but I also think that it's worth noting that it's Halloween and I know you guys have a podcast that you do for Spotify with the hottest take, right?

Yes. That's like this, like a quick bite opinion podcast. Can I audition for that right now with my probably, it's not my hottest take? It's my most tepid take because it's the most grown-ass man old person take that I have. Yeah, I can hear Spotify printing money right now. Go ahead.

We could see if we could sell this podcast to Rhapsody. or some other defunct music service, Kazah. It's just that, Chris, you and I are gentlemen of a certain age. Wasn't Halloween for kids when we were kids, or did we just not see the grown-ups? I feel like I was never that participatory in college and early 20s Halloween shit, but I do remember it being like something of a thing when we were like first in New York, wasn't it?

No, no, I mean, when we were actually children or adult doing this, because I don't think they were. I just think that our generation and maybe slightly older than us just wouldn't give it up. So what are you seeing out there on the streets? I just nonsense. I'm seeing nonsense. I mean, right now, from my vantage point in the parking lot, I can see, well, I see a lot of Tesla's. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't see people right now. But I just, I find it exhausting.

I don't, what are you wearing right now? I bet it's not a costume. I'll tell you what I'm wearing. I'm wearing that orange flannel that you love because I'm trying to celebrate the autumnal spirit. I'm wearing a pumpkin-colored sweater as well. Yeah, see? So what are we talking about?

You and I are just two guys who love rolling in a pumpkin patch. Yeah, but I'm not like wearing a minion costume. You know what I mean? Or I'm not like sexy minion right now. And yes, I'm intentionally universal IP because I'm a company man of nothing else. that's all I'm saying. Do you want to do a little,

do we do a little side jag over here to discuss the fact that my chemical romance are reforming for a show in December? I went to one year of journalism school, Andy. I think. I think I went to half a year of journalism school. And, you know, the inverted, it's like the inverted pyramid where you lead with the most important things.

So so far we've made an obscure sports reference to anybody who's tuning in to hear about Star Wars Game of Thrones. They don't know what we're talking about with Ben Simmons. Then we made some comments about being old men who don't understand sexy minions. Now let's talk about a defunct post-emmo band. That only is sliver of our audience knows. And then we'll talk about Game of Thrones and Star Wars.

You can make it sound like we're doing something wrong here, but I didn't have to go to journalism school to know that if I were to told myself 20 years ago that it would be a paid job for me to stand in a warm California parking lot shouting at you through a cell phone while drinking a sparkling water. Like, that's a win for me. I feel like journalism school, forget it. This is all going great. Go ahead. Let's talk about my chemical romance.

I almost named the brand of the sparkling water, but you don't like doing that unless they're sponsoring. I know that. That's also something you learned at business school. What don't make me sound like I'm some centrist? I'm just saying. Look, look, look, look, me, buddha, judge, all right? I know there's a lane in the middle, in the podcast. I know we don't talk about it

It was just exciting news right I mean I have to say that I was walking by the podcast studio earlier And Bobby Wagner Who works on a bunch of pods here Big Picture MLB show a bunch of them He's actually been on the watch to discuss Top Gun 2 So he's an expert in sound recording and aviation

And he was on the phone I believe with his sister And he seems like he was shaken And he was just like dude I just slacked you. And it was just a link to My Chemical Romance's reunion show at the Shrine in L.A.

on December 20th. Well, I don't know what the Venn diagram is of people who are excited about this, but should I... It's you. It's you and Bobby Wagner. I didn't flack, but I...

Is this a flex or is this journalism school? I texted Gerard today in response to this news, Gerard Way, the singer of the band, and he's very excited. They're... They've been playing together a little bit, getting the friends and family,

and they just wanted to do a show. There is no album that's about to drop. There's nothing else for now. They just wanted to do a show. And I'm going to fucking be there. I'll tell you that much. Are you really? I'm going to wear my sexy minion costume.

I'm going to be there. I don't think anything can have to, can top seeing my chem at Emo's in Austin during a South by Southwest that I want to say is like 05, but I'm not positive. And they played like a really small show in Texas during the day, and Gerard was wearing a blueproof vest and a leather jacket. And they played Helena. And the entire place, I thought like there was an earthquake happening. It was so good. I distinct individuals with subjective memories of things,

but I have a very keen memory of having the advance of, like, 06, I guess it was, and you coming over to my apartment. And I feel like you sat on like a chest, like a low chest that I had. in my bedroom. I guess that's where I had a CD player at the time. And I feel like our proximity was like De Niro and Pacino and the diner's scene in heat. And I just played like the sharpest lives.

And I feel like we left our bodies for a second. I don't remember anything else about it. Good band, guys. And I'm excited if they do come back. I feel like they would only come back for worthwhile with creative reasons. But I do think that that's a band that celebrated the SAC up and the emo stuff and all that.

But I also think that they were really carrying the torch for a certain strain of just theatrical fucking rock and roll music from the 70s that they all celebrated and loved. And I feel like taken out of the context that people may have carried them or lump them into at the time, those records are ripe for re-evaluation and appreciation by people. And I feel like maybe the audience is ready for them. Yeah, and you were pretty into their late period stuff, right? Because I was more of a three cheers for

for sweet revenge guy. We revenge. I love Danger Days. It's a great record. Yeah. Anyway, it's very exciting. But now I guess we should talk about Star Wars. Whatever. All right, you want me to break it down? You want to give me, I'll give you some bullet points here. So. Yeah, let's do a layup line.

Monday, after we recorded, it was announced that Benioff and Weiss and Lucasfilm, they kind of came out together and announced a conscious uncoupling. So we had been, we had been patiently awaiting a new trilogy of Star Wars movies from Benny Off and Weiss, obviously the people behind Game of Thrones. They were slated, I think, for 2022,

2022, and 226. So these were imminent somewhat. And it was announced that the Thrones duo would no longer be working on the proposed Star Wars trilogy and that trilogy was apparently going to be about the origins

of the Jedi order, which I did not know. I thought it was maybe like Knights of the Republic or something, but apparently the thing that they were most interested in was sort of how did Jedi start. Benny F. and Weiss,

for their part, said that it ultimately came down to scheduling. And in August, as many people know, They had signed a $250 million deal with Netflix. That just sounds like the numbers are just ad up, right? Just right, you know? They're just, that's sound accounting. They signed a $250 million deal with Netflix at the end of the summer,

and according to a statement, they said there are only so many hours in the day. The Hollywood Reporter, they reported that Kathleen Kennedy, who sort of runs overseas Star Wars for Lucasfilm, was unhappy with the Netflix deal depending off and why he said signed. and that's around in the summer was when their relationship maybe sort of took a turn. There's been a lot of speculation

about whether or not Benny Off and Weiss would have been able to fully give their attention to Star Wars or whether Netflix gave them $250 million to go work on something for Disney for six years, whether that was ever going to work. It's also been noted multiple times that this is not the first departure

of filmmakers from the Star Wars world since Kathleen Kennedy took it over back almost, what, I guess almost 10 years ago now almost, right? When this sort of got... Well, I don't know if she took it over 10 years ago, but they've been putting Star Wars movies out for seven years now.

She took over when the Disney sale went through. She proceeded. That was probably 2013, I guess, because then they put the JJ Abrams movie into pre-production then. So, a couple things here. So the other filmmakers who have left projects at Star Wars,

Josh Trank, obviously, Lord and Miller left solo. Colin Trevereaux was supposed to direct what became Rives of Skywalker. JJ Abrams replaced him. And obviously also, Rogue One had some issues with Gareth Edwards being replaced by Tony Gilroy. So a couple things at play here. One would be, let's just make sure that everyone understands the chronology and timeline here. There was a bunch of stuff online suggesting that Disney did this in response to the savage tweet storm that erupted after Beniof and White made a rare public appearance talking about Game of Thrones.

at a convention or an event. Yeah, it was like a convention in Austin, a TV convention. Let's be clear. These two things have nothing to do with each other. I'm sure all of your tweets were very sick burns, but they did not cause Disney to fire these guys from Star Wars movies.

That did not happen. This would have had this one time ago, and this conscious uncoupling only became public when it did, I guess, because this is when it broke or were asking, and they were going to run the story in Bending Off and Weiss's defense. I think an out-of-context tweet chain, quoting selectively cherry-picking quotes from them at an event, the tenor of which we don't know, and we don't know what was being said in the room,

what the ton of it is, is not really helpful way to indict people creatively the way it's been done. You know, because I think they said a couple of things like, what to me sounded like very natural self-deprecation, where they're like we didn't really know. It sounded like they were doing self-effacing, yeah. They were saying, they said, we don't know why George Aramarton gave us the chance. I mean, look, not to turn everything into an eye statement, but like I 100% will say, I can't believe how lucky I am that they must know wanted to let me make a TV show. Like, that is a normal thing to say when you feel humbled and grateful.

And that makes sense to me. And they're also correct in talking about themselves and that they hadn't made a TV show before and there was a big learning curve. These are unrelated events. I mean, not just me, I think many people were extremely skeptical about these movies ever happening anyway. You and I had a good conversation about a month and a half, about the state of Star Wars in general and how it's much more rickety than it may appear to be, considering how prominent that franchise is in our cultural imagination, and how once this

Skywalker thing is over with, it's really unclear what they're going to do next, and you're starting to feel that more and more keenly as potential picture gets murkier and murkier. Business-wise, I think it's important to say, before we get into like the, these are not, to say that these movies are going away, nothing is being. taken from them, right? I don't think they were paid to produce a trilogy of films, and somehow this is, they've, they've ruptured the deal. It kind of feels like they were hired to develop a pilot, and the network decided to move in another direction. We'll be talking about that, too. Yeah. Yeah, but one of the key differences between the way Kathleen Kennedy has run Star Wars

and the way Kevin Feigy, for example, run Marvel, and his name's going to come up again in a moment, too, because it seemed like he was being brought in to held run Star Wars. Now it seems like maybe he's just doing one movie. What I'm going to say is what Fikey does so brilliantly is he announces a project. So people are excited about Black Panther, right, or about Captain Marvel or about whatever else they've got coming up. Then when it's appropriate and the deals are squared away and he's committed and everyone's bought into the vision, then he announces the creative team.

One thing is leading the other. What Star Wars has been doing, because the future is so deeply unwritten for that entire piece of IP, is they're just like publicly auditioning. talent, saying, getting kind of way out in front of the horse here, or the weird spacehorse that they're riding in the new movie trailer, and they're saying, yeah, we're going to get the Game of Thrones guys are going to do a trilogy, and Ryan Johnson is going to do a trilogy, and the Marvel guy's going to do a trilogy. None of these things are necessarily going to happen.

They're kind of announcing development deal, which feels very premature. Think about the fact that we don't know what any of those movies mean. The assumption was because it's names that people like or trust creatively with the word Star Wars attached to it, that it's all going to work. Well, in this, the way franchise films are made today, it doesn't work like that. And we're starting to really see the repercussions of that decision-making now. Yeah, and I think we're at just like a really crucial point for both Star Wars and Marvel and that they're mentioned in the same breath, not only because Kevin Feigey may be working on both soon or is working on both,

but obviously also because they share a corporate, a corporate overlord in Disney. And Star Wars is coming to the end of this Skywalker saga, but specifically this, this trilogy of films that have come out over the course of this decade. And I think that after Last Jedi and after the kind of storm that was caused, this is a kind of like online fandom response to that movie, which I thought was completely ridiculous. I wonder whether or not there was a little bit of trepidation on the Beniof and Weiss part. Not necessarily because of like what happened with Confederate or the fact that their

comments at a television convention got put through the Twitter, Twitter washing machine, but more because like, do these guys really want to get into another world that is so wholly owned by its fandom? You know, I mean, if they have a $250 million deal with Netflix, maybe life's too short and maybe they're like, you know what, we wanted to make

this Jedi's the beginning of the Jedi order, but it just doesn't feel like it's going to be, it's going to get a fair shot. It's not going to get a fair shot from Lucasfilm and it's not going to get a fair shot from the fans. So, I don't know, I think that the easy way to read this is like, Kathleen Kennedy fired another filmmaker or another pair of filmmakers. But I wonder whether or not these guys were like, eh, you know what, man, I think I'll just go make

some shows for Netflix. No, I also think it's a question of what do they think they're signing up for and what kind of bill of goods are they being sold. And if they met with them, because, you know, all companies take meetings all the time and, you know, meeting with someone on Star Wars or meeting with someone on Marvel, like these meetings just happen for people who are enormously famous and successful, like Beniof and Weiss and for just, you know, executive story editors on other TV shows because you want to know it out there and you want to know what takes people have on things and maybe something turns

in to something else. And it does seem like in the pure blue sky generalities of some of these meetings, there was either a fundamental miscommunication or there was a shifting, or the ground shifted. What I mean by that is a lot of these Star Wars project seems like they were sold to the creator as we would love your sensibility to play with this corner of the university. interesting to you. Yes. Lord and Miller bring your zany, one-liner, impository sense of humor to solo.

We want, right, so they met with Lord and Miller, for example, and said, we want Lord and Miller in our world. What's the place for that? And they were like, well, we like Han Solo because he makes jokes, and they were like, awesome. The cold feet and the corporate, whatever, and all the other pieces moving around here made it seem like, oh, no, no, no, this is a core character. We need to treat it with the same reverence

in the mythology as a mythology that went into every piece of everyone's childhood. and so all of a sudden it goes from Lord Miller to Ron Howard trying to make it a serious movie, and it just totally fails. So Benny Off and Wise, you're so good. The Sorcery Storytelling, maybe the origins of Jedi and the forest, and like that's a similar world for you to play in over here while we do all the other things we're doing.

And then you look at the shifting fans, and it's like, oh, no, we don't actually know what we're doing when we're done with resurrecting these characters. You're going to have to be the thing now. And that's a very different project, certainly in expectations, certainly in terms of pressure. It doesn't surprise me that they wouldn't want any part of that. Yeah, I think that it's also a really interesting moment where I think you see Mandalorian and the Rogue One spit off and Obi-Wan all go to Disney Plus. And all three of those titles, five years ago I would have been like, so that's a movie, right? That's definitely going to be a movie.

is this story about a bounty hunter or an Obi-1 prequel or even, I'm still sort of mystified about the Rogue One spin-off as much as I'm excited to see it because I really like that character and the Rogue One has kind of gone through a critical and fan reappraisal, I think, over the last couple of weeks

because we've had these like, what's your rank all the Star Wars movies and Rogue One is kind of like high up there for a lot of people, including myself. But it's the same situation for Marvel in this post-Avangers world where it's like, I think they're offloading a lot of the sort of legacy characters

onto Disney Plus, and they're going to kind of experiment and go forward and try to build up a new group of people with the movies going forward. I don't really know what Star Wars does because Star Wars ultimately became a lot more aspirational and a lot more... I almost want to say, like, kid-friendly in these last three movies.

I know the Last Jedi was definitely, like, darker than Force Awakens and had a lot more adult themes, but I feel like, like we always sort of criticized, or Star Wars itself as a franchise was always criticized for corporatizing movies in a way. And I don't know that that necessarily came true until the last couple of years. It's only recently that we have Galaxy's Edge and that we have this kind of like 360 kind of marketing of it. I wonder whether or not that's what changed. And that's where the Beniof and Weiss medieval politics of the Jedi Knights doesn't fit in.

It's partly that. But I also think it's just though they're important to talk about in terms of global IP franchises and billion-dollar whatever's, comparing Star Wars and Marvel isn't fair because they're at very different points and they're about to be no longer the case. And what I mean is Marvel has been the story. It is making the memories and making the cultural and nostalgic footprints

in an entire generation of people all around the world for being a thing. Yeah. This is what... There are 20-year-olds who only like basically grew up on Marvel movies. Now, but Star Wars for 30 years has not been about the thing.

It's not been about the story. It's been about the story about the story. And that's a different level of remove, and it comes with a different set of obligations and responsibilities and expectations. Marvel is about to shift into that. Marvel is, you know, okay, there's going to be a fun Dr. Strange sequel,

and everyone wants to see Natalie Portman be Thor Thor and Tycho Wadhi have fun with that again. There's plenty of things to look forward to, both from a creative and financial perspective. But the thing, the spine, that will be the thing that will not only make theme parks around the world for another generation, but also will be the mainstream big budget touchstone for a generation of kids is now done. And it ended with endgame, right?

And so then it becomes about what you're doing, not just on its own merits, but in relation to the work that came before, in relation to everyone's memories and expectations and the legacy and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, Marvel being directly a comic book story might be better suited to that change, because the one thing about comic books is that everything changes all the time, but nothing ever changes. So the idea that they're being someone else under the mask for Iron Man or Captain America, like that's a story that happens every three years in the comics. It is a naturally regenerative medium. But for Star Wars, being like, can we tell more stories in this universe?

What are the corners of it, the possibilities of it? You know, is there a story by a canteen. Well, it turned out in terms of a billion-dollar global franchise, no, there isn't. There's only ever been one story, and it's the same story. But now they're admitting that story is done, and that put it in the case. And I don't know who's going to pick up the mantle. I think it's very telling that in a lot of this reporting this week about the Beny Off and Weiss trilogy aching melancholic references to JJ Abrams, who will now be going on a billion

dollar deal or half a billion dollar deal as his like curatorial instincts, right? Well, I think that he was viewed as like an incredibly faithful servant to see, this is the funny thing. Yeah, but I think it's, to me, he was a faithful servant. to the Lucasfilm idea about what these movies should feel like. And I mean that specifically, Lucasfilm, as we know it now, not George Lucas.

I think that there's a lot of talk about returning to Lucas, returning to a New Hope, returning to the feel and the look of those earlier movies and to capture some of the spirit of them. And to me, Abrams is really way more about the hyper, the pacing is much faster, the cutting is much fast,

the camera moves around much more. There's a lot more earnestness to it, I think. And that's what I kind of associate with Abrams's feel of it. And it's interesting that there's, like you said, that kind of longing for JJ not to leave. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Star Wars. Jedi Fallen Order, the new action-adventure game from Respawn Entertainment coming November 15th.

Jedi Fallen Order is the Star Wars game that you've been waiting for, taking place between Star Wars Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars A New Hope, you can play as Cal Kestis, a Jedi Padawan turned fugitive. After narrowly escaping Order 66 and the Jedi purge, you're on a quest to rebuild the Jedi Order. Weald a lightsaber, hone iconic force powers, and complete your training to become a powerful Jedi all while staying one step ahead of the Empire. Become a Jedi on November 15th in Star Wars, Jedi Fallen Order. Available on Xbox One PS4 and PC rated T-15. Today's episode of The Watch, it's brought to you by Watchmen.

Nothing ever ends. Rolling Stone calls HBO's Watchman a dazzling reinvention, a reimagining of the world originally seen in the groundbreaking 1980s graphic novel of the same name. Damon Lendelof's Watchman is set in an alternate history of present-day America, where the lines between vigilantes and mass crime fighters are blurred, and the only true superhero is nowhere to be found on Earth. stylized, darkly funny, and profoundly human

as its characters struggle with personal and ethical issues. The series stars Regina King, Gene Smart, Don Johnson, and Jeremy Irons, and features music from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Watchman is spectacular. Equal parts, insightful, and exciting hails Indie Wire. Catch new episodes of Watchman every Sunday at 9 p.m. only on HBO. You know, this is a good enough segue as any to talk about Thrones. So you throw Thrones into there, which is arguably one of

you know, along with Star Wars and Marvel, one of the four or five biggest properties in pop culture. And they all kind of remind me of, you know, they are all in a similar state where you've got this thing that everybody cares about a lot. And everybody's trying to figure out how much can we squeeze from it without diluting what makes it special?

And what can we do that's different that makes people, it's still, you know, it's still continue to engage fans, and engage new fans, hopefully, without getting too far away from what people actually like about it. And I think that's been the major case for Star Wars where, you know, do you have this tension of like,

well, we want to have the guy who directed Monsters and Godzilla to take on Rogue One because he just understands epic scope. But at the end of the day, he didn't really know how to tell the story we wanted him to tell. And we're kind of seeing that with Thrones now. So obviously, I think people are probably pretty well versed in what's happened this week, but just as a, you know, to review, the Jane Goldman prequel,

which was, I think, known as the Long Night or George R.R. Martin called it the long night. And some people called it Blood Moon, or maybe it was actually called Blood Moon, but it was supposed to star Naomi Watts and Miranda Richardson, and it was set during the Age of Heroes, which is thousands of years

before the Game of Thrones show that we know took place. They shot a pilot. Miranda Richardson, Naomi Watts, like pretty big stars. They shot it in... S.J. Clarkson, a great director. S.J. Clarkson, a really, really fine director, helmed it, and it is not going forward.

Now, you can read around online. Michael Oziello had a piece about how there had been creative differences, how HBO hadn't been happy with the pilot when they originally saw it and sent Jane Goldman sort of back to the drawing board to recut it. The Game of Thrones, the series that wound up becoming the biggest television show of all time, famously reshot their pilot and recast some roles in the... Almost entirely. In the show.

So it's not like this is unheard of in this world, but they, HBO announced that they are not going forward with this show. And right on the heels of that, announced that they will be going forward with a show called House of the Dragon, which is about the Targaryens. And it's much more closely associated with George R.R. Martin, who's working on that show with a guy named Ryan Condal who worked on Colony on, I think I was on sci-fi. On USA. And House of the Dragon also will come courtesy of Miguel Sepachian, who directed some of the most icon. episodes of Game of Thrones. And according to Entertainment Weekly,

the show is going to focus on the period that leads up to and eventually includes Dance of the Dragons and the Targary and Civil War. So Dragons Back. What do you make of all this? But also, like, how do you think this ties into everything that we're talking about here, about the maintenance people have to do on their,

on their IP? I think this is so, I just, I think this whole thing watching this unfold this week, the timing, the guesswork, putting the pieces together as to what was really going on. on here. And what I honestly feel more than anything else, and I know this makes me sound like Emperor Palpatine here, but I feel fear. I just feel fear in all of this. Because for as much confidence as we're meant to be reading, in hearing and understanding as these major, major

companies, all of them really, the major media companies left standing, whether it's Apple, universal, or whether it's Warner, they're all pouring outlandish sum in into streaming services that they're hoping we're all going to buy, right? With big names and big IP and big splashy deals, the numbers are insane. And this week, HBO Max, a lot of this news came around

the unveiling of HBO Max, which is Warner's entry into the field. There's a lot of swagger and confidence, but underneath it all is fear because the entire industry is shifting in real time and shifting dramatically. No one really knows where, and the one thing that people feel like they can count on,

the big ships they feel like they can survive on, the arcs, if you will, are these giant world-beating pieces of IP that every company has like maybe one-up, right? And for Warner, it is Game of Thrones. Yeah. I mean, the fact that they, that HBO stumbled into almost, and again, like you said, they almost didn't green like the pilot to begin with because it felt not like the classy New York brand. And then the pilot came in and it was not good.

And they spent money instead of just walking away, they spent the money to fix it and address it, and then it turned into this juggernaut that really kept them afloat in a way. Just in terms of sheer numbers, I mean, HBO always had prestige, but in terms of the sheer numbers and size and reach of the reputation intact as Netflix began to gobble up the industry around it. Game of Thrones is a huge reason why an AT&T bought the company, right? So the next steps in it, by step here, put at least five potential series into pre-production or to develop. Yeah, they were basically, I think, that they were entertaining the idea of five different stories.

Martin was involved in some of them. I think this one... There was a Martin and Cogman. Yeah, and that is House of the Dragon. I think Cogman was involved in this and then is no longer involved because he now has an overall at Amazon. The idea wasn't that they were necessarily going to develop and make sure they made the right move.

And so the Jane Goldman one felt pretty interesting for reasons both cosmetic and also potentially more than that, right? like because a lot of the criticism against Game of Thrones had to do with the, let's say, the lack of diversity behind the scenes, right? I think it was very telling that they went with a female showrunner, that they, that the lead actors announced were both women that's directing it, and things that we've heard of the project, you know, neither of us have seen the pilot, certainly though I would love to, suggested different take in Westrose than we had seen previously.

And all that sounded pretty intriguing. Yeah, I've read the screenplay for this. I mean, I read the script for this pilot. And I will say, I don't want to be unfair by, like, reading out big swaths of it or something like that, because I don't think that that's cool to do to the people who are trying to make it, and it's not, like, contextually, it doesn't make sense. But, you know, what struck me in your, what you were talking about was that line about, like, fear. And I don't know, I would necessarily say that there's any fear in the script or that there is any nervousness in the script,

but I will say that it feels like it's dragging something behind it. And that's Game of Thrones. We've been thinking and talking a lot about this relationship in adaptation to the original text with Watchman, because so much of what Watchman is doing as we're kind of keying off of what Damon Lindelof said is remixing. And obviously they're completely different things, but you can feel in different parts of the Long Night or Blood Moon script

a kind of like, hey, like, holding this plot back or attached at the hip to this thing is this show that is the reason why everybody's going to watch our show, but also something that we're going to constantly have to be servicing. And even in stage directions in the script, there is like actually a line in one place where it's like, you know, it's essentially Watchers of Game of Thrones will be familiar with this thing.

And it actually says that in the script. So obviously it was something, that they felt like they wanted to tell their own story, an original story, a story that I don't think is actually very, very well detailed in the Martin world. So there was probably a lot of like, how far are we going back and forth in terms of what we're allowed to do versus what is gospel? Yeah, Canon. And then you get into the whole like the George of it all, which I don't really know a lot about where the things stood at the end between Benny Off and Weiss and Martin and HBO. but I think it's very telling that this Jane Goldman's script and this pilot did not go,

and the show that George is associated with went straight to series. Well, again, I don't, I have not even read the script. I don't have any particular insight. I don't have any acts. All the caveats on this and say what I'm doing is really responding to the optics of it. And I think that that itself tells an interesting story. Whether this is an accurate story, I do not know, and I would not want people to take what I'm saying and run with it as if this was gospel.

But the pieces are there to put together a puzzle that says this show, this spinoff that we're talking about that isn't going was simply too different, simply too risky. It didn't have certain guarantees built into it that certain corporate interests, whether they are Casey Boyes in his administration at HBO or Bob Greenblatt and Kevin Riley, who are now above him and running the larger company that is running the streaming service, or John Stanky, who is the head of AT&T and wants to protect his investment to make sure that there's sword content, sword and White Walker content on his subscribers' phones for decades to come, that these people were ultimately not comfortable with taking that risk, especially with the first thing back out.

And so you not only feel that in terms of Martin's involvement, which obviously made people feel good, it's Ryan Condal who has run a sci-fi television show in the past. And so, you know, I don't know him. I don't know his writing, but he certainly has the TV that says he has run a show in this world before. And then even past that, you see certain other things like Miguel Zupacchnik being splashly added to the project as a co-show runner. And which episodes did he direct? Did he direct the most, like, internal, thoughtful, chin-strokey episodes that appeal to certain band of, no, he directed the fucking Battle of Winterfell.

Yeah. And then it's about the Targaryens, which means it'll be about dragons. Playing to a more comfortable, a more safe, or a more easily understood and transmitted to a global audience piece of this particular bit of IP, it probably means it'll be a more expensive show, right? If you're starting with the Targaryens, it means you're starting with Dragons, which didn't show up on the balance sheet for line producers of Game of Thrones until, like, season at a certain size anyway until season. But I feel like the world we're in, when you look at the price tag of a

Marvel movie or a Star Wars movie, they would almost rather spend an exorbitant amount of money on Dragon. A sure thing. Yeah, on a sure thing. Lately less money, but still a lot of money, on the children of the forest in a way we've never seen them before. You know, so it all makes, the fact that you can, that I can tell that story purely from Hollywood Reporter articles and press releases suggest to me that there's something to all of that. Did it happen like I just suggested? Probably not. There's a Bob Iger quote that's being attached to a lot of these Beniof and Wye's stories

that comes from a few years ago, but is essentially about how much Star Wars was too much. And him basically expressing some regret about doing both the new saga and the spinoff movies and having it be one a year. And he was just like, I think that we just went too much too soon. And in some ways I think he was like, we didn't get all our ducks in a row creatively. And in some ways, I think he was like,

it turns out people don't want this much Star Wars right now, maybe. You know, that's my read on it. My big question is like, why can't you do both of these shows? You know, it's sort of strange to me that you wouldn't be like, now is the time we were launching this service, HBO Max. Yeah. Why not have every 18 months there's a Game of Thrones show on

or every year there's going to be another season of Game of Thrones? or are they like, no, we want to do this over the next 10 years and we're going to let House of the Dragon run its course and then we'll see where we're at and maybe we do a sequel to the actual Game of Thrones show. I don't know. I don't think it's that. I think that, I'm glad you brought that up

because to me, the thing that is just the most shocking, not from a creative perspective, but sticking with that sort of shareholder marketplace perspective is I just can't believe the lost time because of that. because the show that they're not going, they very smartly put all these things into development when the other show wasn't over. Precisely so, there wouldn't be a gap.

Now there's going to be a gap. Now, can they afford that gap? Sure, of course. But it must have been pretty bad or disappointing or not at all what people thought they were getting to just scuttle it. Because this other show, which they've now given a straight to series order to,

nothing's been filmed. No, I know. If you read George Martin's blog, he's like, now comes the work of breaking story, hiring actors, hiring a crew, picking locations.

Yeah. They've just started staffing it in terms of writers in the last few weeks. I don't think we're going to see this show until late 2021. Mid-20201, maybe. Well, it turns out.

But yeah, and that's a big thing in anything. You have to, at some point in this birth cycle of HBO math, When they targeted May 2020 or mid-2020 as their launch date, they were like, and we will launch for the new Game of Thrones show. Oh.

Because, of course you would. Yeah, so I can just, why don't I just rattle off? So HBO Max obviously had its big presentation this week. It's launching in 2020, May 2020. It'll cost $14.99 a month, depending on a bunch of different things. They're already offering, like, HBO Max for free with this, you know, and you get discounts here. You get it free. Here's just like, I went through the list of stuff.

the list of stuff is a full few pages of scrolling on a website. It's HBO, TNT, TBS, obviously, all the affiliated channels. There are libraries for the most part, so you get the entire HBO library. There will also be classic movies curated by Turner Classic, Friends, and then just, I'm just, this is literally just like picking random ones. Shows from Denis Villeneuve, Ridley Scott, Issa Ray, Michael Mann, Patrick Somerville, Luca Guadagino, Mindy Kaling, Paul Fieg, Lopita Nyango adaptation of the Chimamanda Negossi Adichie Americana book.

Melissa McCarthy. A thriller about flight attendant starling Kaylee Cuoco. Love to see her back on screen. A Steven Soderberg movie, a Derek C. in France and Mark Ruffalo adaptation of a Wally Lamb book. A Kate Winslet cop show. A Joss Whedon show. A Richard Price show. A Perry Mason reboot from Robert Downey Jr. starring Matthew Reese.

and a Philip Roth adaptation from David Simon, and that's like one one hundredth of what they announced. Yeah, and some of that, you know, is just HBO's upcoming development slate, like the Perry Mason show and the David Simon plot against America show. Some of that was new news. Some of it was things being folded in.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it's wild. And underneath all that, actually, you mentioned friends, but one of the more interesting subplots to watch as everyone is just kicking up, basically, and squatting up is actually the thing I meant to say in terms of just getting their team ready for these wars to come. You know what the biggest thing in that entire press release was

that HBO Max outbid Hulu for South Park? That's actually the meat and how people engage with streaming services stuff that they paid the money they paid for friends to take it away from Netflix. That's why Universal did the same thing with a dome show, The Office for Peacock. That's how you get people to continue to watch stuff, and that's, of course, why things are looking pretty,

I don't want to say dire, but they're definitely looking a little bit foggier for Netflix because you're pulling the spine out and then expecting people to pay a certain amount of money for the really good David Chang show and also maybe they'll make another master of none. And it's sort of a strange popery without that backdrop. Yeah.

I keep using different metaphors to say spine or baseline or whatever. The fact that they paid a ton of money to get South Park away from Hulu, I mean, look, Hulu makes really cool original shows, and they're in it. They won an Emmy for Handmaid Sale. We've been raving about looking for Alaska. There's a lot of other cool stuff they've got coming up.

But honestly, I still think, and I have no numbers to back this up, but I still think that if you ask random people about Hulu, they're like, yeah, I watch South Park there, or I watch fresh off the boat the day after it airs there. Yeah, I think that it's still like the thing that people use to watch a lot of network shows the day after. Yeah. And I think that'll change over time.

I think that when it starts to get bummed. with ESPN Plus and Disney. And when you can finally wrap your arms around that, I think it'll become a lot more significant. But the HBO Max thing that you're alluding to is they are making a volume play. They are not, maybe not the Netflix killer. But the reason why I had to take a breath

and then keep going as I listed off all the stuff that they were doing, which is not even, just says almost nothing about like the kids programming that they have and all this other stuff, they are a fully formed portal. You're not going to, you could have just HBO Max

and live a happy and healthy television watching life. They are, their place to be TV. Yes. You know, it is a place to go to watch Sesame Street, which you can do to watch Big Bang Theory. And it's really grabbing

major pillar of what TV was for the last 20 years and putting it under one place, which is so completely the opposite of what Apple is doing to make it seem like we shouldn't even be comparing them because they're not even in the same business. Apple does not have the library. And so one thing that people are doing

is they scratch their heads and give Apple the benefit of the doubt because of all the money they have is who are they trying to compete with? Are they just spending some of the trillion dollars they have on handed cash to keep things shiny on the Apple TV homepage or to put up the doors like, is the morning show essentially like getting J-Lo to have an iPod? in her Jenny on the Block video. I will tell you this.

One thing that is not like subtle in the Apple shows is the use of Apple products. Yeah, right. They are definitely like the first 10 minutes of morning show, I think every character looks at their

iPhone, which in real life people who do that job in like work in journalism look at their iPhone a lot. But it is not subtle. The only time I have seen people use them is in the Jason Mamoa show that is set in some sort of like Stone Age. So I don't think it's, or I guess Dickinson, she doesn't really use her iPhone that much either. But Chris, like I'll tell you something that happens in, no spoilers, but I'll tell you something

that happens in episode seven of USA's upcoming drama series Breyer Patch is Rosario Dawson looks at her iPhone. Yeah. Like, that's just, that's just TV. That's just good stuff. That's just, that's just compelling entertainment for the whole family. That's like Hamlet looking at the skull, man. Come on. Did I mention January 2020?

But what I'm saying is that all the stories are pitching these all as equal combatants on the field, but they're not all playing. I don't think they're all playing on the same field, let alone playing the same sport. You know, Apple is going to survive as a company. If its television original content play doesn't pan out. Yes. It is much more existential for these legacy companies like Warner, like Universal, who are using their experience and with making content and the depth of their libraries as like the

final stand against whatever tech wave is coming. And so to pair them off against each other is interesting and contextually relevant because they're all kind of launching around the same time and no one really knows how it's going to shake out in terms of an ordinary person's paycheck and how much of it is going where and to whom. But it's not, the stakes are not the same for all of them. No, it's really not. So I think on Monday what we'll do is we'll talk about Watchman and then we'll also talk a little bit about at least morning show. And can we, by the way, just to put a bow on this conversation, one of the reasons you and I enjoy watchmen so much,

separate and apart from whether it's the writing or the performances, is what you said a few moments ago, which is that it feels weirdly radical for there to be such a untethered remix of IP in this world that we've been sketching out over the, the last 40 minutes of this conversation, that the convergence of this particular piece of IP Watchman, which has always been kind of thorny and self-contained, Damon's talent and also relative power and standing, the moment that HBO came to him and Warner came to him, vis-a-vis their own

launching, their streaming services and everything, we might not see this kind of thing again, right, because he is certainly not beholden to the fans of the original comic book or the fans of the Zach Snyder movie. It doesn't sound like he's setting up a series. that is going to run for nine years and be a key driver of cell phones for the next decade. It honestly feels like a show that it feels like a show that he would want to watch. And it doesn't really, it's obviously like for people who've never read the comics and don't have any idea about like that world at all, it's a confusing watch. And for people who are coming to it as comic lovers and are waiting for their like their breadcrumb trail,

it's probably a frustrating watch. If you just go and accept it on its own terms though, I think it's thrilling TV. And that is ultimately is like, will we ever get a Game of Thrones like that? Will we ever get a Star Wars like that? And I think we were close with Last Jedi. I think that there's elements of Last Jedi

that are like, this is somebody who's really making their own thing within this playground. But what are the lasting lessons of that movie? There's still TBD. Will we ever see Ryan Johnson's trilogy? I'm not optimistic about it. Again, based on no information. I just not optimistic about it.

I think that Disney correctly points to the enormous worldwide box office. And you and I and other people we like and know and respect look at it as a, the opposite is a huge creative win. But that narrative that like he pushed too hard on something and upset people has settled into a degree, right? And even if people aren't saying it, we are certainly seeing the results of that response and that fear across the entire galaxy to make another bad analogy. entire galaxy of a major billion-dollar franchise IP. Yeah. Well, we'll obviously be talking more about this on Monday. Andy, thank you for calling me in from a sunny parking lot.

Chris, do you think that people who I just realized are working behind the window that I've been yelling at you in front of who have enjoyed my half of this conversation? Can I check in with that? Is it the writer's room for House of the Dragon? I mean, it very well may be. This is a very shadowy complex, but I'm a part of it. I think I'm just going to slink back in. All right, man.

I'll talk to you on Monday. Great job, Bransky. Bye. So good. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Watchmen. Watchman has come to HBO, inspired by the groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name. Damon Lendelof's Watchman is set in an alternate history of present-day America, where the lines between vigilantes and mass crime fighters have permanently blurred.

Starr, Regina King and Jeremy Irons. Watchman air Sundays at 9 p.m. only on HBO.