This Week in Startups - Kim Kardashian's new PE firm & impact on VC + how Amazon can turn a profit on Rings of Power | E1555

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

First up, J+M discuss Kim Kardashian's new PE firm and break down what this means for the broader private investing industry (2:29). Then, Lon Harris joins the show to break down the controversy, history, and math around Amazon's Rings of Power series (25:58). (0:00) Today's segments! (2:29) J+M break down SKKY Partners, Kim Kardashian's new PE firm! (12:04) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist  (13:34) Has VC entered the public consciousness? Will VC see more high profile celebrities crossing over and starting funds? Is this the future of VC? (24:54) Helpware - Go to https://helpware.com/TWIST to get $1000 off your first invoice (25:58) Lon joins to break down Amazon's Rings of Power taking over online discourse, but first they talk about Twitter being a net negative for society (36:00) Policygenius - Go to https://policygenius.com to get a free life insurance quote (37:26) Lon explains controversy in Tolkien fandom, the trio gives quick reviews for Rings of Power and House of the Dragon (54:50) Bezos's vanity play, how Amazon can turn a profit on Rings of Power FOLLOW Lon: https://twitter.com/lons FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. I'm exhausted. Molly, do the intro, please. He's just crawling to the finish, this guy. Thursday. Just partying so hard this week. Sunday. Just get me there, Molly, drag me. You know what? Peanut, you just sit back and relax and have a lozenge. I got the intro. We're going to break down Kim Kardashian's new private equity firm on the show today. We're going to talk about how, if at all, it might change private company investing. But even more than that, how. all the ways that this is absolutely within Kim Kardashian's core competency, this family's core competency, and how really there's no reason it's not going to absolutely crush. Then it's Thursday. We have our guy, and Harris back on for some streaming math.

We're going to geek out about Tolkien and fantasy series. And then we're going to talk about this ridiculous budget for rings of power and figure out exactly how many new prime subscribers Amazon would need to be in the black. And I'm going to speculate a little on whether Amazon has staying power around content. We'll see. I talk to one of my top seven media moguls in history. The last two nights playing poker with him, and I won't say who it is. But he gave me some insights that I'll share it today.

Yeah. It's a good show. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. Am I here? Stick with me. I'm on three hours of sleep for five nights. Stick with us, Jay, Cal.

Stick with us. It's going to be a great show. This week in startups is brought to you by, Open Phone As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Open Phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team, right on top of your existing devices.

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Head to PolicyGenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. All right, everybody. We have just been waiting. We've just been sitting on our hands. We've been chewing our fingernails. I cannot believe this story broke. Literally after our little gossip fest yesterday, we get the huge breaking news that Kim Kardashian is launching a private equity firm called Sky Partners, S KKKY, get it because Kim Kardashian, to invest in consumer and media brands. She's in the biz. Kim will serve as co-founder and co-managing partners. partner with 16-year Carlisle veteran Jay Sammons, or as I will forever call him the other guy, as Kim's firm, as far as I've learned. Chris Jenner, Kim's mom, will be a partner at the firm. Kim, of course, and entrepreneur full stop. She founded Skims in 2019, which was valued at $3.2 billion after that company raised $240 million. And Sky partners intends to make controlling and minority investments in, quote,

growth-oriented market-leading consumer and media companies. they'll invest in consumer products, digital, e-commerce, consumer media, and entertainment, hospitality, and luxury. I mean, that sounds like core competencies right there of the family. Well, yes. This is fascinating. Yeah, it's totally fascinating. Kim is an incredible entrepreneur. If you look at what she's done, she is a distribution channel onto herself.

The Kardashian name is a distribution channel. And it's really hard to reach those first million consumers, right? If you're building a business, we look at this every day, Molly. How are you going to get your first hundred customers? How you get your first thousand? You know, with Kim Kardashian or the Kardashians, right large, all of them. And I don't know if they're all involved here or to what extent. I don't know how they divvy up between the sisters and the mom ownership of these projects or, you know.

Right. There's no word about the sisters so far, but the mom is going to be a partner. Great. So, you know, it's obviously Kim's driving this. Kim does something. You know, I think probably tens of thousands of people buy it, you know, the first. week, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, depending on the product market fit. So it's not like she can come out of the gate and be like, I don't know, here's a tequila

and they sell a million bottles. But I do think if she comes out and says, hey, here's a tequila. She sells tens of thousands of bottles, hundreds of thousands. And that is when you're cranking a brand, Molly, that first couple of cranks is the hardest cranks. Now, when the flywheel gets going and you've got the hundred restaurants that want to, you know, distribute it and they want the affinity, the affiliates. with Kim and they want to have Kim tweet,

here's where you can find my new to kill. I'm just making up an absurd example that's not not in line with her brand. Obviously, tight-fitting underwear, makeup, hair products. This is her brand. It is aesthetics. It's female aesthetics. It's beauty. And so, but that's what I would be looking for here is how can she crank that first

couple of cycles of a CPG brand, a consumer baggage goods? And with this Carlisle veteran, when they go by. something, what is a private equity fund trying to do? They're trying to accelerate, you know, really two things, the growth, obviously. We all want things to grow. But there's another piece, which is private equity wants to really crank the earnings, the profit. Where does profit go when we are talking to CPG products ourselves? It goes to marketing spend. And now you have a goddess. Like, I mean, she is, she is Athena. Yeah. You know, just basically coming down from on high and saying, here it is Kim's to kill it or whoever's to kill it is doesn't even have to have her name on it

and you've just taken out I don't know probably the first 10 million dollars in marketing spend is her social and her being so this is a brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant dare I say brilliant brilliant brilliant play on her part yeah I mean it really truly is and then even if you are spending on marketing if if this is the family that's advising you name another entity. Name another family or even single human being who has a better and more laser sharp understanding of what American consumers want. God help you, right? You may not love the fact that what American consumers want is every single thing the Kardashians are selling, but they do.

And you are a fool if you think that that's not what Americans want. Like they understand the American psyche better than maybe almost anyone ever has. And so even if you're spending money on marketing, if she's telling you where to put it, you're winning. Yeah. And in fact, a group of folks who are in the business, a friend of mine, Gavin Baker, he's the chief investment office at a treaties. And I'm friendly with Gavin. We have a bunch of mutual friends and I hung out with him a couple times. It's pretty smart.

Dan says, hey, Kim Kardashian posting about a portfolio company, blah, blah, is incredible value ad. We talk about the all the time. It's part of our value ad is you and I, when you invested in sale planners, but one example. you and I talk about, hey, here's our thesis of why we invested in sale plan. Well, you know, there's going to be thousands to tens of thousands of people who now in our industry know about it. And then, you know, and I helped, you know, helped get Uber, you know, on the map, right? With my social media following, it's nowhere near this level, but, you know, in the market,

in the investment community is. And Gavin Becker says, top quarter, easily top desile day one. I'm dead serious. And, you know, there's consensus here amongst people who are in this industry. this is a, you know, a power move. And, yeah, good on Kim. I mean, the ambition here is pretty amazing. We were kind of goofing off yesterday about being in the cycle.

And, you know, when you said, who else? The only other person that came to mind was Trump, but he's such a narcissist idiot who is so toxic. Right. That I think he spoils it. Right. There was a moment when he was 100% one of the, right? It was like him and the Kardashians know what Americans want. And then unfortunately, the ego took over and it got too crazy in there.

And now it's like, it's all about what I want, I being Trump. But no, they still, they still get it. They still understand how to sell. They also still own their social media accounts. So this is the other piece here. This is where we look at social media. They didn't get booted. I mean, when they, I did say this on CNBC, I think.

I said, you know, when they took away Trump's social media accounts, that was the incineration of a billion dollars a year in value. Now, I don't know that he understands. understands as much of a media savant as also Trump is, I don't think he understands or has any ability to build an actual really good brand. It's like all this stuff is so schlocky and not thoughtful. But he did build that brand The Apprentice. He did build the Trump. Putting. Because now it's just pudding up here. There's not, you know, right? Like at some point you got to be honest about what was and what is. Like it's a theory, you know, and then if you look

the people he surrounds himself with, like there was no, they didn't accelerate the brand value. Whereas I think Kim has, I don't know this exactly, but is Kylie the sister who has the lip gloss that everybody talks about or the lipstick?

She was on the Forbes cover like as the first self-made billionaire and everybody had to fit about it. And it was like, you know what? You do it. Beauty is a real category. They're phenomenal. Well, first of all, it's a real category

and like F you guys who don't take it seriously. I mean. To take it seriously at your peril if you're an investor. Exactly. It says the guy who's on the board of Lashify because you're no dummy. Like these people know how to sell. It's just a fun. But it's been really interesting.

One, I think to see that in the ways in which we're kind of like post-Kardashian mockery, like there are a lot of serious money guys out here like you were just saying with this tweet exchange who we're like, yeah, no, this is going to absolutely destroy. There's also been an interesting thread about what this means for. the investing, the private, the capital markets industry. And we should continue, I think, to say that this is private equity that we know of, right, and not VC.

But there was an interesting, it's private equity, very different. What happens is private equity and venture capital get put into by LPs. So like if you were talking to the Harvard Endowment, you're talking to Yale, this is private company investment. Now, they do it very different.

Definitely. Private equity looks at very well-established brands and buys a controlling interest typically, and they operate the companies. They roll up their sleeves. They hire operators. So a private equity firm, like Kim's new one, might have, you know, 40 MBAs sitting over here. They buy this tequila brand that I'm making up. And then they get to work on it, right? So they go in how they own 51%. They're like, yeah, this is a great marketing party. You're all fired. We're bringing in our marketing people. They'll do a better job. Oh, okay. Yeah, here's supply chain. Great. We got a supply chain. person. They've done this 20 times. We're going to lower the cost by 27%. We're going to increase distribution by 50%. That's how we make our money. Whereas VCs, we place bets on management. We go to the board meetings. We try to steer it and try to get it to 10 million, then 100 million, then a billion dollars in revenue. And then the private equity guys try to like hawks, you know, coming in, birds of prey, try to steal them from us. And we try to IPO them. So they're all under the umbrella of private company. They're in the same sort of investment category for. LPs, which is like it's risky investment. It's a smaller. It's a percentage of their portfolio,

private company investment. On the program today is Dorena Kulia. She is the founder of OpenFone. Welcome to the show, Dorena. Thank you so much, Jason. Great to be here. You know, I've read the ads a couple times here. It seems like you're charging too little for this product. It's 10 bucks a month per number. How are you able to do this so affordably? A hundred 20 bucks a year, 150 bucks a year per per person is nothing. So we're a very self-served product, which is why many of our competitors offer much more expensive tiers is that they rely on like a customer success rep or someone

help you out to set things up. We are very self-served. Now we do have customer success managers who are amazing. A lot of our customers are founders and startups. They like things to just work without instructions without... Yeah, they'll read the manual.

They'll watch the videos. They don't want to talk to a human. They just want to set it up and go. And you made the product so simple. Absolutely. That's where the cost savings comes. And you don't have to have a sales team going out there selling it. And you know, the other big thing is that the way we also grow,

and I think, you know, the way we get a lot of customers is that we have very strong word of mouth and people like tell others about us. And I mean, all of that contributes. Our business model kind of makes sense, it makes sense for us to be able to offer it at a very good price. All right, everybody. Here's your CTA, the old call to action. Twist listeners, 20% off any plan for your first six months. Just sign up at openphone.com slash twist. And if you got an existing number, no problem. They'll put it right over. Openphone.com slash twist. O-P-E-H-O-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash twist today for 20% off.

So what's interesting is like there was somebody asked, praying for exits, the VC meme account run by an anonymous VC. On our show twice. Somebody said, you know, hey, thoughts on these celebrity VC partnerships in general. And this was just an interesting comment saying venture capital has now reached the public consciousness. and this is just step one of how this industry is about to drastically change. No elaboration on this, but I did think it was kind of interesting. And then I've seen some comments on Twitter today that were like, okay, VC is about

to become VC in private equity and private company investing. It's about to become a lot higher profile. People are going to want more transparency than has existed before like you're making a skeptical face. You don't think this is like the moment, this is not a sea change. The moment everything changed. The problem is, you know, you really. have to double click and look at each individual celebrity because I listen, I've been down

this right for a decade. Obviously, you know, I'm high profile and I've tipped over into, you know, more non-tech awareness of me as an investor. So I do get the opportunity to meet celebrities. I do get the opportunity to meet people in sports or whatever. And, you know, I, and I both in terms of they want to become investors or invest alongside with me, like in a syndicate kind of format, or they're doing a company. And when you start double clicking on it, you know, the majority of the time, over 90%, the celebrity is not enough to move the needle to make it like a thing. Yeah, yeah.

Kim Kardashian is very different. And in fact, Trump is. So when Trump did his SPAC, is it truth social is his? Paradoxically, is that his platform? Truth Social is the product. The SPAC has a different name. Okay. So when he did the SPAC.

Which, by the way, is like all falling apart. Of course. But. So not enough. Not enough. But in that case, it did, what his brand was enough to get. some number of people to sign up and to get the SPAC off the ground. That's our point here is that the number of celebrities who could even use their celebrity to manifest a raise

10,000 or 100,000 people using a product. This is rarefied air. And the problem is, Molly, people look at the numbers of followers. People look at what looks like a lot of engagement. And then what you have to do is you have to look at their comments and you have to look at the clicks and you have to look at the sales. Mr. Beast, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump, when they do something, people show up in person. When they, you know, Mr. Beast just did his first Mr. Beast Burger. And the first Mr. Beast burger kind of was hit or miss. They were having other restaurants make the burgers. Ghost kitchens.

Yeah, exactly. Or other restaurants. Other restaurants. So it was not ghost kitchens as much as like, hey, you guys. the local diner here in Boise you can be the Mr. Beasburger and you'll deliver them. But he did a first store and I saw

Alexis O'Hanney and our friend from 776. Congratulations to Serena on an epic career, his wife. Did you see that final game? Oh my God. I cried. I got a little teary-eyed. I literally. It was just so nice to see somebody have a great career, you know?

Yeah. And then just to be something about like sports where they kind of wrap it up and You can see the joy on their face, but for all of us, it's sadness. But for them, it's like, shit, I'm exhausted. Although I did, I will say, I don't know if you watch her interview right after the match. She's like, she's like, I don't know, maybe. I mean, you could, you know, probably not.

She's probably not going to retire. I mean, I think a little flame burns. Well, she's a VC now too. So. She's a VC now too. And so there's somebody who actually could move the needle, I think. Maybe not to the level Kim or Trump or whoever could. But what I look at is the actual engagement.

So when you look at Mr. Beast, I think 10,000 people showed up for this opening. So Mr. Beast is the type who could get 10,000 people to show up somewhere Trump is the type of person, you get 10,000 people to show up for a rally. I believe Serena probably, probably false. And that kind of will find out. And those people could do it, but most celebrities cannot. They might have a big following, but there's no alignment with the product. You know what I'm saying?

And so that's the really big piece is that their fan base has to align with a product. and in some way click, you know? And that's what doesn't happen. That's why this is not going to be like the big trend in the future. It's not. It's going to be one out of a hundred celebrities will be able to red this needle. I guess, though, I would say the question is less about whether there's going to be more celebrity partnerships in VC and more about whether there's going to be this greater awareness of VC. Is it going to popularize this?

Yeah. You know, you had like some representation in Super Pump. you add a little more representation of it in wheatgrass. Like it's, it's like in the, I mean, you know, six or seven years. The zeitguise? Like, whenever it was, I took over Marketplace Tech. I started with like a week long series on like, what the hell is BC, right? Complete black box.

Like nobody understood the funding mechanism. Now it's like much more culture. I think that's correct, actually. Yes. So I would agree with that. It's in the zeitgeist. In fact, as I said in the show, I'm here in L.A., I'm meeting with my reality TV company.

There'll be an announcement a couple of. weeks. I mean, people are really excited about this new show I'm doing. And we'll see if it gets on air. The last one didn't. But NBC had famously bought the option on it. And that was like five years ago, six years ago, and did make it on air for whatever reasons I won't get into. But my partner on it or the production company kind of imploded. I might be able to do some math there. But this new company turns out has worked with, you know, pretty high level reality stars. I'll leave it at that. Now it's been coming. So yes, it is in the zeitgeist. It is very much in the site guys, you and I talking about VC Sunday school, the number of people making micro funds,

rolling their own rolling funds with Angel list, with ashore, with CARDA. So the infrastructure's now built, you know, syndicates, we played our small role, my book, you know, it is happening. There is that famous rock and roll band. Ah, what's their name? Not the killers. Anyway, they're VCs as well. I hear that they're legit. There's a rock and roll band that raised like a hundred million dollar fund reportedly. Really? Wow. The chain smokers, thank you.

The chain smokers? What are the chain smokers? Are they rock and roll? Are they? Okay, so there's an EDM band called the chain smokers. They're, they're EBM the chainsmokers? I don't know.

I couldn't tell you once. We're like Alt Nation, I thought. Okay, whatever. Anyway, chain smokers. Some band. What I've been told is these DJs chains smokers, I know people who've met with them. We've traded social media, you know, pleasantries. The chainsmen

Markers, my understanding is, are actually interested in being VCs on the daily. So this is the other thing. As a celebrity, are you actually interested in meeting with, you know, you said you're doing eight meetings a week, some weeks, like eight times 40 weeks, kind of your minimum amount of work you need to do to actually find some decent companies? Are you willing to do three or four hundred, half hour to hour meetings, write notes, debate them with other investors on your team? Like, it's kind of all encompassing. It's taken over two thirds of year. live and the other third is obviously doing the show or something of that effect. You're adorable.

This show is two thirds of my life, Jason. Oh, the show is two thirds? I thought it was, this was two or three hours a day. Oh, okay. I thought it was, this was two or three hours in the rest of Menter VZ, but okay. Well, we'll have to talk about that. We'll go through my calendar together. I mean, the calendar reviews are a good thing to do for everybody.

So anyway, I think, I think most people, you know, it's like I have a lot of friends who have dabbled in Hollywood. David Sacks made a film. Thank you for smoking. Did very well. he hasn't made a second one David Taxmate thank you for smoking yeah

I was actually went to Sundance with him when he had it there and we did the Sundance thing together so that was 15 years ago something crazy and he also bought the rights to the PayPal story

so Sachs is the rights holder to that and I think that's going to be made into a series that's public knowledge but he hasn't done something since because it's hard and it doesn't pay well So when VCs want to make movies and stuff like that,

they're just like, oh my God, this is so painful. And you take 10 years to make a project and we make a prototype or an MVP in 10 weeks. And then when a celebrity comes to VC, they're like, well, usually when I walk into a room, everything just, you know, everybody fawns over me and I don't do any work. I say three lines and I'm out. And I get my check. Then they start doing this.

And they're like, okay, I got to meet with 30 companies and then meet with the top five three or four times and then over two years, get to know them and then make one bet. That's too much work. So both parties, when they go to the other side are like, ah, you know, I'm doing this reality show. If it winds up getting on air, I'm going to have to come down to L.A. Every four months, tape for 10 days, and it's going to be insanity. It's going to be 12-hour days, you know, and still do this and still do my day job,

still be a parent. So it's just hard. It's hard when you try to do two different disciplines is what I think. Some people like Kim can pull it off. We'll see. Right. Even Serena, if she wants to do it, like could Serena be the number one tennis player in the world? a mom and VC, you know, sometimes things break. You know, it's only so much what I think is actual energy you can put into a discipline. Yeah. What's probably very, very smart about Kim Kardashian doing this specifically is that it's not even a really, it's not even a split focus. Like it's a, it's actually just a new avenue to continue doing what she is already crushing in the world. And so it's, so if you think about it, it's not like trying to combine through, you know, disparate things. And it's a, you know, disparate.

being a mom and the number one tennis player and a VC. It's like, oh, I'm just here building brands and extracting unbelievable value from them. It's effectively formalizing kind of the same job, which I think is even more of a sign that she's going to kill it, that this firm is going to kill it. I don't see why it would. Yeah. For her, this is like, okay, I put my name on this. There's people who are private equity experts.

I don't need to learn that business, reinvent it from, you know, zero. Like you coming here, right? Like, you do have a support system around you, you know, and you can ask questions. And so you could start on, you know, arguably second or third base and then you just find the company and close the deal. So she'll have that ability, right? And they can bring her in strategically like, okay, we vetted this enough that we can bring Kim in and have them meet the founders of this company and start collaborating. Or we didn't vet this enough. This is, you know, or this is not really what it seems to be.

Let's not waste Kim's time with it, right? So that's good. And so in that way, I think you're exactly right, Molly. this is a new venue for her. It's a new platform, but she doesn't have to create the platform. Whereas everything else she's built in her life, she has to, through sheer force of will and her own personality manifest keeping up with the Kardashians, skims. Like she had to manifest those things, build them from zero to one.

Here, it's one day one. And she just gets to leverage it, which is exactly correct. Very good point, Molly. We have Lon Harris coming up next on this week in streaming. and he is so locked in and stoked on the deep, deep Tolkien knowledge. We're going to talk about House of the Dragon and the Lord of the Rings series and just geek out on TV for a little bit. I'll give my one word reviews.

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I think I need an IV. I got back for Burning Mad Lottie Dottie. It's Thursday. My guy, Lon Harris is here, Twitter.com, says, Lans. Follow him. We'll play Stump the Lone later. You know, I had a big burn. And, you know, two sunrise burn out of three nights.

I'm sleeping three hours a night, basically. Came back, had to hop on a flight, had 24 hours at home to host my poker game at the final code conference. I gave a nice, I gave a nice toast to my friend's Guy Dayton. I'm my friend Brooke Cameronling. Give a nice toast to you. Carras Swisher, who's retiring from the Code Conference.

Oh, the Cold Conference might continue. They just need an impisario. Hmm. Maybe even a duo. Maybe even a duo, Molly. You know. To keep it going. But I don't know.

Anyway, the guy, Bankoff will buy my last company's running it. No announcements yet. But they're looking for an impusario, I think, because Karaswisher's moving on to her next adventure. Yeah. I just wrote about this this morning. Bob I spoke there. Bob spoke.

That's in today's Insight Street. make of Yeah, so Bob was here. He said Twitter that they, when they looked at buying Twitter famously, you know,

Molly, Disney was going to buy Twitter. Jack was on the board of Twitter. And then they woke up at one point and realized, oh,

I'm sorry, do we want to host the most vitriolic, putrid, absolutely horrific discussions in all the world to create more joy

at Disneyland with these wonderful characters and be associated with that? What the fuck are we doing? It's not an obvious synergy. Right there, not an obvious brand synergy.

I mean, what are they things going to happen to Davy Duck on Twitter? He's going to get Brigadey. They're Donald. Daffy's Warner, brothers. Right, Donald. What are they going to happen to Donald Duck? He's going to get Brigaded day one. Minnie?

No, it's... The violence towards Minnie on Twitter would be, you know, unbearable. I mean, we already see it. That's like all of the Twitter arguments that are already happening. She Hulk twerking set them off for nine days. I got to say, I like legitimately this morning was thinking about how. how Twitter is really genuinely a net negative for our society. Like, who have we even become?

Because I, you know, whatever, I spent an hour looking at tweets this morning about the queen and then was like, you know what, people are actually irredeemable. Like humans might be irredeemable. And Twitter is just the vector for it. Like, who are people that it's just like, you know what? I'm going to go on this public forum and just be like, the worst. The worst. I think that's kind of how you win the game Because I feel like it

And that's how is how I will win And I'm just like yeah We suck It's weird because it's like There's the troll There's the people who I get to be anonymous This is I'm gonna let my

Unfurled in like There's no checks on me I can say whatever I want to Whoever I want Yeah classic internet message board There's obviously those people But I feel like it brings out A side of all of us

That is also bad Like not everybody is that bad We're not all trolls But everybody like I feel like almost every comment I get back on Twitter is like basically a version of here's why you shouldn't have tweeted this. Like here's why this is a bad tweet. And it's like you could just move on with your like, you don't need to come and criticize everything I say. You could just, and that it brings that

out of us. We are we all get like that when we're on there. You read a tweet and you're like, this guy's an idiot. And it's I got to, I have a new tagline. It's true. Twitter, bring your worst self. It is. It is. It brings out the worst. Bring yourself. I really believe that. It genuinely is. I believe that. Yeah. You don't feel like bring your whole self. is it. Bring your worst self. Bring your worst self. We should make a fake Twitter. We should commercial.

And I shouldn't because I love it. I recognize that that's true, but I'm on there all day. I'm obsessed with it. I can't, like, I couldn't, I don't even remember the last day I didn't tweet like at all, where I didn't check Twitter or look at Twitter or tweet something. Maybe if I was on vacation or something, that's it. Twitter. The most loathsome place on Earth.

Brought you by Disney. The worst place you can't stop going. Twitter. Do you want to be mad? Twitter, where dreams come to die. Right. Let's get pissed together about everything. All right, let's get happy about things.

Let's get happy about things. It seems like... Anyway, I'm just going to apologize to the audience that my voice is still not anywhere near. Acceptable. Nor is it going to be any time in the near future. I'm going to Lady Gaga tonight. Yeah. Because my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my pal, Gaga.

Gagga. Gaga, um, is going to be, uh, tearing up. Steph. You call us. Steph as you call her. You know, that was actually a little pretty lady. Lady Gaga.

Stephanie, I mean, like, I think she does go by everything. Yeah. So if you want, I saw that documentary in there. People do definitely call her like staff or stuff.

Yeah, yeah, no, I met her. I've met her a couple times. Yeah. They're not that type. They're not that type.

I'm not. No. Yeah. Not yet. But, um, first name. So,

uh, yeah, this is like two days of host in the poker on top of three days of burning man. Gaga tonight. And then this will be Recovery Week, and I promise you, it'll be Minty and honey from this point, for it for myself. I'm guaranteeing it. I will get back on track.

You're shining, you're shining bright from the flyer. So what else can we ask? Exactly. Have you been? Have you burned? No one believes you? No. Lawn has not burned officially.

It honestly sounds like the worst place in the world for me. Like I'm not, I'm not judging anybody. I'm not doing right. I'm not doing like physically. The first place of the physical world. I'm not judging anybody like, I'm not trying to. to be pejorative, like, it's bad if you go. Like, I'm glad people go and love it.

And I love when LA clears out. So, like, it's great. I just, for me personally and what I'm like as a person, it sounds like I would be miserable. I don't think I would like. You don't like the dust and the cold and the heat? Just standing around in the heat and the dust. And you're outdoors, 12, 14 hours a day.

People are just like running around. It's a little chaos. It's a little chaotic. And you're getting lost and it's like exhausting and who's got the water. And oh, I didn't bring that. I forgot by flashlight. I'm good. I'm fine here in the city.

And trade my body for some ice. Like, it's like, no, it's just tiring. I'm aware I could wander off into the wild and just disappear like the handless. It feels like Mad Max. It feels like mad Max. No.

There is a barter system. Let's not how it works. Let's talk about TV. I don't know, man. I looked at the agenda. Okay. Go. Let's talk about streaming.

House of the Dragon and Rings of Power are both a couple episodes in and from the kind of business and streaming perspective here, it seems like both of them are turning out to be winners. They're pulling in numbers close to commensurate with their budgets. Does that seem to be the case line? I mean, as best we can tell. With rings of power, we are really like at the, we're at Amazon's mercy.

Like whatever they want to tell us about how it's doing, we're like, okay, but they seem very happy with it. So whatever metrics they're looking at, whatever numbers they're looking at, it seems like they're happy. We already know it's coming back for a season two. And I feel like they're probably primarily looking at engagement, buzz, mentions, conversation.

And by those metrics, obviously it's doing great. There's been a ton of discussion, not all of it positive. But it's certainly been driving a lot of engagement and discussion and discourse online, which is drawing all this attention toward prime video. So I can't imagine they're upset with how it's been going. so far. I think it would have been much more like a wheel of time scenario would have been more of a concern where it kind of came and went and it doesn't really feel like it made that big of an impact on the culture. And I'd be like that would have been more of the concern. And it doesn't

look like that's going to happen this time. Are there like, is it hitting in the meme land? I mean, are there gifts? Like, I haven't really been, I haven't wanted to look it up too much online because there was the whole like review bombing drama and the this and that. I think we're still very much. Can somebody explain what review bombing happened? I did see that. that go by and they turned off reviews. But where were these reviews occurring? To the best of my ability, there's no longer reviews on Netflix or Amazon Prime. It's Amazon. It's Amazon and then Rotten Tomatoes are the two areas we were talking about. And so both of them are being review bombed. We think review bombing as a term, it just means as opposed to one person coming and leaving

one review that's positive or negative, a person who may or may not even have seen the show with some kind of pre-informed agenda is going to come in and leave like 10 one-star reviews to drive the metrics down. That's the idea. It's just like it's brigading. It's brigading. If I come into the reviews and I write, I don't like this show. It's bad. One star. That's not review bombing. That's just me writing a negative review. But if I go do that 10 times, this show's bad. Orcs shouldn't be like that. This, you know, and one star every time, especially if I haven't seen it. That it's considered a campaign designed to drive down the numbers on this show. So Amazon said that's what was happening on Prime Video.

So they turned off reviewing only for three days and said they wanted to set up a moderation system to ensure that these were legit reviews and not spam or trolling. But it nonetheless communicated the idea that they're censoring. They're censoring the review. We're not allowed to speak. I've been silenced about my views on why Hobbits can't be other colors. The issue I think is, you know, a lot, we should have solved the review system at this point. You should only be able to post a review if you're an Amazon Prime member and you've watched the show.

So they should give you the opportunity, like on Audible, you get to review the show after the show. After you've listened to the audiobook, then it prompts you to. Right. Just like you would verify purchasers. Like, so you have verified viewers would be a much better system here. So you could sort out, you know what I'm saying, Molly? Like, we know, Disney knows that people finish, she-hulk, and then they could write the review. So that would get rid of the concept of one person doing 10, at least.

I mean, yes. Listen, life insurance is so important. And getting it will give peace of mind to not only you, but your family and your loved ones. And they depend on you, right? And you need to have that financial cushion just in case the unthinkable happens. Well, policy genius, it's an insurance marketplace. And that means it's easy for you to compare quotes from all the top companies like AIG,

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I honestly. Wait, wait, hold on a second. Because I did watch the Lord of the Rings episode one. And I, but hold on a second. They're both bad. Hold on. There's like two ways to go with this, I think. I have like three directions.

I want to go with this. And this is the least of the most interesting ones to me. But I guess we have to dress it up top. once again, are people having a problem with mythical creatures that don't exist in the real world having different skin tones? Yes.

That's the issue. I mean, these people are way back. This goes way back in like Tolkien fandom. There's always been, and I'm not saying this is true of J.R.R. the man himself, who seemed to have been a pretty wonderful guy.

But within his fandom, there's always been this a little bit of a white supremacy threat. Like, this is the glorious peak of Western. You know, in big of heroes like Western Judeo Christian. Like this is that. It had a good run.

Fantasy, medieval, European. This was the height of whatever. So a lot of people take that weird racist stuff seriously. And they've decided that a show that said, even in a fanciful, impossible version of medieval Europe should not include people who were not in medieval Europe. But this is stupid for a bunch of reasons. One is there were people of color in medieval Europe. Europe.

Yeah, I mean, was it Africa and Europe kind of... Shakespeare memorably wrote a play about one. You may ever called it. So that's already, but also, Lord of the Rings includes a lot of new world, like potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, tobacco. Also, yeah, well, right, but I'm saying like, those are new world products. So if it's set in medieval Europe before they discovered the new world, they don't have tobacco, the Native Americans gave us that.

So we're already including elements that were not... And we're already anachronisms, if you will. And also, these are not history books. They are, in fact, sweeping fantasy. Borrowed heavily from somebody else's sweeping fantasy. Everybody loves that shot of Denethor and Return of the King eating those tomatoes. You know, he's like really grossly popping those cherry tomatoes. It's about the grudder of the goo going everywhere.

And you cut between that and the battle. There were no tomatoes in medieval Europe. Those are from the new world. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead. So Black hobbits are okay. I, this is the problem. I mean, it circles back to our little banter about Twitter, where everybody brings their worst self.

It's like, what's the worst thing I can think right now and express? And, you know, half of it's trolling and half of its racism. Anyway, all of it's boring. There's also misogyny. Sorry, I curse again. Oh, yeah, don't pray to misogyny. The lead character is Galadriel, who Tolkien himself describes as basically a god elf. She's the most powerful, greatest elf.

In fact, in Lord of the Rings, and this is in the movie, you've got no excuse, folks. In the movie, Lord of the Rings, they're like, would you like the one ring? And she goes, I can't take it. I would be even more powerful than sorry. on if I had that ring. Yeah, she trubs everybody. She's the most powerful but they still don't want her to be the main character. I mean, I'm sorry, like it is literally not credible

to me at this point that people are out here like, there's not racism and sexism in our society when they're literally like, they're taking the time to review bomb. She beat one total. It's the same one percent. It's the same one percent of idiots and they're doing this for attention and we shouldn't give it to them. Let's get to, let's just get to

is it a good show or not? I have watched the first episode of Lord of the Rings, with rings of power, I have watched the first three episodes of House of Dragon or House of Dragons? House of the Dragon. House of the Dragon. Because the Targaryans, their sigil is a dragon.

So they're the House of the Dragon. I have not watched the second episode of the Rings of Power. But I am ready to give my one-word reviews. House of the Dragon is... My one-word review is exceptional. It's exceptional. The show is thrilling.

The storytelling is fantastic. Episode 3 crushed it. They advanced the storyline by a couple of years. The action is extraordinary. It is Class A entertainment. It's on par with Game of Thrones, the original series. It will stand right next to it. I believe if it keeps up at this pace, and I think it's only increasing,

it is unbelievably worth. second effort, and it establishes that this is the new Star Wars or Marvel. They can do 20 shows of this. It's not going to get old for people, is my prediction. There is so much story to be told. That is my one word. It's exceptional. Anybody else have feelings on the House of the Dragon?

I'm curious. Then we'll go to. I'm with you. I really enjoyed it. At first, I was worried about the, it's a lot smaller scale. Game of Thrones is like, This family's over here, this family's over here, and this family's here. And here's all the politics and all the stuff that this is going on the other continent.

Like right away, episode one, you're thrown in the deep end. And this one is much more like this one kind of situation that keeps spiraling more out of control. But I really feel like they've already managed to kind of suck me in. I like that we get to spend more time with each of our characters here because there's just fewer of them. And I agree that that Sopachnik really killed that episode three battle sequence with the pirates on the beach. Episode two, this is Molly, I think, you know, when I look at a series, the burn is what I look at. Episode one, they established this interesting group of people. You know, it's like a seven and a half out of ten.

Episode two, we really started to understand these people and we get to like an eight and a half, nine. And then episode three comes and it's just straight out ten. Episode three is a ten of ten. There's no really. It's like smash it. Like, this is incredible. It's one of those where. I watched it twice of I'm being honest.

It hits the exact Game of Thrones formula that works. It's like a little bit of the politicking, a little bit of the mystery, what's to come, laying the groundwork. And then a huge epic battle, 20 minute dragon battle sequence to wrap it all up. So did you get to catch it yet, Molly, or no? Oh, you watched the first one. Yeah, I'm a hard note. Thank you on that show. Yeah, Molly is going to set aside.

I'm like an emotional chicken. Like, I don't want to see the slaughter and the child brides and this and I don't know. Like those shows, like, I went over this last time. I was like, it's too much for me. Got it. I have low emotional bandwidth for that, that series in particular. I mean, I read the books. Like, I loved him, whatever.

I just, that one I don't know if I can do. I mean, the next two episodes have no crazy misogyny. Don't they have a child? Isn't there a full-on child bride? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. It is about like, sorry, you can't marry her. She's but 12.

And he's like, I'll wait to have sex with her until she's 14. That's it. And she's like, don't worry. She's like, don't worry, you won't have to bed me until I'm 14 or whatever. 14, yeah, that's there. Okay, yeah, I mean, it was a different era to be short. That's not even why. Like, they're just, I will, I'll tell you what.

It was the violent you objected to. For the purposes of this series are this week in streaming episodes, I will do what I did with the last, with Game of Thrones, and I'll read the recap so that I'm up on it. Because I sort of like to read the recaps and know what's happening. Yeah, I would tell you if I thought it was like over the top. But yeah, anyway, read the recap and then you make your own decision. I mean, I will, I will. watch a lot of like really violent action movies.

Like I don't know. There's something, I don't know. There's something. It's just a little, those, I don't know. I don't have to give you hazard. It's brutal. I think what. It's interesting. We have both of these shows on at the same time because Martin kind of intended his world as like the anti, you know, everything in Tolkien is kind of whimsical and fanciful. They're like classic adventure stories. And he was like, what if you had like a fantasy world, but in like our horrible world

where everything is random and cruel and brutal and nothing. Like, prophecies don't necessarily come true. And sometimes everybody just gets killed for no reason. And like, so yeah, like, David Throads is like, it's this purposefully really like harsh, brutal, merciless kind of world. And that's not for everybody. I get it. But I will read the recaps because I do actually like to do that so I know what's happening. And then in terms of Lord of the Rings, I watched the first episode and started the second episode and then my life, Wi-Fi.

One review is? Lovely. Okay. Episode one, lovely. I think it's lovely. I'm into it. Unpack, please. What did you like about it?

I think, I mean, I think like you can see the money in the production value. I thought that Galadriel, like, slaying that big monster was just like such a sick fight scene. Despite everything else I just said, I was like, that was awesome. I think, I mean, I think all the characters at this point feel a little thin because they're brand new and it's the first episode. And I'm fine with that. I think it looks really beautiful. and I was surprised. I'm okay with the pacing.

I think, Lon, you were tweeting about this. The kind of fantasy pacing is like deep fantasy doesn't hustle in storytelling. But I was like, okay with that. I thought that the, the scenes are really pretty.

The world building is great. Like, the people are pretty. I don't know. I'm into it. What's your one word? One word in that I'm back. I mean,

yeah, fantastic would be my one word. Wow. I'm a big fan. I mean, look, as I was saying to Bali before we started, And like I even like those Hobbit movies.

Like, I'm a sucker for Tolkien. I read it at a, I read Lord of the Rings and Hobbit at a very pivotal eight. I was like 14 or something. And I love them. And I love those Peter Jackson movies. I've always been into this world. So I'm an easy. I get that I'm an easy sell.

But yeah, I thought it was amazing. And yeah, I mean, sort of to what Molly was saying to, so many of these streaming shows, they're big budget. They look good. But they still have that look. And I really like Netflix's Sandman, but it had this where it's three or four characters in the foreground and then there's like a big beautiful animated vista behind them. The Marvel movie like Thor 11 Thunder, which is on Disney Plus today, is also like this.

Like Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth are there in the foreground with their weapons. And then, you know, everything is sort of God City is dropped in behind them. And I don't even think like Russell Crow is not there on the same day as, you know, Chris Hemp. And this doesn't feel like that at all. They built sets and they put these guys in the foreign. and they're like, run up that mountain. And it feels tactile and physical and real in a way that the other shows just don't. You can't.

Your eye isn't really fooled. We can tell when you're in a Burbank warehouse. The Mandalorian problem. The Book of Obafebath problem. That's such a great observation too. And you've made it before, but I don't think that it was as clear to me until I watched the Lord of the, this Lord of the Rings series, that sense of,

because it's true. It's like when the background gives you uncanny valley, you don't, it like, I haven't been able to articulate it as well as you just did, but that's exactly it. And this feels really, everything just feels really solid and true. Those actors were all in a cave. They were in a cave. There wasn't a troll there, but they were all in a cave and they were running around.

And like, that's a real set. Yeah. And you can, your eye can tell. Our brains are so good. Our eyes are so well trained. We could spot it immediately, even with all the special effects they're throwing at it. Yeah. And look, I'm not saying those other show.

Like, I like Marvel movies. I like Sandman a lot. It's good. And we praised Kenobi and they were inside the magic box. It can be, it can be very good. But how much better could have been? Nothing matches people walking on a real mountain. Nothing matches it.

I think this is where, I think, these big streamers are going to have to really have a sit and say, do we want to churn this stuff out and, you know, get you your Obi-Wan fast. You want it fast or you want it good. And I think this is a part of the situation here. I loved Obi-Wan, but when they did that Darth Vader and Obi-1 fight scene where it cracks his helmet, as I predicted and gives them the scar,

they were on, you know, a light box. They're in a box. I mean, none of us can talk about that set of like stalactites and, you know, they're throwing some rocks and be like, oh, yeah, they built that set. Like, no, that is not the desert. They did not go out to some desert. Right up the street for me. they were in exactly. And it's hard to have like an emotional connect because if you grew up reading, I mean, I also grew up reading Tolkien and reading fantasy and just like there's some kind of depth of feeling that you get. It's almost like yearning. Like fantasy makes you hungry, like emotionally hungry to be part of that world and have magic. And you know, it's like this like deep intense feeling. And you could actually imagine having that feeling about this show. Whereas for as much as I enjoyed, Kenobi, like,

I really did. Obi-1 loved it. I never felt 100. I'm not thinking about it later. No. I didn't pull you in deeply. I didn't feel that same sense of like immersion and kind of like long. Like,

I want to be an elf on the in the bend or whatever. Well, I mean, if you look at like, whatever your greatest films are, their ability to take you to that place. Like I think about Blade Runner and the practical effects there. I actually like in my crazy Blade Runner fandom,

like tried to find a spinner car, tried to find, you know, like I was going to. buy one and it was like there were like two left and they had destroyed them all and they were kind of in hiding like but the practical effects of the spinners was they literally had some people in L.A. who spent a year or two building just the cars of Blade Runner, you know, which really do set and they did those down in downtown L.A. and some other locations. You really do get a

sense of place and I did get that for the rings of power. Good. Good. You know, but I'm trying to figure out where this story is going. You know, is this about Sauron? you know, and it just, if I am a little disoriented, if I'm being honest, after one episode. Yeah. And I'm just disoriented a bit. Like, who are these characters? What is their motivation? There's too many characters in the first episode to, for me to like understand what's going on,

which I guess is how some people felt during Lord of the Rings who didn't read the book. Right. But I am, I have no navigation here for this story. It's very like Tom Clancy. Like you read the first chapter and you're just like, I just ingested 150 names and I don't know what it's about. But by the end, you have whittled it down. But this is just.

going to give it a chance. I'm very curious as to what kind of timeline they're planning on, because they are moving very gradually, but I think the threads are already there that if you know Tolkien well enough, you could be like, I get, I get what we are. It's basically doing what Lord of the Rings did the previous version. A lot of people very confident, evil is gone. We defeated Sauron or Morgoth in the last age, and now Middle Earth is free of this dark evil, but there are those individuals spread around Middle Earth who have some other insight

and think that perhaps the dark one is just in hiding, regaining his strength, and is going to return. So we're going to follow all of those people as they eventually come together and become the force that's going to drive Sauron back, at least till the third age, when the events of Lord of and there was that. Did you guys see, have you watched long enough for the meteor to shoot across the sky? I have not seen episode too. I have not seen episode too. But a being arrives from the sky and lands in a town outside where some of those,

they're Harfoots they're called. They're the predecessors to hobbits. That's probably going to be a centrally important figure who's going to be an important figure in rounding up a lot of these disparate elements from around Middle Earth. Now, we do know from Tolkien, this is not a point. There are a group. that came from the sky. There's differing opinions about whether this was during the early third age or the second age.

Saraman would have been the first, followed by Gandalf and Radagas, and there were two others. The Einar, the Ishtari. There's something that's called the Wizards. Yeah. So,

that character... Did I just figure it out? Like, literally just, as you were saying, and I was like, there's a scene in episode two where the Harfut's used... The Harfuts used jars of fireflies is like lights. That's how they use them as lanterns. And there's a scene where...

The being that crashes from the sky, opens the jar, and seems to communicate with the fireflies. He kind of whispers to them and then they listen to him, which is, if you watch your Lord of the Rings, there's another character that has the ability to talk to animals and give them little messages. I'm so excited. Well, there's, there are five. I can't believe it was a slow burn on that. We don't know which of the five. Whatever. Saramon traditionally is thought to be the first to arrive, but it doesn't feel like a Sarawry.

on character to be. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Well, yeah, things can be happening a different... This is going to be really annoying for you, Jason. This is going to turn the tables on all those episodes where you got super deep into Star Wars lore because me and Lund are going to be like, oh, my God. I'm here for it.

I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I'm totally here for it. I think, you know, I was talking to them. Yeah. So we're following Elrond and Galadriel and the high elves and their sort of take. We're going to follow this strange, the stranger, as they're calling him, and the hobbits and what they're up to.

And it would also make sense. That character has a lot of affection for Hobbits. It would make sense if they first arrived and got to know the Harfuts first. I play poker with an iconic media mogul, say top five to seven in the history of media. And played poker with him the last two nights and hung out. And we sit next to each other poker table, which we like to chat. And he said, you know, that he, uh, you know, that he, uh, really was taken with game of

House of the Dragon. I thought, you know, a lot of the things, okay. But I was talking to him about the economics of it. That's what I wanted to get into here. So I have some insights from top, top five, seven media mogul in history that I can sort of convey here without saying who he is. The first thing he

told me, you know, when I was like, it's like a billion dollars. Like, why would they do this, Molly? And he said, you know, this is a Bezos vanity play, essentially. Has nothing to do with reality. There is no, this does not pencil out It is not intended to pencil out. This is a CEO, a CEO, a CEO, you know, tent pole strategy.

It had nothing to do with the reality of ever being able for this to pencil out because, even though this reported billion dollar number out here, they spent, and I don't know if this public knowledge or not, but $250 million on the license for the IP. You know, let's just pause. That's out there. So that is a, just a pause. For a second, a quarter of a billion dollars to the token estate and Time Warner, which shares it or whatever it's called Warner. They received $250 million in cash for the story, for the IP.

Let's just let that sink in for a second. That has nothing to do with one paintbrush on one backdrop, one actor salary, one makeup kit. And it's just for the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. It's not for all of Tolkien's other writing. So they can adapt stuff from the Simarillion. They're limited. So they didn't even buy all of the guys work. They don't even own the whole library.

This is extraordinary to me. $250 million per piece of IP. What this got me thinking is like, but how long did it take for that IP to bake? So when is the source material from? Does anybody know the year? Yeah. Would have been the 30 years.

30. So anyway, basically. He was back from World War I, a few years in between. It's got to be, he was working on it. in the 20s, probably published by late 20s, early 30s,

there is The Hobbit, and then Lord of the Rings would have followed many years later. Pretty short of her. I don't know if any IP has ever had a hundred year, what would you call that when something stews,

something... Marinees. I mean, shelt like a marinade. I like a marinade. And then one chunk of it. Just one chunk of that piece of steak. Quarter of a billion dollars. Quarter of billion dollars.

For one bottle of wine that's marinateded for a hundred years. We have IP that's marinated for a hundred years and still entertaining people, Molly. He's in a little bit of an interesting cultural place just because it's a foundational text for a whole genre. Like, as opposed to, there are a lot of books that were written in the 20s that people still read, you know, Theodore Dreiser or whatever. But like, he created this entire format that people are still writing new stories in today. And it's a foundational, if you're into the fantasy genre, you kind of have to read Tolkien. So just point of privilege.

Did the concept of a dwarf or an elf or a Hobbit exists before token used those terms? Yeah. Yeah. There's the whole like who he's who he borrowed heavily from, right? There was that other, there was that existing work. Okay. Yeah. Oh, there's so many.

I mean, I don't know. There's so many. Yeah. I don't know. He was a scholar. I mean, you have to think of it. Like he was a linguist and a historian. Right.

So yeah, he was like borrowing little elements from this myth and that myth and this folklore and that culture. So almost everything from Lord of the Rings was inspired by a Norse legend or an old English poem or this. It's like, and he was that, he had that kind of mind. Like he was like a genius.

And so, yeah. And in fact, in Marvel. There's full of all of this stuff that it's all baked into this one world. And in fact, in Marvel, Thor as a character exists as a god.

And we could all go make a Thor story today. It just couldn't be for the super bear. It was free. You were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. back in the 50s. You got to crank out four issues before lunch. It's like, what story can we do? Ah, I don't know that guy.

He's got a hammer. Go to ancient history. Yeah, exactly. I think that's what's so funny. We're so reverent about comic book stories today. And it's like, those guys were, so Ditko was like, ah, Spider-Man, he goes to the moon. They had 10 minutes, you know? They got their corned-out sandwiches on the way.

They got to, like, grand this out. And today we're so precious about, oh, you can't, Thanos wouldn't do that. It's canon. Yeah. And it's just like, they were making it up. But yeah, so reportedly,

I mean, I like, well, I love this thread too about the Bezos Vanity play because reportedly he did effectively issue this order. Like, go get me a game of Thrones. We need a thing like that for Amazon.

And so, uh, no expense has been spared. The series, we think, cost $58 million dollars per episode, 465 million total for all of, uh,

season one's eight episodes. So including, the IP, Amazon has spent more than $700 million on season one. So there's some back of the envelope math here that we can do about, I mean, again, like, it doesn't seem like it particularly matters to Amazon or Bezos, at least, who is not in charge anymore. So you got to wonder what Andy Jassy's thinking. Like, now he's saddled with this thing, right? He's like, I guess we're riding this horse now.

Yeah. to the tune of however many billions. It doesn't seem to matter them to them whether it ever breaks even or makes money or whatever. However, if Amazon Prime costs $140 a year or $15 a month, then 3.3 million prime subscriptions, assuming new ones,

assuming like for whatever reason, 3.3 million people were to sign up. Or years of, right? Let's see if it was a million who stayed for three years, it would be similar. right. That would pay for the production cost. Yeah, not the IP, put the $250 on top.

So, yeah, if you put, it would be 50% more. So it would be like $5 million to break even here. And that would be to my friend who's in the media business. That's the penciling out. Like the number actually at some point makes sense. Is that even possible? Is there any credible number of incremental Amazon privacy or I suppose, Molly, you could also say people who didn't cancel because to get this.

Yeah. If you were, and some number of people like, Yes, cancel prime. I don't think many people do. I think it's a pretty sticky product. So. And it's very hard to tell this because people don't buy prime for prime video. But in this case, how many people do we think would buy prime video who don't have it to get this?

People would, right? I think people would. About five million of them? Yeah, it's very hard to quantify in those kind of numbers. And I don't think five million of them would. I would also note, though, that Amazon's strategy has kind of shifted in the early days when they were first competing with Netflix. They were trying to keep up with Netflix. They were releasing new shows constantly every week.

This big new thing, they've pumped the brakes. There's fewer Amazon originals, and a lot of them are more cost effect. Like, the league of their own was the other big recent Amazon original. You know, there's a production value behind it, but it's nothing like what they're doing here. So they're kind of picking their battles more these days. Obviously, the boys has turned into a big franchise for them, and they're putting a lot of energy there. They made a big play with that wheel of time show that's going to come back and do season two.

That one, to me, feels like more of a maybe questionable call at this point. I don't really know if it had that kind of impact, but I feel like they are kind of slowing down and so they can focus more on these level, these huge projects that are going to bring in, you know, theoretically a lot. more attention. I'm really curious to see if this strategy remains. I really am because Jassy is not this kind of CEO. Like Bezos, I think, you know, he got the Hollywood bug hard. And you saw this who, there's some other, I'll think of it. There's some other media property where it was like, clear that they had gotten the Hollywood bug and they wanted to go really big Hollywood. And then it

just was like, that's not the right play here. I have a hard time believing that Andy Jassy over time, I think it's going to be a slow, you know, like back pedal away from, because throwing money into the black hole that is entertainment is not a long-term growth strategy. Like, we have just never seen that really, really work. And if you're Amazon and you're printing money with cloud and, you know, like retail is almost its own kind of break-even business. I just, I wonder how much longer. I just wouldn't get attached to Amazon originals, I guess is what I'm saying here.

Okay. I guess what we have to look at here is we can look at the profitability of Amazon as a corporation all stools of the, all legs of the stools, three, four legs, whatever it is. And we could say, dropping a billion dollars of cash on something that is this, you know,

discussable every year, like he did on James Bond, right? So I would say, throwing money into the black hole is correct unless the IP has staying power. we've seen with Disney or perhaps, you know, some iconic HBO IP, like DC comics. So here's how I look at. They're actually spending a billion dollars here.

I know that they got the 500 million number for production. They get the $250 million license. They've also been promoting the heck out of it. It's got to be a $100 million marketing spent here. Right. So that's where I think the billion dollar number comes in. We're like, where's the other 250? I think the 250s is billboards you're seeing.

Like, so they're really trying to make the abysomnia. So if you want to be loved by a large number of people for delighting them with IP that just, you know, is not, it makes no logical sense. And they're spending here, if it is a billion dollar number, $2 million per minute, $120 million per episode, not just, you know, 50, 60 million, because it's eight episodes into a billion. It's probably the number here, right? So we're, we're over 100 million per episode, a hundred 25 million in fact, which for 60 minutes is two million dollars a minute. Now I'm going to pause every single minute and look for the two million dollars in every scene. I think you could, I think, you know, it's, well, you can see it. And remember,

half of it's not there because it's for marketing and IP rights. But anyway, the other, the other amazing thing here is no marquee starts. Usually when you think of your spending is that crazy. No Robert David Jr. Half of it's just Brad. Pitts quote, you know, and George Clooney here. They're doing this like the nobody from this show is, you know, recognized. Like they're as character actors and stuff, but they didn't, yeah, they didn't get Ian McKell in to come. I believe this is an incremental one million subscribers. I do believe there are a million fans of token here in the United States.

I'm like, I can't even venture to what's happening outside of the U.S. And I don't know exactly which markets Amazon Prime exists in outside the U.S. because it's not every country. Amazon's no. I mean, they're around most of the world at this point. But the Amazon Prime for delivery, Amazon doesn't operate in every country

because, you know, there's Walmart's and targets of Prime Video actually. There are some countries that don't have the Prime Video delivery, but they carry the Amazon programming on another service. I'm going to go with the number of million. If I go with the number of million, and I think, you know,

half of them stick around for good, which is, you know, they stick around for five, 10 years. That means cumulatively, I think there's maybe three million years of prime, three million years of prime, $150 total per year, $100 per year, maybe some outside the United States. I think there's three or $400 million in incremental revenue here. I think there's a third of this gets paid off. And the other half or two thirds is a wash. Yeah, but does that happen every season? Like if you do season two,

which is, I do think it does. Bringing in every year? No, I think it could. I think if it builds, it could. And that's, I think, what will... How many seasons should there be here? Is this a five season type thing or a three season type thing? Do we have any indication? I don't really have a sense at this point of how big a story they're telling.

I mean, I don't know if they may even know at this. But we're definitely getting at least one more season. If you probably... This is 5% of the income of, say, AWS. You know, like the profits. Yeah. And maybe it's if the loss is 7%, you know, is 70% of 5, 3%. So to make everybody in the company feel great, to make the world love you to take a swing at the bat, I kind of like it.

I like it. I think it's a fine, you know, hell Mary. Also, we're looking purely at this as a prime video sign up play, but they are also reviving interest in this valuable IP that they will own for. moving forward. So the idea that if you get a bunch of people into Lord of the Rings again, you could sell books or merch or experiences or video games or... Did they own the fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers as part of this? Did they...

I think they own the Lord of the Rings books. So I think they could do stuff with other stuff that's in those books. They don't own the extended universe stuff. But yeah, they wanted to down the road remake the... Lord of the Rings as a movie or something. For our TV series. I believe that they cook. I think that's part of it.

Fantastic. So. All right. All right. There is. I like a tie-in game or a, you know, ride or a show or this. You know, like that that's definitely something that Disney is. Like soon?

Yeah. Like Disney's already mastered this and they're thinking of it on a much bigger level. I'm time stamping this right now. No way. We're going to get two seasons of this show. And then it's going to. And then Jassy is going to be All Cloud all the time.

He is a server guy. This is going to be a distraction. What would happen at Amazon Prime land? Like you pack boxes? Like you go in, you put your Amazon outfit on, you pack boxes, you tape them and throw them.

All right, we got to get Jason, we got to get Jason to a flight, but I will be caught up on what's happening in House of the Dragon by next week. We caught up on Lord of the Rings and we'll see you tomorrow, everybody.

Thanks on.