This Week in Startups - $PTON & $SNOW earnings divergence + Streaming news with Lon Harris: HBO, MoviePass & more | E1544

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Big show! First up J+M break down two pandemic darlings on two totally different paths: $PTON and $SNOW (2:26). Then, Lon Harris joins to talk about HBO's record breaking House of the Dragon premiere (27:12), MoviePass returning (47:16), and more! (0:00) J+M tee up today's segments! (2:26) Peloton earnings breakdown: it's getting grim, so J+M brainstormed on where the company can go from here, stock was down over 20% (16:26) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (17:53) Snowflake earnings breakdown: massive quarter, stock was up over 20% (25:37) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist  (27:12) Lon Harris joins to break down this week's streaming news! First up: HBO's House of the Dragon set a record for most-watched premiere with almost 10M viewers (39:39) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist (40:58) $WBD CEO David Zaslav continues to make cuts (47:16) MoviePass is making a comeback and Lon gives some streaming picks

Oh my God. So much to talk about. Let's go. This show is so great. Okay, first up, we have a tale of two companies big time, a tale of two pandemic darlings with two very different quarterly outcomes. Peloton is basically on the precipice of, yeah, just being incinerated. And then Snowflake is firing on all cylinders. Argy Sleutman.

It's just an absolute beast. He's the flamethrower right now. A beast. He's like the Hulk of sass. Hulk smash. That's his new nickname. Really? The Hulk.

I want a t-shirt with Slutman as the Hulk. I think I might jade some snow. It's amazing. I don't think that's a terrible idea. I'm trading on emotion. Take a deep breath. My best trades. Count to 10.

Then we're going to have Lon. And speaking of more drama, we got our guy Lon Harris back on the show for this weekend. streaming and there's a lot to talk about there too. Yes, House of Dragon is out and it's set a massive record. Additionally, we play Stump Lawn Harris, where Molly and I tell him our favorite shows because we're both into the sci-fi fantasy kind of thing. He tells us what to watch next, and Molly and I are Q's Runneth Over.

Stick with us. It's going to be a great show. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Odu is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever and right now O-Doo is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at Odo.com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. 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. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. And lemon.io. Need to speed up your product development without draining your budget? Hire vetted engineers from Europe at lemon.io. Go to lemon.io slash twist to get 15% off for the first four weeks. All right, Molly, it's Thursday. That means we'll have this week in streaming with our friend Lon Harris. He's got so many great suggestions.

We're going to talk about to Dragons, HBO, General Zazlov, or as I call him, General Zod, like from Superman fame. Superman, too, the best Superman film ever. Best metaphor. Like, that is perfect, and all I will ever see in my head when I think of everyone on.

Jarrell. I love Zard. Neo before Zod. But we've been wondering what's going to happen. Yeah, with Pali-Pal, my Pellipal. Not Pellegrino, Peloton. Yeah.

I love my Peloton. I would like to invest in that company, but I never have. What's happened? It's looking grim. Well, kiddo, you're not going to know. Let me tell you. Peloton reported earnings for its fiscal Q4. The results were not good.

Stock was down over 20% on Thursday right after the earnings report. Peloton's market cap is now $3.7 billion. Here are some notable. numbers. Q4 cash, $1.2 billion. Q4 inventories, $1.1.1 billion, meaning that Peloton is currently sitting on one point, over a billion dollars worth of unsold inventory. And I'm just going to say, I know that when you're running out of money, you raise prices, that seems reasonable. But like, I would have helped him out with that inventory problem.

And then boom, price range. And I'm like, I can't do it. Come on. You're killing me. Q4 accounts payable, $797 million. $3.4 revenue, $679 million. That was down 28% year over year and down 30% quarter over quarter. Q4 subscription revenue, $383 million. That's 56% of its total. That at least is up 4% quarter over quarter and up 36%. They raise the price is 10%. Yeah. They raise the price of 10%. I mean, I think this is where like roll up that inventory and make it a subscription. Just do it tomorrow. Yeah. I know it doesn't bring in cash fast enough. Maybe. I don't really know. Q4 paid subscribers about 3 million. Up 27% year over year.

That's nice. They got more subscribing. Yeah, people are still subscribing, which is great. That means they may be buying their own hardware as well and subscribe it. I guess so, or maybe re-subscribing, you know, like maybe they, I don't know, let it go. It's interesting, though. CEO, Barry McCarthy is, in the words of producer neck fighting for his life here. He told this story in his letter to shareholders.

He wrote, quote, in high school, I spent three summer months working on a cargo ship. After midnight on my second voyage, I was asleep when the alarm for general quarters woke me. My reporting station was on the bridge. Fear is a great motivator. I dressed while I ran. The 720-foot ship was doing 27 knots and the helm was hard a lee. This is a shareholder letter, by the way. Is this from Masseyoshi-san?

Quick reminder. Yeah. Right? Like, you really should. Can you pull up? Where is this story going? Do they wind up in the water with a thousand sharks? Stay with me.

The ship was healing. sharply to starboard and the steel hull was shuddering. The captain was trying to turn the ship around, but a ship that big going that fast takes miles and miles to change direction. We saved two men's lives that night. They'd been lost at sea in the Mediterranean for several days. A fortunate, happy ending. Peloton is like that cargo ship. We've sounded the alarm for general quarters. Everyone's at their station. We continue to add new inputs to evolve our go-to-market strategy to restore growth. When will the ship respond is the question. Our goal is fiscal year,

2023. In a time when men control the open seas. I mean, this sounds like an action film. At a time when people couldn't leave their homes and go to the gym, one hero created a bike with an iPad. They are f***. We didn't see that iceberg coming, nor did we see the end of the pandemic. We didn't see it.

I mean, Barry wasn't there then. It's not an episode. No, no, Barry's the cleanup guy, and he is like, how bad is this going to get? Yeah. But, I mean, I don't want to say this because it's going to wind up being an incredibly long bleep. But holy, sorry for the long bleeps, but this is not good. They have, this is where, remember I was thinking about buying the stock? I was going to j-trade this.

But then I was like, maybe I should buy the bonds because the bonds are senior to the equity. So looking at this, you know, they're running out of cash. Fast. The inventory, 1.1 billion in inventory, that's worth like $200 million. Just discount that all the way down to 20%. Okay, so you got $200 million in inventory.

Best case, my estimation. They got accounts payable of $800 freaking million. And they've only got $1.2 billion in cash. So if they were to pay down their accounts payable, they're sitting on $400 million in cash, but their free cash flow went negative $411 million in this quarter. Are they one quarter? away from flipping the car?

The boat's going to sink in a quarter or two? Is that what this is saying? I feel like that's where they were the last time we talked about this. And nothing is changed so far. Q4 net loss of $1.2 billion and Q4 free cash flow negative $411 million. This is a disaster. I have to say like this is not looking good. I've talked about this many times having this is my third big war.

You know, like I made it through World War I and World War II of like economic craziness. I don't want to have business. Like dot com and Great Recession. Okay, I don't know if this is Vietnam, the Korean War, World War III that we're going through right now in terms of the metaphor. Sorry for the war metaphors, but it's, you know, I'm a guy. And toxic, mass, willingly, whatever. This is serious. Like, in war, people die, like, boats sink.

and this is a sinking boat. Like, this is tragic. It's hard a lee, if you will, in the words of Barry McCarthy. I had to look up, Ali. I've never heard that phrase in my entire life. Hard Ali. This guy's dropping like maritime buzzwords on us? I mean, you really do hate to see it, and he was handed a bad hand, right?

Like, he, or dealt a bad hand. This is a rough situation for him to have had to walk into. I don't know how you... Hard a Lee. I wonder why no one has acquired Pelotan yet But if not this feels like the quarter to do it Except that maybe even they are like You gotta think they're talking to people

Like how do we get out of this mess? And the easiest thing to get out of this mess Would be for somebody to buy the asset And you know put it into a stronger You know they could probably get the asset You know for close to free And you get 3 million subscribers pretty great This thing is maybe

You have subscribers The brand has a ton of value like, where's Amazon here? You know? Well, you know, with this Lena Khan, you know, anti-conglomerate thing, I think you take a lot of the big, and I'm not saying I'm against that,

you're taking a lot of the big acquires out of the mix. So, you know, Google, Apple, Amazon, or like, if we're going to go to bat on buying something, maybe we shouldn't go to bat on Peloton. And this is where, like, I think they said, you know, the general rubric here is companies with over $500 billion market caps

who are like monopoly positions or the ones who are going to be the most stringent. So who does that leave? Okay, the $200, $200 billion dollar crowd. There's not a lot of people there. This is a challenge. They did just enter into an e-commerce partnership

to sell on Amazon. Well, duh. That's where the consumers are. Duh, right, exactly. I mean, the idea that you could avoid Amazon in today's day and age as a retailer, like this is a fantasy that people who were, you know,

had tons of venture money, you know, kind of believe they could go direct and, you know, capture all that margin. And then it turns out, you know, sometimes you need distribution. So like Magic Spoon, we had them on the pod. You know, that protein cereal?

Magic Spoon is on Amazon. So you don't have to buy a subscription. I mean, it's a hell of a lot. I think it's $15, $16 a box. And then I notice they have a competitor now. So this is what happens. You get forced to go on Amazon where the prime customers are.

Yeah. But then what you'll see on MagicSpoon, if you look at related products, and so, you know, I wanted to buy MagicSpoon, but I don't like opening another account in dealing with that. But then I saw them here, I was like, well, maybe I'll order some. And then when I looked at related products, you know, like people buy ads, what you'll see in the, is it related products or people search for this, search for that? People also buy, yeah, if you scroll down even further.

Or if you just go here, look, right next to it. The second one, look at the second one up there. Click on the one next to Magic. Protein and gluten free breakfast cereal buy, So I don't know who this is. Three wishes is now got a knockoff. You get six boxes for the price of the other one. Look at the price per...

What is the price per ounce on this? I can't read it. A dollar 89 cents. They crib the entire branding. So anyway, now Nick, take a look at the cost per for the other one, for Magic's Moon. A dollar two, it looks like. But depending on that, it's obviously varies by box size.

but that's what you're dealing with. But none of it's $0.89, exactly. Is there, would there have been a B-to-B play for Peloton? Like, could they have made a deal with Ecoonox? Like, just buy all, you know, people are going back to the gym. Well, no, that's what I think. You know, we have like one of those. We talked about hotels.

Talked about hotels. There was, we have like a communal, you know, gym at the resort where I have a ski house. and they have two peloton's there. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll jump on a bike. I've never done it. I do the treadmill. And it was like, oh, you have to log it and type your login in. And I was like, ah, and I was like, why don't they have the QR code here?

I was about to do it, but I got into the weights. But I think this would be the move. If I had a bunch of cash for a private equity, this is a free private equity play. Go by tonal, hydro, and peloton. And then go find gyms that are going out of business or maybe a gym, like 24-hour fitness. and put these assets together, come up with a brand name. Peloton seems like the best one to use.

So make it the Peloton hydro, make it the Peloton tonal. And then just make it 24 hours a day. You come in anytime you want, like 24-hour fitness. And these could be like a different footprint size, you know, and you could put them into apartment buildings

or flow, whatever you want, colleges, and you get access to all this equipment. If you have a membership, and the membership allows you to go to any of those anywhere they are. It would be brilliant. Mm-hmm.

Brilliant. Because that's like recording everything is so much, it's such a game changer when you record all your workouts and you can see them in one interface. So right now, Apple Health lets me sync my Peloton workouts and my tonal workouts, my FitBod workouts. And then like if I do an outdoor, you know, have an outdoor bike ride, outdoor walk, you know, that's built into Apple. So I kind of see everything in one place is kind of nice that they can import the Peloton stuff. So this is why Apple could have a series of gyms or Amazon could have a series of gyms. Like they're going into healthcare

and it's about prevention now. So if you put it under the health rubric, my lord, what a great, imagine if they, because Amazon's doing retail. Imagine if Amazon, what do they call their quick service or their top stores, like with their top 100 items? Maybe they call a five star or four star, Amazon four star. Yeah, those stores are awesome.

Those stores are like irresistible. Make that into a gym. or give the Apple branding. You know, Apple and Peloton is such a like natural sort of feeling brand tie up. But it's also super far afield for them. Like, yeah, they sell premium hardware and they're good at making and selling premium hardware, but it feels like a stretch for Apple too. Like it's hard.

You're right. With Amazon somewhat off the table because of antitrust, it's hard to think who would rescue them at this point unless it's like Walmart or, you know, we looked at hotel chains and they all have like the same market gap as Peloton. They don't even have enough anymore. I'm going to say this is crazy molly. Here's a crazy idea for you. Amazon buys a mall.

Amazon buys a strip mall. Whatever. Amazon buys a mall. You got your Amazon 4-star. You got an Amazon Books. You got an Amazon Go, the Quick Serve. You got the Amazon Fresh. You got a Whole Foods.

And you have a Peloton store. Yeah. How great would that mall be? Or a strip mall. They should just do this as a pilot. Find a great strip mall in San Diego, you know, the Bay Area. or Los Angeles, they're all over the place.

You know, these strip malls. We have like, yeah, 100%. And they're all like 40 parking spots and five stores. And it's like a framing store and a dry cleaner. Buy one of those, you know, a two story one and put in four Amazon stores. It'd become a sick destination. I mean, honestly, I would buy everything there. I'm so sad to say it, but I would.

I mean, you know, this is the thing. As consumers, you want convenience and you want really great products. And Amazon is the most convenient of any product ever made for humans. aside from like maybe Uber and them. Like those are the two most convenient. The Amshad has a funny idea, which is that Flo could add Peloton to its houses. Rivka.

Let's go out. Let's do the tonal and then we do a shot and then we do Peloton. Okay, Rivka. The good stuff. Okay, we put the 1492 in the water cooler. Everybody loves the gym now. Okay, genius.

You have to go to the gym and do a shot. Let's go shots in the gym. Drunk Peloton class. Let's go, Flo. I just, I'm here to make Molly laugh. Listen, if you're a founder or an employee of a startup, it's critical that you become capital efficient at a time like this. Fundraising, really hard. And your burn rate, hey, that might make you unfundable and you want to make that runway last as long as possible.

One great way to do that is to cut the cost of running all of these disparate SaaS applications. Why not run on one platform? And that one platform is called Odu. Using Odu suite business applications means you don't have to have a bunch of messy SaaS subscriptions everywhere that nobody's using, that are costing you all this money, you get in charge on your credit cards every month. Nope, everything you need is already an Odu. All you have to do is turn it on, boop, when you're ready. and they'll only charge you for the apps you use.

They want to grow with you. They want to support you. They have over 40 main apps and 16,000 apps from their open source community. We're talking about all the important stuff, sales, accounting, marketing automation, HR, website builders, and so, so much more. And this will streamline your business, no more issues transferring your data back and forth and wasting time. Now it's time for the best part.

The call to action on this is amazing. The first app you use on Odu is free forever. Okay? And they're so confident they're going to give you a $1,000 credit on your first implementation path. All you have to do is go to odoo.com slash twist. O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. For $1,000 off, that's O-D-O-O-O-O-com slash twist. One of your other favorite generals, not Zod, the other one, Sluutman. This is a tale of two earnings reports that we have today. So if Peloton is almost is kissing right up to default dead,

Another pandemic, darling, is booming after a year-quarter. Let me guess. Let me guess. Revenue up. A great growth company, 20 to 30%. I don't know the answer here. But if it's General Sluutman, my guy, Sluptman Zazlov.

I'm going to guess Sluptman is double. Is double a high growth? Over a quarter? Instead of year-over-year. Instead of 20 to 30%, I think he's 40 to 60. This is Snowflake, by the way, that we're talking about,

cloud services provider, Snowflake, just for those of you at home who might be trying to keep up. What did he do? Q2 revenue, $497 million up 83% year over year. What?

80. What is that? That's good numbers for a Series A company. You're over here. 18% quarter of quarter. Fentanyl. When you buy Snowflake, do they give you fentanyl pills with it?

Why is this thing so addicting to people? I mean, I don't know. I don't even 1 million percent understand what they do, except for print money, evidently. Net revenue retention rate of 171 percent. So Snowflake grew revenue 71 percent from the customers that already had. It was like, hey, guys, you want to give us some more money? And they did. This guy's got more net retention than El Chapo.

I mean, we need to send him a T-shirt that says that more than retention. and then El Chapo. This guy is... I mean... Oh my God, it's incredible. Franks Lumen, only the government can print money. The rest of us have to take it from somebody else.

He wrote and amp it up. Thank you, producer, Rachel. He's such a gangster. You know what? I'm making my own legion. I'm making my legion of super villain CEOs, like the almost hardcore

and his general Zod. Zaslov. I got Slutman. We're going to have to do our hardcore CEO draft. We got Slutman. We definitely are, because I'm not sold on side yet. We'll see if he actually, if this works for him. Okay. And then you put Adam Newman in there? These are some hardcore people.

Some hardcore supervillain CEOs. But jobs in there, Bill Gates? I feel like Frank Slutman somewhere right now is like, excuse me, but I do not deserve this. Adam Newman pairing. But whatever. Newman's got his own super. He's like the Riddler. I mean, Sluptman's Lex Luthor.

Yeah, he definitely is. Product, gross profit. This is a fun one. $334.7 million up 93% year over year. Okay. Gross whole profit up 93%. So he grew the top line, 83%. And then he grew the bottom line, an extra 10% on that. I mean, so he basically told everybody, I want a double revenue, but I want you to do it more profitably. Usually when you try to hit big numbers, you got to invest and spend money. guy's a murderer Yeah I mean Full on They did have Interestingly a Q2 net loss

Of $223 million They did Oh you know what This might be also like Either investment losses Or stock based comp You know Yeah yeah totally

It's probably a little stock based comp in there Snowflake trades at the largest Price to Sales multiple Of any public Sass company 29X Yeah Well

You got the Sloopman factor I mean this is like the salute man of actor is at work here. He saluted it. He saluted it. He saluted the whole company. I mean, this is what he did. He came in.

He said, show me your, I want to meet every salesperson. And I want to see your number. And then they brought him the numbers. And they said, here's your number. Here's your new number. Double. And they said, okay, well, what's the other option? He said, there's the option.

And he pointed to the door. That's it. You double your revenue or there's the door. I'll find somebody who can. And you know what? crazy goal? I bet you that's the goal he said. I want double. Yeah. Or you can pick door number two, which by the way, is door number one is you double your book of business. Door number two is, there's the fucking door. I'm sorry to bleep it out. There's another bleep for your issue. That's

it. Fired up. He saluted him. He saluted the sales team. Yeah. Salute the sloopman. You will salute the sloopman. In the earnings call, he said, Snowflake's next frontier of innovation is aimed at transforming how cloud applications are built, deployed, sold, and transacted. And then he went on to say, in the scariest threat to anybody else in this business you've ever heard in your entire life, we look forward to executing against this growth opportunity. Did he just describe AWS or GitHub? I mean, both of the thing. I think he just described cloud computer.

I think he was all SaaS. I think Salesforce, by the way, had like a down quarter. I think they like everybody Sleumann is coming for everybody He's like oh are you an awesome database Are you cloud services? Are you The way that cloud services Cloud applications are built, deployed, sold and transacted

That would mean an app store Well no it's a business to business app store Which by the way Salesforce has an app store It does incredibly well We have a couple of startups That sell in the Salesforce app store So you have Salesforce as your CRM But then you plug in other things you need

Your company right? Yeah This to me feels like he's going after that maybe. Well, let me see. Salesforce reported earnings today, and it was like, yeah,

they trimmed full year expectations for earnings and revenue because they're getting saluted. Dude, is that tower coming down and a snowflakes going up in downtown San Francisco? No, man.

He's like Dr. Freeze. He's going to come in there and he's going to just like manifest the first snowstorm in San Francisco history. He's going to come in here and like global warming.

There's a blizzard. He puts a blizzard on the Salesforce tower. This is like, this is like the action movie of earnings reports. I mean, can you imagine we're in the like greatest financial turmoil

since 2008? It's 15 years after that. And then Sluen's like, you know what? I'm just going to put up numbers. You guys can all cry in your coffee. You want to do a riff? You can all cry in your coffee.

You reset expectations. You know what we're going to do? We're going to beat expectations. Yeah. This is what I like. I don't care what the conditions are out there. Let's play the game on the field. Get it done.

Get it done. We look forward. Don't you have a chill? We look forward to executing against this growth opportunity. Peloton is like, people are jumping out the window, and then people at Snowflake are like literally taking the beach. You know, like they're just literally taking, invading other markets.

Yeah. Just mountains of cash. Crazy growth. They're banshees. Right. Now they've got TV, action movies. Sorry. I'm so excited.

I wish I was a show over. Exciting drama on the brain. It's time to toss the lawn here. We got J-Trade here. Our man, the lonster here to talk. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. Not yet.

Not yet. The glasses are coming on. Sorry, I got to open my Robin Hood app. The glasses are coming on. I may need to salute. I knew me to put a bet on Slootman before the Fed makes a decision. God, oh my. This just shows you great companies can be built in down markets.

This guy's going to take over the world with this. What if he starts buying other companies? I don't know, man. He can do anything. Here's a lot. All right, everybody on the phone today is Open Phones founder Dorena Kulia. Welcome to the program, Dorena. Thanks, Jason.

Great to be here. Now, what mistakes do most founders make with phone numbers in their startups? Great question. First one is they use their personal phone number for their business. And it's an easy mistake to make because you don't necessarily think about it much. You incorporate your company. You put your phone number. number, there's all these forms you fill out. It very quickly goes from being your personal number

to being the number for the company. And when that happens, there are all these data aggregators and all kinds of services that take your number and put it everywhere. Suddenly now there is this uptick in spam text messages. It's the worst. Yeah. And people just wonder, like, how are others getting my number? Well, let me tell you, you put it in different places and it kind of snowballed from there. So that's the first mistake. The second, which is initially as a founder, you're the salesperson. You're the only sales rep. And then you hire a first sales rep.

And sometimes founders let that person use their personal phone number. Oh, no. That number, the data, everything that happens is just fully belongs to the sales rep. And if that person leaves, you lose the entire history with your customers. Yeah. And then what if that sales executive goes to a competitor? Exactly. Yep.

Okay, everybody. Twist listeners can get 20% off. plan for their first six months at OpenFone. Just go to openphone.com slash twist. If you got an existing number, they'll put it right over for free. Head to O-P-E-H-E-O-P-Hon-E-com slash twist today for 20% off. Hey, everybody, welcome to the highlight of the week for all this week in startups, listeners, and Molly and myself.

The amazing Lon Harris is here. He's at Lonz on the Twitter, Twitter.com, L-O-N-S. if you would like a great mixture of a classic coastal elite and a huge nerd who understands everything about film, this is the Twitter handle you've been waiting for. Does this look like the home of a coastal elite to you? It's a little bit of a joke. It's a little bit of a joke.

This is not the hostility home. But I do like that you put some... I mean, what's going on with these pictures on the wall? You punched up your background. Oh, I put some art. Yeah. Well, these were all over my apartment, but now that I'm on Zoom so often, I was like, I need a, I need a permanent sort of backdrop. Did my sheets ever come?

Did they get you the sheets or no? I never did the sheet. We did not do the sheets. Damn it. The Nodies asked about those just. The Nodies asked about the sheet. I'm going fresh. It was, it was a research thing.

I was supposed to look into what are the good, I don't know. I don't know. That's it. It's enough. It's enough. Fresh. I want you to send two sets of sheets. One brand, the number two brand up to a thousand.

$1,000 in sheets, but I want a duvet or something very nice. So when I'm talking to Lon on Thursdays, I got a nice view here. Okay? That's it. Fair enough. I believe this is a queen, yeah. Yes, okay. All hell, the queen.

Speaking of the queen. Hey, look at you. Hey, House of Dragons came out, and all of us have PTSD. Lon, what did you think? I liked it. I enjoyed it. It's enough to keep me coming back for more. And it does feel like they made it.

feel like more Game of Thrones? Like it feels like a continuation of the original series enough that I feel like people are going to get back on board. And I think a lot of people almost wanted an excuse. Like they wanted to get back into Game of Thrones, but it ended on this kind of sour note. And they were just looking for,

give me an excuse to get back into this. Give me something to hold on to. And I think it's good enough for that. So it's the Rogue One. It's the Rogue One of the Star Wars universe. It can pull people back in after it does some mistakes. I do feel like the scale, I was saying this to Molly before we went live. I feel like the scale is a lot smaller in a weird way now. Like, we went from,

this is a show about the politics of this whole world and all the different players and all the different houses. And this one feels a lot more like a personal story about a few of these characters. And I'm not sure how that's going to play over the course of multiple seasons. But for now, it feels like it's going to let them focus on a few characters and let them grow this sort of main storyline out more, which I like. How did it do, Molly? Do we have any metrics yet on how this largest premiere in HBO's history

drawing almost 10 million viewers? There is some pent-up demand for Game of Thrones content. It appears. Across all platforms. If you add up TV, HBO online, and HBO Max, almost 10 million viewers, which is the most for any first weekend of an HBO show.

Yeah, ever. That's a, wait, 10 million people watched it? In like the first like, I think four days, something like that. But they say, I mean, Game of Thrones, it's front-loaded. So almost like 40% of your views come in on Sunday for Game of Thrones. It's appointment, would you say? Right. Yes.

But 10 million is very good for an HBO show. And obviously, they sounded, please. People liked it. They got an 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 400-plus reviews. George R. Martin said, to your point, about the kind of smaller world, Game of Thrones was high fantasy and House of the Dragon is meant to be more of a Shakespearean tragedy. I thought that the responses were, I was surprised to see that 83% fresh rating because I thought the responses were kind of all over the place. I personally like,

I don't want to watch anymore. I mean, you all know me to have low emotional bandwidth and I don't like, you know, I don't like these shows where like, but certainly like I just don't want to see a show where like a lady gets carved up, but I'm supposed to feel fine about ladies in this world because one gets to be the queen, like, hmm. Well, that's just yucky. That very violent. It's going to get worse.

Yeah, that very, there's a very violent and disturbing birth surgery, sort of forced birth sequence in this that a lot of people found sort of objection. Well, it is very difficult to watch. I think they, the creators almost compounded the problem because in advance of this show, they made a whole big thing about, we're not going to do as much violence against women. and that was such a big Game of Thrones thing and it's not going to be what drives the plot this time

and this is a lot less of that kind of stuff and it's more. And then the pilot, the very first episode. Is the Red Wedding Part 2. Really gruesome scene of violence against just a woman. It's not like a... In the most vulnerable and, you know, feminine peak of, you know, making a baby, right.

Like, I literally felt like it was an effie to all of it. Like, I was just like, oh, okay. That's interesting. Thanks for that. I feel like if you had approached it in the almost the exact 180 opposite way, if you had warned people, look, the inciting incident in this is extremely troubling, but we're trying, we're going to get away. As the season progresses, we're going to get it. Whatever.

If you didn't deny what you were doing and so then it feels like you're jerking the rug out from under people, I think your reactions are going to be better. Or just don't. It doesn't need to be so disturbing and visual. It really did not. You did not have to do that on. You could just show her die. That's it. Or you could just show it with a towel over, a sheet over her.

Or the face or the, you know, whatever. The actor playing the king, Patty Considde, is an amazing actor. You could show him reacting. And he would sell you on the gruesome, horribleness of what's happening. And if she's about to, spoilers, the woman is about to die anyway. What matters in terms of the ongoing show is how this affects him. So why would you show just an objection? bird's eye view of the horror

instead of the face of the character reacting to it, and it also gets you out of having to show all of the blood. Well, and this wasn't the only hyper-violent aspect of the show. The Golden Guard goes out and decides, we're going to round up every criminal and judge dread them.

You're guilty, here's your punishment. We're going to castrate you or chop off a limb. It seemed to be the top two things. And there were so many they had to cart them off in a cart. wheel barrels. And wheel barrels of appendages.

People were just like, yay, Game of Thrones is back. And I was like, oh, yeah, I remember why. So I watched the first season of the first Game of Thrones. And then I read all the books. And then I was like, I'm not watching that. Because I knew what was coming. You knew the wedding was coming. Yeah.

I was like, nope, nope, nope. And then when they got past the point where there was book material and started inventing new material, then I started to read the recaps because I still was like, I don't think I want to watch it, but I'll read the recaps. And then I watched like the last half of the last season. But watching this first premiere did make me remember why, like, I don't, that's not fun for me. Well, does it read less disturbing when you read about the Red Wedding?

Was it less disturbing than seeing that episode, I guess? I never watched that episode. I just read the recap. I was like, hell no, I'm not watching that. And then they made it even worse in the show. I think just the fact that you're reading it on the page is it's not as visceral. Like, it's still upsetting and disturbing and growing. rose, but there's something about seeing it visually that that massively compounds that.

And they do, well, it's right. I've read some of the books too. They do tend to up the graphic nature of the vibe. Martin might say, and he slashed him with his sword splitting, Sir Robert in two. But that's not that graphic, whereas when you see it and there's guts filling out. And sound and the flame. Remember the guy who wanted to flay everybody? like there was one group of people in the original Game of Thrones who were into flaying

which is like cutting the skin on. Sure. I was like, dude. That's their sigil. I'm like, what is the bladed man? They're the flayed man. That's the Bolton house sigil.

Yeah. I mean, literally I was like a sigil is their signature. They're simple like how the starks are wolves and the Targaryens are dragons. The pigs are a man being hung with his skin flayed off. If that's your insignia for your house. you're a pretty sick group of individuals. Yeah, the Bolton's are messed up. That was Bruce and Ramsey.

All right, so let me ask this. So I just want to make it clear that I don't want to watch that show for our... No, no, we won't. I'm just glad that it's bad because now I get to tap all of this knowledge of this house in here, knowing Bruce and Ramsey Bolton are and getting nothing out of it. Nice work. So this House of the Dragons must be making Zazlov General Zazlov.

I refer to him as general because he is my Zod. Always my favorite villain was Zod. Neal before Zod. And now the HBO employees must kneel before General Zazlov and explain themselves. Where is the next house of the dragon?

What's next? How does this impact the streaming wars? Do you think? Like, this is the biggest bet they've ever made and it's paying up. I mean, it's up there. I mean, the great news for HBO is they already have a bunch of other spinoffs in active development.

So this is like a continue, you're on the right track, green light, a few more of these. Okay. This is their Marvel. This is their Star Wars. This is a Lord of the Lerlis Valerian, who played by actor Steve Toussons. He was the black guy with the Dreadlocks who was in House of the Dragons on the King's Council. He's playing a character named Paulus Valerian. They already have a spinoff in development about him before the action of this show.

he was a pirate. He was like, so the sea snake is what they called him. So it's about his naval adventures would be another show. There's the adventures of Duncan Egg, which is about a knight and his squire around this time. There's, the guy like, there's Princess Namiria, which is like an ancient myth in the Game of Thrones world that could go back and make. So it's great news for them because they were already working on this as if it was their big Marvel Star Wars type franchise.

and now this is a big green light. Like, yes, people are into it. Keep going. That's fantastic. All I care about is the Starks. Like, Aria Stark is the... Well, the big... The biggest spinoff they have currently in the works

is they announce Kit Harrington is signed on to come back as John Snow. So we're going to get a sequel series about whatever... You know, remember Game of Thrones ended with John Snow abdicating the throne. He goes back north of the wall to go live presumably with the Wildly. So all I care about is Sonsa and Aura. Is Sonsa dead?

No, Sons is the queen of the north. Yeah, Sons is running Winterfell at this time. Aria played by Macy, my pal Maze. We don't know. She's like, adventuring. She's like a faceless man. Assassining.

Mercenary assassin. That's all I care about. Make me the Aura Star. Is it Aria? Aria Stark. I want Aria Stark with a little Sansa on the side. That's all I care about. This John Snow Show, they're playing it.

very cagey right now. But it would be obviously he's not going to stay north of the wall the whole friggin' time. That would be boring. I mean, I don't mean to bait and trigger you guys, but like, of course the guy got a show. Like, we only care about Arias Stark.

John Snow is so boring. All he doesn't stare and be bummed. Obey War was about Princess Leia. I mean, this is it. Whenever you make it about one of the female characters, you see what happens to get canceled, like, back girl. No.

Wow. Neil before General's as love. I'm just spicy. I'm just spicy right now. You're always in the first episode or two. John's back south of the wall. He's back in Winterfell. He's reunited with at least Sonsa.

I feel like you'd be crazy not to bring him. Kill him in the first season. I want him dead by the... You'd be crazy not to bring surviving starts. And then just have it be about Sonsa and Arias. Those were the best characters. Bran is in Kingsland. He's king.

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only at lemon.io slash twist. All right. So Molly, what else is that? Zod's just going to be all in on Game of Thrones forever, right? It sounds like he's just kind of killing literally everything that's not that. He's pulling the golden cloak. right now for all of the other properties. Yeah.

Well, at this point, I mean, I think the other thing that's pretty clear is he's, he's very down on animation. He's not an animation guy. They've been, they've been really just routing the entire cartoon network Warner Brothers animation team. Even if you've survived, at this point, they're signaling to you. Look, begin packing your bag. I thought animation made money.

Is animation not make money anymore? They must be seeing data that I'm not seeing. because everybody else seems pretty bullish on that. Like a lot of other streamers are putting a lot of bets on animation. Sony's strategy is hugely centered around anime and animation. So he must be looking at HBO Max numbers I'm not seeing. And like Disney animation views and cartoon network views are soft. Because these are all the shows he's cutting.

He's cutting a lot of the team over there. And he's put the fear of God into every cartoon network creator that their shows are going to vaporize. and disappear. I mean, nobody wants to be, you know, let's lower the budgets and increase the production. Because he just, they shut down Cape Crusader this week,

which was a follow-up to Batman the animated series, an iconic beloved series. Bruce Tim, the creator of the original Batman, was back. And it was produced by Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams. And they just signed this week, Matt Reeves, to a long, ongoing contract. They got him away from Netflix and signed him to WB. discovery, you're going to cancel a Batman animated series from like legendary creators?

Even as you sign the Batman director to come, like, it seems crazy. Yeah, I can't explain that one. He's postponing, and do we think this is for recuts or for marketing purposes, two big budget DC superhero movies, including Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2. I am not too worried about Shazam 2, but I do want Aquaman 2 to come out. I mean, they'll both come out. There's a lot, Aquaman 2 at this point, it's so hard to say, because there's so many different conflicting story.

There was the story Zazlov doesn't like the current cut. There's the Amber Hurd question kind of hangs over that whole thing. There's also Shazam 2, Aquaman 2, and the Flash interact. There are segments in those movies that pay off in the other movie. So every time they move one around, they've got to adjust the other two. Like Michael Keaton pops up in some of these. There's multiverse stuff going on. Okay, so this is a Tetris that they're trying to fix.

Every time they... Pieces keep dropping. Every time they mix one of these movies up, it's a ripple effect that is causing problems with the other movies. That's what happens when you fuck with the multiverse. And you've got, you know, Aquaman 2's got the Amber Hurd situation. Flash also has the Ezra Miller situation. Oh, right.

So they have two of their, you know, one of the top tier and one is second. tier character are very troubled. Yeah. What do you do with a disaster like that, Molly? What's the right thing to do? Just separate the art from the individual? Maybe, I mean, I think probably do what he's doing, which is push them out until the news cycle moves on, right? Like, let people forget about it. Oh, wow. How sinister. Delay. They kept pushing the Ezra Miller decision back, push it back. Then he kept scoring that things up. And now they've come out and said, I'm going to go get help. They're,

they've started the rehabilitation storyline. So hopefully by the time Flash is ready to come out, they've resuscitated their public image enough that we're all okay seeing in Ezra Miller movie. That's the, that's the thinking.

I'm not saying it's going to work. That would be my guess too, is it's all like delay, delay, delay, and there will be another Can I ask an honest question? Is anybody not going to go see Aquaman too because Amber Heard's in it? Is anybody not going to see the Flash because asra Miller was in it?

Am I crazy to think that it would have less than 10% impact? Maybe like right this second, you know, it might be a little bit of an impact, but I can't. What do you think, Lon? Is it, what would be you to put a percentage less revenue ticket sold? Yeah. I'm taking aside like public outcry on Twitter or whatever, but in terms of brass tax. I think that's what General Zod is about. I think it will matter.

I think it does impact some people, but not maybe as many as you think from special. all day on social media. Like, this is one of those. Twitter is not reality. And like, this may seem like the only thing that matters to people on social media. In the real world, even awareness of this story is going to be, like, surprisingly low. You know, like, a lot of people probably haven't even heard about Ezra Miller's running. I'm not up on that at all.

Or even know the name Ezra Miller and associate it with the flash. So you always have to take all that stuff with a little bit of a great assault. Can I ask another stupid question? don't these people have morality clauses when they're banking on them in this big way? Because if I remember correctly, like as but one example, Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., wasn't bankable, he wasn't bondable, I guess. You couldn't get insurance from a film. And, you know, they had to put all these clauses and listen, you better stay on the straight and narrow or else you don't get this part. And there were like significant financial repercussions if you screw up.

Don't Amber Hurd and Ezra Miller have those kind of clauses where it's like financially just brutal to them if they screw up? Yeah. I mean, we-we... Or do those things not work? We recently saw this with Jackass Forever. Bam Majera was in it and then he had a clause that he wasn't allowed that he had to take drug tests while they were making it. He failed the drug test. That's why he's not in the movie.

So these do still exist. The problem with both of these movies is they're already made. Like, if you're a Warner brother, like, yeah, I guess they could sue. Maybe they could sue Ezra Miller. But at this point, you've got a movie. It's worth more as a movie than it is as a lawsuit. Right. Or whatever.

Like, you want to release it as a movie. Get it out there. Speaking of movies and movies that we may or may not go to, let's talk about the return of movie pass, shall we? I love it. I love it. I love everything about this. For those of you who may have missed it, the movie pass was the movie theater subscription

service that everyone was like, wow, that makes no economic sense whatsoever. You could pay $10 a month and go and see as many movies as you want. And then not surprisingly, it shut down almost immediately back in 2018. But now, movie pass says a beta launch is coming on or around Labor Day weekend, including three pricing tiers that will, quote, generally be at $10, $20 or $30 a month and contain a certain number of credits for movies each month. Lon.

Are you long on this? Is this going to work? Uh, we need, it's like, TBD. We need a lot, we need a lot more info because the economics of movie pass didn't work. Like it was, people loved it. It was an amazing offer. Of course they did. It was not feasible economically.

People were seeing way, way, way too many movies. Theaters were losing money on this deal. It was just not a good deal for anybody other than people who got to see a lot of free movies. It was a great deal for them. Did you do it? Uh, yeah, I had movie pass. Towards the end. I wasn't one of the early people in because I was like, how could this possibly work?

It seems like a scam. And then once I figured out, oh, no, it's just VCs are giving them money and then they're blowing it. I'm sure I got on board eventually. How many movies did you see in your biggest month? You know, I'm never that big of a theater. Probably four. I mean, I probably went once a week at my most. But I knew people who were seeing 10, 12 movies a month, you know, going every night after work.

It was so awesome. Well, the thing was, you could also see movies. that this is the craziness Molly. It was, I think it was 14 bucks a month. You could see movies anywhere. And if you saw a movie and it wasn't part of the Movie Past network, like you would just send them the stub and they would pay you back in your account. It was the most bizarre system ever.

And it was getting people. I mean, I will say when it existed, it was amazing for just movie fandom in general because people were, people would take a chance. They would go see anything because it was free. They were just like, I showed up at the theater and I just walked into this and it was amazing. And so the diversity and breadth of movies that were getting viewed in theaters skyrocketed it overnight because of this offer, but it's not a feasible business model. So this new one, they're saying three different levels.

And then you're basically entering like a raffle. Like you're putting your name into a hat or a hopper and they're picking whoever's first come first serve, certain numbers of people get to see the movie if you're if you got in line early enough. And the different levels, you get more, you know, like they'll wait it more somehow, but they're not, it's not specific yet. So we don't know what the offer really is yet. One thing we do know is that they are partnered with movie theaters this time.

Like they, according to Business Insider, they said they have partnerships with 25% of the theaters in the U.S. Like previously, they weren't even partnering with theaters. So they weren't even getting any kind of a discount from theaters. They were just straight up buying theaters back. people, yeah. Which is bonkers. The other thing, one more thing before I, I, I, I, there's one more thing that makes

me very cautious about this, which is that the guy, one of the co-founders of movie past who bought it back and who's relaunching it. Also, it has his hands in a Web 3 company. It is like eyeball tracking on ads, like make sure someone watches a whole ad before they click away. And so obviously, that's what this is going to be. It's like, oh, you want your free movie ticket? Watch these five ads and take your token and then use that to get it.

It's like, no, I'm out. That's, that's all. That's what it would take for me to not be interested. If you are watching this on video, you will see me waving my red flag right now because that is a problem. Here's the thing. There is a business here. This could change the entire industry if they priced it like the epic or icon ski pass. It needs to cost 500 bucks a year.

And for the 500, you should get 20 tickets or something to that effect. Like, some number of tickets. Actually, it would be $50, would be $10. You should get 100 tickets for $500 a year, $5 a ticket. And you should be able to use it for yourself or a companion. And you should have to pay it in advance. So, you know, these ski passes started, you know, if you get a local one in Taho, I think it's $5,600. If you get it across the country and world like I do, it's like $800 or something.

But once you, a ski pass now is $150, $250 a day. So once you hit the fourth or fifth day, you've kind of broken even. So it's a great deal. But what it did was it gave them the money in advance. And then they could float the entire business on it. So this would be incredible. And what you should do is it should be $500 and you get, you know, 20 popcorns and 20 sodas, whatever size you want. And that would be a really cool way for these movie theaters to like have some base of revenue.

and to get more people buzzing about stories and talking to them. And then they should say, if you come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're the slowest days in the theater or you come before 6 p.m. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, if you come before 6 p.m., your companion ticket is free. So now you're filling it when it's empty, and people are buying more popcorn, and then you get more buzz about it.

It could totally change the whole nature of passion for films. It did for me, because when I got it, I bought it as an experiment, and I happened to be in L.A. on my own for a week ahead of my family coming out because I had some business to do. And I was staying downtown L.A. next to the AMC. And the AMC had like, I don't know how many theaters it has down there. It's a regal, I believe. A regal. Right. How many theaters is that thing? 20? Eight, 10, 12, maybe? It's big. It's pretty big. It was big. And I just went in there. And I watched, you know, all of these like independent films I had, all the major ones. I did five in a week or maybe 10 days. It was great.

That's what we were seeing. And that was great. I mean, the one other downside now is that a lot of the theater chain stole their idea. So AMC saw a movie pass and now added AMC plus or A plus. I have it. Yeah. A list. 10 bucks a month.

It's a month. And I get a free ticket every month. I get a ticket every month for 10 bucks. And you get a little bit of like higher level service, which movie pass should also integrate. Skipping the lines. Yeah. A list.

They've got a few other. And Cinemark also has one now. You know, so those theaters are going to be more inclined to go with their own loyalty programs than sign on to the third party movie pass one. So I don't know. Their train may have, they have sailed. It really all depends on the offer. It's got to be easy and it's still got to feel like cheap, like you're getting away with something for it to work. I want to go for the more high-end VIP service.

That's what they should be working on. I think it should be a big commitment up front and a great deal on the back end. But, Lon, as we wrap here, what should we be looking forward to in the next week or two? In the next week or two, what should we be looking forward to? Well, I mean, obviously. Molly's going to try to stump you with a recommendation. Oh, well, September 2nd, of course, which is a week from Friday, a week from tomorrow. We've got the first two episodes of Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power on Amazon.

That's a, that's a huge debut. I am also really looking forward to there's next week on Hulu. There's an FX series called The Patient. This comes from the creators of the Americans, which I don't know if you guys have seen. My favorite. So good. So the two guys who created The Americans, this is their new show. Steve Carell stars as a therapist who gets kidnapped by Donald Gleason, who is a serial killer

because the serial killer wants the therapist to like cure him. So he kidnapped some prison. What a great premise. A therapist and forces him to give him therapy to like cure his homicidal impulses. That's funny. That starts on Thursday, a week from today. What is that called? It's called the patient.

Oh my God. You can look up. There's a trailer out there right now. They bought that in the room. They heard that one sentence and they're like, it's Silence of the Lambs meets Dr. Melfi. Right. But like a little quirky, a little, little dark comedy. Yeah.

Yeah. So they're going to, so it's literally like if Hannibal Lecter, what was that therapy one that Gabriel Byrne did, I think, on H. Oh, in treatment. Treatment. So it's in treatment meets silence of the lamps is what you're telling us. Yeah, I mean, or I like Supranos almost. It's a little bit like if you

could imagine Tony Dr. Melfi relationship, but, you know, like Dr. Malfi is in a basement handcuff to a wall. Been taken hostage, yeah. But it's Steve Karel too. Okay, Molly, describe a film or TV series

that you like and you would like to see more of. This is where Lahn shines. So pick two or three series you like, or movies, that you wish you could see something similar to. I'll give you an example. If I, I love the film Dread. And I also loved Prey and the Predator series. So if I were to say to Lawn, hey, I enjoyed Dread, the Carl Urban, $30 million of low-finite. By Alex Garland. Yeah. Incredible sci-fi film. But I also like the Predator series and, you know, Prometheus. I like this kind of genre of intelligence, sci-fi, gritty, dark, blazing.

The Red Runner is my favorite film. Lon, what would another film for me to think about for series B? Well, I would recommend in terms of sci-fi, there's a great anime film called Bell that's now on HBO Max. It's almost like a ready player one kind of elements, but mixed with a beauty and the beast kind of thing, but with a sort of a dark sci-fi sort of twist. Wait, how do you spell that? B-E-L-L-E, just like Bell, like from Beauty and the Beast.

It's basically about this very shy, reserved girl in real life, but then there is this virtual, you know, massive virtual online community that she goes in. And there she's like a superstar singer, and she begins investigating who's this, like there's a beastly terrorist. Everybody's afraid of. And she decides to find them and figure out what's going on. So it becomes a play on Beauty and the Beast. That one, I thought was really good.

Also, I think day shift on Netflix, which is Jamie Fox. his new vampire hunting comedy. I think was a lot of fun and has kind of kind of some like some action, some martial arts, but also it's in this like fantasy vampire Los Angeles. I watched, by the way, I watch Predator 2 to get the scene with the with the at the end. At the end with the gun, the revolver. The Pirates gun. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Okay, Molly, now so you understand how the game is played. I also just watched Prey and it was. excellent. I like trying. Well, there's also, the one other one I was going to say, just in terms of action, there's a Korean film on Netflix right now called Carter. The same director

who did the Villaness a few years ago, the Villaness, a landmark Korean action film that actually ended up inspiring John Wick 3. Villaness has this big scene where a bunch of guys are sword fighting on the backs of motorcycles, and it was this very famous scene. And then John Wick 3,

they basically took that and were like, we're going to do that now too. So this guy's new film, it's almost like a crank style thing. You're following a guy who's got like a bomb implanted in his neck and he's got 24 hours to do this like top secret covert mission. The action is ridiculously over the top. Incredible. John Wu? No, no.

Ju-1. Blanking on the director's name. I'll look at it up. Carter, 2020. Carter, 2022. Watch this one and then go back and watch the villain as John Biongill. That's the guy's name. I'm in on that.

I have been for years, the only two series in my life that I wish I could replace are Buffy the Vampire series, Vampire Slayer and Alias. I loved Alias. And then if I just, the exact kind of movie that I want to watch right now that is not like the opposite of Game of Thrones is like Battle Los Angeles. Just indulge my military fetish and blow up a lot of aliens. Okay. Okay, well, the first one, because you said Buffy, I definitely feel like you need to see paper girls on Amazon, which is a graphic novel series adaptation about a group of, there are a bunch of paper girls in 1988, like literally newspaper delivery girls. And then they get sucked into a time vortex and end up getting, they end up getting, like, caught in the midst of a feud between groups of time travelers. But a lot of it ends up taking place in the present day, because they time travel here from the age.

and meet their, like, adult selves. Like, Ali Wong plays one of them grown-up. You know what's interesting? I remember this as a graphic novel because I went on Amazon. I did some searches for great graphic novels for teen girls or whatever, and this came up.

And so what I did was for my daughters, I just bought like 20 of the best graphic novels for girls, put them on a shelf in the house, and they never said anything, Molly. I just let them sit there. They just appeared. Every now and then I find one of my daughters reading one of them.

This was written by Brian K. Vaughn, who also did Why the Last Man, which was a fun series that never sort of got at some time. So this is a different one of his books that's now getting adapted. But they did it. Amazon did a great job. It's really fun.

The other one, I haven't gotten to watch this yet, but I really want to. There is a German action, period action series called Cleo, K-L-E-O. And it is about a former East German spy, and it's set right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and she's basically let go for,

she's been in prison, and she's basically let go for prison, because there is no more East Germany. And so she just goes on this path of revenge for everybody who wronged her during the Cold War. You really get me. You really get me, Lund. I cannot wait to watch that.

Wow, here's Leo. This is like why I'm like such good friends with Lange because I can use him for great suggestions. You know what I wish somebody would remake actually on that note is counterpart. Like if I could just have one campaign, it would be like, please, pick up counterpart. The creator follows me on Twitter now because we kept praising it on this show.

Oh my God. Tweet them. It's so, it was so good. So good. Thanks, Lon. We'll see you next time. Lon. You're the best. Everybody follow us Twitter.com slash lawns. See you guys. Thanks. All right, Molly, what an amazing week we've had thus far. Two days left we got to get through. You got a big Friday show. Remember, OK, boom, we're coming. And then of course, Sunday, we'll have VC Sunday school in a great climate interview. Yeah. As always, it's going to be amazing. Stay tuned for that. And we've got, let's see, news founder interviews,

OK Boomer, and see you tomorrow. All right. And follow us on the Twitter, Lonz, Mollywood, Jason, TWAI startups. Bye. Bye, bye, bye.