Scientifically Measuring Movie Love

Welcome back to the Bulwark goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bunch. The culture editor at The Bulwark, and I’m very pleased to be rejoined today by Kevin Getz. Now Kevin’s been on the show before. We had a great chat about his book, Audienceology, how movie govers, shape the films we love.

You you you gotta pick it up on Amazon. It’s really if you are interested in the world of filmmaking and how stuff gets to audiences and how they see it. You you have to understand what is going on in the the the testing process, and Kevin is the mass of that. And he also has a podcast out called don’t kill the messenger. And I I will say, look, I don’t actually listen to a lot of podcasts.

I’m I’m one of those people who, like, does more podcasts than they listen to because I just don’t have time. But I I make I make an exception for Kevin’s because it’s really interesting. He’s talking to folks he works with about the movies they’re making, the movies they’re testing together. The episode with Jason Blum in particular is is really incredible and just like really he’s Jason Blum is an open book. He he feels like he’s he feels like he’s happier to talk about this stuff than just about anybody else.

But also there’s an episode with Dean Dublin who folks will remember from Independence Day, Stargate, the library. You you you gotta check out his podcast don’t don’t kill the messenger. Go there, subscribe, leave reviews, etcetera. It it it it it’s something everyone should be listening to if they are interested in the art and business of filmmaking. Kevin, thank you for being back on the show.

I really appreciate it.

Yo, Sunny. I had to say that because I’m a Jersey boy. And and from Brooklyn originally. So Yo, Sunny. That’s my favorite.

You’re you’re terrific. And thank you so much for that beautiful shout out.

We’re gonna get to we’re gonna get to some of the stuff you talk about on your podcast and your book in a second here, but you were just telling me before we started that you have purchased a new company or purchased another company. You know, you so you are are the the owner operator of screen engine ASI,

which is a big testing firm, but you also have picked up coherency. What is coherency? Thank you for bringing it up. I’m so excited. The press release just dropped today,

I think, from a a podcast point of view. You are the exclusive here. So Coherancy is a company we’ve tried to go after. Even before COVID, then COVID structural kind of put up, you know, a delay in that acquisition. But it’s a research and branding firm.

A research and branding agency that specializes in emotional, the currency. So understanding just how much consumers love a particular brand or product and they do a lot of work in Hollywood, but they also do a lot of work outside of Hollywood. So one of the reasons that I thought the synergy was so great is in an industry like ours where emotional currency is what we trade in, like, how could we not add this? To our advertising testing, to our to our product testing, meaning our screenings, our pilot testing for the streamers, for linear, for cable. It’s so important to understand not just if someone is definitely interested in something, but what is the passion and the advocacy towards that particular piece of content.

How much are they gonna fight for it? And that is super important in my view to separate the good content from the great content. And, you know, people say you know, at different points in time, distribution is king. Marketing is king. Content is king.

Well, content is king. But cut but but not just content, but great content. And great content is content that really lives in that hierarchy, that top of the hierarchy of of of stuff that resonates with you in a visceral and emotional way. So I’m really excited to have this company started by Jeff Moleski, Steve Markov and Lee Loeb’s joint screen engine ASI, and I know the industry’s gonna love it. Well,

how does it how does it work exactly? I mean, are are we talking about, you know, a a questionnaire app of the fact? Or is it alive with dials and people are, you know Interesting.

Yeah. They do several things journeying and and and community chats and things like that. But their primary product is something called the love quotient. Which was actually born out of one of those matchmaking platforms initially. And it has an algorithm, proprietary secret sauce, if you will, that takes through question asking on a questionnaire the consumer’s point of view and then is able to put out a score attached to that based on emotional responses.

Howard Bauchner: Well,

that’s cool. That’s really that’s interesting. I’m curious to see how how and we’re

integrating both of us are. I I I I again, I just you know, I I it’s it’s it’s rare that I get so turned on by a product because we we’ve so many of us in the business. In my end of the business, I’ve seen and heard and been pitched so many things, but there’s such a uniqueness to this and it just makes intuitive sense that one of the things we’re missing when we’re trying to capture, like is something theatrical versus it? Is it a streamer, for example? It has to speak in a different way to a consumer, a way in which they’re gonna leave their homes if it’s theatrical to go to a movie theater.

That’s a call to action. That has to be measured differently than simple definite interest. And so there’s where I think this can be a an absolute, you know, effective tool that can change that paradigm.

Yeah. Oh, it’s it’s interesting that you mentioned the difference between theatrical and and streaming because that’s one of the things I wanted to to to get to. So let’s let’s hop to that. When you are when you’re looking at these numbers, what are you looking for when you were making a recommendation to a studio or to a streaming network? Okay.

This is something that you you gotta get in theaters. This is a this is a thing that’s really clicking and it’s clicking on this metric and this metric and this metric. Gotta get this in theaters. This on the other hand is something people seem to like, but it’s not they’re not that excited about

it. So let’s let’s maybe focus on streaming for that. Absolutely. Well, it’s a great question and it’s the question of the day, isn’t

it? First of all, I think that research needs to be conducted earlier than actually once you’ve you’ve made your product because there are a lot of economic consequences that can happen if you go the wrong way, that is to say that if you’re going to say we’re making this as a theatrical movie, there are costs associated with that from a marketing standpoint that that could really blow your model. So you need to know very early on before you green light the movie. Whether or not it’s going to go on the streaming a streaming platform or whether it’s going to go theatrically. And when I say theatrical, theatrical or something else, right now, the something else is mostly a streamer.

In the theatrical benchmark now, the the the the ticket to entry is really dictated by a certain level of advertisement. Like, you’ve gotta create an event around something. Whether it is special effects, whether it’s a great director, whether it is a star or several stars, whether it’s a unanimously great reviewed movie, Like, there has to be something to hang your hat on that is different than so many of the other movies that are not on that are not don’t have those elements that don’t have those kinds of special hooks So if you don’t have one of those, it’s really, really difficult to to to to open theatrically. And to justify, to make a business argument is why we should spend a minimum of thirty million dollars, let’s say, to open a wide release movie if you don’t have the the goods. Now, the movie could be really good Like, I’ve seen a lot of really good streaming movies that just don’t work theatrically.

If you watched the Globes last night, you saw that, you know, there’s several movies that people are like, what? What movie is that? But yet they they they’re terrific and they deserve to be seen. They just don’t justify a wide release because they’re more particular in nature and they don’t warrant spending big money particularly chasing a lot of eyeballs that will never see the movie, which is what you have to do when you’re advertising, say, on television because you’re not honing in on, right, what that who or that audience is. So there’s a lot of wasted eyeballs.

So you really want something that is something that’s made for either everybody or somebody as a ticket to entry, but not for nobody, and I know it’s a dumb negative. Meaning, nobody is more of a movie that has a psychographic behaviors and attitudes as the driving force of the audience, that is to say they have commonalities in a certain particular thing they like, whether it is French food or whether it is basket weaving or whether it’s golf. You can find these people and you can do it digitally much more efficiently for that type of campaign. But you can’t, very difficult to create what we call reach and frequency in a four week period to to go wide unless you you you spend real money to advertise broadly. So that think about the movies that are released, and you know, with that really warrant spending now that, of course, there’s perceptions to that because there are limited and platform releases.

But I’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that those are those movies are becoming harder and harder to make work because people aren’t really watching television right now, so they’re not seeing those ads. Mhmm. So you have to reach them and convey somehow that this is an experience that again you need to leave your home to go see if movie theater. So you need to decide early on before you green light what lane you’re playing in so that you can make the movie appropriately. The other thing you have to also do your homework on is, who is going to buy let’s say you most movies are relegated to a streaming service or some other alternative distribution than a theatrical distribution.

We only had seventy one wide releases last year, for example. This is like half of what they worked back in two thousand in the teens. Mhmm. Why well, very wide wide and very wide releases. But you have to know that sort of in advance and you want to you want to make sure that your your any money that you’re gonna put against that is justified.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. Totally. No. Totally. And and you raise a good point here, which is that you know, I’ll just explain this from my point of view.

From my point of view, once upon a time, I had a pretty good idea of what was gonna open and what wasn’t gonna open because I saw all the same ads as everyone else. I saw the ads on TV. I saw the billboards when I was driving. I saw I saw, you know, the magazine ads or whatever. Right?

I kind of understood basically, like, this has a good ad campaign. It’s gonna connect with audiences. They’re gonna show up. Now I have no idea what anybody is seeing anywhere. You know, people don’t watch linear TV anymore or the the people who do watch linear TV tend to be older who aren’t going to movies anyway.

Ad campaigns are all very micro targeted to your Facebook interest your Twitter interest, whatever else you’re in whatever you’re watching on Instagram. So everybody is seeing something else slightly different. From your perspective as a marketer, how hard is that to to kind of gauge what will work and who it will work with. I mean, like a movie let’s just take a specific example, a movie like Meghan, which came out last weekend Huge numbers, thirty million dollars, big opening for for Universal Blum House, all those guys. I didn’t see a single ad for that movie.

I never saw an ad for it. I think I may have seen only one trailer, but I was intensely aware of it because it had a great viral meme style marketing campaign. I mean, how do you how do you go to a studio and say, well, you could spend forty million dollars on ads or you could have a gift go viral. I like, I just don’t

understand how we work We we did work on that movie. And so in the in the playability stage, and the movie played really well and people were really humored by it. I’ve said this before, if you don’t have an elevated sense of fun, And I mean, you can actually gauge that. There’s questions that we can ask to gauge what that level is. So it’s not just like Oh, that’s that’s that’s enjoyable.

Words like that. But when you say, oh my god, this little this friggin doll, you know, dances and and is so cool. And suddenly, you can feel it. And this is why going back to the coherency measurement of love quotient, measuring that early on will tell you that you’ve got something that’s going to catch on. Whether it’s viral, whether you’re gonna capture it in an advertising, in a commercial or a trailer, you know that that lightening in a bottle if you will or that secret special sauce has to be bottled some way and you have a much better chance to do it when you know that you’ve got the goods.

And you gotta know and trust people like Screen Engine, NAI, that have measurements that can tell you you’re not quite at that level or you’re way above that level and, I mean, it can go the other way too. You have a movie that is intended to go to a streamer, but my god, people are over the moon about this. They are When they discover this movie, I worked on something the other night in San Diego, and it was an independent film that just surprised us all. I had no idea. And it spoke to where we are right now in our in our sort of apathy and in our and it was so feel good like so feel good.

Now, you know, it’s how I even said that. I didn’t say it was, oh, it was feel good. It was so feel good. It scored hugely. I believe that the right salesperson and the right studio or streamer or whomever that ultimately get sold to will recognize that, see those measurements and be able to capitalize and cash in on that.

And that to me is what happened with Meghan. Meghan had a cool effing premise and it was really executed well, but it had an elevated sense of fun. And the, I have to say, Brilliant I thought marketing campaign was able to capture that. And so you have to be able to do that. But what I was suggesting before is, Sonny, is try to get some of that if you can before you shoot a frame of film.

In other words, try to capture what that level is we call it capability testing, which is kind of a It kind of measures the DNA of something. You know, do you have the goods or not And, you know, you can only capture so much in a paragraph or two. But nonetheless, how does it? You can take an indication. Yeah.

Sorry

to interrupt. How does that work, actually? How do you how do you do you do you have, like, a a a group of people and you read them a synopsis and you say, what are you you’re interested? Basically,

the answer is yes. But when you recruit an audio a screening for an audience, we generally, if we don’t recruit it blind, meaning It’s just this is a new make major motion picture studios releasing this new comedy, and here’s a movie qualifier list. If you like these movies, you’re probably gonna like. You know, that’s sometimes how we recruit. But often we recruit with a concept.

We recruit with, like, a, I don’t know, a two to three hundred word concept. And that concept is an indication of interest because we can then say to the person hiring us your recruit ratio is. Now what does that mean? A recruit ratio is how many invitations does it take to get one body to show up. Mhmm.

And that number often is very very insightful in the the real interest because we’re actually asking people to leave their homes. So what is that conversion rate? We call it a recruit ratio. Now take that same premise and pretend that you’re not having a screening, but you’re gonna show it concept or two or three or eighteen or twenty. I do full slates of networks and studios where we test all of their ideas.

And create a hierarchy based on the concept of buy in. And you can see really that if you have fifty projects, there may be ten of them that are really at the high level. And ten that are real stinkers. And when I say stinkers from a marketing standpoint, they don’t have any teeth, the hope that I was talking about. And then you see thirty of them that are in what we call the murky middle.

And the murky middle is always the card part. Then we have to step in as the research company and say, how do we then create or suggest or find out ways to move the murky middle to the top or the bottom. So it’s a it’s a hierarchy system, but it really a picker, if you will, but it gives you a early sense of buy in. And I think that is so important. If it were me running a studio or running a, you know, service or whatever.

To me, that is the most important thing that I would do, whether they do it with us or not, is to measure what is your capability, what is your potentiality before I shoot a frame of film. That’s how it’s done. It’s done with survey research. It’s done with large numbers. It’s we work with outside sample companies who do this for a living and they’ve they you know who you you’re talk you know the people that you’re talking to are who they say they are.

And we curate them. We set quotas up so that we get, you know, fifty percent males and fifty percent females, and we get you know, twenty five percent eighteen to twenty four year olds and twenty five, twenty five to thirty four year olds and twenty five, thirty five to forty nine year olds and fifty plus for the other twenty five percent. We know that we do a diverse audience with ethnicity and race so that we’re getting a real representation of a particular, you know, the American sort of scene. We also do it internationally as well where we don’t concern ourselves with race and ethnicity as much. But then you can also begin to see, okay, maybe it’s not testing overall so great, but I’m a streamer and I need a movie for African American and Asian females over the age of thirty five.

This will say, oh, gosh. Wow. Look how strong and that movie could be everything everywhere all at once, for example. Which may not play to the general public as much. And you don’t wanna just dismiss it out of hand by not having capability.

You see? So there’s ways to do that.

Yeah. What is a good response ratio versus a bad response ratio when you’re when you’re looking at these audience? Hey.

Excellent recruit ratio is about a four to one or better. So but very rare, you know. I remember minions most recently had, like, a two to one ratio. It was, like, giving candy to a child, literally. A n a and we call it we do say it’s an easy ratio up to six up to a six.

About a seven, eight, nine to ten is a moderate recruit ratio. And then eleven, twelve, thirteen becomes difficult, and then very difficult, fourteen, fifteen, and above. And we have some that are in their twenties. Thirty. You know, we’ve also added sometimes we have to add financial incentive, whether it is and and that’s, you know, I’ve always been fine with that because the art of focus groups, if you’ve ever participated in one study, where you’re asked to come to a facility and you’re asked to to go behind glass, you know, and you’ve got to go behind you and and there and you’re whatever that could be toothpaste or whatever it may be.

You’re paid fifty bucks, seventy five bucks, a hundred bucks. You know? And so as more content keeps getting released, the special nature of going to a movie screening has really dissipated. And so you have to pay people for their time or acknowledge them in some way for their time. And we’ve done multiple studies to determine that, you know, whether you’re paying someone or not paying someone, I say, pay, it could be a movie ticket.

Could be two movie tickets or something. Right. Whether you’re incentivizing them or not is irrelevant in how they’re actually rating something. And if if if if again, if I was wrong about that, you’d know that every product category would have to do three focus groups which — No. — they’ve never done.

So it’s — Right. — it’s it’s a very effective way of of getting the audience that you want and need to show up because you don’t wanna just get one group. You wanna be able to see those happy accidents. I remember in my book Audienceology, I talked about this one movie years ago, Betty Thomas directed called, oh, John Tucker must die. And I remember she got to the screening in Woodland Hills, and it was like a it’s it’s it’s these girls who have the same boyfriend.

He’s, you know, screwing around on all of them. So they band together, I believe, and, like, Yeah. Kind of

Dick revenge flick. Dick

revenge flick. Thank you. So who’s your obvious audience for that? Younger females. Right?

Maybe older females. And she saw too many older males in the in the line. And I remember she’s saying, what’s going on here? We’re gonna be screwed. This is, you know, And we’re like, you know what?

Let’s just get this is we wanna get a a good swath of sort of everyone and see what happens. And of course, she had plenty of females and all that. What would happen is the male scored as well as the females. So in other words, I don’t think two guys are gonna say, hey, let’s grab a couple of beybeers and go see John Tucker must die. But they weren’t gonna reject it if the girlfriend or wife recommended seeing it, and they were gonna then say, this is a pretty cool movie.

And they saw it much more as a comedy And so that was a very good learning experience at that moment. And sometimes a happy accident can lead to great success. Yeah.

What are the things what are the things that was really interesting in your podcast with Jason Blum again? The podcast is don’t kill the messenger. Go get it on on Apple folks. I’m I’m telling you you gotta listen. But one of the things that was really interesting in that you you were talking to him about the the screenings for Getout.

Now, get out obviously is one of the huge big successes of our time. It it did great cinema score numbers for a horror movie, you know, it’s always hard to get those to to test well. But you said in in your in your show with Jason Blum that it it didn’t test well with the audiences, and that was because they didn’t they didn’t have any marketing aid to let them know what the movie was. And that that’s a really fascinating insight to me because it it isn’t we are at a weird time in movies where originals have a hard time breaking through finding an audience because nobody knows what what they’re about and nobody wants to take a chance on something. So how do you what what’s your point of view

on how marketing can help educate the audience and prepare them to enjoy something? Tremendously so, and not only marketing a marketing campaign, but critics can too. I’ve seen many, many movies over the

years. Get influenced because critics saying, basically, if you don’t like this, you’re not in the know or you’re not cool. And so if if you get unanimous, I don’t mean good. I mean, like, great, like, reviews, that can actually turn someone’s opinion someone maybe I need to give this a little bit more thought. Now, reviews are funny because the general public honestly doesn’t care that much about reviews.

They care about great reviews can drive a conversation forward and really bad reviews. Can almost create a negative downward pressure. But most of the reviews, as you know, are somewhere in the — Sure. — thirty’s, forty’s, fifty’s, sixty’s, seventies. That’s just basically noise to a lot of people.

And they listen to audience scores more than they listen to critics scores. However, for a particular audience, a specialty audience, critics still matter and but only if they are unanimously great. You know, I’m talking eighty five and above, say, on a rotten tomatoes type thing. Now marketing educates you, initiates you, persuades you if it’s really good and sets you up for the right the right the right thing, the right tone, the right the the fact that you have the permission to laugh at something that is maybe not overtly funny. A good campaign will will show that will communicate that message, and that’s really important.

The brilliance of Getout, let me just say and Jason Blum, is on record. So I’m not talking out of school by ever talking about a particular movie unless I’ve gotten permission from the people that are that I’m discussing. But get out didn’t score badly. It scored. It just didn’t score off the charts.

And the reason for that is many movies that have sort of a dual tonality or have a, you know, a mixed genre. Audiences can’t often peg them into a into a particular lane. And so they’re a little confused and so they don’t necessarily rate the movies as high as they might. Correct? You understand?

So — Right. — sure. So makes sense. Right? So in the in the case of Getout, Getout took such a turn and it was so interesting but people didn’t know necessarily what to make of it.

So that’s I think why it didn’t score so well. They were intrigued by it. I imagine they talked about it way after the the the the screening screenings. But I did notice that they were gonna have to do some heavy lifting by educating the audience, as you said, very smartly sunny to what they were in for. And I remember doing a lot of different I think it was I wanna say Josh Goldstein at the time who who had spearheaded the campaign and Michael Moses, excuse me, over at at Universal.

We also had to speak to, there was a particular sense of what the African American audience, how they saw this movie from a cultural cue standpoint, and how say non African American audiences saw this and their cultural cues and there are some cultural cue differences I’m a big believer in not looking at race and ethnicity in the in the in that sense. And they weren’t doing that. They were getting smarter than that. They were looking at the cues that they could then spearhead advertising that would touch again, going back to the emotional response of what resonated on both sides of that equation because clearly, it was a movie that was about racism and about that divisiveness and division. And if you couldn’t tap into that, it was just gonna be a generic horror movie, essentially.

And it was everything but that. It was really a very artistic piece. And It was a very, very interesting movie to work on for the reasons that you brought up, but also to see the success. One wonders today how it would resonate that we have as a as a culture, as a as a society, how we’ve evolved post post the murder of George Floyd and the and the movement that this industry has at least undergone. I think it’s been somewhat of a transformation.

I know as a business owner, our attention on diversity inclusion has been just off the charts and has changed dramatically. I think that the audiences today might not see the importance of the movie like they did then. And marketing again fed right into that at the time was the perfect time for that movie to come out. And it really addressed certain issues. Yeah.

Yeah. One thing, you know, one thing you had you mentioned a little bit earlier, eventizing. Eventizing movies and making them a a, you know, it’s either look, this is the new MCU movie, so it’s an event. You gotta come see it, so it’s not spoiled for you or, you know, it’s a new horror movie. You wanna you wanna go see it and experience it with an audience.

One thing that used to be eventized every year, awards season movies. Right? Oscar movies, prestige pictures. And that seems to have gone kind of away. I mean, I it seems it seems that the the audiences are not excited for these anymore.

Regardless of how good they are. I mean, a movie like thirteen lives. Thirteen lives, the Ron Howard movie about the the Rescue of the Thai soccer players in the cave made my top ten of the year. What am I what am my favorite It is. And

by the way, Sunny, It’s extraordinary. I worked on the movie with Ron and and, you know, MGM. And it was spectacular. And I’m gonna say, because they publicly said this, one of the highest testing movies that we’d ever tested. Right.

Well,

so here’s my question though. Here you you’ve got a movie that tests this great. It’s got a great pedigree. It’s got great stars and guys like Colin Farrell are in it. It it it has it just has this it has everything going for it.

And it got a limited theatrical release, which is nice, but it it it’s gonna most are gonna see this on streaming. It did it did not get a big wide release. And I’m I’m curious why? Why why have how have we lost that ability to, again, eventize to use your word a a a a

prestige award season, but also just like very good, thrilling, dramatic picture like this. Well, you use the word, use the operative. Dramatic. This is a no indictment on the movie

or Ron, who I consider a friend, or and Brian, also who I consider a friend and Michael Rosenberg and Matt Hole team and all the MGM folks that no indictment at all on them. It’s about consumers. And consumers customers are seeing dramas as something that they could easily see at home and can experience at home. There’s no great cinematic reason to usually go There is sometimes many people cry at dramas and many people don’t like to cry in public. For example.

There’s an intimacy about a drama, and

there’s

a sense of I’ve seen this story before, whether it is the Chilean minors movie. In this case, this was about other kids that got caught in a time — Yeah. — whether I saw it in it’s not something that feels from its DNA that is altogether new and different. It is may be the best version of something that it feels familiar, but there is a familiarity to it. That people are not called to see this and reviews as great as they may be as I said, are typically not the impetus for a general audience movie.

They might create that particular audience to go see it. But and I don’t even know what the what the reviews were on the movie, but I can tell you that I I thought the movie was spectacular. I’m like you. It’s on my top ten list. But like, you know, are people going to leave their homes when you put a movie like thirteen lives next to Avatar.

And Avatar is a movie that I went to see last week and was blown away by. Now you could say it was too long. You could say it was it was, you know, I don’t know, confusing because there were so many story lines, but it was it elevated the cinematic experience. It absolutely fit into that. For that reason, it will be one of my choices probably for the Academy Award.

I say probably because I’m not really allowed to say what I’m voting for or not or denominating. But I will say that there is we we need we all should as academy members, I think have a responsibility to say, what is sort of elevating our art form? What is elevating our our field of motion pictures. And there’s no question that Avatar does that. And it’s not just good special effects.

That would be — Mhmm. — absolutely, you know, minimizing James Cameron’s vision and it’s You feel something, you you know, you it’s you you you invest in these characters. And yet it you’re immersed in a whole new world. So any drama, put that against that. And you answer your own question, Is it is

is part of this I’m sorry to harp on this, but it it is really interesting to me. I I’m I’m I’ve been trying to figure this out now two, three years. What what’s going on? Is is this a is it a function of TV? The the rise of prestige TV kind of training adults to be like, you know what’s good is, shows like Sopranos and mad men.

And that’s where the, like, the serious adult drama storytelling is One hundred percent. One

hundred percent. That is exactly what has happened. The great content, the full meal, if you will. If you think of a movie, you’ve got ninety minutes to two two and a half hours of entertainment. And if you look at that against a white Lotus, that has, whatever it is, eight episodes — Right.

— that that are, you know, it’s just you you you learn and grow with these characters and you and you can watch them essentially, you know, somehow they’re delaying a bunch. And but many times they come out altogether, so you could watch them over a weekend or something. It’s

just

a fuller meal. And and it’s a fuller meal that is quality, that is engaging and that you don’t have to leave your home to see. I mean, that really becomes the question I don’t think there’s anybody that’s in our in the movie business who’s like closed movie theaters. Like, that would be Cilean. We grew up with them.

We love them. And people love going to the movies. But they’re not gonna go to see the few movies like they did when we told them, when we told them, this is what you have to see this weekend. Two or three movies. Here you go.

Take it or leave it. Now they’re like, if you don’t serve me something that I really wanna see, I really wanna see this. It’s elevated fun. It’s got a hook. It’s got a reason and an experience for me to lead my home.

I’m gonna stay home. And watch something because there’s so much great stuff there. So people are going to see going are still gonna go to the movies but they’re gonna see far far fewer films. You know? That’s not changing.

That’s not something there were thirty something fewer films than the prior year wide releases. That’s not gonna all of a sudden boost up. Like, people are gonna get wise to it and understand, so then other folks are gonna say, well, So they’re only gonna make superhero movies in tentpoles. Well, hopefully, that’s not all we’re gonna see. But yeah, they’re gonna make event style movies.

But there are some great movies. Look at look at that. My favorite movie of

the

year, well, one of my three favorites. Maverick,

I mean, that’s

not a superhero movie. It’s just a great cinematic experience and not just for Tom, who I’m, you know, absolutely in love with as a as a as a as a man and as a as an actor. He he’s just he gets it, you know? And he knows how to do that. Did you see that trailer for Mission Impossible, by the way?

With the stunt? Yeah. Come on. That’s an experience. I can’t wait to see that for that reason.

You know, they just created this

And then let me tell you another thing that I thought

was incredibly theatrical in my opinion, which was the Oppenheimer movie. Mhmm. Now at the at the core of that, isn’t it a drama? But they managed to Now, Chris Nolan, people can say, don’t just say Chris Nolan. Chris Nolan understands intrinsically what it means to elevate the cinematic experience.

He just does. And so as a result of that, that movie which is a drama and there could be a documentary on Oppenheimer on any Netflix or any other place. Is not the same thing as seeing that and those bombs exploding in the It’s just How do I say this cool? And again, I’m hoping that this love quotient is something that can measure that because right now it’s really difficult to capture as you mentioned, that sort of lightning in a bottle. And I’m hoping that we will be able to bring that emotional sort of measurement to the table and help people to determine better which way this should go.

Because one thing I didn’t get to before, which is, alright, we talked about pre measurement. But now what happens if you made a movie and it scores mediocre. In a mediocre fashion, you know, you you test a movie, it scores in a mediocre way, and you don’t quite know what to do with it because do I spend the extra fifty million, sixty million worldwide marketing or do I cut my losses No streamer really wants it. What do I do now? That’s a scenario that you don’t want to find yourselves in.

That’s a really difficult one because now you’re stuck with a really expensive movie that is kind of a feathered fish. Mhmm. And from a business point of view, you can lose a lot of money. That’s why the pre understanding is so very important in my view.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned Top Gun Maverick because I I I, you know, I’ve written about this before. Is it one of your top ten? Sunny?

It’s it’s in my it’s in

my top ten. And I think I mean, I think the academy is insane if they don’t. If it’s not at the very least nominated for best Can I just say

something about it? Let me talk about the Academy for a sec. Because I’m a huge fan of fan of the Academy. And I I I’ve been on the executive committee in my branch, which is the marketing and PR branch, for many years until I turned out I have to take a two year hiatus to be considered on again. But it’s not like the academy votes for these.

These are people who are voting their hearts and minds. Now, I would say to you, consider filmmaking as I just mentioned with Avatar that elevates the art of the cinematic experience. I actually think Maverick did that. So I agree with you. But it’s not like we’re trying to create ratings for a show.

That’s not what we’re doing. We’re trying to Now that also means on the other side, you don’t have to pick movies that have wonderful, weird stories that have not a lot of character development, but there’s, you know, you you gotta look at both sides of that. You know, you gotta look — Yeah. — quote, that’s not a great example, but you know what I mean? Something that is — Sure.

— very small in in particular. What I do look, I need criteria is what I mean. I mean, tar Total. Total. Total.

Total. Total. Total is a great movie, you know? And But, you know, it’s not doing it’s

not

doing box office business, and one wonders why that is. Well, look, I

mean, this is this is my my whole thing is I love Tar is my number one revealer. No. I love Tar. I loved it. I thought it was great.

I mean,

you and I should hang because you and I agree on on so many movies, man. Well,

this is but if but if if if the if the voters of the Academy picked that as best movie of the year, they you guys might as well shut the Oscars down because I, like, I the the audience I I understand you don’t wanna you’re not chasing ratings and and all that. But if the Academy Awards is a showcase for the for for the business of Hollywood and the great things that everyone’s doing, everyone’s just gonna tune out. If a movie even a movie as good as Tar, which I love, again, my number one picture of the year, I just I I can’t see it winning best picture for basic practical prosaic reasons. We are, as I

said, we are artists working to bring an attention to the most artistic experience and that could be a small movie like a hurt locker in one year and it could be a titanic in another year. I mean, it’s not or a far as gump, you know. It’s like it’s not about we’re trying to create a reputational Look, we we have certain things that we’re trying to consider. And and some of the criteria because excellence comes in many different ways. Excellence just doesn’t come in a a very particular script.

It also comes in extraordinary special effects. It also Mhmm. Because we’re trying to look at the whole world of filmmaking. And in Maverick’s case, man, it touched so many of those areas. You know, Fableman’s, you know, is a very, very moving story, very intimate story, something that’s out of Steven’s typical wheelhouse in that, it it is something that he spoke about last night.

Extremely close to him, took him a long time to be able to get that. And as our greatest filmmaker. I won’t say whoever I won’t say in our generation. I’d say whoever lived. I do think that that’s its own hook.

To intrigued people to see the movie. What went in the mind and makeup and composition of this guy? And it does a really good job of sort of getting under that and having us figure it out. And I hope that people, you know, just because they haven’t seen it, Well, A will see it, but I hope the academy also sees that as not just you you know, if It’s like I said this about Woody Allen, and and I say it about Steven Spielberg. It’s like, imagine the worst movie that either of those two gents make.

And you see it only that movie. It would be discovered as a great movie. Do you do you know what I mean? Like, natural.

We just

expect them to hit it out of the park every single time. And I think that that’s very, very very, very interesting that you we can’t put undue expectation. Each picture has its own sort of special you know, special thing about it. Sure. Totally.

Alright.

I I’m I’m running along here. Oh, gosh. You know,

to wrap it up. I talk for

I I always like to ask at the end if if there’s anything I should have asked if you think there’s anything folks should know about. Marketing, what’s in what’s in theaters? What anything else? What what did I what did I not ask that you think folks folks should

know about? I think it’s more about what you’re talking about with the Oscars. And and and let me be an advocate for the audience for a second. The audience is in the driver’s seat. Okay?

And the audience has a lot more sway and opinion than they think. When you’re talking about the Oscars, you’re talking about curated group of the best in the motion picture arts who are coming together to decide what speaks to them, and as I said, what elevates filmmaking. Audiences have a different barometer. That’s why often the Oscars are not necessarily in sync

with

the general audience. Because the audience just wants to be entertained in a heightened way and have either not either have both an intellectual satisfactory experience, but also an emotional satisfactory experience. And if you capture that and you have this elevated sense of fun, a movie will succeed. I have an adage that I’ve used and we can have a different show on this because It’s what my second book which I’m writing right now through Simon and Schuster called had a score in Hollywood. It’s about getting to the green light.

And what goes into that? And what audience how do audiences inform that decision? And they really do and should. And I’m hoping that our people that are green lighting movies do listen to to the to the audience. And as I end every podcast with I say thank you for tuning in, we appreciate you being part of

the

movie making process, your opinions matter.

Yeah. And that is a that’s a good way to sign off here. Again, Kevin, thank you for being on the show. Name of the book is name of the first book. I’m I’m glad to hear we we’re getting a sequel.

Is Audienceology, how moviegoers shape the films we love. There will be a link to it in the email, make sure you click on that. And and the pie cast again. Don’t kill the messenger. Again, if you want to understand how a one of the most important and underappreciated parts of the film making process, the audience testing.

I appreciate you

saying, underappreciated, by the way. It’s and and I I

don’t think I just don’t think people think about it. For I mean, it’s and this is invisible to audiences probably for good reason, you know. But — Yes. But but it’s it’s it’s it’s it is a must understand if you wanna understand the business of show biz. So check out his podcast in his book.

My name is Sunny Bunch. I’m a cult editor at the Bulwark, and I will be back next week with another episode of the Bulwark Coast of Hollywood. We’ll see you guys

It could be information to change your life forever, or that something you should know podcast could just be something interesting. Talk talking about the benefits of play. My guest is Joanna Fortune author of the book, why we play, how to find joy in meaning in everyday life. Playfulness in the life of models in terms of its psychosocial impact is under studied if anything, but the research that is available does point a myriad of pro social benefits and psychological benefits. Something you should know wherever you

listen.