For Lego, net zero goals are anything but child’s play
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Welcome to Most Innovative Companies. I'm your host, Yasmin Gagne, joined by my producer, Josh Christensen. Hey, Josh. Hey, Yas. So I have a question pertaining to our segment, Be Guest Today, which we'll learn about. And it's my favorite question to ask everyone from a very famous movie. Okay. What's your favorite scary movie? The Shining. Hands down, The Shining. The Shining's your favorite movie? It's like one of my

It's a great movie. It's a great movie. It's probably like one or two in terms of my favorite, probably number two favorite movie of all time. It's a great movie.

It's iconic. You can't. It's so good. I really wanted to get, when I moved to a new apartment, I wanted to get the carpet with the rug print from the hotel. Why? The like orange and red design. That's, no. That's a gross. It's all, everything's bad. Everything, like that movie holds up too. It's legit scary. It's really good. Builds suspense. Yeah, it's just that sort of like creepy. It's not overly jump scary. It's great. What's your favorite scary movie? Oh, God.

Oh, God, I go back and forth for a lot of times. I mean, I'm always a fan of the classics. Halloween, the original Halloween is terrific. But I rewatch the Scream franchise every single year. It's got that, it's like funny and scary. It's the meta. It's got some comedy. It's great. Like, I don't know if this is a technical term for them, but I call it like popcorn horror movies where it's just like, it's the ones that are just like so watchable. I'm pretty squeamish. I think Scream is fine, but like Saw...

to me is like doesn't do it because it's like too gross. Saw movies are super campy in how they are but like what they tried to accomplish with that series honestly on rewatch is really impressive. But then they tried to do that spinoff series with Chris Rock something from the book of Saw. I don't know it's not good though but we'll talk more about scary movies in a little bit. Very soon.

But first, do we have any housekeeping we can finally not mention the festival? Well, no more festival, although you'll be hearing some panels, including today's segment B coming up and some highlights from festival. And it'll only be a matter of time before we start plugging 2024 Innovation Festival. But I did want to send out a call to action to all of our listeners right now to leave a review.

on our podcast. You've subscribed, you've listened, leave a review. Some of you have slid into our DMs and given us weird feedback. We love that. That's great. You can criticize my grammar on Instagram. You can tell me I have an epic giggle anytime.

That one's wild. Later on today's episode, we'll hear the panel I moderated at our Innovation Festival last week. I chatted with Jason Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse, David Gordon Green, the director of The Exorcist Believer and Pineapple Express, crucially, and Emma Tommy, the director of Five Nights at Freddy's. We discuss what Blum calls the riskiest undertaking of his career. But first...

Lego is trying to be more sustainable in its design, and here to help me break this down is Fast Company Senior Editor Liz Stinson. Hey, Liz. Hey, Yaz. Let's talk Lego. Broadly, Lego made this pledge to...

make its manufacturing more sustainable. And it seems like it's changing course. Tell me, sort of like set the scene for all this. So the story starts a couple days ago when the Financial Times reported that after years of material research and innovation, Lego is now going to ditch or at least scale back

I mean, it's a little bit fuzzy because they're still working on this, but they're going to scale back its efforts to replace ABS plastic with a more sustainable material. So ABS is a plastic that requires a lot of petroleum to make.

This is news because not only is Lego probably the most influential toy company in the world, but it's news because Lego has made it news. You don't see like Mattel making sustainability pledges. I can't really speak to that. I think that everyone is making sustainability pledges. Whether or not they're actually holding themselves accountable to them is an entirely different question.

But, you know, over the last decade, Lego has widely publicized its efforts to become more sustainable. At one point, like you said, the company pledged to eliminate petroleum-based plastics from its line of products by 2030. Mm-hmm.

At the core of these efforts is this magical new material that can function just as well as the ABS plastic it had been using for decades. I mean, Lego has been making these little bricks for 60 years and they really haven't changed in structure. But, you know, changing that, as it turns out, is a really hard thing to do. And this week, Lego admitted as much. Why is it so hard? Like, tell me about the testing process and why it hasn't worked out.

Well, first, I mean, I think it's important to kind of have a sense of what makes Lego special. So there are certain characteristics of Lego that make it a really great product, one that can last decades. So it's remarkably rigid and sturdy. So Lego prides itself on something that it calls clutch power, which is this really wonderfully evocative term to describe the ability of its bricks to attach and then detach from each other automatically.

over and over again. And that's important because Lego bricks are abused by the children who play with them. It sounds like a sports statistic, like clutch power. Sounds like a baseball statistic. I learned that phrase this week and I love it. It's so good. It's fantastic. Yeah. The kids, they chew on them. I know this from personal experience.

And they throw them, they play with them really, really hard. And so they require a certain rigidity that is hard to find in recycled plastics. The recycled plastic that Lego had been trying to work with most recently is something called, and please forgive my pronunciation here, but I think it's polyethylene terephthalate.

Cool. We're never going to say that again. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that they call it our pet plastic for short. So let's just stick with that. But anyway, it's significantly less rigid than ABS. Tim Brooks, who is Lego's head of sustainability, had, and actually a Fast Company most creative person, I think, from like 2019, said,

had this amazing quote in the Financial Times piece. He said that using ARPET to make bricks is like trying to make a bike out of wood instead of steel, if that gives you any sense of what this material is capable of. Anyway, Lego realized to make this ARPET material work, it would basically have to reformulate the plastic to make it safer and also more durable. But doing that

would actually require intensive amounts of energy that would effectively negate any sustainability gains it made by switching to a recycled plastic. So, you know, Lego said it would ultimately lead to more carbon emissions to switch to this recycled plastic.

Because of the, like, sort of factory power it would require? It seems so. We didn't get any details around exactly what they meant by this, but it sounds like they would have to completely retool their manufacturing, which would, you know, cost a lot of money, but also a lot of time and actual energy. And I think that that, again, negates any material gains in the sustainability efforts. It's interesting because, like, that's a really hard thing to admit. People want a really clean solution and being able to say, I'm going to swap out this really bad,

bad material for this better material is a super clean story. You've got a great headline saying you're going to do something more incremental. It's a harder tale to spin, I think, and get people excited about. You know, they're still pledging, I think the company is still pledging to reduce its emissions by 37% compared to 2019. So it's not like they've given up

on sustainability initiatives, right? Yeah. I mean, they're still definitely working towards that. And I think that's important to remember. We actually got a comment back from Lego today saying that this isn't the end of their efforts, even though that's what the big narrative has been this week. Really what they're trying to do is just take this particular material out of the equation. They're going to keep experimenting with different types of plastic.

that could potentially someday replace ABS, but this RPET material is not going to be it. But to your larger point, yeah, they're looking to reduce their CO2 footprint by 37% compared to their 2019 levels. And they're putting a lot of money behind it too. So they said that they're going to be tripling their spending on sustainability efforts to 1.4 billion in the four years leading up to 2025. So I guess they've been spending a lot of money so far and they're going to continue doing so.

They didn't give a lot of info on what that is going to be, but I know that they have a really big team behind all of their sustainability efforts. And I suspect that that is not going to shrink. It's probably only going to grow. It's also worth saying that Lego is making strides in other areas. They're going to be transitioning to paper packaging fully by 2025. And they're also going to be trying to reduce the carbon footprint of ABS itself.

by adding bio-based and recycled materials into that polymer. So they're experimenting with other alternative plastics. They're going to be changing the formulation of ABS in general. So they're going to be doing this incrementally instead of a wholesale swap of materials, which again is a valid way to go about this. It's just a lot less grabby of a headline.

Yeah, they sort of like over-promised and under-delivered or like promised in the wrong way to people, right? That's the real issue here. Yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of where the story gets complicated because Lego is doing a lot on these efforts and it's hard to begrudge them for being honest about the data that they're getting back. What Lego has done over the last decade of communicating the strategy is not...

not greenwashing exactly, but it's not not greenwashing. The reason people feel let down is not because Lego isn't trying to do better. They definitely are. But like you said, they promised too much and they announced it too early. Had they simply done the research in the background and then announced it earlier

if and when something actually was going to work out. I don't think we'd be talking about this right now. Instead, we got a play-by-play where every small win on their end was a media moment. And I don't know. I mean, in some ways, I feel like it's a short-term gain for long-term pain strategy, which has left a lot of people disappointed.

That's like when I pitch a feature and I'm like, you have no idea how amazing this is going to be. And let me tell you, I have one due in two days. Lower that bar. No, it's the roller coaster of the feature story. This is a great idea. Oh God, now I have to do it. Actually, it's going to be good. And then like, as you turn it in, you're just way down again. Get that first edit back. You're like, dear Lord. You know, it's,

The other thing that's funny is like, it's hard for a company that it literally makes plastic bricks. I know they have like a recycling program or something. Like, tell me about that. That was the big argument that our writer, Kay Zeus, made is that really, if you want to change your environmental impact, you really just have to be producing less.

And that is a hard thing to swallow for companies who are trying to maximize their profit. But Lego is working on recycling programs. And I think that that is going to be a bigger part of their strategy. Right now, they already have something called FreePlay where people donate their Legos, they clean them, and then...

children who are in need can play with them. I think that's great. I don't exactly know how they're going to scale that up to convince people to pay for used Legos, but maybe that can happen and I hope it happens because that's the whole premise of this plastic. It lasts forever. It should last forever. I think it's a

huge ask for anyone to keep an entire Lego set well organized. Are you kidding me? No, absolutely impossible. But you know, if you're just like free playing with your Legos, maybe it's possible. If you're trying to like build an actual Batmobile, you might be in trouble. Yeah.

Isn't this kind of what the business side of it they try to combat because they last forever? My nephews currently have my old sets of Legos right now, but then they create more and more bespoke sets that are tapping into pop culture with the Star Wars sets or the Marvel sets and business priorities coming up against the sustainability priorities.

Are you in a Lego household, Liz? I am not in a Lego household. I am in a magnetile household at the moment. Lego is just a little bit too small for my 16 month old. I have a three year old who would be very, very into Lego, but I can't bring them into our house because he is also at the point of thinking that they're candy.

What is a magnetile? Magnetiles are so cool. They are these plastic pieces that connect together and you can build these massive structures with them. They connect on the edges of the tiles. That's neat. I think I know what you're talking about now. I think my nephews had those growing up too. Well, anyways, magnetile, if you want a sponsor, this is some free publicity for you. Exactly. I think I'm never going to let Legos into my home if I have...

Well, your feet will thank you. Yeah, that's what I'm saying is too painful. The praise is too much. The praise is too high. We're going to take a quick break now, followed by my conversation with Jason Blum, David Gordon Green, and Emma Tommy at our Innovation Festival last week. Hi, everyone. So I have some questions for the audience before we start. Has anyone here played Five Nights at Freddy's?

Whoa. One, two, three. You guys, you better leave here immediately and go start playing. Yeah. This is unbelievable. New hobby found. Has anyone seen an Exorcist movie? Okay, we have a lot. All right, all right. That's a lot better. And has anyone seen a Blumhouse movie?

Guys, people not raising their hands. There are a few people who didn't raise their hands. I'd like to quiz them. So I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm a writer and editor at Fast Company, and I host our weekly podcast, Most Innovative Companies. And I don't like speaking for people, so I'm going to get you guys to introduce yourselves. Emma, why don't we start with you? My name's Amitami. I'm the director of Five Nights at Freddy's, which you will all soon be playing, we've already established.

I'm David Green, the director of the new Blumhouse film, The Exorcist: Believer, which will come out in a couple weeks, so hopefully you'll enjoy it. And I'm Jason Blum, the founder of Blumhouse. Jason, I think we've got to get the hard part of this panel out of the way for you. I don't know if you've heard there's a strike on. I did hear that. And this is a broad question about it, but broadly, what needs to change about the way business is conducted in Hollywood?

What has to change is, which is, you know, since streaming has started, this notion of hiding the performance of the movie or television, the show that you've made, I think is...

very detrimental to our business. So what has to change is we just need transparency. The people who make the stuff that people watch, we just need to know how many people watch it. That's-- fundamentally, I would say that has to change, and then I would say, in terms of the strike negotiations, I think the ecosystem of Hollywood is very small and fragile, and it kind of breaks my heart

the rhetoric on both sides. It's not helpful. The CEOs are not evil. The artists are not greedy. People are trying, you know, the artists are trying to get a fair deal. I'm on their side in terms of demanding transparency, but I wish that we would all talk about each other with a little bit more compassion. - On August 8th, you tweeted, "Anyone working in Hollywood who is saying the strike is not impacting them is full of baloney."

How is this strike impacting Blumhouse? Terribly. That was a direct comment about rhetoric. That was actually talking about the CEOs. Although it was misunderstood, a lot of the CEOs would say on a quarterly basis at their earnings call, on a quarterly basis, it's not affecting us. That's fair. But on an overall business basis, of course, it's affecting all those companies. It's affecting us terribly. Our television company is

been decimated. Our movie company was okay for about eight weeks, but we're now, we have six

wide-release movies next year that were baked and done, and we now may be down to three or four. So it's cutting our movie business in half. So it's definitely effective. Let's talk a little bit about the projects. David, or as Jason described you in another recent tweet, the handsome and talented David...

Handsome and talented. Handsome and talented. You didn't say anything about Emma. No, I've learned my lesson. Before reviving The Exorcist, you revived another popular series, Halloween. What did you learn about adapting or reviving a franchise that you brought to this project? A lot of what I learned is the importance of acknowledging the legacy, the existing fan base.

but not discounting the new audience that's there to discover your work, discover the story, and then to look back at the movies that inspired it. And so for Halloween, it was great because we aligned ourselves with John Carpenter, the director of the original film, and of course the icon, Jamie Lee Curtis,

and then you've got this mask of Michael Myers that can be what you want, and so you can integrate that into a contemporary business model. The Exorcist was another opportunity to take what we love about a film that's 50 years old but kind of transcends time. It's as unnerving to audiences today as it was 50 years ago when William Friedkin made the first film, and so we invited another icon, Ellen Burstyn,

to come and join us and be our kind of, I don't know, fairy godmother for me, a very inspirational guru voice as we're creating this project that needs to come from some element that feels organic to the origins of this project.

and then find a way, which can be difficult, of taking a young audience, a contemporary horror-going audience, and make this something that they're fascinated by, intrigued by, tell their friends to go see, and have conversations about the movie at the end of the movie, much like the original, inspired those kind of debates, controversies, and excitements.

Emma, I want to talk about Five Nights at Freddy's, which you wouldn't know it from this crowd, but is based on a popular video game. We've seen some successful video adaptations. I'm thinking of The Last of Us on HBO. Others have kind of flopped, right? How did you approach this project with that in mind?

Well, we also, I mean, not totally dissimilar to you guys working with John Carpenter, we were so lucky to have the creator of the game, Scott Cawthon, involved in the project. And

that was really a guiding light for us creatively. And in terms of tapping into the fan base, I was once like you and did not know what Five Nights at Freddy's was and became really immersed in the world once Jason brought up the project and I was fortunate enough to be able to pitch on it. And for me, the world felt really familiar because it was based on a haunted world

Pizzeria arcade a la the 80s 90s with animatronics and I was like, oh I remember those so well and they freaked me out but they were also so fun and what a perfect setting for a great horror film and what a perfect company to produce this film. So yeah, I think we just like really we needed the creator of the game to be a part of it in order to know we were gonna get it right for the fan base.

The movie was in development forever, though. Like 10 years, right? Yeah, I think Jason can speak for that. Tell me about that. Well, we're really lucky. Well, I shouldn't pick favorites, but we're definitely very, very lucky to be in business with both of these amazing artists. And I'll tell a story about Emma first. So Warner Brothers was developing this about 10 years ago, and I was aware of it, and the game...

Just like you said, the game has extraordinary reach, extraordinary reach. So I was very interested in seeing it. And there's a good mythology to the game. So it's easily adaptable into... It's not easily adaptable, but there was a lot to adapt into a movie. And Warner Brothers let the option go. I got in touch with Scott and we partnered. And Scott is a...

very eccentric genius who's come up with this entire universe, which is amazing. And he had very specific ideas about what the movie should be. And when we first came into it, I think I wasn't listening enough. And I said, well, those are good ideas, but this is a better way to make the movie. And I paired him with director and writer after director and writer after director and writer. I think we had...

six or eight of them and it was not until Emma Scott saw Emma's movie and then got on the phone with Emma and Emma was able to make him comfortable and

Through that process and what's interesting about that is you don't people think of what's it? What's a director's job a director has in many many jobs in this case the job the the the job that Emma was able to do that no one else was able to do is Unusual not necessarily connected to directing which is to make the person who came up with the IP comfortable and Emma and Scott had an incredibly fruitful partnership which started what two or three years ago and

And Emma did a spectacular job on the movie and an equally spectacular job making sure Scott was comfortable with what the movie was and that the movie would satisfy fans of the game, which was Scott's primary concern. And so my hat's off to you really for doing that. It was amazing. Thanks. Emma, how did you balance putting out your artistic vision with this kind of pre-existing fan base?

Yeah, well, I mean, I was, I remember one of the first chats I had with Jason about this, he was like, this is a movie for the fans. This is for the fan base. And I was like, but this is a movie I would want to see. And I don't know the game. Like, this is, this is cool. So I was really hoping and thought we had the opportunity to make something that would be a movie that

stood on its own, whether you had previous knowledge of the game or not, and then also deliver on Easter eggs and all the things for the fans that they were going to be hungry for. But you mentioned The Last of Us recently, and I was not familiar with that game, and that was probably my favorite show of the past year. It was so great. It just stands on its own completely. So I was really hoping we'd be able to do both. Jason, The Exorcist...

is a wildly expensive bet for Blumhouse. And Blumhouse is not really known for making expensive movies. We get very nervous. Yeah. Why was it worth the risk?

Why was it worth the risk? Well, it's an extraordinary piece of IP, but as David will tell you, David and I and David and Blumhouse had this amazing three-movie, five-year run on the Halloween movies. And I think David, like Emma, did it. There was a complicated issue with the rights holder, and David just did an amazing job with all three Halloween movies. And I'm very, very proud of those movies and the work that David did. So when The Exorcist came along...

we thought, "It's never good to repeat success." You can't repeat -- As soon as you start saying, "Well, that's a mistake Hollywood makes a lot," it's like, "Well, these movies did well. This movie is like those movies, so that's going to do well." As soon as you do that, it's usually not successful. It's also boring. So I don't want to say we were going to repeat anything, but with a new piece of IP and try this differently,

My heart and soul, I was built on working for commission. I was a cable TV salesman. I was a real estate agent here in New York. And even my movie model, it's all the same, which is if I made a sale of cable TV, if I rented an apartment or if I made a movie that made money, we'd make money. But if I didn't, we wouldn't get paid. And this was a very different model. So it took some getting used to, I think both for David and I. We did it because the market was such and the rights holders of The Exorcist

I just wanted to go this route. But it's a model I don't love, and I prefer our make-it-inexpensive, work-for-backend model. But like you say, we didn't do that on this one. - David, I saw you nodding. Are you nervous about this release?

No, I'm nervous about a model that is, you know, I like buy low, sell high. Buy low, sell high. We all like that. And so there is a different structure here. But, you know, when you have a title like The Exorcist, it's the holy grail of horror. And so it's an opportunity to...

to reinvent your own process. And I can get very comfortable in making a slasher movie or making the comedies that I make, and the financial models, the business models where art meets responsibility. And I do think we've begun this adventure making art that is responsible financially. And the idea of

"My Loves Hill High" still applies. I think we've got tremendous ambition. We've had a great adventure making something that is distinctive in its own right, but pays honor and integrity to the original franchise. And that's part of the fun too, is taking risks, going out there and seeing what the audience thinks.

And just to connect that to what I was saying earlier in the panel, you can't buy low and sell high unless you know how what you have made has done. So you have to have transparency about the performance of your movie or show in order to work for back end. So that's why those things are connected. That makes a lot of sense. And this is kind of related.

You know, horror movies are so great to watch in theater, right? You hear everybody get scared, you get scared with them, it's dark. How do you think about theatrical release and releasing on streaming? Like, what does the window look like for you? What is your strategy when it comes to that stuff?

My thinking has totally changed and totally evolved on this. I was a big, 10 years before COVID, I was a big proponent of Dan Date. Yeah. I am no longer a proponent of Dan Date. I believe wholeheartedly in the theatrical window. We're obviously not doing that on Five Nights at Freddy's because I think it's such a

such a specific movie for a very specific fan base. So there were reasons that we didn't do that for that particular movie, but 90% of our movies are theatrical with a theatrical window. And I think the best way to monetize a movie is to have it in separate windows. Not just

theatrical and at home. But even your at-home window, your movie is best, or your television show is best monetized by moving around even when it's in the at-home window. And what I mean by that is it should be on Hulu for a little bit, and then be on Netflix, and then be on Amazon, that it should migrate, which is what used to always happen. And certain windows should be exclusive, and certain windows should be non-exclusive. Because even Netflix, only 50% of the

streaming, watching world has Netflix, right? So the best way to get the most eyeballs on what you make is to have your theatrical window, go to home, and then once you're in home, migrate to different services. Now, you moved a release date to work around King Taylor Swift. She killed us. Yeah, tell me about that. She destroyed us. The best...

date ever to release a horror movie is Friday the 13th in October. They don't come around very often, I think once every seven years. So we had identified for "David's the Exorcist" Friday the 13th in October, which is a terrific date. And it broke my heart that my daughter's favorite singer, Taylor Swift,

put her movie on that date. And when she first did it, I tried to get extra swift going, like, I tried to make that a thing. And the general consensus of which I was part of and agreed was that it was too risky to hope

XR Swift would work as opposed to moving the movie. But the fun kind of story about the moving of the movie is we moved the movie a week earlier, which just so happened to be the date a movie my wife wrote called "Dumb Money" was being widely released.

So there was about 12 hours of unhappiness in the Blum household, and then they actually moved their movie earlier. So long story short, Taylor Swift disrupted wildly the fall release schedule like she has done everything else, and bravo to her. She's amazing and she's a force. And if she's competing with me, I would always say she would win.

And I can speak louder than words. And she did win. And I gave her my precious Friday the 13th because it's her favorite number, which is crazy. I

I'm curious, David, how has the strike affected the kind of press rollout of The Exorcist? Actors obviously can't give interviews about it. What's that been like for you? Well, it's just beginning, you know? For the phase of which the strike hit my particular production, I was in the editing room, and...

I'm a writer in the Writers Guild, but I'd long since delivered the writing on the movie. And so we're putting together the post-production attributes of the film and moving forward. But now we're at a phase, you know, and who would have imagined it would last this long? And now we're at a phase where it is starting to fail. We're starting to see the fact that we don't have Leslie Odom Jr. and Ann Dowd and Ellen Burst and such an incredible cast, Jennifer Nettles and

and these two young amazing Discovery talent, Lydia Hewitt and Olivia O'Neil. And so to have them speaking as voice for the movie would be so valuable to seeing the character, getting the audience to connect with who they are going to see in these very strange and vulnerable situations. So I love seeing the life and razzle-dazzle of some of these performers and the way that they speak for the film and their characters. And instead...

You got me and Jason up here. Sorry. So we're starting to feel that, but at the same time, the movie speaks for itself. We're really proud of it, really passionate, as I've showed it to some of the cast and see their response. We're starting to really feel that energy, but they just can't be out there speaking for it, and it's unfortunate right now. Jason, I want to talk a little bit about brand extensions.

Halloween pulls in a ton of money each year, like the date. And beyond your movies, how have you capitalized on that? I know Blumhouse puts on live events. Maybe you've looked at... Oh, we do. We have a thing. Yeah. October is much to my children's also delight. October is the most important month in our household and the company. We do not have a Christmas party at Blumhouse. We have a Halloween party. Yeah.

Yeah, we try and do all different things to get Blumhouse into the Halloween dialogue. And one of the things we have, we have three mazes at Halloween Horror Nights this year in Florida and also in Los Angeles. We have an exorcist maze, we have a purge show, and then a Blumhouse...

kind of wax museum-ish kind of, also kind of a show. And we do all different things. We have a conference that we often do in October to excite people about Halloween. And I love dressing up as Halloween. I dress up as a woman usually, and it's very exciting. What's your costume this year? I haven't decided yet. No.

Anyone got any ideas? I haven't decided. You're down to the wire. What's yours, Emma? You just looked at me like you had something planned. Definitely do not. Nothing? David and I both just delivered our films today, tomorrow. You don't want to be a creepy bear or something? Haven't thought about it. But yeah, it's got to be a Freddy's inspired thing. David, do you have a plan? I just keep a Michael Myers mask in the trunk of my car. At all times. I'm good to go. So this wouldn't be...

a Fast Company Innovation Festival in 2023 without a question about AI and how AI is going to work in movies. I want to ask you each this question, but I'll start with Jason. How would you like to see the technology applied in Hollywood?

What I hope is that AI -- and I actually believe this. I'm less frightened of AI than a lot of my colleagues. Watch me be proven wrong. But what I hope is that AI is like -- and it's been described this way, obviously, by other people -- but it's like an uber-assistant, that it makes the process of creating much more efficient.

I don't believe, at least in the near or midterm, that AI is going to replace the imagination of artists, of people sitting on the stage. What about in the long term? I'm more worried about global warming than AI in the long term. Fair, fair. And we may be dead by then. David, yeah, how do you think about it? So I'm not...

the state-of-the-art technical guy in any respect. But I will say that a lot of my friends are musicians. And when we were putting together the score of The Exorcist, my best friend since we were eight years old was one of the composers of the film. And so we put together the score and we did all the temp music for it. And we have synthesizers playing the cello and synthesizers playing the violins. And then last week, we were recording the final recording session for the film and we bring in the orchestra. And...

Goosebumps, amazing. You feel something very different in your body when you hear an incredible orchestral cello play, as opposed to the synthesizer my best friend's been pushing the button on for the last six months. And I do feel that there is something organic and primal about creation

that we can always smell the bullshit. And if you can't smell it, you can see when the real thing shows up and says, "Here I am." And I didn't know it until I heard that cello last week. And I always feel like there's something in our bodies that will speak to us about the human creation, as brilliant as AI can be and as valuable as it can be in so many ways of research and progress and development, I think we'll always be able to see through and find the real thing. Emma, what do you think?

Yeah, I think as we can utilize it to assist and not replace in all the ways would be great. I was listening to James Cameron talking about his use of it in Avatar and all the ones he's doing right now. And

He had such a... He made the distinction that the actors' performances were still completely essential in the process. Everything that AI was doing around that was built on that as the fundamental essence of what was making that movie work. And I hope in every...

facet of making a film we can find that distinction where how can it enhance and and as you're saying like be the blueprint of something that then we can you know finalize with with all the things that make films have a soul and feel human and um be really unique i have another question for each of you and i'll start with jason it's a it's a broad one here

But I'm asking you, where is the untapped potential in horror? Is there some beloved IP out there that you're waiting for? Is there, like, an extension of the genre you see? No, my favorite thing about horror is that the cost of entry is low, meaning horror movies are generally inexpensive. And there's no better example than, like, Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. And those two movies were made by people outside the system. You know, Oren Peli, who did Paranormal, who we eventually partnered with him, but...

you know he'd never had any experience in the movie business he made the movie for 15 000 bucks with two friends and that's my favorite thing to answer your question about horror is that there's a hundred percent someone is working on the next paranormal activity or the next player which i hope we're lucky enough to see it early like we did those movies maybe we will maybe we won't but that is always around the corner that will happen again to a certain degree i feel like

touched on that, you know, Talk to Me touched on that. Neither one of those were our movies. They were both terrific, terrific movies. They didn't quite have the cultural impact that Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch did, but it's coming, and that's one of my favorite things about horror. David, are you... I mean, I know Jason loves an original project. It's also cheaper. But is there any IP that you're really waiting to get your hands on? Not in terms of IP, but I think... He's done with IP. Yeah, I know. He's finished. Enough. Enough.

The only IP he wants is original from his mind. But I think that's where it is. I think that horror is a great place for innovation. It can exist in so many capacities. It can exist in a dramatic capacity or a comedic capacity. And finding those things that get under your skin and that evolves as culture evolves. And new ways to tell economical stories is always going to be my thing. Emma, I've got to ask you the same question. What are you looking for? Looking for new ways to tell expensive stories? Yeah.

No, no, no. I think you have a distinct talent for sniffing out what's the next new viable. I actually think that with Five Nights at Freddy's, not to self-promote here, but... Self-promote away. You knew. You knew. This has a fan base. This has a built-in audience. And what I will say from my perspective as a director is I knew this is not...

the standard Blumhouse type of horror film. This is a real genre blend, super quirky, leaning a little bit more towards a younger audience. And you guys were like, support, support, support, whatever unique, weird thing this needs to be. And...

I think being able to say, okay, we have a successful model, but we're also going to incorporate something that is a little bit outside of that because it's a risk that's worth taking and it's a project that we believe in. Like, I think that's the, for whatever the new thing is, you know, found footage movies weren't the thing before Blair. You know, just have an instinct. You're going to be adapting more video games is what you're saying. Yes, I may have. Sorry. Money, money works best.

so effectively against creativity. Because the more money you put into the equation, the more constricted you feel creatively. You feel this pressure. And I really feel like if you can shrink the capital investment or capital generally into injecting in the art you're making, the freer you are. I feel free to take shots on things because the bets are low.

That's why I'm now to bring it up a third time. I think it's so important that what we make, the cost of what we make should stay low because it makes it better. It makes you freer to take risks, to try new things. And again, if you're not participating in the success of what you're making, that drives up the cost of everything. Well, I think that's a good place to end this panel. Thank you so much, Jason, David and Emma. It was so great. Thank you.

All right, we are back with Liz and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each of us shares a story, trend, or company we're following right now. And Liz, since you are our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? My goodness, it was really hard for me to think of something because my life is consumed by either work or children. But...

I recently finished the latest season of a TV show called Somebody Somewhere. It's very funny. It's very sweet. It's a lovely piece of television realism. It's about this woman who moves back to her hometown in Canada.

from another small town in Kansas and just follows her as she makes these oddball friends. And I don't know, I loved it. It just, I'm from Nebraska. It got me thinking a lot about why there are not more stories told about people in the middle of the country. I don't know if anybody else is watching this show, but I think it's phenomenal. I thought season one was absolutely lovely. Did we put, maybe we just talked about putting Bridget Everett on MCP. Yeah.

Maybe we didn't actually do it. I'm not sure. I love Bridget Everett. She lives right down the street from my dog's vet and has a dog herself. So I see her in that neighborhood almost every time I go to the vet. Have you befriended her yet? No, I haven't talked to her at all. You know who lives down the street from me who I see all the time?

Gautier, the guy who sang Somebody That I Used to Know. He's like retired from music and I see him all the time and I'm always like, maybe we can be friends. I've got David Cross two doors down from me and then John Baptiste one door down from him. Oh, that's cool. That's pretty cool. It's a pretty good stretch.

Gabby Hoffman lives near me, but I know I'm not cool enough to be friends with her. I think you're probably cool enough to be friends with Gautier. And Gabby Hoffman, for that matter. There's this coffee shop I go to, and I always, like, my dream is, like, him cutting me in line and being like, but you didn't have to cut.

Which I know is so stupid, but I'm like, one day it's going to happen. You know that he would never cut anyone off and lied for that reason. I know, I know. He's like, no.

But anyway, Somebody Somewhere is a really great show. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? I've got two keeping tabs. I have to mix this up because the first one's very depressing, but I can't not keep tabs on it. The childcare crisis in America, and there's a piece by Clint Rainey, friend of the pod, in Fast Company about the...

a childcare cliff coming in five days, basically Saturday, this like runway of investment from of pandemic funding for childcare centers is set to run out. And there's an estimated 70,000 centers across the country that could be closed because of this, which would leave possibly like 3 million plus kids without childcare, which is just crazy.

devastating. I mean, it's such a crisis. Even with this funding, it's a crisis. Yeah, I saw Liz nodding through that because she's actually someone potentially affected by this. Not affected by it, thankfully, but I can imagine how difficult it would be to be in that position. And it's unbelievable that there's not more done for parents in this country. I'll leave it at that.

Josh, what's your second one? My second one is very silly. And I have a demonstration put on. We were talking last week about TikTok marketplace and being able to buy products directly. Well, there is one product that I've bought from TikTok. Oh, is it the toothpaste?

It's not the toothpaste. It's the jaws are size, which for people are, I'm holding up these little like mouth workout thing. Are you trying to strengthen your jaw? Yeah, because I've always been self-conscious about my chin and my jaw line.

So you put it in your mouth, and for everyone listening at home, I have this thing in my mouth, and you basically do sets of it. Doesn't it hurt? You get used to it. It's got a mold in here that you can put your teeth into, and they have two sizes. Does it work? I'm noticing some differences. I've also lost a decent amount of weight recently, so that also may be contributing to what I'm perceiving as this Jawsercise. No, it's the Jawsercise. I know it.

But I do it every day and I think it's working. My jaw feels stronger. And I bought it because I saw it on TikTok. That's awesome. I had no idea you could sculpt your jawline. I thought strengthening your jaw just meant you could chew better. What TikTok told me is that this works out those muscles in the before and after pictures look pretty convincing. Yas, what's your keeping tabs? I weirdly have a related keeping tabs. There was a piece. To which one? To the

Second one. Okay. There was a piece in the Washington Post. It came out like a couple of weeks ago and I skimmed it and then I was having a conversation about it this weekend and like went back and reread it because it's insane. But the piece was basically like, why is it

that everybody has the same teeth. Yes, I saw this teeth. When you watch people on TV, like you could find like a, you know, somebody would play like a street urchin in the 1900s and they'd have like perfect, like well aligned teeth. And the answer is veneers. And let me tell you, maybe I'm just an idiot and I've been living under a rock, but I didn't really know how veneers worked.

It's wild.

So if you get veneers in like your 20s, you know what this means. By the time you're like 70 or whatever, like everybody's going to be wearing dentures. Like every celebrity is going to be wearing dentures because you run out of tooth. That is wild. But you're essentially wearing a version of dentures anyway. So maybe it's not so crazy to switch to dentures when you just have little nubs left. The feeling of not being able to feel your teeth. I know. It's so brutal. Anyway, I guess we can end it there. Yeah.

That's it for Most Innovative Companies. Liz, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom, mixed and sound designed by Nicholas Torres, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Yes, the Iron Jaw himself. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we will see you next week.