Podcast appearances and mentions of Thomas Tull

Joe and Drew commentate over the highest grossing Godzilla movie ever. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/godzillapodcast Discord: discord.gg/cFFx4N5 *** Directed by: Adam Wingard Screenplay by: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, Jeremy Slater Story by: Terry Rossio, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett Based on: Godzilla and Mothra by Toho Co., Ltd. Produced by: Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod Starring: Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen Cinematography: Ben Seresin Edited by: Josh Schaeffer Music by: Tom Holkenborg, Antonio Di Iorio Production company: Legendary Pictures Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures (Worldwide), Toho (Japan) Release dates: March 25, 2024 (TCL Chinese Theatre), March 29, 2024 (United States) Running time: 115 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $135–150 million Box office: $571.8 million  

On this episode of The Godzilla Podcast, hosts Drew and Joe take on the epic 2021 showdown, Godzilla vs. Kong. Directed by Adam Wingard, this blockbuster pits two legendary titans against each other in an all-out battle for supremacy, with humanity caught in the crossfire. The hosts explore the film's breathtaking visual effects, the intense action sequences, and the ensemble cast, including Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, and Brian Tyree Henry. Tune in for expert commentary, fascinating trivia, and Drew and Joe's personal insights on this $470.1 million monster mash! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/godzillapodcast Discord: discord.gg/cFFx4N5 *** Directed by: Adam Wingard Screenplay by: Eric Pearson, Max Borenstein Story by: Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields Based on: Godzilla and Mechagodzilla by Toho Co., Ltd Produced by: Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod Starring: Alexander Skarsgård Millie Bobby Brown Rebecca Hall Brian Tyree Henry Shun Oguri Eiza González Julian Dennison Lance Reddick Kyle Chandler Demián Bichir Cinematography: Ben Seresin Edited by: Josh Schaeffer Music by: Tom Holkenborg Production company: Legendary Pictures Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures (Worldwide) Toho (Japan) Release dates: March 24, 2021 (International) March 31, 2021 (United States) Running time: 113 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $155–200 million Box office: $470.1 million

On this episode of The Godzilla Podcast, hosts Drew and Joe dive deep into the explosive 2019 blockbuster, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Directed by Michael Dougherty, this monster-packed spectacle brings iconic kaiju like Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan to the screen in an epic battle for dominance. The hosts break down the film's visual effects, high-stakes action, and the ensemble cast, including Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, and Millie Bobby Brown. Listen in as they provide expert commentary, trivia, and their personal take on this $387.3 million monster! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/godzillapodcast Discord: discord.gg/cFFx4N5 *** Directed by: Michael Dougherty Screenplay by: Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields Story by: Max Borenstein, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields Based on: Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Rodan by Toho Co., Ltd Produced by: Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers Starring: Kyle Chandler Vera Farmiga Millie Bobby Brown Bradley Whitford Sally Hawkins Charles Dance Thomas Middleditch Aisha Hinds O'Shea Jackson Jr. David Strathairn Ken Watanabe Zhang Ziyi Cinematography: Lawrence Sher Edited by: Roger Barton, Richard Pearson, Bob Ducsay Music by: Bear McCreary Production company: Legendary Pictures Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures (worldwide), Toho (Japan) Release dates: May 13, 2019 (Beijing) May 31, 2019 (United States) Running time: 132 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $170–200 million Box office: $387.3 million Keywords: Godzilla: King of the Monsters review, Godzilla Podcast, Godzilla commentary, 2019 Godzilla movie, Michael Dougherty Godzilla, kaiju battle, Godzilla vs Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan

Before Igor Jablokov was CEO and founder of Pryon, he worked with Apple on a prototype of Siri. He also founded a speech recognition company that Amazon acquired to develop its Alexa AI and Echo devices. He joined me on the podcast to talk about the evolution and challenges of building AI technologies and companies, different phases of startup growth, and how AI is transforming enterprise software procurement.  Igor also offered his insights on the current AI hype cycle, explained the concept of “knowledge friction,” and shared some personal anecdotes and observations about achieving enduring entrepreneurial success in the AI domain. Runtime: 42:55 Episode breakdown (2:42) “We were their first AI-related acquisition that birthed what many people know as Alexa.”  (6:44) What happens when you can't commercialize the technology you've created? (9:11) How Pryon originated the concept of “knowledge friction.” (14:33) Igor deconstructs the three main types of founders working in AI today. (18:38) Where he thinks we are in the current AI hype cycle. (21:14) “Before ChatGPT, it was a desert and very few of us survive in the desert with a small amount of water.” (23:06) Inside Pryon's September 2023 $100M Series B round. (25:26) Why early-stage AI startups have a major advantage over legacy tech companies. (28:07) Founders need “practical experience in an industry that eventually you're going to be a part of.” (35:00) “Tech is as perishable as fruits and vegetables you can procure from Trader Joe's.” (38:58) Questions Igor would ask the CEO if he was interviewing for a role with a startup. Links Igor Jablokov, CEO, Pryon Pryon Pryon Closes $100 Million Series B Round Led by Thomas Tull's US Innovative Technology Fund Amazon.com Acquires Voice Recognition Start-up Yap Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Substack Thanks for listening! – Walter. fundbuildscale@gmail.com  

Episode 577: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) talk about mysterious billionaire Thomas Tull.  Want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Blue Collar Billy of The Week: Thomas Tull (2:29) Moneyball strategy for movies (5:20) Formula for box office hits: Bigger is better (7:25) International appeal (specifically China) (8:22) Data analytics for movie marketing (13:15) Flywheels at the highest level (24:31) Moneyball for X (26:42) Business lessons from the UFC (31:03) We give Zuck PR advice (33:02) What Dana White taught me about marketing (34:06) Level 1: Sell a product (34:46) Level 2: Sell a solution not a product (35:20) Level 3: Sell a Lifestyle (36:55) Level 4: Sell a feeling (39:18) Level 5: Identity in a box (46:49) Why Sam's new project will fail (52:38) Shaan workshops Sam's idea — Links: • The Information article - https://tinyurl.com/4csvs9ab • Legendary - https://www.legendary.com/ • “We Don't Sell Saddles Here” - https://tinyurl.com/2s39sjzf • SmartAsset - https://smartasset.com/ • Sam's List - https://samslist.co/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it's called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Are you ready to adapt quickly? Billionaire tech investor Thomas Tull says you should be—because these days, there's no other choice. Entrepreneur's 45th annual Franchise 500® ranking shines a light on the unique challenges and changes that have shaped the franchise industry over the last year—and how franchisors have adapted and evolved to meet them. See the list here:

On this episode, Joe and Drew talk Godzilla 2014! An American sailor's journey to reunite with his family amidst the ancient rivalry between Godzilla and two parasitic monsters known as MUTOs. Directed by: Gareth Edwards Screenplay by: Max Borenstein Story by: David Callaham Based on: Godzilla by Toho Co., Ltd Produced by: Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Mary Parent, Brian Rogers Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey Edited by: Bob Ducsay Music by: Alexandre Desplat Production company: Legendary Pictures Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures (Worldwide), Toho (Japan) Release dates: May 8, 2014 (Dolby Theatre), May 16, 2014 (United States) Running time: 123 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $160 million Box office: $529 million Yes, we forgot iTunes reviews... Sorry about that, we're rusty... And, Congrats to Joel! *** Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/godzillapodcast Discord: discord.gg/cFFx4N5

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with Ben Lamm of Colossal Biosciences, a startup using genetics to bring back extinct animals such as the wooly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and the Dodo bird. Learn more at https://colossal.com/ In this episode we talk about the technology and the "why" behind de-extinction science, raising capital for a moonshot, how to identify investors with a long event horizon and much more. Colossal Biosciences has raised over $225 million in total. The Company's most recent round was a $150 million Series B led by US Innovative Technology Fund with participation from Breyer Capital, WestRiver Group, Animal Capital, In-Q-Tel, Animoca Brands, Peak 6, Bold Capital, Jazz Venture Partners and others. Previous investors include Thomas Tull and At One Ventures. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $9.7 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com.

In the second episode of our ‘July With Jen' miniseries, we welcome two leading entrepreneurs on the show for a varied discussion on the US economy, geopolitics, tech and more.   The episode brings together Joe Lonsdale, Managing Partner of 8VC and Co-Founder of Palantir, and Thomas Tull, Founder of Tulco LLC and Former CEO of Legendary Entertainment. The discussion is moderated by Jen Prosek, Founder of Prosek Partners, who is kindly guest hosting the podcast this month.   The two entrepreneurs offer some thoughtful insights on emerging technologies, AI, synthetic biology, the private and public sectors, as well as the rise of China and America's response. They also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains & manufacturing, philanthropy, and leadership.    Sign up to our newsletter for more in-depth insights | Follow us on LinkedIn   The Money Maze Podcast is kindly sponsored by Schroders, Bremont Watches, and LiveTrade. We're also pleased to be highlighting & supporting GAIN as our 2023 Charitable Partner. 

Gov. Josh Shapiro has been in office for 100 days; the former Alcoa plant in New Kensington will be home to a new manufacturing plant backed by former Amazon leader and billionaire Thomas Tull; and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's 2023 list of Best Books for Babies.

Ben Lamm has already started a handful of companies, with just as many exits. He is now onto his biggest adventure year. An effort to rewild the planet, which has already attracted $225M in capital and 50 advisors. The startup, Colossal Biosciences, acquired funding from top-tier investors like Thomas Tull, Breyer Capital, Draper Associates, and At One Ventures.

SMALL WORDS TO MOONSHOTS | Ben Lamm, a multi-time founder who is currently working on bringing back the woolly mammoth, joins host Gregg Garrett to discuss how small words can lead to HUGE ideas. Of course, Ben shares his Top 3 or 4: Thomas Tull, who reminds him to just keep going; John McKinley, who taught him how to live servant leadership; Richard Garriott, who has stoked his passion to explore; and his grandmother, who has taught him that he can do anything. And you have to hear what he has to say about picking a principle and not allowing anything to budge you from it.  About Ben Lamm     Ben Lamm is the co-founder and CEO of Colossal. Ben is a serial technology entrepreneur driven to solve the most complex challenges facing our planet. For over a decade, Ben has built disruptive businesses that future-proof our world. In addition to leading and growing his own companies, he is passionate about emerging technology, science, space and climate change. Active in angel investing, incubators and startup communities, Ben invests in software and emerging tech, and is deeply engaged in the technology, defense and climate change communities. Prior to Colossal, Ben served as the founder and CEO to a number of companies, including Hypergiant, an enterprise AI software company focused on critical infrastructures, space, and defense; Conversable, the leading conversational intelligence platform that helps brands reach customers through automated experiences acquired by LivePerson; and Chaotic Moon, a global creative technology powerhouse acquired by Accenture. Ben was also the co-founder of Team Chaos, a consumer gaming company acquired by Zynga. Ben is a fellow of the Explorer's Club, whose mission is to promote the scientific exploration of land, sea, air, and space by supporting research and education in the physical, natural and biological sciences. He also serves as a Scientific Advisory Board member on the Planetary Society and sits on the Advisory Board for the Arch Mission. Ben has appeared as a thought leader in many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Wired, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and Newsweek on topics such as innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS During this episode:  Introduction [0:00] Small words, big impact [0:52] Introduction to Ben [3:03] Colossal, de-extinction,and technology [4:24] The “Top Three” Thomas Tull: reminds him to just keep going [06:59] John McKinley: taught him how to live servant leadership [19:38] Richard Garriott: stoked his passion to explore [29:29] Ben's grandmother: taught him that he can do anything [38:17] Other Points of Interest: Encouraging moonshots [44:09] Transparency in industry [48:35] You have to hear this… Pick a principle and don't budge [49:02]    

Ep. 159: Bed Bath & Beyond reports wider-than-expected losses and there is a chance that they could be filing for bankruptcy. Babies R Us is attempting a comeback by opening a store in the American Dream mall. Coinbase is going to slash 20% of its workforce in a second major round of job cuts. Microsoft is reporting that they plan to invest $10 billion in ChatGPT. Finally, Capella Space raises $60 million fund by billionaire entertainment exec Thomas Tull.

Thomas Tull, President and CEO of Legendary Entertainment, discusses his new film "Outlaw King."

Thomas Tull recounts a strange tale of a psychopath and twinkle who scurry around in the night.

In this episode, Lexman interviews Lord Thomas Tull about his favorite Karajan recordings. They discuss the life and works of one of the greatest conducting directors of all time.

Thomas Tull is an endocrinologist who has worked extensively on the development of tailored clothing and seeder extractants. He shares his insights on the role gonfaloniers play in the industry and how torr technology is changing the way crops are grown.

Thomas Tull, director of Aquaman, discusses the challenges and benefits of working with shearling on his latest film.

Lexman interviews Thomas Tull, chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures. The two discuss the movie business and Meagreness.

Lexman interviews Thomas Tull, a Celticist who has recently been measuring felworts and weavers in the hopes of understanding their techniques better.

Lexman Artificial interviewed Tom Tull, famed film producer, about his new film release, "Augustus." They talked about the plectrums Augustus used, the monopodes he discovered, and the massasauga. The conversation was lively and entertaining, and Lexman offered his expert insight on all things Augustus.

Lexman interviews Thomas Tull, director of Legendary Pictures. They discuss the origins of James Cameron's epic film, "Rostand" and the challenges of adapting the story for the big screen.

Chris Carter, NFL and NCAAF analyst, hosts the Locked on Steelers podcast.The Pittsburgh Steelers' stadium is no longer named Heinz Field, and now will be called Acrisure Stadium for the next 15 years. But what led to an insurance company from Michigan taking over for a historic Pittsburgh company like Heinz? The answer is in the naming rights contract that pays the Steelers $150 million over the next 15 years, a price Heinz couldn't afford. It also points to Steelers minority owner Thomas Tull's involvement as a Chairman for Acrisure. Chris Carter lists other suggestions like Iron City Beer, Primanti's Sandwiches and other famous Pittsburgh companies Steelers fans wanted to see over Acrisure.Meanwhile, a caller asks how vital it is for Mike Tomlin to get a winning record in his first year without Ben Roethlisberger. But the truth is, Mike Tomlin is already 18-15-1 without Roethlisberger. That's 34 games--two full seasons--and Tomlin already has a winning record with backups. What he could do with Mitch Trubisky and/or Kenny Pickett could be even better.CALL INTO THE SHOW AT 412-223-6644 or if international, e-mail your audio message to LOSTEELERSTOPICBAG@GMAIL.COMFollow Chris Carter on Twitter: @CarterCritiques.Theme music is 'Soul Kick' by Ceddy P, and 'Too Easy' by Nerdboy. Both from their label Renaissance Music. Find more from their label here.This show is part of the Locked on Podcast Network.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Athletic GreensTo make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/NFLNETWORK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chris Carter, NFL and NCAAF analyst, hosts the Locked on Steelers podcast. The Pittsburgh Steelers' stadium is no longer named Heinz Field, and now will be called Acrisure Stadium for the next 15 years. But what led to an insurance company from Michigan taking over for a historic Pittsburgh company like Heinz? The answer is in the naming rights contract that pays the Steelers $150 million over the next 15 years, a price Heinz couldn't afford. It also points to Steelers minority owner Thomas Tull's involvement as a Chairman for Acrisure. Chris Carter lists other suggestions like Iron City Beer, Primanti's Sandwiches and other famous Pittsburgh companies Steelers fans wanted to see over Acrisure. Meanwhile, a caller asks how vital it is for Mike Tomlin to get a winning record in his first year without Ben Roethlisberger. But the truth is, Mike Tomlin is already 18-15-1 without Roethlisberger. That's 34 games--two full seasons--and Tomlin already has a winning record with backups. What he could do with Mitch Trubisky and/or Kenny Pickett could be even better. CALL INTO THE SHOW AT 412-223-6644 or if international, e-mail your audio message to LOSTEELERSTOPICBAG@GMAIL.COM Follow Chris Carter on Twitter: @CarterCritiques. Theme music is 'Soul Kick' by Ceddy P, and 'Too Easy' by Nerdboy. Both from their label Renaissance Music. Find more from their label here. This show is part of the Locked on Podcast Network. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Built Bar Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order. BetOnline BetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts! Rock Auto Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Athletic Greens To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/NFLNETWORK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The long-time home of the Pittsburgh Steelers has a new name: Acrisure Stadium. The team made it official late yesterday, and fans went wild making fun of the choice. Minority owner Thomas Tull allegedly brokered the deal with Michigan-based insurance firm Acrisure, which Reuters reports is a growing member of the fintech industry — and one that's profited recently from the war in Ukraine. While the terms of the deal aren't public, Pittsburgh-based Kraft Heinz says the company hopes to remain involved with the Steelers. The Post-Gazette's Brian Batko explains what comes next. Our newsletter is fresh daily at 6 a.m. Sign up here. We're also on Twitter @citycastpgh & Instagram @CityCastPgh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lexman delves into the story of Thomas Tull and his quest for the perfect horseshoe.

Thomas Tull talks about how his company Tummy Bundles uses buoyancy to help pregnant women stay afloat during labor. He also discusses the symbolism of wreaths and why Isidora is his favorite opera.

This interview features Adam Rymer, CEO of OpTic Gaming. We discuss what he learned from running Harvard's campus store, adapting to Napster at Universal Music, why entertainment doesn't value innovation, being on Universal Pictures' greenlight committee, scaling Legendary Digital and working alongside Chris Hardwick and Amy Poehler, how to create communities for gamers, why he plays Fornite with his son, and how to follow your own roadmap.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow us on LinkedIn: RockWater LinkedInEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com Interview TranscriptThe interview was lightly edited for clarity.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Adam Rymer, CEO of OpTic Gaming. So Adam was born in Fort Lauderdale and was a self-described '80s internet nerd. That meant hanging out on internet bulletin boards and attending internet meetups at bowling alleys. His online passions paid off and he ended up going to Harvard after writing an admission essay, comparing entertainment dollars versus grocery store dollars. Adam's early career included Universal Music where three months after beginning his new role Napster was launched. And Adam had to figure out questions like, "What now? And who do we sue?" After rising up to the exec ranks at Universal Adam then struck out on his own to co-founder production company that worked on projects like the Rover and sci-fi hit arrival. He then became president at nerd and legendary networks where he helped build a multi-platform media business alongside stars like Chris Hardwick and Amy Poehler today. Adam is the CEO of OpTic Gaming, where he is helping to grow and scale one of the world's most exciting companies operating at the intersection of gaming and entertainment.Chris Erwin:Adam, thanks for being on The Come Up Podcast.Adam Rymer:Great to be here, man. Good to see you.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So where are you calling in from?Adam Rymer:I am in Dallas, been here about two years now.Chris Erwin:Are you in the Envy offices right now?Adam Rymer:We are. I moved here in the middle of COVID and we've been, believe it or not, working mostly in the office since I got here.Chris Erwin:Like to hear that people getting back to the office environment. Well, we're going to talk about Envy more, but actually want to rewind a bit, Adam. So going back a few years here, I want to hear about where you grew up and a little bit of what your childhood was like to see if there's any kind of glimpses into this media and digital executive that you've become.Adam Rymer:I am a Florida man. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale. Born in Miami, grew up in Fort Lauderdale, '70s and '80s which whatever anybody thinks about Miami and south Florida now is not what it was like when I was there. It was retiree paradise. And then the occasional spring break debauchery but of course, I was too young to really understand and appreciate any of it. So I just saw all these college kids coming in and thinking that would be awesome. And then by the time I was actually old enough to enjoy spring break, that it all gotten kicked out of south Florida and moved to Daytona and Cancun and wherever else. So missed out on all the benefit of all of it. But Florida was an interesting place to grow up in the '70s and '80s. Left at 17, never really went back, but definitely helped shape my desire to stay someplace warm for the rest of my life.Chris Erwin:Okay. So I have to ask you, what was your household like growing up? Were your parents into the same things that you're into now, media entertainment, digital gaming, gaming, what that looked like back in the day was very different, but what did your parents do and what were some of your early inspirations?Adam Rymer:My dad was a physician. He was an immigrant. My mom helped run the household. I had a younger sister who was six years younger than I. And so we were not overly close partially because of the age difference. And partially because we were just into different things, I was probably what you would call a quintessential nerd back in the day when it was very, very uncool to be a nerd. I got an Apple 2e when I was, I don't know, probably like eight or 10 years old and was goofing around on that with floppy discs and playing Zork and all the text base games and whatever else I could get my hands on. I remember connecting to BBSs back in the day. That was how I spent a lot of my free time.Chris Erwin:But BBS?Adam Rymer:Yeah. BBS was a bulletin board system. It was the modern, the old precursor to, I guess what you'd call like a social media network today. It was dial-in multi-communication platform where you could type and talk to other people and play games with people online, text-based games for the most part and south Florida, believe it or not, was actually the hub of some of the biggest BBS companies in the .country every now and then we'd go to meetups with people who were on these, these services, but you'd get online and play trivia and you'd play just chat with each other. And I guess back in the day, you'd consider it pretty weird. And today you just call it WhatsApp.Chris Erwin:So question, you said we would go to meetups. How old are you and who is we? Are you going with your parents or friends?Adam Rymer:Yeah. I was like 13, 14, and I'd have friends that would drive me around. We'd meet at like bowling alleys and family entertainment centers like arcades and mini golf places. And there'd be people from 14 to 40, but everybody was just connected through these online environments of being... At the time, I guess we were outcast and ostracized. And like I said, we were big old nerds.Chris Erwin:Were your parents supportive of some of your interests here with these meetups and the BBSs?Adam Rymer:Yeah, I mean, they didn't really know what was going on. For me, it was just a way to meet people and make friends and met some really interesting folks. Met some really odd, strange folks through it. Some people went on to greatness and do some pretty cool things. Some people faded off into obscurity. I think it definitely helped define and set my career in motion from being part of something that was just on the cutting edge of interactivity and technology. And 'cause there was a lot of steps to it, right. We had to, you had to get a 300-baud modem. You had to connect a phone line to it. You had to pay for time on the service by dropping off some money at a house or sending something in somewhere else. And I mean, it was really complicated, but we made it work. It was a weird time. It was like during the days of war games, if you remember the movie War Games, it was like that sort of universe.Chris Erwin:I've known you for years now. This is the first time I've really asked about your upbringing in your childhood. And within one minute, learn something completely new, but it makes sense. Everyone nowadays talks about how do you build community? How do you build fandom amongst different media brands, participants, creators, and users, et cetera? And you have now three to four decades of experience of building fandom on the internet. It's all becoming much more clear. So as you go to high school and then you're applying for college, what did you think that you were going to do?Adam Rymer:It's funny so we used to go to Disney World a lot in Florida, right? Because it's only about two-hour drive from where I lived. And I was always, I guess, kind of a weird business-focused kid at a certain level. I remember writing my college essay about Disney, but not about the cool entertainment factor of Disney about the business of Disney and how I found it super interesting that when you would go to someplace like Disney World, that you would be totally open to spending $8 on a Mickey bar ice cream that if you were just at a grocery store, you would totally freak out about highway robbery. You would just never spend that kind of money. And, I wrote my essay about like entertainment dollars being different from regular dollars. I did, I guess-Chris Erwin:So precocious.Adam Rymer:... I was a weird kid and at the time I was like, "I want to be Michael Eisner." Michael Eisner was my idol at the time not knowing a whole lot about anything, but knowing Disney and seeing how that was working, I was like, "That's my aspiration." Right? So went off to college. And at the time I was focused on engineering because as a nerd, geeky kid, I thought I was going to be an engineer, but within a year of college, I shifted over to being an economics major and really focusing more on business and really put most of my efforts into pursuing kind of game theory and business and economics.Chris Erwin:You went to Harvard up in Cambridge, right?Adam Rymer:That's the one. Yeah.Chris Erwin:So your essay must have been something special to get into that school. Right?Adam Rymer:God. To this day, I don't know how I got in. I'll tell you, I mean, it's my 25th reunion this year. I look around and I see other people from my class and I see kids today and I mean the quality of students and applications is just phenomenal. And to this day I count my lucky stars that I went there and got in there and survived. It was the hardest experience in my life. I can't even tell you, I felt overwhelmed half the time, lucky half the time. I mean, it was something.Chris Erwin:Well, if you're going to a reunion, my dad, I think is Harvard '70. And I think he's going to his reunion this year as well. So maybe you guys can bump into one another there. So you're at Harvard, you're feeling overwhelmed, but feeling lucky and grateful. And do you think you get more clarity on what you want to do when you're graduating?Adam Rymer:Yeah. Well, look, while I was there, I had my first real work experience. So we had this thing called Harvard Student Agencies. And what that is a bunch of student-run businesses on campus that are sanctioned by the university. And they let students sort of operate businesses through a platform that the university puts together. And I started out running something called the Campus Store, which basically sold futons and refrigerators and class rings and all the stuff you need for dorm rooms. And then my second year I became vice president of the organization. And one of the things that organization also did was produce the Let's Go Travel Guides, which might be a sign of another era, but it was books that you would use to go travel abroad and low-budget travel through Europe and other places around the world.Adam Rymer:And it was a team of hundreds of students that would write these books and go out and travel and run these businesses. And I did that for two and a half years of my time at school. And I found my time working and helping to run these businesses to be maybe the best education that I got over my time there. So by the time that I was graduating, I was pretty dead set on being in the business world, operating, trying to figure out some way to be an executive in some way, shape or form. Didn't necessarily know exactly what type of business to run. So I ended up going into management consulting, coming out of school because to me that seemed like the best landing spot, where I could get a sense of a bunch of different industries, bunch of different businesses, try to solve some problems for different companies and then figure out what I wanted to do from there. Or just do that for the rest of my life. Because from what I heard, that was a pretty cool thing to do.Chris Erwin:Got it. You go to L.E.K. Consulting in the late '90s. Was the experience what you expected it to be?Adam Rymer:So, so late '90s, I got to take you back a minute. I mean, at the time computers were still relatively, they weren't new, but they were not as useful as they are today. Everything was hard. The internet was slow. The amount of data that you had access to wasn't quite there, Google wasn't quite there. So I was building a lot of financial models. It was hard to do the research. We were printing things out on overhead projector slides for client presentations. PowerPoint was not as user friendly as it is today. I think I, when I started there, we were using Lotus 1-2-3, not even Excel. I was working probably 80 to 100 hours. I found the work interesting. I found the rigor interesting. I found the type of things we were doing interesting. I did not find the clients. I was working on overly exciting, and that was a big epiphany for me.Adam Rymer:I found it really hard to stay focused working for industries that I didn't have a passion for. At one point I was no joke... People say these things as jokes, I was working for a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, literally a company that made vacuum cleaners and I was helping them reallocate their sales force across the country. It was just hard. I was on the road and I was looking through maps and I was looking at different DMAs and I was trying to help them figure this out. I also spent a lot of time working in the biotech space, trying to look at different drugs that were coming to market and how they should be priced and talking to a lot of doctors and physicians about whether they would use the product and whether they would get approved by the FDA.Adam Rymer:And look, it wasn't my background. I mean, I purposely stayed away from anything pre-med I don't think I took any biology classes past ninth grade. The work was fun. The hours were rough, but not being passionate about the day to day subject was a real challenge for me. So about a year in, I was trying to figure out what was next.Chris Erwin:I hear you. I mean, I was a banker, right when I graduated from school undergrad. I think from like 2005 to 2010. And yeah, we were able to pull down 10-Ks and SEC filings, from the internet and able to get a bunch of financial information using Excel to create models. And I just remember all my MDs being like, "We used to have to get the 10-K's physically mailed to us." They didn't have Excel and they were doing modeling by hand on paper or in these really basic computer systems. And I was like, "Either that sounds terrible or it was better because you could just focus and do less." Where when you have access to technology your bosses just expect, "Well, you can work on five assignments at the same time." Right? You're equipped. But anyway, I digress.Chris Erwin:So then, okay, you do that for a couple of years and then I think you make a decision that instead of being an advisor and consultant, you want to go work for a company. You go to the line, quote, unquote, "some people say." And you go to Universal Music. So how was that transition for you?Adam Rymer:I mean, it was a magical transition for me. I mean, it was a happenstance lucky break for me and my career and the whole rest of my career, to be honest with you. And it goes down in something I think about still on a regular basis is having been a nerd. I mean, this goes back to the BBS story is I had built a PC. I was living in Cambridge. I was downloading the first MP3 files off the internet from really obscure search engines, like web crawler and LICOs. And I bought the first MP3 player that was ever made. And I would take this MP3 player to the gym and the use case for a portable MP3 player I found fascinating. The other options available at the time were a Walkman with a tape that you had to make a mix tape for, or a CD player, which for those who don't remember them, trying to get a CD player not to skip when you're at the gym or on a treadmill is almost impossible.Adam Rymer:And so I, part of me just realized like this digital music universe is going to be the way to go. This is just going to completely take over the future as the technology gets better. And I went to the consulting company I was at, and I said, "Look, we should sell a project to the music business and help them figure out the future of digital music, because there's no doubt in my mind that this is going to change the whole face of how the music industry works." To their credit they let me help work on selling that project and they successfully did sell the project. To not their credit they didn't let me work on the project.Chris Erwin:You can be the idea, the inspiration, create the pitch. And then it's like, "And you're off the team."Adam Rymer:So I left and that was the impetus for me leaving. I applied for a job at Universal and I was very fortunate to get an interview and then ultimately get hired to go join the strategy group at Universal Music in New York in, I think it was 1999, early 1999. It was a life-changing moment because the beginning in 1999 MP3 files and digital music was starting to be a huge subject of conversation. It was on the front page of USA Today. I was quoted in a bunch of things. It was something that everybody was talking about and knew was coming. But what nobody saw coming was Napster and Napster happened about three months after I got to Universal.Chris Erwin:Oh wow.Adam Rymer:So all of a sudden I was thrown into the fire with, it wasn't just me we had a team of people. But it was the, "Okay. Piracy is real. It's not going anywhere. How do we solve this?" Do we start suing the companies? Do we start suing our customers? Do we create our own technology? Do we create a subscription service, which is no joke, an idea that we presented at the time in 1999. What do we do? How do we solve this problem? Because it's not going anywhere and technology isn't where it is today.Chris Erwin:Follow-up question on that. Adam, did you feel that the leadership, did they understand the weight of the situation? Were they really panicked, very concerned or it's like, "This is an issue we should sort this out over the next five years, but take your time and be thoughtful." What was that sense inside the building?Adam Rymer:I'm going to answer that in a couple ways. I mean, this is a problem that I have seen throughout my entire career, which is that at traditional entertainment companies, the leadership is rarely incentivized to try to really innovate solutions to the biggest challenges that are in front of them. There's a lot of reasons for that. And I don't necessarily blame the leadership that's at these companies. A lot of them are publicly traded. They need to hit their quarterly returns. They're incentivized to hit those quarterly returns. Innovation is very rarely valued at these companies the way that it needs to be. Oftentimes they can buy innovation when they need to. Right? They're big enough. They've got public stock and if there's a startup, they can often buy the company that's going to solve their innovation problem. The difficulty in these cases is when you're dealing with something that's inherently illegal or theoretically illegal, you can't just buy the illegal thing and make that part of your repertoire.Adam Rymer:So the answer that was given was essentially like, "Look, let's let the courts figure this out." It was somewhat of a, "Well, obviously this is illegal. So the government should just stop this and get in front of it and shut it down because we have the right to sell music on discs and all these other things." And I think there was an inherent unwillingness to accept the fact that the consumers get to decide these things. Consumers get to decide how they want to consume content, how they want to live their lives. And ultimately it's the entertainment companies and the media companies who have to answer to the consumers on these things. And that's where I saw the biggest disconnect. And it wasn't just at the music industry. I've seen that through most of my career.Chris Erwin:Yeah. You were at Universal Music for about one to two years. So, and clearly had some early exposure to digital, but we're seeing that this is a theme from very early on in your career and your childhood. But then shortly thereafter you go to Universal Pictures. Why'd you make that transition? Did you feel, "Hey, there's a lot of inertia here, things aren't changing and I want to go to another part of the house," or was it something else? What was that catalyst for change?Adam Rymer:Well, for anybody who remembers the advent of Napster and piracy, also the crash of 2000 from a tech standpoint, just really killed the entire music industry. I mean, the music industry was cratering at that point. People were losing their jobs. Revenue was cut more or less than half very quickly. And I had an opportunity to go to business school. So I jumped and I decided I was going to ride out the storm of 2000 and everything else while I was in business school. And if there was still a music industry to go back to, I loved the music business. I would've gone back to music after business school, but between 2000 and 2002, while I was in school, the music industry kept falling. They couldn't quite figure out the solution. And I spent my summer at Universal Pictures looking at a another side of entertainment.Adam Rymer:So after school that turned into a full-time offer. My thought on it was the biggest challenge the music industry had was technology hit them like a title wave because the technology at the time had already caught up to the feasibility for music, meaning you could download a song in a reasonable amount of time to make it useful for the end-user, right? It only took a couple minutes, 5, 10 minutes at most to download a song, if not an album based on where technology was in 1999. When I graduated from, from school and went off to film the technology, wasn't there to download a movie, right? We were still a long way off from maybe not that long, but technology hadn't quite hit the film business in terms of feasibility for the piracy and the not having enough time to get in front of.Adam Rymer:So the way I saw it was this is an opportunity to get into the film business and try to help them stave off the problems that the music industry faced. How do I take the learnings from music and apply it to the film business and try to do some things differently here that we couldn't do there?Chris Erwin:You go there and you have a seven-year run and you end up rising to become I think the SP of digital for Universal Pictures where you're managing an international staff of, I think over 20 people across the US as well as London and Tokyo, if I'm right. Did you feel that at that point that you were coming into your own as an executive where you have a vision, you know how to solve problems, you know how to build the teams? And did you feel like that was a transformational moment in your career?Adam Rymer:I thought so. I thought so. It was the, "Hey, this is great. My career's really advancing. I'm at the senior levels of a major studio. I'm getting to present to some really cool people." I'm continued to have some really lucky experiences. Got involved in some very cool projects. I was always very much on the business side of it. I was pretty far removed from I'd say the creative side. It wasn't until the very end of my stint at Universal that I got put on the green light committee at Universal, which is where you actually get to have a say over which films get made at the studio, which was a pretty cool experience. Although it didn't last very long.Chris Erwin:How big is that committee and how much weight did your particular vote from the digital strategy side count?Adam Rymer:I'm not sure how much weight anybody's individual vote has, except for a couple of people on those committees. There's about 10 people on that committee across the studio. You've got home entertainment and marketing and production and the head of the studio and those kinds of things. It's fascinating. I mean, it's very kind of closed-door sort of, sort of setting very private, almost Illuminati-ish, but it was pretty cool to be in the room for some of it. But my job was to weigh in on what the digital and alternative revenue streams could be for the titles that we were working on. So things like video games, YouTube content, ancillary products. At the time we were talking about things like ring tones. What's the other stuff that we can do out of these films to generate revenue.Adam Rymer:And then I would be on the hook for delivering those numbers against the P&L for that particular title. It was pretty neat. And I felt like things were going pretty well for my career at that point, for sure. Now the downside was during my time there, we kept getting acquired. And for most people getting acquired sounds like it's a pretty awesome thing. Usually, there's like, "Hey, you got paid out. That's a big success, big exit." Well, in the big giant corporate world, those kinds of acquisitions usually get met with, "Hey, we're just kind of sitting on our hands for a while." So Universal was a big company. And when I started working for them, it was owned by Seagram. Then it was owned by Vivendi. Then it was owned by GE. And when I left, it had been acquired by Comcast.Adam Rymer:And we were always the acquired company, which meant that the acquiring company was taking their people, having them learn about the business that they were buying, meeting with everybody trying to figure out what everybody did, which resulted in a whole lot of work for all of us to educate them. And usually, that met with a whole bunch of reorganization and strategy redesignChris Erwin:Hey listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of the Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work. And it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it everybody. Let's get back to the interview.Chris Erwin:So, Adam, I totally feel you on if you're always the target and you're being acquired the reeducation of the new leadership. It's a lot. I mean, I remember when Big Frame was bought by Awesomeness TV and then Verizon, and then Hearst then invested thereafter, and then Comcast NBC U came and bought Dreamworks, which had owned Awesomeness. And there's always the strategic goal shift, the mandate shift there's reorganizations. And there's a point where you're just like, "I just want to get to work." And look, that's the nature of the beast, but was that a reason why after your seven-year run, you then started to explore entrepreneurship? You were the co-founder and COO and CFO of Lava Bear Films. And you did that for a few years. Was that the reason why you made the switch?Adam Rymer:Yeah, look, I mean, there were management changes and to be honest, I had been part of a very big company where I was an employee number. I still remember my employee number to this day, which says a lot, and it was an eight-digit number. So I was just a little tired of being in that kind of structure and part of me who likes solving problems and actually making things happen and not having a whole lot of red tape. There was an opportunity in front of me. The chairman of Universal had left and had an opportunity to start a film production company and asked me to help him put the business plan together for it and raise some capital and go after it. So I thought it would be a great chance for me to not only learn how to start a company from scratch but also learn about the other side of the business, the creative side of the business. How do you actually make content from start to finish?Chris Erwin:Well, you must have been doing something right at universal if the chairman leaves and wants to bring you on board to his next venture, right?Adam Rymer:I would hope so. I would hope so.Chris Erwin:So you're there. You learned the creative side of the business, which I think is, I've talked about this on a few podcasts, right? Usually, in entertainment, you're either on the business side of the house or on the creative side of the house. It's rare for people to speak both those languages. I think of people maybe like Bob Iger or David Zaslav at Discovery in Warner Media. Right. So it's smart to build out that muscle and I think that you are an executive producer on The Rover and you helped finance the movie Arrival?Adam Rymer:That's right.Chris Erwin:Produced by FilmNation and [inaudible 00:28:25] and Glen Basner and they're good friends of ours.Adam Rymer:Great guys.Chris Erwin:Yeah. They're the best. And so you do that for four years and did you see like, "Hey, maybe there's a world where you stay in the creative side of entertainment?" Was that interesting to you?Adam Rymer:Look, it was an amazing experience. I always wanted to see how the whole sausages gets made from start to end and really got to do that. I was going around to film festivals. I was reading scripts. I was handling some of the talent deals. I was negotiating a lot of the financing for the films. We were selling the projects internationally. We were dealing with the studios. We were looking at the marketing for the films when they came out. But for I'm sure you've talked about this on some other podcasts the filmmaking process is very long and very slow. And so for me, it was I like being on the creative side of the business or having involvement on the creative side. But I don't know that filmmaking was the place for me to explore that in the long term, because I'm so used to being in areas where things move very quickly, right?Adam Rymer:Even the music business moves relatively quickly. And on the digital world, I was watching things happen. Snapchat was starting to happen and Twitch wasn't quite there yet, but YouTube was really starting to take off and there were all these other things that were happening in the background. And I just felt like I was missing some really cool, innovative opportunities that were going on. So I had an opportunity to go join Legendary, which was at the time a pretty cool independent studio started by Thomas Tull. They had made Godzilla and Hangover and King Kong and 300. And he asked me if I would help them build their digital businesses over there.Chris Erwin:Was it an immediate yes? Like, "Oh yeah, this makes sense. This is an incredible studio with some incredible IP. There's a lot I can do here. Let's get to work." Or were you evaluating other things too?Adam Rymer:I wasn't evaluating other things. And it was pretty hard decision because you this was a company that I had helped start and I was a pretty big piece of, but the opportunity and it was a blank slate. I was kind of handed a, "We don't know what the right answer is and we need somebody who's got enough experience on both sides of the equation here that understands making some content, understands distribution, understands the business side of it to really help us figure out what we should do with this asset that we have." They had just acquired Nerdist and just didn't have a solid business plan on how to start making real revenues out of it. So for me, it was a puzzle to solve right back to the things that I love, which is trying to put pieces together.Adam Rymer:At a certain level the film business has a very defined path, right? There's not much to solve in that. There's always new innovations that are getting made. There's new ways to finance a film. But for the most part, the business model of making movies is relatively defined. You might say that Netflix has changed that in some way, shape, or form, but there wasn't a whole lot of, "How am I going to do this for the next 20 years and innovate and do some neat things?" And at Legendary, it felt like there was a real chance to try all sorts of new ideas.Chris Erwin:When you enter their first year, they've acquired Nerdist and I think that was... Was that founded by Chris Hardwick?Adam Rymer:Correct? Yep.Chris Erwin:And so what did you think of, okay, these are the wins that I want to get in year one. I think that we are capable of doing this. It also feels innovative. And then I think it's going to set you up to have an exciting career overseeing digital at Legendary going forward. What was that first mandate for you?Adam Rymer:First thing was really figuring out how are we going to generate consistent revenue? Because at the time the video part of Nerdist was founded as one of the funded YouTube channels. Some people might remember that YouTube was putting a lot of money into funding channels for the purpose of creating more premium content on YouTube and right around 2014, they stopped funding those channels. And so a lot of these channels ended up in no man's land of figuring out how they were going to keep their business running. And so for me, the first step was okay, well, now that we don't have this stipend coming from YouTube every year, how are we going to find ways to just generate consistent revenue even if we're still operating at a little bit of loss, something that we can project to keep it all moving. So at the time we had the Nerdist podcast and we had some content that was existing on YouTube, and my first step was, well, how do we start monetizing podcasts in a better way?Adam Rymer:So I was able to take Chris's podcast and structure a deal with Midroll and that helped get us really kicked off with our first seven-figure deal, which let me hire some more staff and start to figure out some new lines of business.Chris Erwin:Did you feel like, "Hey, we figured out a digital revenue model here for media brands and fandoms built around big personalities"? And so did that then inspire you to say, "Well, let's start buying some other companies to add onto this roster"? Because I think you then acquired Geek and Sundry and then Amy Poehler's Smart Girls at the Party.Adam Rymer:That's right. So the idea was, well, if we can create enough of scale around these celebrity-driven community content businesses, then we can justify having an infrastructure that can support all of them the right way. So that allowed us to have a sales team that could support all of them, and start doing branded content deals that could leverage the communities that were built across all of them simultaneously bring some staff efficiencies together, and allow content production to be more efficient. So we had our entire... We had our own content production team. We had our own studio where we produced all of the content that we're making for the YouTube channels ourselves and for our branded content features. And ultimately that led us to start a Twitch channel with Geek and Sundry, which is where I started to learn quite a lot about Livestream.Chris Erwin:So do you feel at this point it's like, "All right." You're attached to a big studio, you have a lot of resources, you have incredible IP to work with, but you also, you're running your own division, which has its own P&L. It seems like you're on both the creative and the business sides of the house, where you have a real strong point of view of what content we're creating. How do we monetize it? What's getting green-lit? What new platforms are we experimenting with? You're building out a team against your vision. Did you feel like, "Hey, I feel like I have it all right now"? This is checking all the boxes for my career.Adam Rymer:In hindsight, I guess so. I mean, at time it felt very stressful. At the time it felt like we were building the plane while we were flying it. And there weren't a whole lot of examples for us to point to say, "Hey, we're doing it like these guys," or we've got somebody else that's done it in front of us. There were the MCNs out there that were aggregating a bunch of channels together. And they had a somewhat different business model, but there was nobody who was really trying to create more premium level content on a regular basis. And I mean, I had to answer to a pretty senior studio executive. So I had a lot of pressure from that side, but I did have the luxury of a good balance sheet. So I wasn't having to deal with trying to raise capital on a regular basis to keep the thing afloat.Adam Rymer:There was a couple years there where it really felt like the coolest, most fun job that I ever could have thought I've had. We were going down to ComicCon. Chris was moderating panels for us in Hall H. Got to go backstage and hang out with the cast of all the Marvel films before they got on Hall H. we had all sorts of fun people coming by the studio to be in the content, got to watch and be part of a lot of the content that was being filmed at our location. I think most of the people that were there at the time will tell you that it was a pretty magical place to be for a couple of years.Chris Erwin:I mean, I remember going to your offices a couple times during that period and just looking around at the different sets and the studios. And I was like, "This sounds like a pretty amazing gig, Adam." I knew that you were working really hard and that it was a lot and you were kind of figuring things out on the fly as you said, but I think everything in retrospect, you get some clarity of like, "Oh, that was a pretty cool moment." You know? And I think that was a very cool moment for you. And clearly, you learned a lot, which has bolstered your career. But I'm curious to hear you so you started experimenting with Twitch. I think that's just an interesting precursor to some of the channels and the partners that you work with today, particularly in gaming, similar to when you saw the power of MP3s when you were up in Cambridge.Chris Erwin:And then you saw how that was going to disrupt the music space. When you were first exposed to Twitch, did a light bulb go off on your head and say, "Hey, there's something incredibly exciting about the power of live?" What was that moment like for you?Adam Rymer:I'll be honest. I wasn't the biggest, "Hey, we're going to figure out how to monetize this immediately live streaming." I was the suit in the room on it. I had some people from Geek and Sundry come to me and they said, "We think that we can create a channel for Geek and Sundry and stream different kinds of content, just do some stuff out of our office. And we will minimize the cost that it takes for us to do it and we'll give it a shot. And they did it and they got it up and running and they spent as little as they could to create a set and livestream and got a bunch of equipment donated. And it was okay. And Felicia came on and streamed with it and that helped build an audience for it. And it was programmed. I mean, the thing that was most interesting about it was it actually had a schedule.Adam Rymer:There were shows that were on certain times of day, certain days of the week, it was a live-streamed TV network. Maybe one of the first of its kind. It started to gain some traction, but it was when Felicia brought in her friends at Critical Role to stream their Dungeons and Dragons game that we really started to see the magic of what live-streaming could be.Chris Erwin:What was unique about bringing Critical Role in live-streaming Dungeons and Dragons? What did you feel was special for the audience or to help amplify marketing? What was that?Adam Rymer:Well, I mean, what was amazing about it was it found a community that never had a place to call home. So most of Twitch was watching people play video games. There was some what you'd call today, just chatting going on, which is mostly what Geek and Sundry was. There was some game playing, but nobody was really streaming D and D at the time or doing things that were a little more creative like that in a meaningful, well-produced way. And all of a sudden this show found a home and started to spread by word of mouth and it had some great talent attached to it, right? Everybody who's on Critical Role is professional voice actors in their own right. And so they brought a level of confidence to it that don't think many people have seen before. And Matt Mercer's just a genius as a DM at the end of the day. So giving this community, which is spread out around the world a home one day a week, where they can all get together and share an experience at the same time, really became a magical place to be.Adam Rymer:So Twitch loved us because we were bringing in a community that wasn't necessarily there naturally again, because most of Twitch was more based around video gaming and the D and D community loved it because it was giving them a place that they had never had before. It was a little bit like lightning in a bottle.Chris Erwin:It just goes back to, I think I was listening to a podcast by Ben Thompson a couple weeks ago. And I think a point that was made is never underestimate the ability of the internet to reach these incredibly niche fandoms all around the world. There is interest in anything at a minimum, at least one person will be into something if you put it out there. But I think Dungeons and Dragons has this massive community and like you said, but they didn't really have a place to call home and you guys created that for them. I think that was just like so beautifully articulated. I love that. So you're doing your thing at Nerdist and Legendary you're there for five years, but then at the end of your five-year run, you go into this exploratory phase where you're advising a few different companies.Chris Erwin:I think you're reimagining cinema with a company called WeVu. And I remember being in your living room, having some brainstorm sessions around that with a few mutual friends, shout out to Adam Sachs. And then you end up as at the CEO, as of Envy Gaming, a big bet on the gaming space. How did that run come to an end? And then it kicked off. I'm going to make a bet on the gaming space. What did that look like for you?Adam Rymer:Sure. So Legendary sold to a big Chinese company called Wanda and I'll make it a short story. It was just the fit for me at the new version of the company wasn't quite the same as it was under the previous leadership. So I left and started advising companies that I just thought were really interesting and cool out there. Did some work with [inaudible 00:40:44]. Did some work with Participant. Did some work with ranker.com, other friends of mine that I had known over the years that I just had a chance to really help out here and there. And then out of the blue, right before COVID hit, I got a call from a recruiter about this position with NB Gaming. And as I've said, I've been a gamer geek nerd most of my life. And I've been paying attention to what's been going on in the gaming and Esports space for a long time.Adam Rymer:At Universal, I was responsible for all the video game work that was done. We had produced a couple games while I was there. We looked at buying a big video game publisher while I was there. So the video game space wasn't totally new to me, but the video game lifestyle space was a little bit new. And I had been following the growth of Twitch, the growth of what you'd call the celebrity influencers and creators that were emerging on the platform. And I had seen some of these Esports organizations. I hadn't necessarily known of Envy at the time, but I did know of a couple of the other ones that were out there. And I saw the potential, right? I saw the early days of a new form of brand and community entertainment, which was emerging on Twitch and other platforms because it was interactive. And when I started meeting the people that were here at Envy, it really felt like the next phase of innovation for me.Adam Rymer:And if you think about the path of my career, which has always been trying to find where's that edge of entertainment and technology and consumer behavior music with Napster and film with digital distribution and Nerdist with community-based content. This really feels like the edge of the universe at the moment, in terms of where the community is starting to emerge, where you've got a new generation of people who are not watching traditional television. It felt to me like this is a place to plant my flag for a while and see how I can help this develop.Chris Erwin:So you end up moving. You were based out of LA. Your family was in LA but the role was in Dallas. Did you just move there full-time in the beginning or were you commuting like four days a week in Dallas? And then back to LA on the weekends?Adam Rymer:I moved here to Dallas in the summer of 2020 having never met anybody at the company in person because we were all working from home. And my family stayed back in LA because of the pandemic. And I would fly back home every two weeks to see them. And we did that for about nine months while my kid was finishing the school year. It was an interesting time to be away from home and in a new city that I knew absolutely nothing about. I had never really been to Dallas before. I knew nothing about the city.Chris Erwin:Did you take on the role without ever meeting anyone from the founding team, the leadership, or the investor group in person? It was all Zoom calls and then you signed on the dotted line?Adam Rymer:Yes.Chris Erwin:Wow. That's a big decision.Adam Rymer:Yes. That's how convinced I was about the future of this space and also the people that were involved with it. So the interesting part about that period of time is I have a son who at the time was eight years old. And the way that he and I would stay in touch and I think this is telling to the future of this space, the way he and I would stay in touch while I was living in Dallas and he was in LA is we would play Fortnite together. Several times during the week I would get home from work, we'd both load up Fortnite and we'd put on the cameras. And while we were playing Fortnite, we'd catch up on how school was going and what his friends were up to and how he's doing. And that to me was the whole reason why I'm in this space.Adam Rymer:Because yes, we were playing a game and we were shooting people and we were like having a good time, but it was really just about us spending time together and talking to each other and interacting with each other. And that's what I think we're going to remember at the end of the day and not what skin we were wearing or any of that kind of thing, which to me shows how gaming is just the natural way of interacting and communicating for people today.Chris Erwin:That is so cool. I mean, I think about from our generations like Gen X and Millennials, oh, early memories of your father, it's like going fishing together, right. Going camping. And I think that your son, right, these like Gen Alpha, their memories will be like, "I remember when we used to play that old game Fortnight and we used to talk and catch up about our what was going on in school." It's just going to be a whole transformation of memories of childhood and with their parents, you know?Adam Rymer:Absolutely.Chris Erwin:I love that. We always say for us, you need to be where your clients are at. Tell our clients to don't resist or to be forceful. And I really like you're meeting your kid where he's at. If you look at the stats, we just did a big research project for a toy retailer of where are parents and kids independently and then also as a co-viewing unit spending their time online. It's on social media and it's in these big gaming environments, like Fortnite, like Roblox, like Minecraft. So I think that's pretty smart parenting, Adam. I am not a parent, but I think that it seems like smart parenting from afar.Adam Rymer:Absolutely. It's a new world. I keep trying to explain to people who are in a, I don't even want to say older generation, right because I don't feel like I'm old these days, but I'll just say anybody who's Gen X and older, we tend to use the word gamer, right? As like, "Oh, there's gamers." People are gamers and it's a misnomer now. It made sense for our generation because gaming was such a new thing for people to do. Not everybody had an Xbox, not everybody had an Atari. Gaming wasn't a natural course of business. But for this new generation, for the younger generations, asking somebody if they're a gamer is like asking people in our generations, if they listen to music or if they go to the movies.Adam Rymer:Well, you might talk to people and say, "Hey, what TV shows are you watching?" And there might be people who say, "I don't watch TV" and you're going to say, "Okay, well, that's strange. I mean, most people watch TV." But in this generation, I think we are increasingly reaching the stage of saying, "What games do you play?" Not, "Are you a gamer?" Because to me that is the given for this generation.Chris Erwin:I love that. Such a poignant point. Couple quick questions before we go onto our closing rapid fire. But when you got in there, I remember I'm like, "Adam, so what's your initial focus there?" And I think that you had a point of view like you've done at your other companies of what is the 360 monetization model? How do you take these teams, these players... How do you build media brands around them? How do you build fandoms? What is the talent-driven model to really take this business to the next level? If you could just tell our listeners what your initial re-imagination and growth vision for the company was in year one.Adam Rymer:A lot of it is applying principles to it at a certain level. What we do, isn't very different from other forms of media and entertainment that I've been involved with. And other people have been involved with in the past, which is we have a brand that has stature and meaning and association. It has a community around it. And through that brand and through the content that we create, we reach our users, we reach their eyeballs. It helps our brands and advertisers reach their eyeballs and it helps us connect with them. And so that's no different from any other form of media, whether that was magazines back in the day or television, or filmed entertainment, it is at a certain level. It is reach and it is scale. And so when I came in here first, it was really just understanding the dynamics of the industry.Adam Rymer:Where does monetization happen? What platforms does it happen on? How do we actually get in touch with these people? What kind of data is available? But then it was what are the assets that we actually have and what levers can we pull and what is our programming? So when you start thinking of the brand and your programming, you start saying to yourself, okay, well, I've got teams and I've got content creators, and I've got original programming that we put out. And you start looking at the pieces of your organization as what reach to each of those pieces have. So I've got this team and they play a certain game. Let's call it rocket league. Well, what audience does that rocket league team bring to me? Where are those people from? What demographic is that group of people? Are they mostly in the US or are they mostly international?Adam Rymer:What age are they? What states do they come from? What do they care about? What brands and industries are they interested in? And then I've got our call of duty team. Same thing. What reach do they have? Switch over to our content creator side. Okay. Well, if I'm going to bring on a new content creator, what's the audience that I'm getting from working with that content creator? It's not overly different. I mean, it is, there are differences in nuances, but if you are Discovery Channel and you're thinking about filling the 8:00 PM slot on Thursday, well, what are you going to put on in that 8:00 PM slot? You don't want to put on something that overlaps with another show that you already get that audience from. This is the whole definition of programming. It's the same reason why Game of Thrones and Westworld aren't on at the same time for HBO. They sequence those things because they want to optimize the programming and make sure that people stay subscribed to HBO for a longer period of time.Adam Rymer:So understanding your audience, understanding who's coming in, understanding the reach that you get with the assets that you have available starts to get the company thinking about us as a media property. And once you shift your mindset to thinking about it as a media property rather than necessarily a sports team, you start to build business processes around that in a different way. And that's what we're focused on at the moment.Chris Erwin:I don't think I've heard a smarter encapsulation of a media strategy than your past couple minutes, Adam. So very well done. So I'm curious in putting that strategy in place, just over the past almost two years, what are some of your favorite moments of some wins with the team? I was reading on LinkedIn. There's the Valorant Championships and the Green Wall, the Fandom really coming alive, having over a million concurrent viewers of the competition. Is that one of them? Are there others? What has that been for you?Adam Rymer:To start with our Call of Duty team won the CDL Championship within a month of me being here at Envy, which was mind-numbing. It's like, imagine joining the Chicago bulls five days before they won the NBA Championship, right? It's that kind of thing. And all of a sudden you've got a ring and you've got a trophy and you've got all this stuff and you barely started to understand what this world is all about. It was a pretty phenomenal moment. It was an amazing way to get indoctrinated into the space and get excited about it all. So now I've got a championship ring that's sitting in my office and that was a pretty fun, pretty fun moment. But yeah, about a year later, we merged with OpTic Gaming, which some of the listeners might know is one of the biggest, most passionate fan bases in the world when it comes to gaming and Esports.Adam Rymer:And that has been like wildfire for us. Hector Hex, just an amazing individual who's knows how to work with his audience and knows how to create content, and knows how to bring the audience into the brand in a really phenomenal way. And he's been educating us on a bunch of things that we didn't quite understand, and we've been working with him on some of the monetization things and just really couldn't have put two better organizations together. So within two months of bringing those organizations together, we won the Valorant Championship in Iceland, which is, as you were mentioning, had over a million people watching it. And just again, just another one of those too picture-perfect of a moment for us. Great memories that we're going to have forever.Chris Erwin:That's awesome. A final question for you is what's next for Envy gaming? What should people be watching for in some of the upcoming announcements, some new business initiatives? I think I was looking at from your team, there's some new virtual character immersion like CodeMiko. I'm pronouncing that right? Maybe some web three activations. What are you working on right now?Adam Rymer:What I think you're going to see out of us over the next year is really continued expansion of optic from a brand perspective, in terms of the areas that we're in. Just really trying to explore new ways to reach our fan base and build communities. I think the whole world of Web3, and I think a lot of people talk about Web3 without necessarily... I'm not saying I'm an expert in it, but I don't think a lot of people quite understand some of the dynamics of what makes Web3 different from Web2. And the biggest thing to me about Web3 that makes it different is community. If you don't have a community tied to some Web3 initiative, then you're missing it. I'll give you an perfect example. Web2 is about user acquisition on a one-to-one basis.Adam Rymer:So you've got a game like Candy Crush and you spend 50 cents to bring somebody in to Candy Crush and they spend a $1.50 on the game. You've made a dollar in profit and you can just keep doing that cycle all day. And you find new ways to bring more people in and you get a huge user base. There's a community that maybe gets formed online on Reddit boards and whatever else talking about Candy Crush, but the community is not an inherent part of what makes Candy Crush successful. In Web3 it's a little bit different. Web3 is if you bring somebody in, if you spend 50 cents to bring somebody to your Web3 platform and they get there and there isn't a whole community for them to connect to, they're going to leave. There's nothing for them to do. The community actually makes your project valuable.Adam Rymer:So in game terms, it's like bringing somebody in to play Fortnite, and they're just sitting in the queue, waiting for the game to start. And because there aren't 90 other people for you to play the game with, you're just sitting there and you're just waiting and waiting and nothing happens. And so it doesn't matter how much you spend on user acquisition, you didn't get your value for it. So we're going to be spending a lot of time on how do we build our community in new ways? How do we get the information about who our community is? Where do they live? What are they looking for us to do? How do we bring value to them? And how do we find partners that want to provide value back to our community? So how do we find those really interesting partnerships where we can take the Green Wall and OpTic and Envy and work together with those platforms to create really interesting dynamic opportunities together and not try to just have everything operate through our own vertical.Chris Erwin:Well said, something that we talk about at RockWater is the sense of valuing your community and communal ownership. I think that there's been a lot of literature over the past, call it year, particularly as you look at the building of different game franchises, where these users, their engagements, all the dollars that they spend on the games, all their engagement that can drive advertising revenues, right? And in-game purchases, the value that they create for a few stakeholders or investors or game owners, and it really gets siphoned to just a few. So the question then becomes, "Well, how do you reward the community for all the value that they're creating?" And I think there's actually a much bigger win there where if there's more of that two-way street, in terms of value sharing, the overall pie gets a lot bigger and everyone can win. And so I think that's a really, really smart mentality.Chris Erwin:Adam, I'll close it out with this before we get the rapid-fire. I just want to give you some kudos here. I think we were first introduced when I was probably at Big Frame and Awesomeness. So this is probably around maybe like 2015 to 2017 timeframe.Adam Rymer:Wow.Chris Erwin:And I know dating us a bit. And I just remember when I met you, you were running Nerdist and Legendary Networks at the time. I was like, "This is a guy who's a super sharp operator." He totally gets it. He's got both sides of his brain activating. I very much thought on the business side, on the creative side, I thought you really understood talent. You knew traditional entertainment, you knew digital. And I thought you were a very, very special mind and operator. And I remember when you were in your, what I call here in my notes, the exploration phase. So like after Nerdist and before you went to Envy Gaming, I think there was a period where you are wondering what really excites you. What's really going to get you going. And I think a lot of things that come across your plate that you weren't too thrilled about. And I just knew, I mean, I don't know if I ever shared this with you the right thing's going to come across Adam's desk and he's going to crush it. And it's going to be a really exciting moment for his career. Now I look back at all the success that you've had with Envy over the past, less than a couple years, and I am not surprised whatsoever. And I can't wait to see what you do there over the next two to three years. So I wanted to just share that with you.Adam Rymer:Thank you, my friend. It was definitely an adventure after leaving Legendary. There were points where I felt like I just needed to take something for the sake of taking something. I will wholeheartedly recommend people holding out for as long as you possibly can to find the right thing that feels right. If you can. Obviously don't sacrifice your family in your future and all those kinds of things. But if you can find the right thing, it definitely pays off.Chris Erwin:Very well said. All right, Adam. So we're going to get into the rapid-fire six questions. The rules are simple. It is short answer one sentence, or maybe just a couple of words. Do you understand the rules?Adam Rymer:I think so.Chris Erwin:All right. Proudest life moment?Adam Rymer:Birth of my child.Chris Erwin:What do you want to do less of in the second half of 2022?Adam Rymer:Less stress, more outside.Chris Erwin:Less stress, more outside. What one to two things, drive your success?Adam Rymer:Paying attention to everything going on out there.Chris Erwin:Advice for media gaming and Esports execs going into the remainder of this year?Adam Rymer:That's a tough one. Bear with the downside. There's still a huge opportunity in front of all of us, but manage this downside economy at the moment. And there's a bright light, but follow the path.Chris Erwin:Got it. All right. Last couple. Any future startup ambitions? Can you see yourself starting something from scratch in the future?Adam Rymer:For sure. Never a shortage of ideas that I've got. In fact, I think it's probably maybe a problem that I have. I am hopeful that I'll be launching something again sometime soon. We'll see. We'll see. if you got any ideas, send them my way, but yeah, definitely be starting some things soon.Chris Erwin:I think you got enough on your plate. I'm going to hold back on sending you too much, but maybe in a few years time. How can people get in contact with you?Adam Rymer:I'm pretty easy. It's Adam@Envy.ggChris Erwin:Adam. This was a delight. Thanks for being on the podcast.Adam Rymer:For sure. Great to be here. Let's do it again sometime.Chris Erwin:All right. That interview was just awesome. I don't think I've interviewed anyone in the gaming space yet to date. And I stand by my point that I think Adam is one of the sharpest minds that's operating at the intersection of content community in commerce. He's been in the business for a really long time who really understands the business fundamentals. And he's got an incredible set of stories. So a real gift to have him on the show, very excited for what he continues to build with OpTic Gaming. Okay. Also, as many of you know RockWater is market research and strategy advisory for the media technology and commerce industries. We've just introduced a new offering, which allows us to work with more partners. It's called RockWater Plus. It's an offering for companies who want an ongoing consulting partner at a low monthly retainer yet who might also need a partner who can flex up for bigger projects.Chris Erwin:So we've worked with a large range of companies from big and small. Big Fortune 50 like Google and YouTube and big cable networks and studios like Viacom, CBS, and Warner Media to a variety of digital publisher, upstarts and retail brands, and more. So with Plus, we do a variety of things. We can have weekly calls to address any immediate business concerns that you have. We can set up KPI dashboards that allow you to make database decisions around how to best operate and grow your business. We can do ad hoc research, ad hoc financial modeling. If you're doing market sizing need to do P&L forecasts or valuations to assess your business before you go out to investors and so much more. So if you're interested in this and you think it could be helpful shoot us a note at hello@wearerockwater.com. And then lastly, we always love any feedback on our show. If you have ideas for guests for just feedback on the format, shoot us a note at TCUpod@wearerockwater.com. All right, that's it. Everybody. Thanks for listening.The Come Up is written and hosted by me, Chris Erwin, and is a production of RockWater Industries. Please rate and review this show on Apple podcast and remember to subscribe wherever you listen to our show. And if you really dig us, feel free to forward The Come Up to a friend. You can sign up for our company newsletter at wearerockwater.com/newsletter. And you could follow us on Twitter @TCUPod. The Come Up is engineered by Daniel Tureck. Music is by Devon Bryant. Logo and branding is by Kevin Zazzali. And special thanks to Alex Zirin and Felicity Huang from the RockWater team.—Ping us anytime at hello@wearerockwater.com. We love to hear from our readers.

In this episode, Lexman Artificial talks to Thomas Tull, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Legendary Pictures. They discuss Thomas' long history in the film industry and his thoughts on the current state of propaganda and its limits. They also discuss how movies can help to heal wounds and how they can help to pass on cultures and values. Finally, they discuss the 2018 Disaster Film Awards and give their predictions for the winners.

Thomas Tull, the CEO of Legendary Entertainment, talks with Lexman about his experience with angina and how he overcame it. They also discuss the current state of the film industry and what Legendary is working on next.

Thomas Tull, the CEO of MajlisTechnologies, joins Lexman to chat about the company and its latest product - the Mopeds Tracker. The device connects to your smartphone and allows you to track the location of your mopeds 24/7, no matter where they are. Enjoy!

Thomas Tull is a world class skater. He spends his days skating around the city, except for when he's in the hospital. That's where Breast Congeries come in. Breast Congeries are little machines that help Thomas with his breathing.

In this episode, Lexman interviews Thomas Tull CEO of Legendary Entertainment. Tull talks about the new movie he is finance, "Sylviculture", and how he got his famous (or infamous) auricles.

Ben Lamm is on a de-extinction mission and it's no coincidence his company is backed by one of the original creators of the Jurassic Park franchise.  As a serial tech entrepreneur, Ben Lamm knew his next startup was always going to have a big impact on the world. With Colossal Biosciences, he's doing just that.  Joe gets Jurassic with Ben as they discuss how Colossal is building tools and tech to help rescue species on the verge of extinction, how DNA technology can build an elephant, and how to raise $75 million dollars from investors including Paris Hilton and Thomas Tull, Executive Producer of Jurassic World. You'll also hear how to create an artificial womb and the shift Colossal made from academic lab to tech startup. If you're growing fast and need marketing talent on board, check out MarketerHire. Using advanced AI tech and a thorough vetting process MarketerHire will match your business with a top-tier marketer and they'll do it quickly. Get signed up today and find your marketing professional at http://marketerhire.com/ (marketerhire.com) And if you love listening to Just Raised, please leave me a 5-star review on Rate My Podcast: https://ratethispodcast.com/justraised (https://ratethispodcast.com/justraised) Thank you so much! Follow  Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimmychen (https://twitter.com/jimmychen) Check out the Just Raised newsletter: https://bit.ly/3Ghj2tY (https://bit.ly/3Ghj2tY) Stay up-to-date on all things Just Raised: https://workweek.com/brand/just-raised/ (https://workweek.com/brand/just-raised/) or follow Joe Sweeny on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JoeySweeny (twitter.com/JoeySweeny) And if you're a fan of Acquired, Invest Like The Best, Business Breakdowns or 20VC, you'll love Just Raised

Thomas Tull is a leading entrepreneur and investor as the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Tulco, LLC. he has made notable investments in the likes of FIGS, Colossal, IL MAKIAGE, Pinterest, Zoox and Oculus Rift. Previously, Tull was the founder, CEO and Chairman of Legendary Entertainment, the film company that produced blockbusters including The Dark Knight trilogy, 300 and The Hangover franchise. Outside of his investment work, Thomas is a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, Yellowstone Forever, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. If that was not enough, Tull is also part of the ownership group of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the six-time Super Bowl champions. In Today's Episode with Thomas Tull You Will Learn: 1.) From Laundromats to Legendary Entertainment: How did Thomas first make his way into the world of business starting with laundromats? How did growing up without money impact Thomas' early mindset? What advice does Thomas give to young people today on starting their own business? 2.) Thomas Tull: The Investor: How does Thomas approach risk today? Where is the boundary of acceptable vs unacceptable risk? How does Thomas assess his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time? How does Thomas protect himself from people and occasions where one is being used for their money or status? To what extent does Thomas believe success is luck vs skill? 3.) Legendary Entertainment: How did Thomas make his way into the movie business with the founding of Legendary Entertainment? How did Thomas first meet Chris Nolan? What did the early days of making Batman Begins look like? What were some of the most memorable times from making 300 with Gerard Butler? What were some of the most challenging elements of scaling Legendary? With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything that Thomas would do differently? 4.) The Macro: Why does Thomas believe public markets are the least rational they have ever been? From geo politics to climate change, what is Thomas most worried about today in the world? What does Thomas believe we should focus on as positives moving forward? What should we be excited about? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Thomas Tull Thomas' Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Thomas' Most Recent Investment: Colossal

President Biden has arrived in Brussels, where NATO and G-7 leaders are meeting to discuss responses to the war in Ukraine. We discuss possible outcomes with Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners, Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund, and our own Kayla Tausche. Plus, Billionaire investor Thomas Tull joins to discuss how his thesis is changing amid global market uncertainty, and his recent continued purchases of FIGS.

LEARN How to Get Into Investment Banking (for FREE): https://howtogetintoinvestmentbanking.com/ (https://HowToGetIntoInvestmentBanking.com)   Click HERE to get your copy of the PDF to keep up w/ me!: https://tdgllc.gemalpha.com/view/e7eee3d163164460a79e0ad8d8660f28b9e578128692424b92328fd03bfd8f1b/H2GIIB+Episode+9+-+Why+I+Did+Investment+Banking (https://tdgllc.gemalpha.com/view/e7eee3d163164460a79e0ad8d8660f28b9e578128692424b92328fd03bfd8f1b/H2GIIB+Episode+9+-+Why+I+Did+Investment+Banking) How To Get Into Investment Banking Episode 9: Why I Did Investment Banking . College students looking to get into #InvestmentBanking, read below to see why I picked Investment Banking as a career out of college and why you should too. Investment Banking amplifies your career and gives you a leg up on what you want to do after your time in Investment Banking. . 1. I wanted deal experience. What does this mean? I wanted to work on M&A transactions, capital market activities (e.g., debt offerings & equity raises), understand how deals came together from the point of a seller, buyer, and creditors (I worked in restructuring). . 2. I wanted to develop a solid technical and soft skill set. Let's break these two down a bit more.   Technical Skill Set means the following (to me): Can you take a CIM, a 10-K, or a teaser and extrapolate the given data to create a 1-page write up on a deal or company that speaks to the merits of the deal (favorable or a negative). Further, can you leverage excel as a tool to complete an analysis (whatever it might be, e.g., accretion/dilution, LBO, DCF, forecasting analysis, etc.)   Soft Skill Set means the following (again, to me): can you take a blank PowerPoint and use it to convey a story to a buyer or seller to speak to why the transaction or investment is worthwhile, i.e., should we buy or sell or raise capital or divest an asset, etc. . 3. I knew I wanted to be an investor/operator as an "end state" for my career. As I researched the career of folks that I admire (e.g., Thomas Tull, John Malone, Ken Moelis, Josh Harris, Louis Bacon, Bob Iger, Neil & David Rimer, Meg Whitman, Deborah Farrington, Indra Nooyi), I realized most had backgrounds in either consulting/banking/buy-side), I knew that investment banking was the best place for me to go and start my career – get my feet wet and then go from there. . This exercise aims to further remove the noise from your day-to-day and remain focused on what matters – getting a job in Investment Banking. . Please leave all questions below in the comment or email me directly at info@saajandoshi.com or text me at 310.526.2906! Also, feel free to leave any feedback or thoughts on what else you'd like to see. Thank you all!   Connect with me on Social Media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnOUxc0lycxkZ8F1ADvnWdg?sub_confirmation=1 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnOUxc0lycxkZ8F1ADvnWdg?sub_confirmation=1) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saajandoshi/ (https://www.instagram.com/saajandoshi/) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@saajandoshi (https://www.tiktok.com/@saajandoshi)? Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaajanDoshi (https://twitter.com/SaajanDoshi) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Saajan-Doshi-101283318648410 (https://www.facebook.com/Saajan-Doshi-101283318648410) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saajandoshi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saajandoshi/)   My World Wide Web: Where I Invest My Money: https://public.com/SaajanDoshi (https://public.com/SaajanDoshi) Get a Free Stock: https://public.com/user-referral?referrer=SaajanDoshi (https://public.com/user-referral?referrer=SaajanDoshi) Invest in Crypto (Get FREE Bitcoin): https://www.coinbase.com/join/doshi_b9r (https://www.coinbase.com/join/doshi_b9r)   Here are a

The company plans on using mammoth DNA that has been frozen in ice for thousands of years and combining it with modern-day genetic material from Asian elephants in order to create a hybrid animal that most closely resembles the extinct creature. They recently raised $75 million.  The investors include Paris Hilton and Jurassic World producer Thomas Tull.  It plans to fight climate change by populating tundra in Russia and Canada with the animals, which will stomp cold snow down and preserve permafrost.  Permafrost is the frozen ground found near the Earth's poles. When it thaws, it releases carbon dioxide and may effect climate change.

Today's episode is an awesome interview I did with the phenomenal Thomas Tull, founder and CEO of Tulco! We discuss his career in full, focusing on your strengths versus your weaknesses, soft skills versus hard skills, the importance of humility and much more. Enjoy! Let me know what you thought. Tweet Me! @garyvee Text Me! 212-931-5731 My Newsletter: garyvee.com/newsletter Check out my new NFT project: veefriends.com Join the VeeFriends Discord: https://discord.gg/veefriends Checkout my new co-hosted podcast with DraftKing's founder--Matt Kalish on all things sports, business, and alternative investing: https://linktr.ee/propsanddropspod

Thomas Tull is founder of Legendary Entertainment, Tulco, part-owner of Pittsburgh Steelers, and guitarist for the band Ghost Hounds. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Paperspace: https://gradient.run/lex to get $15 credit – ROKA: https://roka.com/ and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex and use code Lex25 to get 25% off – Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings EPISODE LINKS: Tulco: https://tulcoholdings.com/ Ghost Hounds: https://www.ghosthounds.com/ Pittsburgh Steelers: https://www.steelers.com/ Legendary Entertainment: https://www.legendary.com/

Today's episode is an awesome interview I did with the phenomenal Thomas Tull! We discuss his career in full, focusing on your strengths versus your weaknesses, soft skills versus hard skills, the importance of humility and much more. Enjoy! Let me know what you thought. Tweet Me! @garyvee Text Me! 212-931-5731 My Newsletter: garyvee.com/newsletter Check out my new NFT project: veefriends.com Join the VeeFriends Discord: https://discord.gg/veefriends Checkout my new co-hosted podcast with DraftKing's founder--Matt Kalish on all things sports, business, and alternative investing: https://linktr.ee/propsanddropspod

This episode features Thomas Tull, Vice President and Chief Experience Officer at Ballad Health. Here, he discusses managing staffing shortages while consumer expectations increase, the issue of helping patients to understand and fully utilize advancing technology in healthcare, using telemedicine to care for underserved populations, and more.

Top energy industry watcher Clay Siegle of Vortexa says it's not out of the question that oil could reach $120 a barrel, pushing prices at the pump to at least $5 a gallon by next summer. Plus, global coal demand and production continues to set new records every year, and China is a big factor behind the increase. And, we sit down with billionaire investor Thomas Tull, the head of studio Legendary Picture and part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, to discuss investing, China and why America potentially faces a lost generation of young men.

Thomas Tull didn't know anything about Hollywood when he started Legendary Pictures. However, he did know how to build a financial model and reach the untapped market of comic book fans. Legendary Pictures has produced films such as The Dark Knight, The Hangover, and 300. Under Thomas' leadership, they became a disruptor in the film industry by focusing on a global distribution strategy.    After selling Legendary in 2016, Thomas started Tulco LLC, a holding company that invests in artificial intelligence and technology solutions.    Listen to Nathan Chan chat with Thomas about:  His origin story as a local laundromat owner Raising half a billion dollars to launch Legendary Pictures Working with directors Christopher Nolan, Zack Synder, and Todd Phillips The portfolio theory of building a sustainable production company The feeling of creating a product that becomes part of the lexicon Behind the sale of Legendary Pictures to Chinese-company Wanda Group His strategy for selecting partners to invest in Who do you want to see next on the podcast? Comment and let us know! And don't forget to leave us a 5-star review if you loved this episode.   Wait, there's more… If you enjoy the Foundr podcast, check out our free trainings. Get exclusive, actionable advice from some of the world's best entrepreneurs.    For more Foundr content, follow us on your favorite platform:  Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Magazine

Hey everyone, the HIGHLY ANTICIPATED Sci-Fi epic: DUNE, has finally released in theatres around the globe (its actually been out in a few places around the world for over a month now). As someone who has read most of the first book and being a massive fan of Denis Villeneuve, I have been very excited for this movie. I got a chance to see it yesterday. Did it live up to the hype? Find out in this SPOILER-FREE review. Dune: Directed by: Denis Villeneuve Screenplay by: Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth Based on the novel Dune written by: Frank Herbert Produced by: Denis Villeneuve with Mary Parent, Cale Boyter and Joe Caracciolo, Jr Executive Produced by: Tanya Lapointe, Joshua Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt and Kim Herbert Music by: Hans Zimmer Cinematography by: Greig Fraser (Director of Photography) FIlm Editing by: Joe Walker Casting by: Jina Jay, Francine Maisler Production Design by: Patrice Vermette Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, David Dastmalchian, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, with Charlotte Rampling, with Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem Synopsis: A mythic and emotionally charged hero's journey, “Dune” tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity's greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive. - (https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/dune)

Jay and Captain Keith discuss the new Dune movie directed by Oscar nominee Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”) directs Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures' “Dune,” the big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert's seminal bestselling book. A mythic and emotionally charged hero's journey, “Dune” tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity's greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive. Villeneuve directed “Dune” from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth based on the novel of the same name written by Frank Herbert. Villeneuve also produced the film with Mary Parent, Cale Boyter and Joe Caracciolo, Jr. The executive producers are Tanya Lapointe, Joshua Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt and Kim Herbert. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/moviebenchquarterbacking/message

On this week's show, we... bid adieu to the late, great Dr. Lonnie Smith  spend quality time with superlative new records from Adia Victoria & Dirty Honey spin new tracks by John Mellencamp, Parquet Courts & Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit All this & much, much less!Debts No Honest Man Can Pay is over 2 rock-solid hours of musical eclectica & other noodle stories. The show started in 2003 at WHFR-FM (Dearborn, MI), moved to WGWG-FM (Boiling Springs, NC) in 2006 & Plaza Midwood Community Radio (Charlotte, NC) in 2012, with a brief pit-stop at WLFM-FM (Appleton, WI) in 2004.

Legendary Entertainment founder and Pittsburgh Steelers co-owner Thomas Tull discusses a variety of topics, including his extraordinary success in the film industry, his current pursuits in technology, his love of sports, his rock band, and much more.

The JMart and Ramon Show can be found on 104.5 The Zone and features DK Pittsburgh Sports' very own Ramon Foster as one of its hosts. He and Jason Martin talk about life as a Steelers fan and being a minority owner of the team with Thomas Tull. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Legendary Entertainment founder and Pittsburgh Steelers co-owner Thomas Tull discusses a variety of topics, including his extraordinary success in the film industry, his current pursuits in technology, his love of sports, his rock band, and much more.

Thomas Tull is the Founder of Legendary Entertainment and Tulco LLC. Legendary entertainment is one of the first companies to jointly finance films with movie studios, partnering with Warner Bros in 2005. Tulco is a holding company that helps its portfolio companies apply technology such as AI, machine learning, and predictive data analytics. In this episode, find out how Tull's childhood passions (Batman, Led Zeppelin, and Pittsburgh Steelers) have followed him throughout his career. This episode is sponsored by DoorDash for Work. Get DoorDash for Work and make work delicious. Go to:

If I Gave a Damn! Podcast presents Not Another Damn Movie Review with Adrian and Eric!In this episode we will take a look at the biggest showdown since cat vs. dog....Godzilla vs. Kong! This epic fight was released on HBO Max and (and movie theaters) like many other movies during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sequel to Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Kong: Skull Island (2017), it is the fourth film in the MonsterVerse series. Fun Fact: It's the 36th film in the Godzilla franchise and the 12th film in the King Kong franchise. Adrian & Eric discuss the plot, the characters (or actually the monsters), the fights, and of course announce the winner!**********Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)Directed by: Adam WingardProduced by: Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeodDistributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures**********Follow us: https://ifigaveadamn.com/ Facebook: http://facebook.com/ifigaveadamnInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ifigaveadamn/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ifigaveadamn**********The views and opinions expressed in If I Gave a Damn! Podcast, Not Another Damn Movie Review, are those of the hosts or their guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of their employer. Any content provided by our bloggers or authors or hosts are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.**********FAIR USE NOTICEThis video may contain copyrighted material; the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available for the purposes of criticism, comment, review and news reporting which constitute the 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Not withstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, review and news reporting is not an infringement of copyright.

My guest today is Thomas Tull, the founder of Tulco LLC, an investment holding company that invests in businesses with high growth potential and helps them apply machine learning and data analytics. Thomas is also the co-founder and former CEO of Legendary Entertainment, the production company behind the Dark Knight, Hangover, Inception, 300, and many more iconic movies which he sold in 2016. In our discussion, we cover the movie industry’s value chain, the recipe for trying to make a successful movie and how Legendary pioneered the use of data analytics to improve those odds, and Thomas’ concept of the new physics of business and why it matters for what he’s now building at Tulco. Please enjoy my conversation with Thomas Tull.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Vanta. Vanta has built software that makes it easier to get and maintain your SOC 2 report at a fraction of the typical cost. Founder’s Field Guide listeners can redeem a $1k off coupon at vanta.com/patrick. ----- This episode is brought to you by DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean provides founders and creators with the platform they need to get their website and apps off the ground, all with low-bandwidth pricing to save them money over other cloud providers.   If you are looking for the best place to build web apps or API backends on robust infrastructure, DigitalOcean is the place for you. They provide a fully managed solution that handles your infrastructure, operating systems, databases, and other dependencies on their new App Platform product. App Platform makes it easy to build, deploy, and scale apps. Get started for free at do.co/founders. ----- Founder's Field Guide is a property of Colossus, Inc. For more episodes of Founder's Field Guide, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes [00:03:06] - [First question] - His overarching career philosophy and theme [00:04:07] - Attacking a previously established industry in a new way [00:05:20] - The origin story of Legendary and stepping into the film industry [00:07:56] - Stakeholders involved in producing a movie and pre-existing profit pools when Legendary was founded [00:12:44] - Topline and downstream revenue distribution of intellectual property from then versus now [00:19:46] - Lessons learned about intellectual property writ large   [00:19:03] - What makes Chris Nolan such an exceptional storyteller [00:23:42] - Power and defensibility of cinematic universes and transmedia storytelling [00:22:21] - Applying quantitative data analysis to film production and marketing [00:25:55] - Competitive frontiers in movie studios and his advantageous skillset [00:28:10] - Potential investment opportunities in media or media adjacent businesses [00:29:26] - Interesting new tools that could be developed in entertainment technology [00:31:00] - His favorite mind-blowing and awe-inspiring movies [00:32:41] - Telling Jackie Robinson’s story in the film, 42 [00:35:30] - Jackie Robinson and Chadwick Boseman’s quiet dignity [00:36:56] - Building the holding company Tulco  [00:39:02] - The new physics of business that can’t be ignored [00:42:40] - Modern velocity in the current era of business [00:46:03] - Interweaving an antifragile mindset into the company culture [00:47:55] - Who Tulco Labs is and what they do [00:49:12] - What gets him most excited about exploring a new business for the first time [00:50:48] - Unique characteristics he seeks out in a management team [00:52:31] - Trends that make him feel worried about the future [00:57:47] - Trends that make him feel optimistic about the future [00:58:49] - An important lesson learned from his career on a personal level [01:00:15] - The kindest thing anyone’s ever done for him

The #godzilla podcast has returned! Here are our first impressions of #godzillavskong!   Credits: Directed by Adam Wingard Produced by Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod Screenplay by Eric Pearson, Max Borenstein Story by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields Based on Godzilla and Mechagodzilla by Toho King Kong by Edgar Wallace, Merian C. Cooper Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir Music by Tom Holkenborg Cinematography Ben Seresin Edited by Josh Schaeffer Release date March 24, 2021 (International), March 31, 2021 (United States) Running time 113 minutes

For more information regarding COVID-19 and available health services in Canada, call 1-833-784-4397 or visit canada.ca/coronavirus.  Special thanks to Zencastr who made it possible for us to record this episode while practicing physical distancing in separate locations. The two most (arguably) iconic movie monsters of all time come together for the first time (since 1962) on the big screen (if you're able to attend movie theatres) for true clash of the titans. And this time, there is a definitive winner! Join us for a conversation on the idea of "versus" movies, the Monsterverse, and diving into details of a movie where those details shouldn't matter. To avoid SPOILERS for "Godzilla vs. Kong", skip over 51:10- 1:04:33 of the episode. Music and audio from "Godzilla vs. Kong" is the property of Junkie XL, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Alex Garcia, Eric McLeod, Warner Bros. Pictures, Toho, and Legendary Pictures. The intro and outro music was created by Cackles and Jeremy Eckert. We thank them for their generous support of this podcast. Check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/batjarpodcast. Invite your friends to like our page! You can contact us at @thebatcookiejar on Twitter or you can send an e-mail to batjarpodcast@gmail.com.

“I cannot pontificate about it, but by the time I'm done, I will have done one movie, and it's all the movies I want.People say, you know, "I like your Spanish movies more than I like your English-language movies because they are not as personal", and I go "Fuck, you're wrong!" Hellboy is as personal to me as Pan's Labyrinth. They're tonally different, and yes, of course you can like one more than the other – the other one may seem banal or whatever it is that you don't like. But it really is part of the same movie. You make one movie. Hitchcock did one movie, all his life.” —Guillermo del Toro, Twitch Film, January 15, 2013 Ok, passengers! First off, if you don’t know who Guermillo Del Toro is, press pause on this show, smack yourself in the mouth and then go watch Pan’s Labrynth, Hellboy or even Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and then come back to finish. Go on… git! We’ll wait! Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the son of Guadalupe Gómez and Federico del Toro Torres, an automotive entrepreneur. Both of whom are of Spanish descent. He was raised in a strict Catholic household. Del Toro studied at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, at the University of Guadalajara. Having a taste for the macabre at an early age, del Toro decorated his family home with decidedly spooky elements. Del Toro loves monsters. . He claims that monsters used to crowd into his room at night, and he made a pact with them: If they let him go to the washroom, he’d be their friend for life. It worked, and del Toro says, “To this day, monsters are the thing I love most.” Del Toro liked monsters so much as a child that his Catholic grandmother, fearing for his soul, performed a real-life exorcism on him, and when that didn’t work, she actually performed a second one. Del Toro considers himself a book-person first and foremost, and there were two books that shaped his universe as a child. One was an encyclopedia of health (which led to an obsession with anatomy), and the other an encyclopedia of art. When del Toro was about eight years old, he began experimenting with his father's Super 8 camera, making short films with Planet of the Apes toys and other objects. One short focused on a "serial killer potato" with ambitions of world domination; it murdered del Toro's mother and brothers before stepping outside and being crushed by a car.  Del Toro made about 10 short films before his first feature, including one titled Matilde, but only the last two, Doña Lupe and Geometria, have been made available.  He wrote four episodes and directed five episodes of the cult series La Hora Marcada, along with other Mexican filmmakers such as Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón.Del Toro got his first big break when he made Cronos in 1993.The movie, about the effects of a device that confers immortality, won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Film—including best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best original story—and also received the International Critics’ Week grand prize at the Cannes film festival.  Del Toro studied special effects and make-up with special-effects artist Dick Smith. Dick Smith had been a huge influence on del Toro throughout his life. He bought Smith’s make-up kit when The Exorcist came out in 1973, and applied for his make-up course in New York in 1987.  He spent 10 years as a special-effects make-up designer and formed his own company, Necropia. He also co-founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Later in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang. In 1997, at the age of 33, Guillermo was given a $30 million budget from Miramax Films to shoot another film, Mimic. After turning in a draft of his screenplay for Mimic to Miramax, the studio was not happy with how little was explained about the creatures at the centre of the story, and decided to commission a number of rewrites. One of these drafts was written by none other than Steven Soderbergh, but almost none of his work ended up in the film. Del Toro is not a fan of second unit work, and for his director’s cut of Mimic he managed to excise the majority of the second unit footage. Robert Rodriguez was one of the second unit directors on the film. Mimic was a very troubled production, and del Toro claims that his experience butting heads with studio execs at Miramax was actually more traumatic than his father’s kidnapping( which we'll discuss in a bit): “What was happening to me and the movie was far more illogical than kidnapping, which is brutal, but at least there are rules.” He was ultimately unhappy with the way Miramax had treated him during production, which led to his friend James Cameron almost coming to blows with Miramax co-founder and owner Harvey Weinstein during the 70th Academy Awards. In 2001 Del toro made The Devil's backbone. The Devil’s Backbone, was produced by renowned Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar afforded del Toro a level of creative freedom that he’d never experienced up to that point, and the eternally grateful del Toro has tried to pay this gesture forward as a producer for many directors’ films. The film was an international co-production between Spain and Mexico. Del Toro wrote the first draft before writing his debut film Cronos. This "very different" version was set in the Mexican Revolution and focused not on a child's ghost but a "Christ with three arms". According to del Toro, and as drawn in his notebooks, there were many iterations of the story, some of which included antagonists who were a "doddering ... old man with a needle," a "desiccated" ghost with black eyes as a caretaker (instead of the living Jacinto who terrorizes the orphans), and "beings who are red from head to foot." As to motivation for the villain, according to the actor who portrayed him (Eduardo Noriega), Jacinto "suffered a lot when he was a child at this orphanage. Somebody probably treated him wickedly: this is his heritage. And then there is the brutalizing effect of the War." Noriega further notes that "What Guillermo did was to write a biography of Jacinto (which went into Jacinto's parents, what they did in life, and more) and gave it to me." DDT Studios in Barcelona created the final version of the crying ghost (victim and avenger) Santi, with his temple that resembled cracked, aged porcelain. The response was overwhelmingly positive, though it did not receive the critical success that Pan's Labyrinth would in 2006. Del Toro considers The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth to be companion pieces, and claims that they reveal “symmetries and reflections” if watched together. His next film was on 2002, Blade 2. directed by Guillermo Del Toro and written by David S. Goyer, it is a sequel to the first film and the second part of the Blade film series, followed by Blade: Trinity. Guillermo del Toro was hired to direct Blade II by New Line production president Michael De Luca after Stephen Norrington turned down the offer to direct the sequel. Del Toro chose not to alter the script too much from the ideas created by Goyer and Snipes. "I wanted the movie to have a feeling of both a comic book and Japanese animation", said the director. "I resurrected those sources and viewed them again. I dissected most of the dailies from the first movie; I literally grabbed about four boxes of tapes and one by one saw every single tape from beginning to end until I perfectly understood where the language of the first film came from. I studied the style of the first one and I think Norrington used a tremendous narrative style. His work is very elegant". Blade II was released on March 22, 2002. This was during a period of the year (months March and April) considered to be a bad time for sequels to be released. Despite this, the film became the highest-grossing film of the Blade series, making $80 million in the United States and $150 million worldwide.  Hellboy is a 2004 supernatural superhero film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro from a story by Del Toro and Peter Briggs. It is based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola. Del Toro and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola envisioned the film as a Ray Harryhausen film. The film was shopped and rejected by various studios for years due to studios disliking the title, script, and the fact that Perlman was cast as Hellboy.[7][8] Del Toro invited Harryhausen to teach the film's animators what made his effects techniques unique but he declined, feeling that modern films were too violent. While writing the script, Del Toro researched occult Nazi philosophies and used them as a reference for the film's opening scene. In an early version of the script, the gyroscope portal was described being made out of rails that formed into pentagrams, hexagrams, and inverted stars to illustrate the film's magic and occult elements. Del Toro chose to alter the origin from the comic to give main characters interconnected origins. Aside from working with Perlman before, Del Toro chose him for the title role because he felt Perlman can deliver subtlety and nuance with makeup.[23] Del Toro assigned his real life friend, Santiago Segura, to play the train driver who assaults Hellboy. The film was shot 6 days a week for 130 days, Mondays through Saturdays without a second unit. Sundays were reserved for editing.  Del Toro noted that the film could have commenced filming in 1998, however, the film had difficulty finding a committed studio due to the stigma Hollywood associated superhero and comic book films with, at the time. The action scenes were staged after Harryhausen films with little to no camera movement using wide shots. The cemetery sequence was filmed in a real cemetery in Prague. Pan's labyrinth is a  2006 dark fantasy film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film is  a Spanish-Mexican co-production. Del Toro stated that he considers the story to be a parable, influenced by fairy tales, and that it addresses and continues themes related to his earlier film The Devil's Backbone, to which Pan's Labyrinth is a spiritual successor, according to del Toro in his director's DVD commentary. The idea for Pan's Labyrinth came from Guillermo del Toro's notebooks, which he says are filled with "doodles, ideas, drawings and plot bits". He had been keeping these notebooks for twenty years. At one point during production, he left the notebook in a taxi in London and was distraught, but the cabbie returned it to him two days later. Though he originally wrote a story about a pregnant woman who falls in love with a faun,[12] Sergi López said that del Toro described the final version of the plot a year and a half before filming. Lopez said that "for two hours and a half he explained to me all the movie, but with all the details, it was incredible, and when he finished I said, 'You have a script?' He said, 'No, nothing is written'". López agreed to act in the movie and received the script one year later; he said that "it was exactly the same, it was incredible. In his little head he had all the history with a lot of little detail, a lot of characters, like now when you look at the movie, it was exactly what he had in his head".  Del Toro got the idea of the faun from childhood experiences with "lucid dreaming". He stated on The Charlie Rose Show that every midnight, he would wake up, and a faun would gradually step out from behind the grandfather's clock. Originally, the faun was supposed to be a classic half-man, half-goat faun fraught with beauty. But in the end, the faun was altered into a goat-faced creature almost completely made out of earth, moss, vines, and tree bark. Some of the  works he drew on for inspiration include Lewis Carroll's Alice books, Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and The White People, Lord Dunsany's The Blessing of Pan, Algernon Blackwood's Pan's Garden and Francisco Goya's works. In 2004, del Toro said: "Pan is an original story. Some of my favourite writers (Borges, Blackwood, Machen, Dunsany) have explored the figure of the god Pan and the symbol of the labyrinth. These are things that I find very compelling and I am trying to mix them and play with them." It was also influenced by the illustrations of Arthur Rackham.There are differing ideas about the film's religious influences. Del Toro himself has said that he considers Pan's Labyrinth "a truly profane film, a layman's riff on Catholic dogma", but that his friend Alejandro González Iñárritu described it as "a truly Catholic film". Del Toro's explanation is "once a Catholic, always a Catholic," however he also admits that the Pale Man's preference for children rather than the feast in front of him is intended as a criticism of the Catholic Church. Additionally, the priest's words during the torture scene were taken as a direct quote from a priest who offered communion to political prisoners during the Spanish Civil War: "Remember my sons, you should confess what you know because God doesn't care what happens to your bodies; He already saved your souls." Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a 2008 American superhero film based on the fictional character Hellboy created by Mike Mignola. The film was written and directed by  del Toro and is a sequel to the 2004 film Hellboy, which del Toro also directed. Ron Perlman reprises his starring role as the eponymous character. Hellboy II: The Golden Army was released by Universal Pictures.The director sought to create a film trilogy with the first sequel anticipated for release in 2006. Revolution Studios planned to produce the film and distribute it through a deal with Columbia Pictures, but by 2006, their distribution deal wasn't renewed and Revolution began refocusing on exploiting their film library. In August 2006, Universal Pictures acquired the project with the intent to finance and distribute the sequel, which was newly scheduled to be released in summer of 2008. Production was scheduled to begin in April 2007 in Etyek, Hungary (near Budapest) and London, England. del Toro explored several concepts for the sequel, initially planning to recreate the classic versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man. He and comic book creator Mike Mignola also spent a few days adapting the Almost Colossus story, featuring Roger the Homunculus. They then found it easier to create an original story based on folklore, because del Toro was planning Pan's Labyrinth, and Mignola's comics were becoming increasingly based on mythology. Later, del Toro pitched a premise to Revolution Studios that involved four Titans from the four corners of Earth—Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth—before he replaced the Titans with a Golden Army. Mignola described the theme of the sequel, "The focus is more on the folklore and fairy tale aspect of Hellboy. It's not Nazis, machines and mad scientists but the old gods and characters who have been kind of shoved out of our world." Pacific Rim is a 2013 science-fiction monster film directed by del Toro. In February 2006, it was reported that Guillermo del Toro would direct Travis Beacham's fantasy screenplay, Killing on Carnival Row, but the project never materialized.[48] Beacham conceived Pacific Rim the following year. While walking on the beach near Santa Monica Pier, the screenwriter imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. "They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things." He later conceived the idea that each robot had two pilots, asking "what happens when one of those people dies?" Deciding this would be "a story about loss, moving on after loss, and dealing with survivor's guilt", Beacham commenced writing the film. On May 28, 2010, it was reported that Legendary Pictures had purchased Beacham's detailed 25-page film treatment, now titled Pacific Rim. On July 28, 2010, it was reported that del Toro would next direct an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for Universal Studios, with James Cameron producing.[51] When del Toro met with Legendary Pictures to discuss the possibility of collaborating with them on a film, he was intrigued by Beacham's treatment—still a "very small pitch" at this point. Del Toro struck a deal with Legendary: while directing At the Mountains of Madness, he would produce and co-write Pacific Rim; because of the films' conflicting production schedules, he would direct Pacific Rim only if At the Mountains of Madness were cancelled. Tom Cruise was attached to star in the Lovecraft adaptation. On March 7, 2011, it was reported that Universal would not proceed with At the Mountains of Madness because del Toro was unwilling to compromise on the $150 million budget and R rating. The director later reflected, "When it happened, this has never happened to me, but I actually cried that weekend a lot. I don't want to sound like a puny soul, but I really was devastated. I was weeping for the movie." The project collapsed on a Friday, and del Toro signed to direct Pacific Rim the following Monday. Del Toro spent a year working with Beacham on the screenplay, and is credited as co-writer. He introduced ideas he had always wished to see in the genre, such as a Kaiju birth and a Kaiju attack seen from a child's perspective. The film was shot using Red Epic cameras.[65] At first Guillermo del Toro decided not to shoot or convert the film to 3D, as the effect would not work due to the sheer size of the film's robots and monsters, explaining I didn't want to make the movie 3D because when you have things that big ... the thing that happens naturally, you're looking at two buildings lets say at 300 feet [away], if you move there is no parallax. They're so big that, in 3D, you barely notice anything no matter how fast you move ... To force the 3D effects for robots and monsters that are supposed to be big you are making their [perspective] miniaturized, making them human scale. It was later announced that the film would be converted to 3D, with the conversion taking 40 weeks longer than most. Del Toro said: "What can I tell you? I changed my mind. I'm not running for office. I can do a Romney."  Del Toro envisioned Pacific Rim as an earnest, colorful adventure story, with an "incredibly airy and light feel", in contrast to the "super-brooding, super-dark, cynical summer movie". The director focused on "big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals" and action that would satisfy an adult audience, but has stated his "real hope" is to introduce the Kaiju and mecha genres to a generation of children. While the film draws heavily on these genres, it avoids direct references to previous works. Del Toro intended to create something original but "madly in love" with its influences, instilled with "epic beauty" and "operatic grandeur". The film was to honor the Kaiju and mecha genres while creating an original stand-alone film, something "conscious of the heritage, but not a pastiche or an homage or a greatest hits of everything". The director made a point of starting from scratch, without emulating or referencing any previous examples of those genres. He cautioned his designers not to turn to films like Gamera, Godzilla, or The War of the Gargantuas for inspiration, stating: "I didn't want to be postmodern, or referential, or just belong to a genre. I really wanted to create something new, something madly in love with those things. I tried to bring epic beauty to it, and drama and operatic grandeur." Crimson Peak is a 2015 gothic romance film directed by  del Toro and written by del Toro and Matthew Robbins. The story, set in Victorian era England, follows an aspiring author who travels to a remote Gothic mansion in the English hills with her new husband and his sister. There, she must decipher the mystery behind the ghostly visions that haunt her new home. Del Toro and Robbins wrote the original spec script after the release of Pan's Labyrinth in 2006. It was sold quietly to Donna Langley at Universal. Del Toro planned to direct the film, but postponed the project to make Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and then again to work on The Hobbit films. Langley suggested that del Toro produce the film for another director, but he could not find one he deemed suitable. While directing Pacific Rim, del Toro developed a good working relationship with Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni, who asked what he wanted to do next. Del Toro sent them his screenplays for a film adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, a Western adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Crimson Peak. The producers deemed the last of these "the best project for us, just the right size". Universal allowed del Toro to move the project to Legendary, with the caveat that they could put up money for a stake in the film. Del Toro called the film a "ghost story and gothic romance". He has described it as "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story", and said that it would allow him to play with the genres' conventions while subverting their rules. He stated, "I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback." Del Toro wanted the film to honor the "grand dames" of the haunted house genre, namely Robert Wise's The Haunting and Jack Clayton's The Innocents. The director intended to make a large-scale horror film in the tradition of those he grew up watching, such as The Omen, The Exorcist, and The Shining. He cited the latter as "another Mount Everest of the haunted house movie", praising the high production values and Stanley Kubrick's control over the large sets. British playwright Lucinda Coxon was enlisted to rewrite the script with del Toro, in hopes of bringing it a "proper degree of perversity and intelligence", but she is not credited on the finished film. The Shape of Water is a 2017 romantic fantasy drama film directed del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962, the story follows a mute cleaner at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature. Filming took place in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, between August and November 2016.  The idea for The Shape of Water formed during del Toro's breakfast with Daniel Kraus in 2011, with whom he later co-wrote the novel Trollhunters. It shows similarities to the 2015 short film The Space Between Us. It was also primarily inspired by del Toro's childhood memories of seeing Creature from the Black Lagoon and wanting to see the Gill-man and Kay Lawrence (played by Julie Adams) succeed in their romance. When del Toro was in talks with Universal to direct a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon, he tried pitching a version focused more on the creature's perspective, where the Creature ended up together with the female lead, but the studio executives rejected the concept. Del Toro set the film during the 1960s Cold War era to counteract today's heightened tensions: "if I say once upon a time in 1962, it becomes a fairy tale for troubled times. People can lower their guard a little bit more and listen to the story and listen to the characters and talk about the issues, rather than the circumstances of the issues".  In an interview with IndieWire about the film, del Toro said: This movie is a healing movie for me. ... For nine movies I rephrased the fears of my childhood, the dreams of my childhood, and this is the first time I speak as an adult, about something that worries me as an adult. I speak about trust, otherness, sex, love, where we're going. These are not concerns that I had when I was nine or seven." The Shape of Water grossed $63.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $131.4 million in other countries, for a total of $195.2 million. The film had received a universally favorable response from critics and audiences.  Pinocchio is an upcoming stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, based on Gris Grimly’s design from his 2002 edition of the 1883 Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was written from a screenplay by del Toro, Gris Grimly, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins and a story by del Toro and Robbins. The film marks the animated feature film directorial debut of Guillermo del Toro. In 2008, Guillermo del Toro announced that his next project, a darker adaptation of the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, was in development. He has called Pinocchio his passion project, stating that: "no art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio", and "I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember". On February 17, 2011, it was announced that Gris Grimly and Mark Gustafson would co-direct a stop motion animated Pinocchio film written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins based by Grimly's designs, with del Toro producing along with The Jim Henson Company and Pathé. On May 17, 2012, del Toro took over for Grimly. On February 2012, Del Toro released some concept arts with the designs of Pinocchio, Geppetto, the Talking Cricket, Mangiafuoco and the Fox and the Cat. On July 30, 2012, it was announced that the film would be produced and animated by ShadowMachine. On January 23, 2017, Patrick McHale was announced to co-write the script with del Toro. On August 31, 2017, del Toro told IndieWire and at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film need a budget increase of $35 million more dollars or it would be cancelled. On November 8, 2017, he reported that the project was not happening, because no studios were willing to finance it.[9] At one point, Matthew Robbins considered making the movie as a 2D-animated film with French artist Joann Sfar to bring the costs down, but del Toro eventually decided that it had to be stop-motion, even if the higher budget made it harder get greenlighted. However, on October 22, 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix acquiring it.  So that's his  film history as a director let's get into some other aspects of his life!!He was married to Lorenza Newton, cousin of Mexican singer Guadalupe Pineda. They have two children. He started dating Lorenza when both were studying at the Instituto de Ciencias in Guadalajara. Del Toro and Newton separated in early 2017, and divorced in September of the same year. He maintains residences in Toronto and Los Angeles, and returns to Guadalajara every six weeks to visit his family. He also owns two houses devoted exclusively to his collection of books, poster artwork and other belongings pertaining to his work. He explains, "As a kid, I dreamed of having a house with secret passages and a room where it rained 24 hours a day. The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7." Politics EditIn a 2007 interview, del Toro described his political position as "a little too liberal". He pointed out that the villains in most of his films, such as the industrialist in Cronos, the Nazis in Hellboy, and the Francoists in Pan's Labyrinth, are united by the common attribute of authoritarianism. "I hate structure. I'm completely anti-structural in terms of believing in institutions. I hate them. I hate any institutionalised social, religious, or economic holding." Religion EditDel Toro was raised Roman Catholic. In a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose, he described his upbringing as excessively "morbid," saying, "I mercifully lapsed as a Catholic ... but as Buñuel used to say, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.'" Though insisting that he is spiritually "not with Buñuel" and that "once a Catholic, always a Catholic, in a way." He concluded, "I believe in Man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world." He has also responded to the observation that he views his art as his religion by saying, "It is. To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I'm telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously." Nevertheless, he became a "raging atheist" after seeing a pile of human fetuses while volunteering at a Mexican hospital. He has claimed to be horrified by the way the Catholic Church complied with Francoist Spain, down to having a character in his film quote what actual priests would say to Republican faction members in concentration camps.[66] Upon discovering the religious beliefs of C.S. Lewis, Del Toro has stated that he no longer feels comfortable enjoying his work, despite having done so beforehand. He describes Lewis as "too Catholic" for him, despite the fact that Lewis was never a Catholic. However, Del Toro isn't entirely disparaging of Catholicism, and his background continues to influence his work. While discussing The Shape of Water, Del Toro discussed the Catholic influence on the film, stating, "A very Catholic notion is the humble force, or the force of humility, that gets revealed as a god-like figure toward the end. It's also used in fairy tales. In fairy tales, in fact, there is an entire strand of tales that would be encompassed by the title 'The Magical Fish.' And [it's] not exactly a secret that a fish is a Christian symbol." In the same interview, he still maintained that he does not believe in an afterlife, stating "I don't think there is life beyond death, I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do. And that moment of clarity gives you either peace or the most tremendous fear, because you finally have no cover, and you finally realize exactly who you are." In 2010, del Toro revealed that he was a fan of video games, describing them as "the comic books of our time" and "a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia". He has stated that he considers Ico and Shadow of the Colossus to be masterpieces. He has cited Gadget Invention, Travel, & Adventure, Cosmology of Kyoto, Asteroids and Galaga as his favorite games. Del Toro's favorite film monsters are Frankenstein's monster, the Alien, Gill-man, Godzilla, and the Thing. Frankenstein in particular has a special meaning for him, in both film and literature, as he claims he has a "Frankenstein fetish to a degree that is unhealthy", and that it's "the most important book of my life, so you know if I get to it, whenever I get to it, it will be the right way". He has Brazil, Nosferatu, Freaks and Bram Stoker's Dracula listed among his favourite films. Del Toro is also highly interested in Victorian culture. He said: "I have a room of my library at home called 'The Dickens room'. It has every work by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and many other Victorian novelists, plus hundreds of works about Victorian London and its customs, etiquette, architecture. I'm a Jack the Ripper aficionado, too. My museum-slash-home has a huge amount of Ripperology in it". Father's 1997 kidnapping EditAround 1997, del Toro's father, Federico del Toro Torres, was kidnapped in Guadalajara. Del Toro's family had to pay twice the amount originally asked for as a ransom; immediately after learning of the kidnapping, fellow filmmaker James Cameron, a friend of Del Toro since they met during the production of 1993's Cronos, withdrew over $1 million in cash from his bank account and gave it to Del Toro to help pay the ransom. After the ransom was paid, Federico was released, having spent 72 days kidnapped; the culprits were never apprehended, and the money of both Cameron and Del Toro's family was never recovered. The event prompted del Toro, his parents, and his siblings to move abroad. In a 2008 interview with Time magazine, he said this about the kidnapping of his father: "Every day, every week, something happens that reminds me that I am in involuntary exile [from my country]." Del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from comic book adaptations (Blade II, Hellboy) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco. These two films, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, are among his most critically acclaimed works. They share similar settings, protagonists and themes with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s. Del Toro views the horror genre as inherently political, explaining, "Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror. One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale: Don't wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment." He is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The three often influence each other's directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose. Cuarón was one of the producers of Pan's Labyrinth, while Iñárritu assisted in editing the film. The three filmmakers, referred to as the "Three Amigos" founded the production company Cha Cha Cha Films, whose first release was 2008's Rudo y Cursi. Del Toro has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell. In April 2008, del Toro was hired by Peter Jackson to direct the live-action film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. On May 30, 2010, del Toro left the project due to extended delays brought on by MGM's financial troubles. Although he did not direct the films, he is credited as co-writer in An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies. On December 1, 2008, del Toro expressed interest in a stop-motion remake to Roald Dahl's novel The Witches, collaborating with Alfonso Cuarón. On June 19, 2018 it was announced that Del Toro and Cuarón would instead be attached as Executive Producers on the remake with Robert Zemeckis helming the project as Director and Screenwriter. On June 2, 2009, del Toro's first novel, The Strain, was released. It is the first part of an apocalyptic vampire trilogy co-authored by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The second volume, The Fall, was released on September 21, 2010. The final installment, The Night Eternal, followed in October 2011. Del Toro cites writings of Antoine Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers and Bernhardt J. Hurwood among his favourites in the non-literary form about vampires. On December 9, 2010, del Toro launched Mirada Studios with his long-time cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, director Mathew Cullen and executive producer Javier Jimenez. Mirada was formed in Los Angeles, California to be a collaborative space where they and other filmmakers can work with Mirada's artists to create and produce projects that span digital production and content for film, television, advertising, interactive and other media. Mirada launched as a sister company to production company Motion Theory. Del Toro directed Pacific Rim, a science fiction film based on a screenplay by del Toro and Travis Beacham. In the film, giant monsters rise from the Pacific Ocean and attack major cities, leading humans to retaliate with gigantic mecha suits called Jaegers. Del Toro commented, "This is my most un-modest film, this has everything. The scale is enormous and I'm just a big kid having fun." The film was released on July 12, 2013 and grossed $411 million at the box office. Del Toro directed "Night Zero", the pilot episode of The Strain, a vampire horror television series based on the novel trilogy of the same name by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. FX has commissioned the pilot episode, which del Toro scripted with Hogan and was filmed in Toronto in September 2013. FX ordered a thirteen-episode first season for the series on November 19, 2013, and series premiered on July 13, 2014. After The Strain's pilot episode, del Toro directed Crimson Peak, a gothic horror film he co-wrote with Matthew Robbins and Lucinda Cox. Del Toro has described the film as "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story", citing The Omen, The Exorcist and The Shining as influences. Del Toro also stated, "I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback." Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, and Charlie Hunnam starred in the film. Production began February 2014 in Toronto, with an April 2015 release date initially planned. The studio later pushed the date back to October 2015, to coincide with the Halloween season. He was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Del Toro directed the Cold War drama film The Shape of Water, starring Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon. Filming began on August 15, 2016 in Toronto, and wrapped twelve weeks later. On August 31, 2017, the film premiered in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion for best film, making Del Toro the first Mexican director to win the award. The film became a critical and commercial success and would go on to win multiple accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, with del Toro winning the Academy Award for Best Director. Del Toro collaborated with Japanese video game designer Hideo Kojima to produce P.T., a video game intended to be a "playable trailer" for the ninth Silent Hill game, which was cancelled. The demo was also removed from the PlayStation Network. At the D23 Expo in 2009, his Double Dare You production company and Disney announced a production deal for a line of darker animated films. The label was announced with one original animated project, Trollhunters. However, del Toro moved his deal to DreamWorks in late 2010. From 2016 to 2018, Trollhunters was released to great acclaim on Netflix and "is tracking to be its most-watched kids original ever". In 2017, Del Toro had an exhibition of work at the Minneapolis Institute of Art titled Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, featuring his collection of paintings, drawings, maquettes, artifacts, and concept film art. The exhibition ran from March 5, 2017, to May 28, 2017. In 2019, del Toro appeared in Hideo Kojima's video game Death Stranding, providing his likeness for the character Deadman. Upcoming projects EditIn 2008, del Toro announced Pinocchio, a dark stop-motion film based on the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, co-directed by Adam Parrish King, with The Jim Henson Company as production company, and music by Nick Cave. The project had been in development for over a decade. The pre-production was begun by the studio ShadowMachine. In 2017, del Toro announced that Patrick McHale is co-writing the script of the film. In the same year, del Toro revealed at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film will be reimagined during the rise of Benito Mussolini, and that he would need $35 million to make it. In November 2017, it was reported that del Toro had cancelled the project because no studios were willing to finance it. In October 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix backing the project. Netflix had previously collaborated with del Toro on Trollhunters. Many of the same details of the project remain the same, but with Mark Gustafson now co-directing rather than Adam Parrish King. In December 2017, Searchlight Pictures announced that del Toro would direct a new adaptation of the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, the screenplay of which he co-wrote with Kim Morgan. In 2019, it was reported that Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette and Rooney Mara had closed deals to star in the film, which went into production in January 2020. https://aznmodern.com/2017/10/10/13-facts-guillermo-del-toro-may-not-know/ https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-guillermo-del-toro-movies-ranked-by-tomatometer/ The Midnight Train Podcast is sponsored by VOUDOUX VODKA.www.voudoux.com Ace’s Depothttp://www.aces-depot.com BECOME A PRODUCER!http://www.patreon.com/themidnighttrainpodcast Find The Midnight Train Podcast:www.themidnighttrainpodcast.comwww.facebook.com/themidnighttrainpodcastwww.twitter.com/themidnighttrainpcwww.instagram.com/themidnighttrainpodcastwww.discord.com/themidnighttrainpodcastwww.tiktok.com/themidnighttrainp And wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Subscribe to our official YouTube channel:OUR YOUTUBE

First: sorry for the delay in getting this episode out. Joe was traveling for a wedding and we also decided to switch our release days to Tuesdays. We are back to releasing an episode every two weeks for the foreseeable future. Second: Chad accidentally recorded some of the episode with the internal mic on his computer, so there's a dip in our normally pristine sound quality. We begin the episode with an excursion into the world of immersive POV Youtube lawn mowing subculture. Real sick stuff. In the news this week: For the first time in US History, the wealthiest 400 families paid less in taxes than working class Americans. Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments has a normal one. Ray Dalio’s recipe for success. Wealth-X Billionaire Census empirically proves that rich people like golf. John Doerr: 6/10 points on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index Doerr is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who got rich in the early-2000s tech boom. His firm went in big on the 2007-2011 “Cleantech Boom,” lost a ton of money when none of the investments panned out, and then more or less gave up on innovation in renewable and sustainable energy. People talk about him being a genius investor, but he also invested in Segway and Juicero. Doerr gives us an opportunity to talk about the moral deadlock between capitalist ideology and the climate crisis. Thomas Tull: 2/10 points on the David Koch Memorial Asset Liquidation Index Tull started in laundromats and specializes in marginally improving efficiencies in existing businesses. Tull also formerly produced movies with Legendary Entertainment, which was responsible for the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. So, you have Tull to thank, at least in part, for the Joker that made us all so damaged and twisted. Lawn Fetish: https://youtu.be/e72txdwCMCY Regressive Taxation: http://shorturl.at/cBFKM Ken Fisher: http://shorturl.at/csyzT Doerr: http://shorturl.at/dnqvU Venture Capital and Clean Tech: https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MITEI-WP-2016-06.pdf Wired article about Green Tech Bust: https://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_solyndra/ Capitalism to the Rescue: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html Tull interview: https://youtu.be/Orp274LdGf0

The National Film Tribune and Anchor Movie Talk present Review. Where one or more of our colleagues review a recent film within the first two weeks of its release. Today we review Godzilla: King Of Monsters in this film humans must rely on Godzilla to defeat King Ghidoran, who has awakened other monsters to destroy the world. Directed by Michael Dougherty Starring film stars Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O'Shea Jackson Jr, David Strathairn, Ken Wantanabe, and Zhang Ziyi Produced by Yoshimitsu Banno, Haruo Nakajima, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashini, Brian Rogers, Mary Parent, Michael Dougherty and Alex Garcia Send us a message of what you thought of the film find us online at filmtribune.net

Thomas Tull, founder of Tulco and former CEO of Legendary Entertainment shares valuable lessons on learning from our own mistakes, asking difficult questions, and protecting our intellectual curiosity. PREMIUM: Support the podcast, get ad-free episodes, transcripts, and so much more: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-premium/  

It’s difficult to put one label on Thomas Tull - he’s an entrepreneur. He’s the founder of Legendary Entertainment, the maker of blockbuster movies. He’s part-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he’s an innovator. Tull is the Founder and CEO of Tulco, an operating company that transforms existing businesses by bringing in great management teams and technology. He recently visited with students at William & Mary’s School of Business. Afterwards, he sat down with us to talk about the intersection of machine learning and human interface. When to listen, and when not to listen, and how to have a job and career you love. Learn how the William and Mary Center for Corporate Education can help you and your organization develop your top talent through customized executive education and professional development programs. Visit us at www.wmleadership.com. Thank you for listening.

In this exciting new episode, Jessica and Chris discuss the misadventures that Jessica had over the winter break.  The duo then breaks down the trailer for Colossal.  Then there's talk about the new TV spots for Kong Skull Island and the world building going on.  Godzilla 2 finally gets a new director, finally, Thomas Tull has left Legendary Pictures: What happened and what does this mean for Legendary and the Kaiju films they produce. Notes: Colossal trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlyFHc5Bsv4   Kong Skull Island spot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29fNwiyzh3U   Listen to us on Stitcher: Or download us on Itunes Feedback on either would be appreciated Let us know what you think by emailing us at The.Kaiju.Kingdom.Podcast@gmail.com Check us out on Twitter @TheKaijuKingdom Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheKaijuKingdomPodcast And on Tumblr as well http://thekaijukingdompodcast.tumblr.com Also check out our other podcasts and follow the Panzer Crush Podcast Network on Twitter: @Panzercrush As well as Facebook And if you like what you hear, please pass it along to a friend.  We always welcome feedback as well.

Welcome to another episode of Media Boat Podcast where we have a long episode with a lot to talk about. We have a strong anime movie "Your Name" coming to the US while Thomas Tull is on his way out of Legendary Studios. Later, we get caught up on sports and the new deal with Jerry Seinfeld and Netflix. Later we discuss everything about the new Nintendo Switch and the legal problems that face the Oculus Rift. We wrap all this up with the who's who list of artists playing at the Presidential Inauguration. All this and more on this weeks episode of Media Boat Podcast. 

Jesus, @Thisfunktional of iwatchmike.com, will be going to the Nov. 30 LA premiere of “Krampus,” but before that he discusses the trailer. Legendary Pictures’ Krampus, a darkly festive tale of a yuletide ghoul, reveals an irreverently twisted side to the holiday. When his dysfunctional family clashes over the holidays, young Max (Emjay Anthony) is disillusioned and turns his back on Christmas. Little does he know, this lack of festive spirit has unleashed the wrath of Krampus: a demonic force of ancient evil intent on punishing non-believers. All hell breaks loose as beloved holiday icons take on a monstrous life of their own, laying siege to the fractured family’s home and forcing them to fight for each other if they hope to survive. The horror-comedy also stars Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Stefania Lavie Owen and Krista Stadler. Krampus and his mischievous underlings have been created by the combined efforts of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, both renowned for their epic work on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and King Kong, among many others. Written and directed by Michael Dougherty (Trick ’r Treat), Krampus is co-written by Zach Shields and Todd Casey and produced by Legendary’s Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni, Alex Garcia and Dougherty. The film will be released by Universal Pictures. www.krampusthefilm.com Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/h6cVyoMH4QE Let me know what you think. Follow and interact with Jesus: Twitter - @Thisfunktional Instagram - @Thisfunktional Facebook - ThisfunktionalLA Tumblr - Thisfunktional AudioBoom - Thisfunktional YouTube - Thisfunktional

Jesus, @Thisfunktional of iwatchmike.com, will be going to the Nov. 30 LA premiere of #Krampus, but before that he discusses the trailer. Legendary Pictures’ Krampus, a darkly festive tale of a yuletide ghoul, reveals an irreverently twisted side to the holiday. When his dysfunctional family clashes over the holidays, young Max (Emjay Anthony) is disillusioned and turns his back on Christmas. Little does he know, this lack of festive spirit has unleashed the wrath of Krampus: a demonic force of ancient evil intent on punishing non-believers. All hell breaks loose as beloved holiday icons take on a monstrous life of their own, laying siege to the fractured family’s home and forcing them to fight for each other if they hope to survive. The horror-comedy also stars Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Stefania Lavie Owen and Krista Stadler. Krampus and his mischievous underlings have been created by the combined efforts of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, both renowned for their epic work on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and King Kong, among many others. Written and directed by Michael Dougherty (Trick ’r Treat), Krampus is co-written by Zach Shields and Todd Casey and produced by Legendary’s Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni, Alex Garcia and Dougherty. The film will be released by Universal Pictures. www.krampusthefilm.com #krampusmovie #horror #movies #movie #film #films #review #reviews #reviewing #trailertalk #entertainment #holidays #christmas

Chairman and CEO of Nerdist's parent company Legendary Pictures is on the podcast! They talk about being a sports guy while still liking nerdy stuff, the influence of watching movies at a young age, the amazing array of movies Legendary has come out with, and their newest movie, Godzilla!