#104 - Jim Gianopulos: The Evolution of Hollywood and Tech

Well, thank you, Alex. It's great to be here. Great to be with you.

I guess the short answer is I worked my ass off in between lucky breaks. Luck is always a part of one's evolution. But I always had a passion for film. My parents are Greek immigrants and my grandfather used to take me as a kid, five and six years old, to the movies, mainly to spend time with me, but also to translate for him because his English wasn't that great. As a result, I ended up seeing things I had no business seeing as an eight and ten year old. But it started a love affair with film that lasted all my life. I was interested in finding a way in. I was also interested in music. I played in bands, but I realized I was never going to be the guitarist for the Rolling Stones. So maybe I could be their lawyer. I went to law school and then into the music business. Then they invented this thing called video. That was the first lucky break. I got a job as the third employee of a joint venture between RCA and Columbia Pictures which ended up being hundreds of people eventually and an industry that was hundreds of billions of dollars. I was there at the beginning. That was a great opportunity and eventually we were buying films and setting up businesses all over the world and financing films and I became fluent on the international side of the business. So I found my way into Fox and eventually worked my way up the food chain. I was running all the international operations and then was named first co-chairman and then eventually chairman. It was a great ride. It was having great mentors, great role models, great opportunities along the way, and taking my best shot to earn them.

When I talk to young people looking to enter the industry or wondering about their careers, I always say the first thing to do is do the job you're doing as well as it can possibly be done. If that takes extra hours or effort or inputs from other people, figure that out and always leave time for your next position, your next opportunity. Whether that's additional education or reaching out to people in the industry. People in positions of importance, whether they're talent or business people, often don't mind sharing and talking about themselves. A lot of it is drawing on others' experiences, watching where industries are going and what might be your next best shot. All of that is part of networking and staying in touch with trends and figuring out how to get to the next step from here. Also, don't always be in a rush. Sometimes that opportunity takes a while to come. Focus on being highly regarded in the work you're doing. I try to follow that. I didn't realize I was following it, but I did and it sort of worked out.

It's hard to look back on 40 years and find that one moment. I do think there were people. One of my closest friends now, Peter Chernin, who ran News Corporation for a while. When I went to Fox, he became supportive and a mentor and opened up doors for me, gave me promotions along the road to the chair. I admired him and still hold him as a role model for leadership. I watched how he treated people, how he challenged them, how he dealt with them when they messed up, how he encouraged them to accept a disappointment and move on. I watched him figure out how to get the most out of all the people he had and make changes where needed. He was a big influence on my career at an early stage and even throughout. When he left News Corporation, I said, 'Now I don't have to kiss your ass. We can just be friends.' Since then, over 10 years now, 15 years, we've been very close. Those are moments and opportunities and intersection of molecules that you don't forget and you realize were instrumental in helping you get to the place you are.

Yeah. I was always looking for ways to improve. I was fortunate. There were times I put my hand up, but not many. I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. I think part of that right place was being at a time when the industry was evolving into new media. When you're the third guy at a major studio distributing video around the world, a business that barely exists and is about to be a vertical growth line, you're on the inside track of developing its business models, the manner of marketing, distributing, financing, and all aspects. Not saying it doesn't take work or some measure of intelligence, but it's kind of easy to be a hero at that point. I happened to be there when global television evolved from a few local government stations to privatized television, when there were 10 networks in each country around the world, or when pay television driven by technology enabled people to have an enormous variety of choices and huge business growth. Then I was on the international side when that entire industry exploded theatrically, in television, and in multiple media. Some of the opportunities came because I was there when those businesses grew and I was in the middle of it.

They're different. At Fox, I had been there for several years working with talented colleagues and we were doing pretty well. Peter moved up and my prior boss moved over. When I took over Fox as co-chair, most of the team were well-established colleagues and friends I liked and respected. There weren't a lot of changes. It was really building on, innovating, and improving on strategies we already had in place. Paramount is a little different. In both cases, it starts with people. I know that's a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason because it's true. These studios are not one genius at the top. Thousands of people make contributions every day to the outcomes. A lot of it is about finding the best, keeping the best, and encouraging them all. At Fox, that was easier because we had a well-established team. Paramount was a different story because it was not in its best years. The year before I got there, it lost $450 million, which is an achievement for a major studio that can draw on its enormous heritage of existing movies generating hundreds of millions of dollars. To lose that much means you had a really bad run, and they had a really bad run for some time. That required a much broader strategic and organizational change. One fortunate opportunity, for the wrong reasons, was that a lot of my former colleagues at Fox were refugees from the purchase of Fox by Disney. When Disney consolidated, some really talented colleagues and friends were available. I brought them in, and we got the studio on a clear strategic track, rebuilt talent relationships, brought in new ones, and revitalized both its image and place in the community. Thanks to these great colleagues, we had a really good run and built new franchises like Sonic and A Quiet Place, and did the sequel to Top Gun Maverick, one of their biggest movies of all time. By the time I left five years later, we had the best run in some years and hit a profit of $400 million. That was an $850 million swing. So that was more of a rebuild and revitalization. Although the years at Fox were also very successful. We had the biggest box office year of all time in 2014. It takes work, a lot of really good people, and direction and strategy both internally and externally. You want to build talent relations in a way that talent feels comfortable bringing their work and projects, especially those with multiple choices. You want talent to feel their work will be respected, that they will be respected, and that they will be properly supported. They also want to know they are people they want to work with. That takes a genuine connection. Then you put that together with financial discipline, which is always key. I always reminded people: we're in the movie business. The movie part is really important, but so is the other part. One thing I promoted was being fiscally responsible so you could be creatively bold. We had many trappings of major studios like fancy premieres and private planes, but to a much lesser extent, especially at Fox. That was partly because of Rupert Murdoch. He was not in for fancy pants Hollywood. It became a strategic approach not to waste money on fluff and put the money where the movies were and where the organization was, so we could continue making bold creative bets because we weren't losing our ass.

They were both. They were potentially massive winners, and they were risky. At the heart of them is James Cameron, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I've known Jim for 30 years. I was a fan of his back before I knew him, with Terminator and Aliens. I ended up working with him starting in '92 on Terminator 3. He had done True Lies and then he comes with, 'I'm going to make a movie about Titanic.' When you look at it objectively, take Jim out of the factor and you go, 'This has been made a few times, we know how it ends, and it's not a happy ending.' Jim said, 'No, it's Romeo and Juliet on the boat.' It's Jim Cameron, right? I knew it had great global potential. I was running all the international at that point and was a big promoter of it. I said, 'We need to make this movie.' But it was challenging because Jim does nothing in a small way. We built a 900-foot ship in Baja California and a new tank, the biggest in the world at the time, in a studio we built to be big enough for the set. Nothing was cheap. It got very scary because it was massively overbudget. The community was saying, 'What a disaster.' Then we started to see the material. Jim cut together 10 or 12 minutes and it was staggeringly genius. We thought maybe we'll be okay. It ended up being the biggest box office movie of all time internationally. It did $600 million here and $1.2 billion outside the US. It was the number one movie in every country in the world, which had never happened before. It was a huge success. When we cast Leo DiCaprio, we knew he was talented but had no idea he'd become the biggest heartthrob on the planet. I arranged with Jim to take the movie to the Tokyo Film Festival six weeks before the US opening. Our partner was Paramount, so we only had international. I was the lead on that. I said, 'This would be a big deal if a movie of this caliber opens outside the US first.' Paramount wasn't too happy, but we did it. I remember carrying the film cans in the overhead bin to Tokyo. That night, the entire neighborhood of Tokyo shut down to welcome Leo DiCaprio. The anticipation built and it took off. In the beginning, there was trepidation, but there was always a strong belief in Jim and his talent. When time came for Avatar, I was chairman of the studio. Jim had given me a treatise called Project 880, the story of Avatars. It was about humans entering alien capabilities to assimilate with the local population. He brought it to us. Part of it was being able to digitally superimpose an alien physiognomy and let the actor's performance bleed through. There's the uncanny valley in digital effects because we've imprinted on human faces from infancy, and when you try to create that digitally, something doesn't seem right. That was the biggest achievement of Avatar. But it wasn't cheap. We were faced with a huge budget. It was a story about 12-foot blue people with tails. He still teases me because I said, 'Do we need that tail?' I knew he was going to do what he was going to do. We got nervous at one point, but I always believed in Jim and his ferocious capabilities as a creator. He won't stop until it's right, which is why it goes over budget. I thought reductively: do you want to be the guy who took a chance on Jim Cameron after Titanic and maybe it didn't go so good, or the guy who said no to Jim Cameron after Titanic? I'd rather take a chance on the guy who made the biggest movie of all time. Rupert Murdoch called me and said, 'What's going on with this movie? It's way over budget. How much is it going to cost?' I never lied to him, which is why I lasted almost 25 years. I said, 'I don't know. I can tell you where it is now.' He said, 'Is it going to be any good?' I said, 'It's going to be great.' He asked how I knew, and I said, 'Because he won't stop making it until it's great, which is why I can't tell you what it's going to cost.' He was always supportive. It ballooned, but it didn't matter because the movie made $2.8 billion. We greenlit the sequels, but by then I had left and it sold to Disney. No one else can do what Jim does. His embracing and fluency in technology is unique even among greats like Spielberg, Scorsese, and Nolan. It wasn't obvious, but you gotta back talent and take those risks with great people.

Yeah. One of the things I always said was the role of a studio head involves many factors in movie choices. I wanted the production team, the people developing and producing the movies, to come to me believing fervently that it's going to be the greatest movie of all time. Then you want people on the finance and business side to be part of the equation in case it's not. You balance those two voices. You need people who will fervently advocate because if they don't have passion, maybe it doesn't deserve to be on the table to make the ultimate decision to spend $50, $100, or $200 million of the company's money. It's a balance. It's the yin and yang of the movie business.

If I knew all the secrets of always being successful, I'd be unique in the history of the business. But there are factors. It's a blend of many inputs. The first and most important is the story. What is this movie about? How is it unique and original? Does it draw on pre-existing material and is it faithful or have a unique take? Is it going to appeal to that audience? Who is it for? Who is going to be the most responsive audience? How big is that audience? Does the budget match that potential size? Who are the creative elements? Are they well-established like Jim Cameron, or are you taking a bet on unproven talent? How do you factor that risk into the equation? Also, how are you going to sell it? What will you tell people it's about? Is it a pre-awareness title or completely unique? How easy is it to get the marketing message across? All these factors go into the mix. You don't make that decision in a vacuum. You bring in the creative team, advocacy, marketing team, international folks, and downstream media. You get their honest input. You look at a P&L and use metrics from years of experience. You look at a range of possibilities and decide the risk and opportunity. Sometimes you bring in partners to lay off some of the cost. It's a balancing of risk. It starts with story, who is making it, and what is it about. Then you look at the risk profile. At a studio, when looking across a slate, we made Life of Pi, which was expensive because of a digital tiger and massive special effects. Why that movie? It was Oscar bait, very risky. That year we had an Ice Age movie, the closest thing to a layup, and an X-Men movie. We looked at the slate and said we're in good shape. If Life of Pi tanks, taking a bold creative risk on a brilliant filmmaker, we'll be okay. Having strength across your slate allows you to take creative risk in other parts.

It's before you spend the dollar. You typically spend money developing scripts and booking sets, but you try to avoid too much sunk money before the full decision. These are tricks learned over the years. Yes, all of this happens before you make the big bet.