Again, we have Tony Vinciquerra, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. And Tony, you're like, I don't know, like the industry guru at this point, I would say. Doesn't take a lot. By the way, it's nice to have Saratoga, my hometown, Saratoga. It's great. Good. Yeah. You have the unique task of leading a major Hollywood film and TV production studio during a period of so much change. Mm-hmm. Like, it's the last couple of years have really been a little. Much more to come. Hopefully no more strikes or COVID. Strikes, no, but the business itself will be in a period of chaos, I think, for the next 18-24 months. So do tell. Like, I mean, that's really the question. Yeah. Can you give us, like- Well, just- How are you thinking about things? ... Well, just look at all the companies that have this albatross of cable networks around their necks, that they have to figure out what to do with. The Disney DirecTV Right ... experience right now is a great example of that, and you'll see a lot more of that. You're gonna see mergers and bankruptcies and sales, and all kinds of fun things happen over the next couple of years. I mean, you know, what's interesting, so there's obviously a lot of challenges. What do you... Any opinions on what the solutions could be for some of these companies? Or do they just have to divest and get away from it? Look, every business has a value at the right price, and somewhere along the way here, we'll see some kind of an adjustment, or I wouldn't say solution, because I'm not sure you can solve the problem of where the MVPD business is going. You know, I think the next couple of big deals that happen, maybe even including the DirecTV, Disney deal, although that's a very unique one, but I think the ones to come will really tell you where the business goes. I don't think I can't make a prediction as to where it's gonna go- Yeah ... but it's gonna be interesting. You can see the negotiations are clearly changing. Yeah ... where it's including direct to consumer. Right. You know, streaming is part of the bundle. Right. Or rebundling. But, you know, you were really unique, in not launching a general entertainment streaming platform. Right. So what do you think staying away from that has enabled you to do? What have you done differently than others by not having a streaming platform? I think there are two things we did differently. One was, when I first got to Sony, we had 110 cable networks around the world. We don't have that, and we got rid of those pretty quickly, except in- India ... three markets where cable networks still work. It's Spain, Latin America, and India. And the Game Show Network here in the US works very well for us. But other than that, we don't have that issue, and that is the one that is most pressing, I think, right now for the business. The streaming business... Look, eventually, that is going to be a profitable business. But it'll still take some time. We do have a streaming business, Crunchyroll- Right. Yeah Yeah ... which is really the only profitable one, other than Netflix, in the business right now. So we're pretty bullish on that side, and we'd love to do more genre-based, targeted, passionate audience, centered streaming services, and we're working on that right now. But, you know, it's gonna take some time for the market to shake out. There's not gonna be as many in a couple of years, and we all know that. Right. So what do you think about how the market result like? Does it consolidate? Do some streamers go away? What do you think the market can support in terms of number of streamers? It's a hard question to answer because, in terms of general entertainment streamers, very broad approach, I would say three or four probably, and you can pick who you think is gonna be the winners there. Right. But there will be very passionate audiences that gravitate towards genre-based streaming services as well. I'm sure you have some substrata. It, you know, history does repeat itself, and it's really pretty much going the same way as the cable business did 25 years ago- Exactly ... twenty-five years ago. Coming out of the strikes, it looks like content spending is not going to recover back to pre-strike levels anytime soon. You're talking television or? Just, yeah, TV content. Yeah. Maybe film. We can get to film also. Yeah. But in TV, and you were, you know. I know you don't like this term anymore, but the arms dealer- Strategic supplier. Strategic supplier. You were big beneficiaries, the strategic supplier to the industry. Are you seeing a pullback for your content? No. Well, through the strikes and through Covid and the strikes, obviously, we saw a pullback, but- Coming out of that. Things are fine. I mean, we're not doing. It's a totally different business today. It's not a high-margin business. It's a volume business where, you know, five or seven, ten years ago, we would do ten or twelve shows a year. Now, we're doing thirty in the US. Shorter series, eight or ten episodes, twelve episodes, maybe, fewer seasons, two or three seasons, as opposed to five, six, seven, eight. So it's now a volume business. The risk is much lower because you don't have. You only produce a program once you have an order, once you have an agreement. Mm. But the upside is not as great as it was. There's no Friends or, you're not gonna see Friends or Seinfelds or those kinds of results going into the future. In terms of deal structure, do you think that we will get? Right now, it's a cost plus- Yeah ... by and large, driven by Netflix initially. Yeah. But do you think the industry ever gets back to a backend? We'd love to do that. We've proposed structures where we'd get the show back after four or five years, as opposed to the much longer terms that are currently in place. But we haven't seen any progress in that to date. Maybe we will. I don't know. But it's a very different business. It is just a very different business. But answer to your earlier question, do we see any negativity to it? Our main customers are Amazon, Netflix, and Apple, and they have not cut back. They may have flattened their spend, but they haven't cut back. The people who've cut back are the ones that are not as buoyant at this point. Right. Can't have a conversation without talking about AI. So how do you think AI will play a role, excuse me, in future video production? It already is to a degree. You know, virtual stages are things that are starting to develop. We have a company called Pixomondo, which builds and installs virtual stages around the world. We have a very, very big elaborate one on the lot in Culver City. So that's one level. Then we have Torchlight, which is a product that we developed through AI, which allows a director to see what a scene will look like visually before actually shooting it, so that they can speed up the process. And I said at this conference last year, that I think what AI will do is help to facilitate the process of filmmaking, make it faster, the cost of film. I said the same thing last year, and a lot of the strikers didn't appreciate what I said, but it will make filmmaking more efficient, and that's necessary because it just costs too much money to make a film today. Maybe you can just elaborate, though, on, like, what kind of expenses can come down? What could the magnitude be, of expense reduction? That, that's still unknown. I think, as I mentioned with Torchlight, it'll allow a director to much more quickly see- Right ... and feel what a scene will look like, so they don't have to go through the dozens of rehearsals or ways to frame a scene. So that's one thing, but there will be many others. We just don't know yet. Right. It's way too early in the process to really understand. We have a film that we're distributing called Here, which is all AI with Tom Hanks, that's coming out this fall. That'll be a real example of a film done in AI, with AI in a way that realizes the restrictions placed upon us by the union contract. So that'll be a real bellwether, I think, about how things will have a chance to develop. So is there any way to think about that movie? Like, what it would have cost without AI? Like, is it- I don't know. Well, w- I don't know if you could have done it without AI- Right ... actually. It wouldn't have been done. Yeah. Just in film in general, like, you've been really consistent in terms of going into COVID, during COVID, that the theatrical window is really important. Yep. Um- We bought a theater chain. You've just bought a theater chain. Yeah. Right? So, maybe we just talk a little bit about the state of the film business right now and what happens with. You said on TV that there's maybe from the bigger companies, like a flattening of spend, not an increase. What do you think will happen in terms of output for films in general? I think it's gonna be pretty consistent with where it's been. It'll be slightly less probably than pre-pandemic. I think you'll see fewer screens around the U.S. But, you know, the thing that people ignore, and no one really talks about, is that most of the film revenue now comes from outside the U.S., on box office. Right. It comes from outside the U.S., and that's still a growing marketplace, so that is a very positive thing. And it really comes down to, if you make a good film, people will go see it. Right. Evidenced by what's happened just in the last couple of months. Right. So on the international markets, are there any particular markets that are showing incredible, you know, stronger? Saudi Arabia has grown dramatically because they just allowed films to come in. England has been great. Mexico has been really, really strong, several Latin American countries. It depends on the film, where it may or may not do well. Right. But the international market is very strong. And then, just going back to, like, coming out of the strike, did it give you... You know, it's kind of was like a forced pause. So, you know, did you reevaluate what kinds of movies you make, or what type, you know, what the number of films? You said it's cadence probably back to normal. You know, one of the things that we talked a lot about during the strikes was: Are there film genres that haven't been explored? And one was rom-com, which we made a couple of and did really well with. Right. People said: "You can't do this." Another was comedy. You know, people said: "Comedy doesn't work." We did the Jennifer Lawrence film, did pretty well. It Ends with Us, is I'm not sure how you describe that. It was. It's not a rom-com, obviously, it's not a comedy. It's very serious, serious subject matter of domestic violence, but it did. It's gonna do $330 million in box office. These are films that people said can't be made anymore, but we went and did them, and prove the proof is in the pudding that you can make films. If you make a good film, people will go see them. You know, just on the opposite side of that, you know, the last decade or so were, like, filled with action films and superhero films and, you know, it almost seems like there's fatigue of the genre, or the question is: Is it the genre, or is it just the specific movies? I think it's the specific movies. You know, Deadpool did pretty darn well. That's a superhero film, and- Right ... did very, very nicely. I think that, you know, if you make a really good film that people are excited about and wanna go see, they will, they will make a way to do it. You know, you saw animated films this summer do really well. Minions did really well. ... Inside Out. Inside Out 2 did really, really well, to the detriment of our film, Harold and the Purple Crayon, because it sucked all the family money out of the marketplace, and we put ours out. Right ...in much, much lower budget film that was targeted at a much younger audience. Wasn't a lot of money left in the pockets for that film. Right. And then you mentioned that you bought Alamo, a small theater chain. Mm-hmm. Could you talk about the kind of thought process behind that? It's a growing business. It's doing well. Couple of reasons we wanted to have it is, one, the most important one is that we, as a film and television producer, don't have direct contact with our customers. Everything goes through a distributor, either through a cable network, a satellite network, a streamer or a film or a theater chain. This company, Alamo Drafthouse, has 4.5 million people in its infinity program. It's a very small company, but has 4.5 million people in its infinity program. So we now have a lot of people to talk to and find out what they're thinking about our various businesses. Plus, the customer profile of Crunchyroll is very similar to the customer profile of Alamo Drafthouse. So we see that there's gonna be some real potential there as well. But you also said earlier that you think the number of screens will decrease. Yes. Obviously, I mean- Well- What do you think about your screen? I think ours will increase, actually, because Alamo is not in a big way in the major markets for film. We're not in New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, which is, you know, 25% of the marketplace. We don't have a lot of screens in those markets. They're in Texas and Midwest and places like that. We think there's some expansion opportunity, but we're not gonna grow it massively. We're just gonna target it a little bit better. Right. Okay. Any thoughts of going outside the US? To own theater chains? Yeah. No, none at the moment, no. Okay. And then- I won't exclude that as a potential, but not at the moment. Right. We're not thinking about it. Right. So, you know, we kind of started off with how bad the pay-TV universe is and the problems for the studios, but, you know, with the decline or the contraction of the linear universe, you do sell to a lot of these companies, in addition to Amazon and Apple. Mm-hmm. You know, have you seen an impact on the acquisition of Sony products? That business, the linear business, has been... Our linear business has been declining over years. We don't have much in the way of linear business today. We have some, but not a lot. Most- The content sales. Content sales, yes. We haven't really seen a degradation there yet. We expect there will be some over time, but we think that the streamers will pick a lot of that up, and they have been. The streamers have been picking up library product as well. Right. You know, we sold Apple even bought a pretty significant package of film just recently. How long are those deals typically for, when you sell packages? They're all over the board. It could. You know, some films have very narrow windows that you can sell. Some are five years, some are seven years. Right. But it depends. Right. They're all over the board. Right. And one possibility to all of the challenges in the industry is for there to be consolidation. We've mentioned consolidation of streamers. Mm-hmm. Maybe consolidation of some of the linear channels, as, you know, maybe there's a roll-up vehicle coming for some of these channels. You know, but just wondering, like, as the industry transitions, transforms over the next few years, what role does Sony play in this? Well, we're gonna sit back and watch what becomes available to us, because we're in a very stable, very comfortable position, and we think that there will be lots of businesses that pop out of these companies. As I said earlier, there's going to be a chaotic time here, where a lot of things happen, mergers, bankruptcies, sales, whatever is gonna happen. We think that there will be some nice businesses that become available that are that we would be interested in, in taking on, mainly in the IP area. Right. That's really where we'll be focused. So you were briefly involved, at least from a public standpoint, in the bidding for Paramount Global. Yep. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to ultimately walk away from that transaction? We didn't really get much traction with the process. We thought... You know, our goal was to get IP. That was really where we wanted to be. We would have had to do a lot to get to that point, in terms of taking the other parts of the company and finding new homes for them. So it really, the scope of that became very, very big, and I understand that the company wasn't willing or anxious to get into a conversation with somebody who wanted to take the company apart. So I think that's really what kind of started it to peter out, from our perspective. Right. We were only interested in a very narrow part of the company. Turning to the advertising market, which isn't something that I guess you're really directly involved with, but- We have some. But- Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! Oh, right. ... Game Show Network. We have. There's some pretty big products there. What do you think the impact of Amazon? You know, it's such a big increase in supply overall. Right. So, what are you seeing as the impact on the market? That's a subject that not many people are talking about, which I think they should be talking about. It's not only Amazon, but think about Walmart buying Vizio. Absolutely. That hasn't closed yet, I don't think. No. But, you know, I think the numbers are something like Walmart sells 50, close to 50% of the televisions in America today. I don't know if that's exactly right, but it's somewhere in that neighborhood. Vizio will be a big product. Walmart sales will be a big share of market there, I'm sure, and they'll create an advertising market as well. And you think about Amazon, they will use their leverage, and so will Walmart, for consumer products to be advertising on their platform. Absolutely. The amount of inventory... I think Amazon followed a very smart path to get to where they are by saying, "If you want no ads, you pay $3 more per month," or whatever the number is. I think it's $3 more per month. Most people, I don't think, did that. I think the vast majority still are getting ads now on Amazon. That's a massive amount of inventory to go into the marketplace, and for a couple of years, it's gonna take a couple of years for the marketplace to absorb that, and it won't be a positive for linear cable networks, I think. Right. Yeah, no, there's a vast amount of inventory. At the same time, you have Netflix, and Disney+ and other streamers scaling up on their- Mm-hmm ... AVOD platforms, but you have- Exactly ... the contraction in linear. Yep. So are you seeing, like, in your ads, in this, is it having an impact on the overall... like, in your shows? Look, the upfront this year, it's not over yet. It's now, well, September, right? It's September 4th today, right? And the upfronts are not done, so that tells you something. Right. Okay. Is there anything, any good news here? Look, I think, there is good news. There's a lot of good news, actually. Mm. Once we get through all the process that has to happen over the next period of time, whatever it is, eighteen months, two years, the demand for entertainment is not going down. It's increasing. Right. You look at product that people really want, sports product, NFL in particular, it's still doing great. And once the business becomes more stable and settles down, there'll be a nice business. It'll be a great business, and we're really looking forward to that time when all the stuff gets wrung out of the business that has to get wrung out of the business. Right. I think there's a lot of future here once we get through the process. Right. Demand for content hasn't. If anything, it seems like it's gone up. It's gone up, for sure. It's gone up because it's easier to access, but- It's gonna become more stratified, and people will be in different groupings and look for different things and have passion for different kinds of product, but it's gonna be a great business. Right, but the business models- Again ... are changing, and Yeah ... I guess, you know, when you talk about IP, we've seen incredible success last year with Barbie and, you know, with the original IP, Barbie and Super Mario. And I'm just wondering, at Sony, you know, you're sitting on incredible IP between PlayStation, maybe even Sony Music. Mm-hmm. Are there any interesting internal opportunities to take advantage of? I think those are the interesting internal opportunities. We've, you know, we've started down a path a few years ago of taking PlayStation IP and turning it into TV and film, and been pretty darn successful at it. I think we've had five or six really nice projects come out of it. We have another five or six in development right now and getting ready to go into television. We have the Spider-Man universe of characters, which we'll continue to develop. We have the Ghostbusters world, which is going to continue to expand. We've got a lot of stuff that's very exciting. Jumanji's coming, and then we have Spider-Man himself- Right ... which we have the Spider-Verse animated side and the live-action side. So we're pretty bullish about the future. Is there anything in Sony, like with Sony Music, that you can develop? It's quite, actually quite a bit. We have a lot of projects going with our unscripted business, with Sony Music doing documentaries on Right ... music, music icons- Accessing your talent ... and things of that sort. So there's a lot, there's a lot happening on both sides. Right. And then would you say you're, like, interested in IP? That was the reason for looking at Paramount, and that you'll see what comes on the market. Mm-hmm. How do you think about scale in the business? Scale will be even more important going forward because the companies that do survive and do prosper going forward will be the big ones, I think. If you look at history and see how businesses go through these kinds of transitions, history does repeat itself. Right. And if you look at history and you see how things work, you can predict where things generally will end up. And the big companies will be the ones that survive unless they make some massive mistake or miscalculation. So scale will be important. And, you know, people say we're under scale at Sony Pictures, but, you know, we have PlayStation, music, all the electronics background of Sony. I don't think we're-- We're not under scale if you look at the company in total. So, I mean, you've had, like, an incredible, successful long, you know, career, a long track record in television. I think I met you at Hearst-Argyle. I know I'm old, Debra. Right. Thank you for reminding me. I think I met you at Hearst-Argyle, so even before Fox. Yep, yep. I guess, you know, like... So, you know every piece of the industry, but Sony isn't operating in all of those parts. Mm. You know, there are certain things that you don't have. Like, I may be wrong on this, but theme parks, I don't think- Interesting you bring that up. We actually have been experimenting with theme parks the last few years, quietly. We've licensed a lot of our IP to theme parks around the world. Not in the US, but in Thailand and Italy and actually Russia, which is no longer in effect, but in Spain to learn something about that business, and so to understand that business. We've come a long way in understanding about the business. When we bought Alamo, we created a separate business called Sony Pictures Experiences, which will be where we put our location-based entertainment businesses, and we're looking at a lot of different paths there right now, actually. So maybe you could talk about the... 'Cause it, in the coming out of COVID, it feels like the experiential part of the business has really just taken off. Yep, for sure. Like, what is your view? Like, how do you see that? We're, like I said, right at the precipice of creating a strategy. We just recently created a task force among Pictures, PlayStation, and Music to really start to evaluate the opportunities out there, and there's a lot. There are a lot of opportunities out there. If you look at a lot of the theme park businesses and the experiential businesses, many of them are owned by private equity firms. So those businesses will come to market at some point, and we're looking at a lot of them. But are there things that are most interesting? Where you'd see the most upside of things like Harry Potter experience or something, or theme park, or something completely different? One of the things we've seen through the experimentation that I described earlier around the world is, if you put successful IP on an unbranded ride, you see a pretty good uplift. 10%, let's say 10%. Pick a number, 10%, 12%, 15%- Right ... something of that sort. So you see a pretty good uplift. So with the IP we own, and, I mean, Disney has done this forever. Universal has done this forever. If you take a theme park, an unnamed theme park with no branding, and put IP on the rides and their experiences, you probably will see a bit of an uplift in the- Interesting ... in the business. So that's a concept that we're using as the core of how we evaluate- Right ... where we go. Okay, and then another area, which is much smaller, is theater, like, meaning Broadway plays- Yep ... West End, or whatever. But, is that something that you guys have? We have been in that business quietly. We, you know, we were one of the owners of MJ, the play that was in New York, and we've had a couple of others. We're not gonna get aggressive in that business. It's a very, very difficult business, as you probably know. I am hit or miss, yeah. Yeah. It's if you miss, you miss big. If you hit, you do pretty well. Right ... but it's a risky business. But we will play in it here and there. As I said, MJ was a big win for us on Broadway, and now it's starting to tour around the world. Right. And then I don't know if there's anything, else in terms of like genres, but so maybe we could just talk about kind of rest of the world. One of the places where, you know, Sony's done really well is in India. But you've had some pretty big changes there recently. A lot of change, a lot of changes in India there. You know... As you know, we were working on a merger with Zee. It was two years of hell- Right ... going through that. And, you know, when a company is in that purgatory world of being in the midst of a merger or an acquisition, things don't necessarily go well. On top of that, the advertising market in India has softened pretty considerably, and the cricket world has just gotten crazy there. The cost of cricket has gotten so out of control. Right. Those are gonna be very significant money losers for— Right ... the companies that own the cricket rights. So we're... But on the other hand, India is the fastest growing country in the world. It's the biggest population in the world. The middle class is expanding. Mm. The economy is expanding. We're there. We have a pretty good business. We, you know, our CEO wanted to retire two years ago, but we forced him to stay through the whole process, and now he's retired, and we hired the head of programming from Star to come be our CEO. So we're still bullish on India, but we're recalibrating right now. Right. But that whole market's in transition. I mean, Disney's- Totally ... basically- Yeah ... selling out or- Yep ... taking a minority stake- Yep ... in a much bigger entity. It's a difficult market because it's, you know, a big market, but it's still, the economy is still evolving. Right. And the infrastructure is still- Still evolving as well. Right. Yeah. And then I guess more, you know, generally, where do you see opportunity to produce content or invest outside of the U.S.? In terms of where we will produce, you've seen the production world change pretty dramatically over the past year or so, year and a half, where much of the production that may have happened in the U.S. is now moving to Eastern Europe, to Australia, to other countries around the world, because it just costs less to produce there. And I think you're gonna see that continue, well, over the next couple of years. So those are important parts. But we also have another business, our international production business, where we used to have eight or nine markets where we were producing local films, and now we're only doing in two or three, Spain being the primary one, where we're very, very successful, and also Japan, where we've been very successful. So, we're gonna expand on those, in those areas as well, where we produce local language films for those specific markets. Right. much, obviously, much lower budgets and much less expectation in terms of box office and revenue, but can be a very successful business as well. So you'll see a lot of that happening. Right. And are there any, like... 'Cause you don't talk about Japan, I mean, you're obviously much, huge presence here. Mm-hmm. But are there any pieces missing in the parent company territory that- Interestingly enough, Crunchyroll is not in Japan, and we wanna find a way to be in Japan with Crunchyroll 'cause that's where all the product comes from, and you know, Aniplex, which is a part of Sony, is a massive producer of anime product, and is such an important part of what we do with Crunchyroll because they know the business. They know the anime, the anime creator business well, and they guide us as to how to navigate that world, which is very complicated. I don't know if you've ever gotten deep into where the product comes from, but it's a very, very unique ecosystem. Right. Right. Mm. And I guess, like, finally, just going back to the film division, you know, you've had incredible, you know, stable management. Mm. Like, you know, Tom's done an amazing job. Mm-hmm. The industry has had its ups and downs, but you guys have seemed really stable. Can you just talk about kind of outlook for the, you know, next few years, what you're planning to do, what your, you know, content, what, you know, number of films, cadence? Mm-hmm ... that kind of stuff? I think we will have a very similar number of films, larger film, medium to large films that we produce, twelve to fifteen. We'll distribute many, many pictures through Sony Pictures Classics. We'll produce some lower budget films through some of our other labels, and we'll represent other companies like Apple or Legendary and other things. So we have over thirty films we'll release a year, so, and I think that'll remain pretty consistent. I think the entire company is very stable right now in a world that's not very stable, so we're pretty comfortable where we are, and we know that, as you described earlier, there will be pieces of businesses that come available that we'll look at and try to add some IP to our arsenal. We're actually looking forward to the next couple of years in that regard. Do you have... You do have an output deal, right? Could you just remind us who it is again? Our output, our film output deal is we combined the Pay-One and Pay-One, Pay-Two deals, and have a deal with, a five-year deal with Netflix and Disney. It goes Netflix, Disney, Netflix, Disney. And that is in process right now. It's a good deal for us, I think a good deal for them as well. In the thirty or so films that you just mentioned per year, does that include your distribution deals? Yes. Who are your distribution partners? Well, Apple- Right ... we distribute a couple of Apple films. We have Legendary, we have and then we have a bunch of independent deals that we do on one-off basis. The Legendary deal is relatively new? It's a couple years old. Uh. Yeah. And is it, like, based on number of films or just- No, it's just when they... A lot of their IP is already committed to Warner Bros. because they've been there for a while, and our deal is for films going forward with them. Right. And then maybe just the television business. I don't think people really appreciate how big you are on TV. Can you talk- We have around the world, we produce about three hundred series a year. It's a lot of series. It's really big. Yeah. I don't think it's widely known. No, it's not. But it's, as we discussed, it's not a business. It's a volume business now, and you have to do volume. You have to do massive amounts of volume to generate the kind of revenues and profits that you wanna see out of the business. You know, between our international business, which we've changed pretty dramatically as well. Several years ago, we had twenty-plus studios. Now we have five or six that are all very successful, mostly in England. And that's worked very, very well for us, and you can see the results of that at our LA screenings this year. I think we had six shows that we were selling from our studios in the U.K. We're doing very well there, and domestically, obviously, doing pretty well in addition. And then we have all the other things we do between our unscripted group, which does, you know, 50 or 60 shows a year, documentary series, all unscripted. We have a lot of business out there. Is there anything- Don't ask me the names of them, because - No, no, no, I actually was gonna ask you, though, and, like, what would be your, you know, few global, like, could you name some of the global hits that you have? Well, the- Is there anything like a global- The Boys is a massive global hit. The Crown is a massive global hit. Right. We have The Night Agent, which is the number one show on Netflix last year. Yeah. We have a lot of pretty good stuff out there. Right. Okay. It's all about great people. We have terrific management in the company and terrific people working in the various parts of it. I mean, you have really stable management. Is there a secret to your, like, success if you've- The secret is to treat people with respect and to help them develop. Except for lately, you don't see my name in the press very often, because I take my satisfaction from seeing the people I work with get better at what they do and develop and go on to do great things, and there's a lot of people around the business that I'm very proud to have worked with, and you know, that's how I get my satisfaction, rather than my picture in the Variety every week. So that's what works. Right. You know, we have great morale. Our company represents the U.S. almost exactly in terms of percentages in terms of diversity and where we have people, and that's what works. If you have a lot of different opinions, a lot of people contributing, it the teams come together. Finally, you mentioned, like, you're looking--you'll be ready for opportunities as they arise, as you know, coming out of the chaos of- Mm-hmm ... what's going on in the industry. So do you have access to Sony's balance sheet? Like, is that, you know, you have access to capital that- Yep ... is not- Yeah. It's not an issue for you? I wouldn't say, but Sony has pretty deep pockets, and, you know, their balance sheet is impeccable. It's the gold standard. There's not a lot of debt. We know how much money we want to invest in the various projects and products that come about, and the company has earmarked a significant amount of money to be invested in the entertainment businesses. Are you fighting for capital against other divisions? Yeah, music mainly, yeah. Me and Rob do a lot of arm wrestling. Okay. Yeah. Okay, and then as you look out over the next year, this is really the last question- Yep ... because we're out of time. But as you look out over the next, like, three years, where, what, what's the biggest area of growth for Sony Pictures Entertainment- Crunch ... for you, your division? Crunchyroll. Interesting. Mm-hmm. And is that because of distribution, pricing, content? It's an enormously passionate, very large audience. It's a genre audience, very large and for a genre audience, it's just gonna continue to grow, and we haven't accessed a lot of the world yet. We haven't really gone into Southeast Asia. We haven't gone into Eastern Europe in a big way yet, so we have a lot of the world still to develop. How big is it in the U.S.? Well, we're about 15 million subscribers, most of that in the U.S. at this point. Is the upside in pricing? Just, would you take advertising or- We do have an advertising. Yeah ... we're not taking an advertising subscription business, but we have a free advertising business already. But look, we want to access the rest of the world first. And pricing wise, we just raised our prices a little bit, actually, on Crunchyroll, so we're looking forward to being in many more countries, and obviously, our pool will be less in some of those places, but- Of course ... but that's a great business. That's a great business. Great. With that, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. This was great.