Interview with Andrea Scarso, Executive Producer of “Judy”

Italian native Andrea Scarso is an Investment Director at The Ingenious Group, one of the UK’s leading alternative asset managers and the largest independent investor in the UK’s creative economy. He has worked on more than 100 film, TV and venture capital deals with a combined value of well in excess of $2 billion. Most recently, he was an executive producer on the Judy Garland biopic, Judy. On October 4^th 2019, Andrea and NOIAFT founder, Taylor Taglianetti, chatted about all things film business and Andrea’s integral role in making Judy.

Andrea: What you’re doing with your organization sounds brilliant. Let me tell you something…when I moved to London about ten years ago, I didn’t know anyone. I came over to do an internship for six weeks and then I ended up staying. I went to a screening once and I met another fellow Italian who moved to London just a couple of years before. And he said, “Oh you’re working in films and I’m interested in films…why don’t we go out for a meal?” And then he invited another guy and I brought another guy and eventually we had this group of about ten people, all Italians, living in London who worked in film. Now, after ten years, they’re some of my best friends. It’s great to have this connection when you come from a similar background, a similar culture and are really interested in the same sector and doing a similar job. It’s fun. It’s just an excuse to get together and to talk about work, but also to get together to share ideas. It definitely helped me a lot in my first few years, but still to this day, it’s very good to see everyone’s progress and what they do. It’s a great initiative.

Are there a lot of Italians moving to the UK to work in the entertainment industry?

Andrea: Those ten are probably the most I could find at the time, but there are probably more. It depends on different roles. There are a lot of people working in post-production and visual effects, and crewing on sets. I mainly connected with people in the business jobs, like financiers and distributors. London is connecting more and more international people to work in films because it is working as a hub. Outside of the States, it is definitely the second most attractive place to do Film and TV. There are a huge number of companies and studios where actually a lot of the American films are being shot and this attracts the talent. In a way, London is almost the equivalent of San Francisco and Silicon Valley for technology. It really is becoming the place where there is a concentration of talent and capital. There are a lot of tax incentives in the UK to develop that part of the industry. It is working very well. If you look at some of the biggest blockbusters, almost all of them are being shot in the UK. That helps because the British film industry is struggling a bit as is all of the independent industries. They still rely on public funding and organizations like the BFI and the BBC, and it is still very much a cottage industry where they are still trying to find out a way to grow in a more mature kind of environment. Whereas around the British community, there are all these international entities finding that London is a great place to be, to meet producers and talent and writers. For me, personally, I always wanted to work in films. I wanted to always move out of Italy to find opportunities to work in films and obviously, the idea was to move to LA, but at the time, I found it was far away and quite hard to get the visa especially if you don’t have any experience and London was just a perfect opportunity for me.

Did you get your start in finance?

Andrea: Well actually, in Italy, I started out a couple of years in production and distribution. I was buying films for the Italian market. I was meeting a lot of sales agencies and there was one agency in London that I got to know quite well and they were very nice to me. We did a bit of business together and they offered me to come over and do the six weeks unpaid internship. That was in 2009. I came over here. I loved it. I loved the idea of selling films, pitching the films and helping the producers getting the film released internationally. This company wound up offering me a job so I took the opportunity straight away. I was working with a lot of festivals as well. I was trying to push our films into the different festivals, trying to close some deals. I was responsible for the smaller territories at the time. It was really fascinating. I stayed there for another two years and then I found a job at Ingenious in 2011, which was film finance. For me, it was a great match of my academic skills, because I studied economics, management and finance, with my passion which was in media. Ingenious was the perfect match to put all those skillsets together and learn how to help producers finance their movies and being that person, in between the creative aspect of putting the project together and speaking the same language as the creative people, but at the same time, helping on the business side of things. The most difficult thing to do in films is distribution and finding the right commercial partners. Making a film is very hard, but once completing the film, that’s only one part of the problem solved. The other part of the problem is getting strong commercial partners that will help you richen the audience, richen the partners, richen the distribution and eventually making money out of it which is obviously very important for the success of everyone involved the process. I think the financier, if it’s not just a bank, if it’s not just someone providing cash, if it’s someone that could really help the producer in this journey, it can add a lot of value. It’s not just the money guy. It’s someone that probably has a better vision of the business side of things than usually the producer. Usually the producer, quite rightly so, needs to focus on putting the film together from a creative point of view and they often don’t have a lot of time to think about what happens next and doesn’t want to take care of the money and all of the commercial aspects of things. The financiers, if as an executive producer, the role in the end that you’re going to perform, I think they can really add the value in that journey. For me, that was very fascinating. I never really wanted to be a producer in a broader sense, but I always wanted to make films and help people make films and I find the opportunity at Ingenious in managing this capital, but also getting involved very early in the development of the projects, has been an absolute privilege in terms of the exposure I have in looking and reviewing a project and then going with this project in the journey that it’s been through.

Are you always involved from the early stages of a script’s development or is it different on every project?

Andrea: It’s a bit different. Sometimes we get involved later on in the project. There’s already a package, there’s already talent involved, but we always get involved before the camera starts rolling. We always need time to think how we can help. How much money we can invest, how we can help producers with putting it together, how we can introduce other partners, if it needs to be other partners. It could be a bank, it could be a studio, a distributor. The earlier we can get involved, the better for us and hopefully the more value we add to the project. Sometimes, especially when producers know what we do, they can come to us quite late and say we are shooting in eight weeks and we need this amount of money…will you guys be interested? And I think, if there is an existing relationship and we know them, then that might be enough time. But it’s not what I like to do. I prefer to get involved very early and be involved in any conversation about the project and really see it progressing and evolving and hopefully, be a part of a very good project creatively, in terms of quality, but equally, a commercial success. Judy, for example, it’s a great example of this, because it’s a film that’s been eight years in the making. The producer optioned the rights to the play called End of the Rainbow eight years ago and then for many years, tried to make it into a script that people would go for. It was really difficult because the play was brilliant, but making it into a film was difficult because it was a very sad story. It was very hard to visualize it in a way that would give the right context to the story itself, to Judy Garland, and also make it an enjoyable film. And then, he asked Pathé UK to get involved. They had worked on a film called Pride and had a good relationship and Pathé came to us because we did a lot of films with them including Pride and a few others in the last few years. This was, like, October 2016. They worked four or five years on the project and they came to us saying, “Can you guys help us?” At that time, the rights to the play were running out so they needed some money to renew the option and do another draft on the script and I remember having a conversation with Pathé and we liked it respectively. We said, “Yeah, we can get involved” and then it was so much quicker because Renée Zellweger got involved and then the project went immediately on another level. The project was so much easier to connect with her and the way she was going to interpret the very difficult role of playing Judy Garland on screen. Renée was very humble and passionate about it and the producers spent a lot of time talking about how she was going to perform it and Pathé and I were talking about how we are going to position it, how we can make it. At the same time, the BBC got involved and from there, we ran into this amazing journey of the shooting of the film. It was brilliant and it was mainly done here in London. I went on set a few times and there was a lot of excitement about it and in Cannes 2018, that’s when we talked to distributors about it to get on board and talked about the release pattern. The company, Roadside Attractions, got the rights straight away. They shared the same vision we had about the film and they got really passionate and the one condition they said was that they wanted to give this film the opportunity to play at festivals in the fall and going for the awards and of course, there was Cannes and that was at the end of May and the film wasn’t ready so we knew we were going to miss the round last year so we all took the decision to effectively sit on the film for a year to make the best version of the film that we could, but also to give it the right platform and the rest is history so far. The film went to Telluride this year and then Toronto and now is out in the U.S. and in the UK. We’ll see how it goes.

Well, it had a spectacular weekend here in the U.S.

Andrea: Yes, it had a fantastic weekend in the U.S. and it’s going to open wider in the U.S. this weekend and already opened quite big in the UK and there’s a roll out in the rest of the world. A few territories will wait until December, like Italy for example, around Christmas which I think is good for places like the Italian market because in December, even though it’s very crowded, it is the time when most people will go and watch films. It’s also quite close to the Golden Globes. The Academy Awards this year are very early, the beginning of February. The timing is awfully right. For me, Judy is the perfect example of what we can do as an executive producer, effectively just trying to be helpful in any aspect in the process of making a film…from being just someone who can listen and give feedback to the producers. Maybe sometimes we can play the bad guys and be the ones who say, “Well, I think you need to make some changes here because this version of the movie is not working.” That’s the one aspect I need to care about, especially when we spend our money or our investor’s money. And, some people hold back their thoughts and I think producers when they’re talking to other people, they’re trying to be supportive and they are supportive, but they don’t say what is quite obvious…what is not the right element on the film and to make it strong, you need a lot of different elements and they all need to add value and they all need to make sense and sometimes, you have to make difficult decisions and you have to replace an actor or cut the scene or change some of the story. It’s not just a compromise or just the way the process works. When the film is getting near completion, we can also talk to the commercial partners, distributors, studios, streamers, probably with an experience that producers don’t add. In terms of volume, we do so much more. Last year, we’d been involved in 42 films. I think for a producer to make 40 films, it would take more than a career. I don’t think there are many producers who have worked on 40 films, maybe some very experienced producers who are prolific in their life. But for us, that was just one year of our time. We talk to many different people and I hope that there is a value to producers in terms of that they can ask us any questions in their finance plans, in commercial terms, in distribution strategy, and that for me, is very exciting because I like being involved in lots of different things at the same time and trying to wear different hats, if I can. I think Ingenious has given me this opportunity because it’s quite a large company with quite a large pool of investors, but if it wasn’t Ingenious, I would still be interested in being an executive producer and being a financier. I found a niche that I like very much and I think at the moment, I’ve been involved in many films, but we’re slowly moving into television as well and there will definitely be more TV product. There is one actually which will be announced in a couple of weeks. It’s a very exciting three-part documentary by an American director that you know very well, I’m very sure.

Documentaries are very hot right now. People, like never before, have been going to the movies to see documentaries. Oddly enough, I think Netflix really started reviving that interest.

Andrea: Absolutely. There are so many good stories that could be told with a documentary. When I started in my career actually, I was involved in two documentaries that ended up winning the Oscar in consecutive years. The first one was Man on Wire about the guy who climbed the Twin Towers; I was selling the rights to the documentary. The next year, I was involved in The Cove, which was about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan. It was a brilliant, very sad documentary, very much ahead of its time, talking about conservation and preservation of species in danger. It was also shot in a very clever way. It was a bit of a thriller with these hidden cameras so that the crew couldn’t be seen by the Japanese fisherman. There was a lot of buzz around protecting the dolphins, but yeah, documentaries could be very strong, very powerful. People connect to those stories very well in a similar way to people connecting to biopics and why biopics are so good. Not just Judy, but in the last few years, I think a lot of bigger successes have been biopics that are at least loosely based on real characters. Think of all the musical biopics as well, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman … people are very much interested in stories they can relate to. The alternative, of course, is the blockbusters, the Marvel movies. When you work in the indie space, you don’t have the same budget to play with. Starting with a strong idea and strong characters…that is always one of the first pieces of advice we give to producers. Sometimes original ideas are so much harder to make, but I’m sure there’s a bounce back to that as well. With the streamers and all the capital and all the money they have, they can encourage creativity and original ideas the same way the studios did years ago. Unfortunately, I think the studios now cannot take the same risk financially, but the streamers can. I think that most of content, especially in TV, it is much easier to take a good idea and develop it over a number of episodes and a few hours of shooting, rather than in the two hours of a film. That’s why there’s so much good content coming out of the streamers which has to be good news regardless of what’s going to happen to the streamers and how they are going to consolidate and evolve, but it has to be good news for content creators and yes, commercially and financially, we still haven’t found a way to recreate the same system where you have backend and royalties and potential to really create the heat…which I think that’s the biggest dilemma right now for a producer to work with the streamers; how can I make sure I really make a commercial success out of my project? Again, things evolve very quickly and you can already see some changes with Netflix, Amazon and Apple allowing for a theatrical release and I think that soon enough, they will have to allow in for some revenue sharing as well. At least, release some of the data in terms of the number of viewers and hits. Things will change, but I think that’s a normal evolution of our industry. There’s always some sort of technological revolution every few years. This is probably one of the biggest because you can easily see how it’s going to last for longer. It’s not just a medium of VHS and DVD…this is embedded in the way consumers consume the audio and visual now, but they will find a different way to explore it and people like ourselves, the financiers and executive producers, will have to play a key role in the conversation between producers, platforms, studios and distributors. It’s an ongoing process and not an easy one, but it is happening and it will change, evolve, and it will find its role.

It really is so interesting with streamers because, as an audience, it’s not really clear what success means for that platform. Because, depending on the film, success could mean getting an Oscar nomination or if it has a theatrical release, like say, The Irishman, a certain amount of money is being made at the box office, but there’s no way of telling how many people are watching on Netflix, so I’m always curious how does someone know if The Irishman is truly a success? How does someone know if they’re making a good deal with a streamer if they can’t look at anything to compare with?

Andrea: Absolutely. I think that’s the biggest dilemma. It’s one aspect of the streamers that needs to change. I think that, as for now, what The Irishman is a good example of is that the success is the fact that The Irishman has happened. This is a project that’s been in the making for a very long time. It had a very difficult process of getting made. The budget was skyrocketing and if it wasn’t for Netflix, I’m not sure if the film would have happened. So, in a way, I think the success for the producers and for Martin Scorsese is the fact that he was able to express his talent in making the film because of Netflix and because of the cash ability to finance it. Whether or not the film will become one of his biggest films and will be embraced by the audience, we’ll have to see, but the fact that they are allowing for a theatrical release and an award run is already a change in what was just happening a couple of years ago. Roma, last year, was a big change, but that’s the direction they want to take. Sharing the backend and sharing potential revenue and net profit that is the biggest problem because how do you do that? Netflix, Amazon, they don’t want to release their data because that’s the biggest asset they have. It’s the value they hold and that they want to monetize. They don’t want to freely share it, especially Netflix because it’s their only business. Their business model is just getting subscribers. They don’t do anything else. If you look at the other platforms, Amazon is in retail and Amazon Studios is probably a drop in the ocean in their business plan. Apple the same, Facebook the same. They are using the streaming service to do something else. They are doing that to sell more products or more advertising, but they are very focused. As for Netflix, that’s it. They need to win more subscribers, they need to collect the data. Because, eventually they are going to sell it, and what they can sell is the data, so they’re not going to release it freely now, but it’s very controversial because we are so used to, especially in films, less so in TV, of thinking well, if I make a successful film, well, that’s it. I can hit the jackpot and I’m done for the rest of my life. Whereas on Netflix, it’s not the case. If you do a successful film, and again, what is successful? I am not entirely sure. Your guess is because of the noise and the buzz around it and then after a while, it becomes just another Netflix film. Then, you still need to work hard to make the next one and keep on going, but I think if you are pragmatic about it, you can bring in some sort of process into the equation most similar to how a “normal” industry would work. Like a normal industry doesn’t work on prototype, it works on product that can sell over and over on reliable business plans that can make you grow. The film industry wasn’t like that. It was chasing the unicorn, chasing the heat, but then the next film, there is always another challenge, another platform. So, the fact that streamers are able to pay a good, fixed price for something they are producing…they bring some normality to the process. Again, it is a balancing act because it might take away some of the reasons why producers go into films in the first instance. They definitely take away some of the excitement you have when you see these films happening and you keep your fingers crossed that it will become the next King’s Speech. I think we are experiencing that with Judy right now. It’s outside all of the studios and the streamers and the film is doing very well because we sold it very well to these distributors. There will be no guarantees, but we are hoping it will become a massive hit because if it does, everyone wins. We as financiers see backend, royalties, bonuses and everyone else involved in the film will have the same. That’s very exciting because it’s what makes this job very interesting. If it was on Netflix, I think it would still be exciting to see what would happen at the awards. Is Renée going to win an Oscar? Is anyone else going to win an award? But financially, it will kind of be a done deal. There’s not going to be anything else.

The Oscar buzz will increase the revenue, too. How that lines up exactly for Netflix, as you said, there’s no way of telling, except that for Netflix, it will, hopefully, increase their subscriber base.

Andrea: Netflix needs the Oscar to validate the business model, to say, we are very creative friendly, we have nominations and Oscars and actually we are not just the bad guys that withhold its natural recourse. They kind of proved that point last year with Roma. But that’s a good thing, again, we’re talking about the streamers as if they have done it for many years and they haven’t. I mean, Netflix has been around for a long time, but not in the current form, not in the size and service, so they need to learn and in the same way, we need to learn and adapt to what they do, but they will evolve as well…if they find it is necessary to be more creator friendly and follow some of the traditional exploitation, they will do so. Of course, the main driver is thinking about commercial return and then, that’s the same drive we have. Ingenious, as investors, at the end of the day, are driven by making sure these are commercial successes, but I think the beauty of our industry is that a successful film commercially can also be a fantastic film creatively. The two things very often can go together. You don’t need a bad action film or cheap horror film to make money and by the way, some of those are very good, when you think of Get Out. It is an amazing film and, in fact, it did well commercially. You can achieve the same as an investor as Netflix wherever you are commercially by making sure you make the top quality of whatever genre film you are putting together and that’s the beauty. I’m talking for myself as an executive producer…it allows me to still be very passionate about film. I’ve never lost the passion of film which is the reason why this is my job, but at the same time, I’m quite cynical, and pragmatic. I have to be very rational in my decision-making. I don’t think the two things will necessarily oppose each other. I think the two things can work well together. Most of my colleagues probably share the same vision. They’re all very knowledgeable about films and they all probably wanted to work in the film sector since they were a child like I did. Now, they are on the financing side, but could have equally been on a different side of the industry. I think that’s why we love what we do because it will allow you to keep that dream alive and have that passion still very much there.

So when you are thinking about that artistic value and that commercial value, do you think more and more people are thinking to appeal to international audiences when they’re writing a script? That’s just something I’ve been seeing lately, at least in the U.S., that sometimes some films are made so that they would appeal in China more so than they would in America. I know Netflix and Italy are working together on some things and Wildside and HBO, they have a deal and they want to bring shows and films here to the U.S. so I’m curious if that’s a big trend?

Andrea: Well I think that films are traveling more easily than they ever did. Of course, because especially through the streaming platforms, you can have a film instantly everywhere through the same subscription to the same service. Whereas, in the past, where you would need to sell and to this day, if you need to sell international rights, you need to find individual distributors for each territory. So, it’s a very long process because you need to find different allies to embrace the distribution of the film in the local territories so it’s a long process. So, for what you said about audience, I do think that whoever it is that generates an idea, it could be the writer or the producer, the first thing you say is, “What’s my audience?” I think very often it’s better to have a very small, niche audience in mind. You want to appeal to a certain demographic. Let’s use Judy as an example. Judy, when ourselves, Pathé and the BBC got involved, we targeted older female audiences and the Judy Garland fan base. We tried very hard to make the best film we could so that the most obvious audience for the film would watch it and think: “Yes, I like it. It is in line with what I was expecting.” If you achieve that, then very often, the film will go so much wider than you had anticipated. It will appeal to a demographic that is outside your target. It will become a hit, it will become massive.

If you do the opposite, if you think, oh, I want to make a film that can work in China, that can work in the U.S., that can work in Italy, and also it can appeal for teenagers and older audiences, I think you are making the biggest mistake straight away. It’s never going to work. If you are a writer and it’s your own idea and you’re probably not thinking that much further, you do need to think: what am I trying to say? What is this story about? I’m writing a film so eventually I hope someone is going to watch it. Who do I want in the cinema to watch my film? It might just be you want to make a film for a tiny, tiny audience. You can still make a great film for that audience if you do hit your target. If you do make a quality project for that audience, chances are it’s going to do better than what you were hoping for because it will talk to a bigger audience. If you do the opposite, you just make a mess. Something that has a bit of everything, in the end, it’s nothing. A bit too much for everyone. That’s a crucial point because you can make the biggest mistake to begin with…one way or another, you might think that it’s true. Making a film is a long journey and involves hundreds of people, if not thousands, and it involves a lot of different moments where things can fall through, but obviously, sometimes you spend so much time and energy, you say, I might as well just finish it, but if you know if you started with the wrong element, chances are you are just wasting time and money.

It’s just very difficult sometimes to say, “Sorry, we have to pull the plug before it’s too late.” Then again, I think sometimes that role is for the executive producer to be the bad guy and say, “Hey, I’m sorry you spent two years on this, but you’re not talking to the right audience, I can see already you’re not going to get to the visibility that this film needs.” Maybe it’s because without even commenting on the creative aspect, just in terms of positioning, you’re not doing yourself a favor. Sometimes the decision can really save a lot of money and a lot of wasted effort by a lot of people. I’m not trying to interfere on creative vision. I’m not trying to replace a producer. I’m not interested in doing that. It would be wrong for me to do that, but what I can do because I’m always a bit removed from the project, like I said, I work on many films every year, not just a few, whereas a producer probably spends 5 years on two projects, I’m able to bring that distance. I’m able to bring a different point of view and sometimes that’s enough for the producer to recognize. You always knew what the answer was…you just needed someone to give you a bit of a push. I’m not going to say to them you need to rewrite or you need to drop that actor completely; that’s not my job, but I can help him review the same process he was doing anyway and maybe just suggest to see things from a different angle. I think you will find it’s a quite natural process. Sometimes, you shed a light and people knew what the answer was, but were just too involved. Talking to a financier sometimes brings a bit more cold, rational approach to things which I think is necessary in the creative process as well.

So how would you recommend that beginning writers, producers and directors shop their projects? Would bringing a project to a financier be a reasonable first step and save them time?

Andrea: There is not a format that works every time. Sometimes, it’s about just finding the right partner for that project…it could be financier, studio, or another creative person like the right director. You have to be passionate about the script. If you have a strong script with a director producer and then yes, then you just go to a financier straightaway. I think, unfortunately, the first few steps are always the hardest because there isn’t just one way to bring it forward. You sometimes need just a bit of a lucky strike and one of those moments where you meet someone who can really make meaningful progress. I think the main advice would be to be very clear as to what the best outcome of your film is. If you have to dream, dream bigger. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an Oscar-winning, commercial box office success. Sometimes you already know the best outcome is to be on Netflix. You need to be very honest and be very optimistic about having a vision for it and then do a reverse engineer. If my goal is for the film to be released by Universal, how do I go about that? What would be the step just below that? And the one below? You deconstruct the idea and then you try to find what the missing element is, always thinking that it’s like eating an elephant. If you do it all at once, it’s impossible. But, if you think it about piece by piece, it becomes so much more manageable. If you’re a first-time producer, maybe find another producer who is more experienced. They don’t have to produce it for you. You can still be the producer, but it just gives you a bit of help, a bit of grey hair, a bit of validation. If you’re based in New York, for example, there are plenty of veteran producers who could give you enough hints or make a couple of phone calls for you. It starts from a good script, if you believe you have that, you should not hold the brag. Be very proud, be very blunt about it and knock on every door and eventually, you will find the one who makes it work. What I love about producers and I envy about them, but also realize I can’t do it myself, is that they are so persistent and resilient on just never giving up. They never, ever give up and they try everything all the time. That’s a skill you either have or not. It’s the only one that will make the process work. Like I said, Judy was eight years in the making. I was thinking about it now and it sounds like an obvious film to make, but it wasn’t when it started. It was a very great play, but quite a sad story with no one attached to perform Judy Garland. But the writer saw, there is something in this, I know I can make it. I know I have a vision for this and piece by piece, slowly, it became what it is today. Sometimes it’s easier. It’s not always eight years in the making. Producers are that kind of breed of people that really have a vision that can bring the vision forward and are very passionate about it. In a way, my job is so much easier compared to that because I already talk to someone who has that vision and all I have to do is see the same things they’re seeing and whether I can bring any value to it. I’m much more lucky than they are in a way because I don’t need to be the main sponsor. I’m the one listening most of the time which is very good. Equally, they are the one who, rightly so credited for it, they are the ones who are making it, who produce and create this project.

What role does artificial intelligence play in realizing a project? I read in an article that you said it wasn’t the be all and end all of what you do, but did you have any experiences using AI on Judy?

Andrea: Not on Judy exactly. Sometimes we use it when we are already on board. Once we greenlit Judy and had all the elements (Renée Zelleweger, the director, and all the other actors), what we do is run scenarios that give a probability of how the film is going to perform and this kind of software is becoming better and better, but it is still a probability scenario. So, you can see the 0.0001% of that scenario and the model is there and it did tell you that there is a 0.0001% of that scenario, but having an educated guess is better than not guessing at all. I don’t believe AI can replace what we do. Our decisions and decision making process is happening where the AI itself is not necessarily the only option, but we do have tools and try to run financial scenarios and distribution scenarios, for sure. Sometimes it’s AI, sometimes it’s me on Excel running my numbers and trying to do it all myself and spending hours on Excel…to take away all the sexiness of making films! But, then again, I think it’s very important and when you think about Netflix and the studios, it’s very important for them. Very often that’s how you decide what to do next. We don’t, in a way because we are much more agnostic. We would like to take chances on many different types of films. I don’t ever have an objective that now we need to find the biopic about Judy Garland. I react to what is offered to me rather than proactively chasing projects, but what I do do is when they come to me with a project, I go back to what they were saying, and again, think what will be the audience for this? Once I have an idea, I test myself using the AI, software, and Excel, and try to see how big that audience is. What would be the balance of making it a success? Very often it depends on various different elements.

Success in revenues is only relevant to how much you spent on making and distributing the film. So, $1 million in revenues can be really successful having a very modest budget. If you make a studio movie of $300 million dollars, then even if you hit a billion dollars in box office, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re profitable. It’s all relative to what you’re considering. I think the AI helps me put that in context. I don’t always know what the price point is so, sometimes, the conversation with the producer is….this is all fantastic, but it’s too expensive, it will never work. Sometimes, my role is how do I help you make it cheaper without necessarily changing the type of film you want to make? Sometimes it’s easy, say, let’s go shoot somewhere else. There are some places now where shooting a film is so much cheaper, yet the quality is still very good. One country to another, one set to another. Sometimes it’s more difficult. Sometimes you might have to cut a scene or an element to make it cheaper. We do spend a lot of time with the producer reviewing the budget and the finance plan trying to make the numbers work, but the idea is exactly as I said, simply finding the right price point for that film. If it needs to cost $100 million, then we can, but there needs to be a reason why it’s $100 million and not $75 million or not $125 million. A film can cost $1 million, which is not a lot of money, but it can still be too much. It might be too little, if I double my money to $2 million and I can make so much better version of this film, that is worth the extra million. So, sometimes, you have to increase the budget and that’s where the AI and calculation works. I was just wrong on that scale. Too much, too little, not the right balance. I’m a bit of a nerd. It’s very fascinating for me. Some people might find it incredibly boring, or incredibly irrelevant, especially when you talk to a creative producer, but I think that it does help in a way especially when you think that making a film is not a painter in the back of his studio. It involves, as I said, hundreds of people for long periods of time and nobody knows anything, but everyone is trying their best to add value. I think that executive producers are trying their best to do what they can do. It’s not always the best, but we are trying.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarityT