All right. Thanks everyone for joining us. I'm Bryan Kraft and I wanna introduce Jeffrey Hirsch. He's the President and CEO of STARZ. We're also gonna have Michael Burns joining us. He's just running a little bit late and he's, of course, the Vice Chairman of Lionsgate. Gonna go a little out of sequence here since we were starting off with Michael.
Okay.
So we're gonna jump ahead to STARZ a little bit. I maybe start with content. You know, what are you excited about? The STARZ slate. You know, what's coming this year? It's gonna drive the business.
Yeah. It's a really exciting year. We just premiered BMF this past weekend to record numbers. We did 5.1 million households, eyeballs over the weekend. If you compare that to The Bachelor that's on all of Disney's platforms, they did about 6 million. So we're probably a third the size.
Okay.
So our content really overperforms. If you take a step back and think about what we do at STARZ, we really focus on two core demos. We focus on women and underrepresented audiences, which really allows us to use content to drive lifetime value, to drive churn down. And so we line shows up. So if you think about bringing a customer on for a 10-week show and in the digital world, they come on, they disconnect. We line up another show right behind that so the finale and the premiere are locked together. So we've been able to extend lifetime value by about 40% over the last couple of years just by using content to actually extend lifetime value and keep the customer in the business.
Talk about this, the content strategy in terms of, you know, how you're building volume of shows, kinds of shows, films. I mean, you touched on it a little bit there but maybe to get into it a little bit deeper. You know, how's that strategy evolving from here?
Yeah. I think again, I think you have to think about overall strategically what we're doing at STARZ, right? So unlike the rest of the industry that looked at streaming as kind of a new business, we looked at streaming as the natural evolution of technology in the space. At first, it was cable. Then there was satellite. Then there was ADSL with telecom. And now there's IP, right? And so we didn't look at that business as anything other than different distribution to the consumer. So we're agnostic in terms of distribution. So what you see on STARZ, whether it's on Amazon, whether it's on our own app, whether it's on Comcast or DIRECTV, it's the same product everywhere. And so we really like that play because ultimately, it just puts another revenue stream on a business that's people and content, right?
We think about it that way. Everything has to be the same across the footprint. We do 7-8 originals, big originals. 5 of our 8 originals do 8.5 million eyeballs a week. If you put those 5 shows into the Netflix viewership data that they dumped a couple of months ago, 3 of those 5 shows would be in the top 1% of all viewing on Netflix and we're a third the size. Our content really overperforms but because it's underrepresented audiences and women, I don't think we get the credit for the scale of what we're putting on. We couple those big originals with a Pay One from Lionsgate. We just had John Wick on. We've got Hunger Games coming shortly. We have a Pay Two with Universal.
So if you think about that portfolio of content, couple that at $10 price point, which is somewhere between $7-$12 below the broader-based services, it really puts us in a great position to be a complementary service and a bundling partner to all. If you think about the old world, that's what we were, right? All we've done is said, "The linear world's getting replicated in the digital world. We just have to be there agnostically to all our consumers." That's why 70% of our revenue by the end of fiscal 2025 will be digital. We're about 63% today. We've really moved through the digital transition. We've done it profitably. We're sitting around a 17% 12-month margin, 15% last quarter. We've got line of sight to get to 20%.
So you've got a business that's, you know, over the last four years that's been very stable in revenue, throwing off profit, and then converting about 90% of that to unleveraged free cash flow. So it looks different than everybody else in the space right now.
And so with the legacy revenue, the linear revenue reaching such a high percentage, are you in a position now where you think STARZ can grow revenue sustainably going forward?
So you saw in the last two quarters, revenue has started to accelerate. So we've been hovering around $1.4 billion for the last five years, give or take literally $1 million. It's been very stable where the rest of the industry is probably down 15%. We put our first rate increase in the business six months ago. If you think about rate increases, we always look at conversions. We put $1 on the business. How much of that $1 did we keep? We kept over $0.66 of that. It was a really successful rate increase. It tells me we probably had a little more pricing power. Unfortunately, our partners can only do $1 or $2 and I was a little nervous to do $2 to start.
So I think we'll come back and do another rate increase in the next 2-4 quarters, 4-6 quarters, depending on where we see the business. But, we've had, you know, revenue growth the last 2 quarters, confident that we'll have revenue growth again this quarter. And so revenue is growing on the top side, and we continue to show a great margin on the bottom side.
That's interesting. So you're gonna do another rate increase. I guess, is that how you think about the cadence? I mean, that's really helpful, first of all, that sharing that. But how do you think about the cadence of pricing, you know, longer term? Is it an annual thing? Is it a semi-annual thing?
I think it's kind of we look at the rest of the space, right? If you think about STARZ, like I said earlier, we always wanna be a complementary service to the broad-based streaming services, right? So just like we were a complementary service for DIRECTV and Comcast and Time Warner Cable when I was there, that's how we wanna be in the new world. And I think what we've seen in the space right now is there's been a lot of disruption in the broader-based services. So, you know, you've got Warner trying to figure out, do they use the Discovery backend? Do you use the Warner backend? You have, you know, Hulu going to Disney. Once that all settles and those guys realize that they're not channels but they're platforms, you're gonna see a ton of bundling coming in and we're set up to be that bundling partner.
What that means from pricing is we always wanna be significantly below those broader-based services. Now, the good news for us is most of those services have done two or three rate increases in the last three years. So it's created a lot of room for us to move our rate up as they move their rate up. And so as long as we have a good gap where the consumer subconsciously believes that we aren't competitive with them but we're complementary, we'll continue to raise price.
Okay. What have you been seeing as far as churn in the business? And can you talk about how you manage it, especially 'cause I think a lot of your business is through Amazon rather than, you know, actually Direct. So I would love to hear your perspective on that.
Yeah. So Amazon is our biggest distribution partner today. Our app is our second biggest distribution partner and it's actually very close to the scale of Amazon. And it was never designed to be that way but it's worked out that way, which has been great. It was designed really to get us first-party data, which helps us with churn, helps us with programming. It was then designed to be kind of a balance in the universe that if a digital partner decided to get in a distribution fight, we had a place to move people. But it's really become our second biggest distribution platform. And so we look at the business, I think, significantly differently than our peers. We actually look at content spend as churn reduction and lifetime value enhancer. So we focus on the back end of the business, right?
Part of the reason why the rate increase was so successful is that we mapped out a customer journey in terms of when a customer so if an Outlander customer got a rate increase and they went to the settings part of the, the app, we knew that they were looking to disconnect. So we threw them a time block that said the next episode's in four days, right? 50% of the customers actually took no discount to stay at that rate because they 'cause the episode's there. So we do a lot of back we really look at the back end of the business versus the front end. So it allows us to stay away from being very competitive and spending a lot of money in terms of acquisition, which actually drives a lot of churn.
And so we really focus on using content to drive lifetime value and churn because we know if you're on the service for six months or more, churn is sub 5%, right? And that's kind of the goal for us. And so we use content. We line content up. So if you think about the Power universe, the reason why we did all those franchises in Power was so that we could have four shows back to back to back. And so a customer that would come on for a season of Power now watches Raising Kanan, BMF, and P-Valley. If they stay for those 40, 40 weeks and 80% do, that brings churn really low. And we have not spent a dime on the front end to do that. And so we've been able to accomplish very low churn and very stable revenue because of it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Burns from Lionsgate.
You didn't have to stop. I.
I'm way too old for red eyes. Way too old.
Hey, Brian.
All right.
Nice to see you.
Nice to see you too.
Sorry I'm late.
so anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So
We just finished that. Our, our single focus is on churn management, back end management, and customer lifetime value. When we get to a stable point where we're below kind of two to three we're down to 2-3% post xi months. That's when we can really take a lot of cost out of the business because we don't have to go to the front end to keep bringing subscribers on. So I can bring the noise of the business down and take front end acquisition cost out and really actually then continue to focus on that lifetime journey of the customer.
Okay. All right. So I'm gonna ask you one more on STARZ and then maybe we'll come back to the Lionsgate and the broader part of the discussion. And I guess that's about the margin profile for STARZ and, you know, your continued ability to contain costs in order to drive margin expansion.
Yeah. So I think there's really three components to getting to that 20% steady state margin by coming out of fiscal 2027 is kind of the goal. We're sitting again in the last 12 trailing 12 months, 17%. So fluctuating rates between 15% and 17%. 1 is rate increase so we can drive the top of the business. We've talked about that. 2, I think, is bundling because bundling actually while we lose some RPU, it creates an extension in lifetime value without a lot of cost. And so then we can pull cost out of the business there. But I think most importantly, it's content cost, right? And so if you think about our slate of 7-10 shows, it's a lot like the salary cap management in the NFL, right?
Which is, you know, if you're following sports, you know, if you have a special teams player who's coming off his rookie deal and about to become a veteran and the veteran minimum pops the cost, you can go back in the draft and pick a rookie and bring him on in a rookie deal and manage cost. Managing a content portfolio of originals is kind of the same thing. So when seasons go from one to two to three to four, three to four is where the cost really pops because most of the actors get bigger raises and you have to really manage that. So you have to have in your portfolio of development shows that can actually replace shows as they get in the later seasons.
So as you turn the slate over and go from season four and five economics to season one of economics, you can pull a ton of cost out of the business. So what you have to do is map out each of those shows and where the cost portfolio looks like the curve looks like and know where you have to pop a new show on to bring that cost down. So we've got a pretty good map of what that looks like. Because again, we focus on just those two core demos, we've been able to manufacture hits for those demos. So when you bring a BMF on, you know, BMF will be probably one of our two biggest shows, okay? It looks a lot like Power. It costs half as much, right? So you look at BMF and say, "Okay.
If I take one of those characters out and spin one of those out, I can bring that on to replace a Power show at half the cost. Now I'm putting, you know, a lot of money right to the bottom line and I'm really not losing anything in terms of acquisition costs and subscriber viewership because we know what those demos want and we know how to line those up." And so that's really the core of getting to that 20% is turning that slate over with fresher content, to drive the business.
Okay. Great. Why don't we, you know, maybe back up a little bit. Michael, thank you for joining us and, you know, give your proper introduction. Michael Burns, Vice Chairman of Lionsgate. So, and, thanks for making the trip. So, Michael, for those not familiar with the Lionsgate story, maybe you could walk us through just the mechanics and the timeline for the plan to merge Lionsgate Studios with Screaming Eagle acquisition and then to fully separate the studio from Lionsgate.
Yes. We're on track. We expect, by the end of this month, to be very much in the throes of the, call it 13%-15% of the studio that will go into this SPAC. I, you know, a SPAC turned into a sort of a dirty word for a little while. We don't look at this really as a SPAC. We look at this as a sub-IPO, disguised as a SPAC, because, our friends at Screaming Eagle, they got rid of all the friction, meaning that there aren't the typical warrants that are hanging around there. They're all gonna be gone. And the interesting thing about the promote, that Harry and Eli and Jeff get, they only get it, when the stock is up 50%. We had, a couple really great anchor tenants in the pipe that was done.
It was 100 we went out for 150. We raised $175 million. Names that you would recognize almost as prestigious as that fellow in the back, Mario Gabelli. But we brought in really blue chip investors, increased the size of that, to 175. And now on the de-SPACing, which will be at the latter part of this month, we expect to close on $350-$400 million. That will represent 13%-15% of the studio and the plan is to spin the rest, the remaining call it 85%, by the end of this calendar year.
Okay. And, you know, really, I guess, question for both of you. Over the course of this year, investors are gonna obviously be forced to value studios separate from STARZ. Michael, maybe you can give us the, the pitch for buying Lionsgate stock and Jeff, maybe you could do the same with STARZ.
Well, while we're together, there's a little bit of a disconnect. I know the stock was up yesterday and it's been bouncing around. I know there's some quant players that show up some days and then disappear others. But, well, really the bottom line is now if you buy Lionsgate stock, the stock that trades on the New York Stock Exchange, you're getting STARZ for free if you believe that we're gonna close this transaction where the studio's gonna be valued at $4.6 billion, enterprise value. And we're very confident that that is happening. So that's where the disconnect is right now. I think that will shrink as we get closer and closer. If you wanna sort of look at the likelihood of the transaction closing, I think you just look at the warrants.
The warrants are either worth zero or $0.50 and that's make their trading in, that's 46-47 cent range. So, my belief is that there are a lot of reasons that Jeff and STARZ and Lionsgate are gonna continue to work together, not the least of which is the Pay One transac Pay One deal that we have together, library deals that we do. But we're gonna get a better valuation at the studio from a multiple standpoint by being a separate traded company. Back in the day, you know, this is a Jon and I've been doing this for 23, 24 years. When we were a pure play, we traded in the multiple range, without deal chatter at the low- to mid-teens. And then, you know, everybody always thinks we're some sort of takeover candidate.
So my sense is that whether that's true or not, we'll see. But we're in a position today where we have a very unique asset. We have a tremendous library. One of the smart things that we did is we bought every library we possibly could and now the revenue of the library, you know, last 12 months approaching, I don't know, $875-$900 million. Don't forget that library business is very high margin business, meaning over 50%. So you've got the fundamental story and then we can talk about the growth story in a minute. But that's the short elevator pitch on why I think you should buy the stock right now.
Yeah. I mean, I've talked a little bit about it. But in, you know, I think with all the carnage going on in the space today, STARZ is a little misunderstood because everybody says if Warner and Paramount and all these big guys can't make it work in the streaming business, how can little STARZ make it work? And I think if you look at our business, we're through the digital transition. I talked about it. 70% of our revenue will be digital. Amazon and our own app or our own distribution platforms. We're controlling our own distribution. We're gonna get to a 20% margin. We're, you know, we're sitting at a 15%-17% margin today. The only other company in the space that has a positive margin is Netflix.
They, you know, I guess you could count the DVD business transition as going from the old world to the new. But we're probably the only linear network that has successfully transitioned off of linear into the digital world while maintaining profitability. The cable fights for us are behind us. When I started at STARZ, with Jeff on the board in 2015, 90% of all of our customers were sitting in a cable bundle. Today, 80% of all of our customers are à la carte or a rev share, which means two things. One is the customers actively went and went to find and buy STARZ. So they know the content's working. They like the content portfolio. But it also means that we generate revenue for our distribution partners. So we don't have the cable fights where we're a cost center.
You know, they wanna save money. We wanna make more money because we're making money together. So our distribution apparatus is very stable. So again, you think about it, you know, $1 billion for growing 2-4, 3-5% long term on revenue, 15%-20% margin. We also convert about 90% of our profit to unlevered free cash flow on a consistent basis. So growing revenue, great margin, customers that want the product, content is working, and we're generating a ton of free cash. I think it's a very investable business.
If you think about why we're doing this, we did two transactions. We closed eOne at the end of December and then we bought another 25% of 3 Arts, which we think is a terrific company. When we first bought that first 25%, they were doing about $30 million EBITDA. They're in the management talent business. They've got writers, directors, showrunners, etc. They create terrific annuity streams by the participation that they represent the talent. So every time, for example, an actor that was in a Marvel movie who remained unnamed, gets a check, these guys take a 10% commission. So we spent a fair amount of money on between the two of those transactions. So $375 million, the wire transfer went out on the eOne. And then on top of that, a couple hundred million dollars for another 25% of 3 Arts.
This transaction's raising between $354-$100 million. We picked up great cash flow. We bought, I think we bought both at a terrific price. Michael Rotenberg, who runs 3 Arts, would say that, well, paying a little closer to retail this time around, I think we paid wholesale the first time. But it's been a terrific investment for us. And so, we are effectively delevering by raising this. It was a little bit of a back and forth inside the board because we're selling a piece of our crown jewel, which is the studio. But we're doing it because we think we'll trade at a better multiple and it'll be a pure play and a lot more people are interested in it. And if the PIPE is any indication of that, it certainly the thesis certainly seems to be playing out. Yeah.
A couple things in there I'd like to follow up on, I guess. So you mentioned that the eOne acquisition from Hasbro, you know, was a low multiple that you paid. How were you able to buy eOne at such a low multiple and what made that acquisition attractive to Lionsgate?
Well, it was a low multiple. You know, it's funny. Multiples are weird things. It was a low multiple, from our perspective because we have all the synergies. So it was certainly probably close to twice what we think it will do it'll, ultimately be. So we think it's a 5.5, 6%, 6x multiple post-synergies. So there in, in the world today, the big guys with all these streaming losses and all these things that they're trying to figure out about cost cutting, they're not really in the game for a deal of that size. The only other players that show up for a deal of that size are the private equity players and they do not have the synergies. So, and then sometimes they will stretch.
I mean, I think that it was a really interesting multiple that was paid for all three, for example, which is a subset of the business that we do. I think it was about a 12.5x, 12.8x multiple. And so that's why we get great comfort on where our multiple will trade, post the separation.
Okay. And you also mentioned some of the episodic speculation over the years about Lionsgate being in play. How much of the separation has to do with putting both of these businesses in a better position to be able to pursue strategic options that, you know, maybe wouldn't be available as a combined company?
Strategic options. Very euphemistically put. It's all sad. We have to.
Yeah.
Find words like that. Exactly. Look, I think there are a great number of companies and players and institutions that are interested probably in some sort of roll-up strategy with STARZ. I think there are a tremendous amount of players that are interested in Lionsgate as a pure play operation, i.e., the management business, the content business, the library, the feature film business, the way we do it, which is completely different than others, and the television business. I think there are less interested parties on both companies combined. So I think it's gonna be an interesting, you know, year or two, could be sooner, could be later, when everybody says, "Let's figure out what that strategic alliance looks like." Then, I'm using strategic alliance as a euphemism as you.
Yeah.
Your term.
Yeah. We have lots of words we can use for it too. Let's see. Would love your thoughts, really both of you, if you wanna opine on just how you think industry consolidation in media broadly may play out or not play out over the next couple of years.
I would say that it depends on who has a currency and who has cash and who doesn't have a very messy balance sheet. So do I think some of these mergers that have been talked about and the big players? I mean, come on. The Justice Department didn't approve Simon & Schuster. So I think that's a bunch of crap. But do I think there are assets that can be moving around between companies? Yeah, I do. Do I think that Jeff is in a very unique position? He doesn't have - he's not advertising dependent and he's got a very steady subscription base and he's making money in the streaming world? Look, the mistake that we made and we did it for growth. We chased growth as we went for STARZ internationally. And it didn't work out well.
But we pulled back and said, "Look, we can't afford to wait for those markets." But that costs us a lot of money. And that's frankly why that's a part of the reason that the stock got whacked.
Yeah.
So but we said, "Okay. Let's focus on domestic." He's doing a great job with his team. He's got great loyal customers. He's got free cash flow. He has, we're one of the reasons that we're as I said before, we're separating the businesses. We wanna make sure that both sides of the business aren't too levered and they're all in the 3-3.5 turns, from a leverage standpoint. So I think there will be consolidation. If I were gonna guess, I think consolidation will involve, you know, on the studio side, the business overall, the people that are entities that are looking for library. That they're tired of renting and they would like to buy.
I think also there are many people that like the theatrical business but they don't wanna be in a theatrical business where you can spend $200 million on a movie and then spend another $80 million promoting P&A, prints and advertising on the movie, and then releasing it domestically. And then it bombs and now you have to release it in 90 other territories where you're putting up the P&A. That is not our business. If you look at the books, it's all publicly filed. On our wide releases, we make money 75% of the time. And even with the losses, the returns are over 30%.
On these platform releases, which are movies that we spend, call it, a nickel to buy, $1 million or $2 million, and then we spend $8 million releasing it off the back, for example, we had a movie called Sisu. We put up off the back of, we put the trailer on John Wick. We make money on those movies 93% of the time and very, very good returns. The nice thing about everybody sort of pulling back and making less movies, which I don't think is gonna stop in the near future. I think everybody's gonna sort of really focus on fewer movies. That gives us the ability to, on that multi-platform business that I was talking about, that 30, 40, 50 times a year, for us to have no issue getting theater space.
I mean, we have, if you take a look at right now, we had a movie a couple weeks ago, sort of in the spiritual space, which is Ordinary Angels. That's on target to make money for us. We came out with Jason Blum and came out with Imaginary last weekend. And that's right on track. It did about $10 million opening weekend and it'd be very profitable for us 'cause the movie didn't cost much. And then this weekend, we have, what's the Mark Wahlberg movie?
Arthur the King.
Arthur the King. We acquired; we didn't develop that. That came with the eOne transaction. And that'll be in, I don't know, 2,500-3,000 screens. We have no problem getting screens and we have no problem piggybacking off the opportunity for us to cross-promote our movies.
Yeah. Okay. That I guess actually segues into my next, next question pretty well. You've provided fiscal 2025 EBITDA guidance for Lionsgate Studios of $370 million.
Before eOne.
Before eOne. So given the hit-driven nature of the studio business and, you know, how difficult it's been lately for larger studios to predict their results, you know, what gives you the confidence in being able to hit that kind of number even with your less volatile model and, you know, maybe you could walk through the building blocks of that 370 EBIT for us?
We've been around long enough to know the last thing you wanna do is put out guidance and file an S1 and miss your numbers. So we're very confident in that number. But the growth is coming from libraries getting more valuable. New platforms are coming up. If you had said to me a couple even a year ago that video on demand or electronic sell-through or FAST channels were gonna be significant contributors to us, I would've thought you were crazy. I mean, FAST channels, come on. And now they're launching internationally. Between FAST channels and some of these AVOD channels, that's gonna be a $125 million very high margin business for us. So we have a great deal of visibility.
You look at our library. It is, you know, year in and year out, we exceed those numbers that we put out there. And it's and we have a great sales force that does that, one run by Jim Packer from Worldwide Distribution. But he's also got a rising tide. He, you know, I call him a sandbagger because he always exceeds his numbers. But you have a rising tide because you have all these different platforms that are coming up. And in the theatrical business, I was looking at Hunger Games numbers the other night. We, you know, redid that franchise. Suzanne Collins, thank God, wrote another book. And the theatrical business was great. Did really well domestically. Great internationally.
But at the same time, it was in the movie theaters towards the end of the holidays. It's called end of December. It was out on a premium VOD. PVOD didn't even exist. Why do we like premium VOD? Because it's $20. We keep the vast majority of the money. And it's a value proposition even at that price point. For, take a look at what, you know, half the country can't write a $500 check. So there are probably 5, 10 people. Their families are getting together and they're watching the movie. And they're not, you know, they're not having to get parking or a babysitter or buy popcorn. And so what happens is that that's another source. And that premium VOD did incredibly well at the same time the movie was in the theaters. So I like where we are.
I like the idea that we continue to grab market share. I don't know whether the theatrical business where it will ever be where it was pre-pandemic. But do I think it's gonna get to 80, 85, 90%? Yes, I do. And if you said to me, "Why is that?" or "Why do you think that?" I think that everybody's focusing on making better movies.
Yeah. That's a great answer. Very helpful. Maybe we could shift to just the TV segment of the studio, or segment of Lionsgate. It, it hit a rough patch this past quarter, from an EBITDA perspective. Can, can you just walk us through why, you know, this was just a blip and profitability is gonna bounce back the way you've kind of articulated?
Well, first I'll say the strike.
Yeah.
You know? And, and that was a double whammy when you had writers and then you had actors as well. So that cost us I think we that was $30 million. And I think even in our fiscal 2025 numbers, certainly the end of fiscal 2024, we probably in our projections have got another $15 million-$20 million to go because of it's just a lag period.
Right.
You know, the best person to talk about sort of that lag and sort of what it's caught up is I mean, we produce the shows for STARZ. It's important to note also that all the STARZ shows that when we bought STARZ, all those IP that they owned I know you hate it when I say this but all that IP, the Power franchise, etc., is staying inside the studio. Everything that Jeff makes going forward on separation, he'll probably own or partially own. And then they'll he'll, there'll be some arm wrestling.
There's an intercompany deal so I will always have access to the STARZ's content for, you know, a will extended long period of time.
Yeah. But the strike itself, it was painful. But I got in trouble the other day 'cause I said that we talked about a couple significant pieces of IP that were going out in the television world that I think we'll probably have 6-10 bidders for, which I still believe is true. But they said.
You can say it now 'cause you've already said it.
I said I've already said it. Yeah. I'm just gonna have lunch with Stephenie Meyer. Anybody know who Stephenie Meyer is? Tomorrow I'm flying back crisscrossing. She's the author of Twilight, which has just been an unbelievable franchise for us. Unbelievable. So we're gonna go out with a television series. It'll be an animated show and I think it'll be very interesting. The other one is a big action franchise. You guys can figure out what it is that we've rebooted again with, for example, sort of an offshoot of that, a spin-off of that, of that sort Ballerina is coming out of the John Wick universe. So you might wanna talk just a minute about sort of how you got whacked and how it hurt your TV. It hurt you because hurting you since we're producing your shows hurt us.
the John Wick spin-off?
No, no, no. I'm talking about the shows. The, the.
Strike.
He was.
Oh yeah. I mean, so, you know, obviously the strike, obviously we shoot a year in advance. But finishing some of the shows in post was kinda hard to do. And so we've gotta move our slate around a little bit. And as we talked about, when you have delays on deliveries from the studio and you have to move your slate around, our again, our strategy is so incumbent on lining up shows and taking deliveries. You know, the world used to be like when the creators decided to give you the show and finish the show, you would put it on, right? Now for us, everything is so scheduled around churn reduction, lifetime value that when you have delays and you have to move things around, it actually really impacts the business.
So we saw that from the other side because of the production side. But we're kinda back to on schedule now. We did opportunistically go buy a couple pieces of content from some co-pro partners in Europe to have on the shelf much like we did in COVID to make sure we didn't have content gaps. So I think we're kinda through that now. And I think we should both sides should be back to steady state in the coming quarter.
We have a bunch of shows that are shooting right now. We just started shooting this Seth Rogen show for Apple. And he plays the studio executive. It's the most ridiculously funny show you've ever seen. It pokes a lot of fun at everybody else in the business but that's okay. I think it's,
Yeah. Spartacus starts in New Zealand next week.
Yeah.
Hunting Wives starts tonight in North Carolina. So there's a lot of production going on both sides right now.
And we're shooting, we're in the middle of one of our biggest hits we do with CBS. And our co-production with the BBC is Ghosts. Oh, and that show is shooting right now. So I think we're back on track on the television side.
Yeah. What, what other content are you excited about between now and the end of fiscal 2025? Whether it's film or TV? I mean, you mentioned.
Well, I'll give you my.
Yeah.
I'll give you my, oh my God. This will probably be a headline and deadline and Feltheimer will get really mad at me because he, he just bought some stock in the open market. And, you know, he's pretty fiscally conservative in many ways. And so that was actually, interesting to see him do it. And I swear he bought it because he went to the set. You know, we're shooting the Michael Jackson movie on the Sony lot. And he just came back and just said, "That thing is gonna be incredible." So am I excited about that? Yes. I think that the, the, Michael, the, the biopic with all of the music and it's gonna be and the, the kid, he's, I think he's a nephew or a grandnephew. He looked exactly like Michael. He dances like him. He sings like him.
The supporting cast, Miles Teller playing John Branca, a lawyer that negotiated the Beatles catalog, etc. It's Fuqua who's directing it. Antoine Fuqua is just a terrific director going all the way back to Training Day. So I'm really excited about that. I'm really excited about a couple of these horror films. These we think we've got a new franchise coming out, Strangers. We'll see how that goes. I think there's a couple I don't really care about the Academy Awards to be honest with you. It's nice to be recognized. But I think we have some movies actually coming up that could be prestigious at the same time, commercially successful. So that's always nice. I think Ballerina and Ana de Armas is great.
That Chad's taking over a lot of the reshoots that we're having, bigger action scenes much in the, you know, he created that John Wick universe. And he's doing Highlander for us right now. So that feels very promising. I like our theatrical slate. I like our movie slate right now. And I think the library's just gonna keep chugging along.
Yeah. All right. Great. Well, we're out of time. So why don't we wrap up there? Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you.
Thanks Michael.
Thank you. Again, I apologize for my mistakes.
Of course. I'm so sorry.