Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are the Oscar winning director and producer behind some of Hollywood's most memorable movies like A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 and The Da Vinci Code. The duo, who co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1985, sat down with WSJ's Ben Fritz at the Future of Everything Festival to talk about longevity in Hollywood, AI in movie production and the future of movies. Further Listening: - Why Hollywood Is Betting Big on ‘Wicked’ - With Great Power, Part 1: Origin Story Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the origins of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's partnership?
All my life, I've been waiting for someone. And when I find her, she's a fish.
The next year, they founded Imagine Entertainment, which quickly became one of the most prolific production companies in modern Hollywood. In 2002, their film A Beautiful Mind won the Oscar for Best Picture.
This isn't math. You can't come up with a formula to change the way you experience the world. All I have to do is apply my mind.
And Imagine has been behind other projects, like the cult hit sitcom Arrested Development. Do you want to go out?
Why are you trying to get me out of the house?
I just thought that we could hang out.
The adaptation of Vice President J.D. Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy.
But you... You've got to decide. You want to be somebody or not.
And a whole lot more. The Da Vinci Code, The Nutty Professor, Friday Night Lights, the movie and the show, and their upcoming film After the Hunt, starring Julia Roberts. This year, Imagine Entertainment is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
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Chapter 2: How has Imagine Entertainment thrived for 40 years?
We live on different coasts.
No, no, we do know each other.
I think it's, look, we access on similar taste. in terms of what he thinks is quality, I would think is quality. It doesn't mean we agree on every story or every theme exactly. We often do, and those are our most successful films. But it's basically just trust in each other's creative judgment, work ethic, and... And so I think that's part of it. We have a very polite relationship after 40 years.
I had to, after the first four years and finishing Splash, I had to say to Ron's wife, Cheryl, I don't think the guy even likes me. And she said, no, no, he really does. And I said, why, what evidence is there? And she said, well, no, he really, really does. I said, well, I've tried to hug him, and we didn't quite hug.
And she said, no, but he really likes you, and so we do hug about once every four or five years. But we're a 40-year period. But it's polite.
We actually don't yell at each other. But we do tell each other the truth. And that's the thing. I mean, we get at it in a way. And by the way, we really know how to read the nuances of each other's sort of statements and even body language. But the point is, we do different things But in the big picture, we're very much aligned. We want to tell great stories.
We want to find the audience wherever they are and carry stories to them. Brian's famous for his curiosity. That fuels things. That's exciting to be around. And at the end of the day, the fact that our compatibility has sustained itself, but some of it is that the surprises of the business keep presenting new wrinkles. There's new challenges. There's new stuff to figure out.
In a lot of ways, you know, I still feel like we're kind of in a startup mentality in a lot of ways.
Well, let's talk about some of those challenges. So you've been through so many disruptions this industry's faced, right? Home video, DVD, cable, the internet, piracy, streaming, VR. Which of those disruptions do you think were sort of the most consequential changes to entertainment and which ones were kind of blips that didn't matter as much as we may have thought?
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Chapter 3: What challenges has the film industry faced over the years?
It was extremely unpopular. It was thought of, first it was the pioneer way of experiencing, it pioneered a way of experiencing stories that people hadn't been doing really, which was television in the 50s and 60s. And then it became all about movies when movies could become sort of the signature of something meaningful. And once we succeeded at movies, I really wanted to go back to television.
And the disruptions that you're talking about are often, you know, they're about distribution. Or if it's tech... Most of those are very advantageous for us because we're storytellers, and we're collaborating with storytellers, and all the technical innovations have either impacted distribution, where are people seeing it, how are they seeing it, and that certainly influences
Us, because we have to decide what, you know, kind of how to tell a story and how do we expect it to be seen and so forth. But the other thing is, as you know, as my friend George Lucas said, it's just trying to get more of the director's mind's eye onto the screen more effectively at, you know, in a responsible, cost responsible way.
On the point of distribution, obviously it used to be that, well, the studio releases a movie in a theater and then it goes on video and then it goes the way they want it. Now it's much more the people watch where they want to, right? So you might make, you guys might make a very big budget movie that's with the best possible picture and sound made to be experienced in a theater.
And a lot of people might end up watching it on their phone. So how do you just embrace that? That's where the audience is? Or do you feel like, Everything should be done to try to get people to see movies in theaters where they're made to be seen. You're talking to me as a director? Yes, as a filmmaker.
As a filmmaker. Yes. Of course, I want the maximum number of people to see it, you know, as it was designed and executed to be seen. But all my life, more people have seen my movies on TV than on the big screen, between VHS and DVD and syndication and networking. So I've always been aware of that reality. And I also remember that when I was a film student,
I was cutting my teeth on movies that were classics, and I was seeing them on my little small dorm room black and white TV at 3 o'clock in the morning, because of course you couldn't just download Grapes of Wrath or Citizen Kane. And I was having an experience. It wasn't the ideal experience. So I'm pretty philosophical about it. To this date, I'd say I'm agnostic.
For me, I'm just practical. I don't care how people see it. I can't regulate how people see things. I don't try to regulate anyone's behavior. And there are times that we have the contractual right, after making a film, to have it in theaters as opposed to streaming.
And there are many times, even though we have the contractual right and muscularity to have it in a big screen, I'll look at it and I'll think it might be, this movie I'm thinking about right now, I thought it was a really good movie, but I did think it should be better experienced streaming. Do you want to tell us what that was? 13 Lives. It was a really good thriller and a true story.
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Chapter 4: How do filmmakers adapt to changing audience viewing habits?
Let's talk about the newest creative technology that affects creativity in Hollywood, which is AI. I know everybody in Hollywood is using AI, but nobody wants to admit it because they don't want to upset creatives. I'll admit it. Okay, good.
Great.
I want to ask you, what are you doing with AI right now, and what do you think will be its future for filmmaking and TV production and everything?
I'll say what we're doing and what we would do with it, but we use it in all different forms. We do it, obviously, for post-production and production efficiencies. I personally use it to collaborate if I have an idea or an area, as Ron pointed out. I meet a new person every week that's expert in some other field. So I get excited about things.
I got excited about the military and about drone technology and defense tech. But I'll throw out an idea and then you can just build it and then give it to professional writers to write. I might be able to produce an outline of what I would like to see or what I'd like to see in the frame. But ultimately, someone has to have the artistic finesse to write it.
to actually ignite real emotion in human beings.
You mentioned the word efficiencies, which can also, as we all know, mean job loss. I mean, is it realistic to think that some of the craftspeople in the world of filmmaking, visual effects artists, animators, production designers, that that work is, there's going to be fewer people working in film to do those jobs because AI is going to take some of that work?
Well, look, I think it's going to affect every business. in the way that you're talking about, every single business. So it's not exclusive to the creative parts.
Hard to tell what the shift is going to be at this point. I mean, right now, you know, it's primarily a research tool. And, you know, it's almost like a backboard. It works very dynamically and quickly. I think you sometimes ask it to do tasks that you wouldn't even bother to. It's not like you're replacing a room full of writers. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What role does AI play in modern filmmaking?
Why don't you try that one, Ron? Well, look, anybody that comes in and fuels the market is a plus for a company like ours. And we've worked with all the big streaming companies. We have good relationships with them across the board. It also creates, you know, hunger...
elsewhere, some of these companies that are experiencing a kind of an existential crisis, it's kind of like, it's not our problem unless we can help you. And of course, holistically, we want as many companies winning as possible, but it's even, you know, interesting to see companies like Tubi take off. So it really is dynamic.
The important thing is, and YouTube, and as Brian was mentioning, wherever a story can meet the audience, that intrigues us. And whatever the format we've found, it can be exciting to us. So it's about aligning the appropriate story with the right home, the right partnership creatively, and from a business standpoint as well.
And I think, again, that's where our flexibility really is exciting for us and important.
In the past several years, Imagine has taken on outside investment and you guys have also explored a sale. I know obviously it hasn't happened. So do you want to at some point sell Imagine? Do you want Imagine to continue beyond your careers? And what would you imagine Imagine being without Ron Howard and Brian Grazer?
Well, we want to just grow Imagine. And so we're having a great time. Sure, we'd like Imagine to become something that continued to be stable and stood for something.
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Chapter 6: How do Ron Howard and Brian Grazer view the future of movies?
Because young people want to be Imagine. They like the idea of it, the idea of two artists. I mean, I started as a writer. I'm not... Great writer. You are Splash. I think that's a pretty good credit. Thanks. I had other helpers, too, along the way. We got nominated for it, but a lot of it was due to two writers named Lowell and Bob Lou.
In any event, Enron is a director in Hyphenate, and so I think they like that artists... Well, we understand the language. We understand their, you know, their fears. We all have the same kind of fears, anxieties, hopes, dreams. Look, the content business has always been a dream business. You have to dream in order to do something great.
You have to dream in order to get through all of the no's, even if you're at the highest level. Steven Spielberg after Jaws had E.T. put into turnaround.
I mean, it's just insane like that. We're going to ask a minute of lightning round questions and then turn to the audience. So follow up, I'll try to pin you down one last time. Do you want to sell Imagine? Is Imagine still for sale? Not today, no. Not today, okay, I'll take it. Maybe tomorrow, no, not today, not today. Not today. Yeah.
So YouTube and TikTok, are they a good thing for filmmakers and producers? YouTube's amazing, amazing. Is TikTok great or is it a waste of time that distracts people from important stuff? Fun, but it's, you know. Fun for them, okay, yeah. What project of yours do you think was most unfairly maligned by the critics in public?
Fairly maligned?
Wow, there's so many.
I don't know. I've had some pretty big, without naming titles, because there's been more than one, disparities between, you know, sort of audience response and critical response. And that's always frustrating.
All right, fair enough. What imagined movie or TV show would you most like to revive or to reboot?
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