January 24, 2024 • 27 mins
Alloy CEO Leslie Morgenstein, TV chief Gina Girolamo and film leader Elysa Koplovitz Dutton, leaders of the company behind such TV and film hits as “Gossip Girl,” “Pretty Little Liars,” “You,” “Vampire Diaries” and “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” explain how they’ve thrived in the YA space and why they are now looking to grow up a bit.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief Variety. My guests today
are the leaders of Alloy Entertainment. You may not know
the name Alloy, but you know their TV shows and
movies Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, You, Vampire Diaries, Sisterhood
(00:34):
of the Traveling Pants, Purple Hearts, and the Ohso Charming.
You are so not invited to my about mitzvah. The
company has an unusual approach to developing content because it
also has a very busy book division that provides the
vast majority of the ip that drives the company. Here
in this interview, we get the lowdown on Alloy's unusual
(00:57):
business model from three key players CEO Leslie Morgenstein, TV
chief Gina Girolamo, and film leader Elisa Koplovitz Dutton. The
trio explain here how they've been able to thrive in
the YA space and why they are now looking to
grow up a bit, as they describe it. Morgenstein also
(01:19):
walks us through how the company wound up being owned
by Warner Brothers but still operates with great autonomy. That's
all coming up after the break, and we're back with
more from the leadership team at Alloy Entertainment. Les Morgenstein,
(01:43):
Gina Jerromo, Elisa Dutton of Alloy Entertainment.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you so much for inviting me to.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Your beautiful offices here on the Warner Brothers lot. It's
my first podcast recording of twenty twenty four, and I'm
excited because Alloy Entertainment is a company I've covered a
long time, but I have really wanted to get to
know you all better and get a little bit behind
the scenes of how you create your content less from
the thirty thousand foot view, can you tell me sort
(02:11):
of what is Alloy's approach to nurturing and generating content.
You have an incredible track record over the last fifteen
twenty years of very buzzy television shows that really have
penetrated the culture in a way that is hard to
in our mass fractured media environment these days. What is
your approach? Sure?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And thank you for coming here and visiting with us,
and we're pleased to be your first pot of the year.
It's a pretty organic story and IP is such a
buzzword or buzz phrase these days, and companies are so
desirous of it. We never sat down and said we're
(02:54):
going to become an IP company. It was more of
a process of a group of people who love storytelling
and had a good knack for what's a commercial idea
building a business over many years. So the company started
in the book business and originally was a production company
(03:18):
for hire, producing a team book series called Sweet Valley High,
and eventually.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Got smart enough to know that.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
It needed to own its own properties and began brainstorming
ideas like what's something we want to see, what's something
we think will resonate with the audience, and putting those
ideas together with great writers, so a nose for concept
and a nose for talent, and that shop eventually produced
(03:49):
Vampire Diaries and The Sister of the Traveling Pants and
Gossip Girl and a very popular middle grade book series
that became a movie called The Click, and.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Pretty Little Liars and The Hundred and You. And the
thing that.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Really makes us unique, which you mentioned at the center
of it, is a group of creative people who develop
ideas internally and then go out and find the best talent,
whether that's a novelist or a TV showrunner or a
screenwriter to make it come to life.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So that's an interesting It sounds like a large part
of the ideas, the concepts that become books and television
shows and potentially movies start in house and then you
marry the writer. Would you say that's more common than
a writer coming to you with a pitch.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yes, I mean these days we do have lots of
relationships with book writers where we'll have a long term
deal and it will be more collaborative, so sit down
with the writer and just have brainstorming sessions.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
But the traditional.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Model, which we still employ on at least half of
our new book projects and we produce about twenty books
a year, come from our group. And there's a team
of editor writers in New York who get together on
a regular basis. This team in LA less frequently and
(05:21):
they just have creative sessions, and that can be very freeform.
Come into the room with an idea, can be a
pitch off of a magazine article or our show you
went to, or it can be very specific like it
was many years ago when Pretty Little Liars was birthed,
and that was a development assignment, which actually came from
(05:45):
our TV office.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
And the problem is, what's a team Desperate Housewives?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
And on the face of it, that doesn't make a
lot of sense, like teenagers.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Are not housewives.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
But when we talked about what was at the heart
of that show, murder Mystery and then I deal like Suburbs,
you kind of see that DNA in what pretty old
liars came to be. So getting back to your question,
the model has been and will continue to be.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
We are self generating.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
That's the thing that makes Alloy a viable business regardless
of what's going around us in the industry.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You're not beholden to the big pitch with the three
Oscar winners and the clock and you must pay, you know,
a small fortune to even get your foot in the door.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Correct, And we're not chasing the hot new book. We're
not going after the Sunday New York Times magazine article.
We are coming up with great ideas we believe in
and nurturing them over time. And like I said, you know,
the various teams of the book team and Gina and
(06:52):
TV and Lisa in movies has done a fantastic job
marroring those ideas with great writers.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So I would love your perspective on how does it
how does it inform and help the process of developing
television shows or movies when you are working with literary properties,
people that are thinking in novelistic form, but you've got
such a you know, you've got a hand in shaping
that novel.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Is that that? That's again a kind of a.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Twist on the on the typical I love this book,
I'm an option in the manuscript.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Yeah, I mean, I'll jump in and I would say
that we are all huge book lovers and TV and
film lovers.
Speaker 6 (07:33):
It's a natural instinct to want to protect the concept
as much as possible, but also understanding that each medium has,
you know, specific rules for what works if you will,
and so I think working with the book team in
New York on a specific idea, they'll sometimes ask us
(07:55):
to weigh in early in the stages of a book
being developed. If it's eyed for television, we can give
feedback that would help expand the world or the characters
or the stories, or once the book is written, when
we're meeting with writers, we can.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
Talk about ways to adapt several characters into only a few,
or you know, hyper focus on a location of a
book and give it specificity that would make the television
show even more special. So I would say that's that's
part of the joy of being on the ground floor
(08:33):
in this company. It's all very fluid and we all
communicate to one another regularly.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So you can even think in terms of seasons like
you can you can project out ahead on something you
feel very strongly about.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
In terms of how to keep it going right, like
potential something absolutely, yeah. I think it's whether it's something
that we option outside of our library or something within
our library. And you know, oftentimes we're working with books
that are multiple book series, so we can sit and
give a writer five novels that continue the foundation that's
(09:07):
built in the first book and expands the world in
a way that they can then take on.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
That was the case with Pretty Little Liars.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
When the final version of the show premiered, the seventh
book had just been released, so those writers had seven
novels that they could dive into and pull story and
character and.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Murders, and from a sales and revenue standpoint, like do
you see is it kind of.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
A virtuous circle. The books come and the you know,
when you coordinate that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
The reality of the book business today is the company
has really transitioned from being a book business with a
film and TV office to being a film and TV
business that has an internal IP generation machine that in
great success, is profitable. But we now are much more
(10:04):
cognizant of our book business exists to feed film and
TV and the communication is much more frequent than it
used to be, and it's much more two ways. So
there are many books that have started as that would
be a great idea for a show or that would
(10:24):
be a great idea for a movie, and recently Purple
Hearts is an example of that, where that began as
a movie pitch and one of our executives here had
read or heard a true story about contract military marriages
(10:46):
and called names it is this the basis for a
romantic movie? And I was like, Yeah, I love that.
Let's just get going on a script. So we did that,
and unfortunately at the time we're on a able to
set it up. But we loved it so much, so
let's turn it into a book. And we did, and
we published the book and then came back to it
(11:09):
in features, and obviously we're fortunate enough to put it
together with Sophia Carson.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
And Wiz Allen, and the movie went on. It was
a great success.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
But that that is typical of the model now where
the starting point can be over here and can go
back to the book team, and the book team will.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Jump on it if it makes sense in this book
as well.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
How is it different working at Alloy in this process
than in you know past in your past lives, at
other at other creative shops.
Speaker 8 (11:38):
The book's really become our superpower because it gives us
the kind of luxury of time to invest and be very.
Speaker 9 (11:47):
Hands on and involved as producers.
Speaker 8 (11:51):
We are kind of we have a we have a
healthy slate, but because we are not we have this
kind of stable of books and continuous kind of new
new flow of material coming our way.
Speaker 9 (12:05):
We can really just focus on the work, which is
a luxury. And I would say that it's.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
Wonderful to be able to you know, if you have
a feature idea, or you hear something that a studio
is really looking for. To be able to run that
by our book business and then talk about what that
would look like in book form is amazing because we
all know the studios get really excited when they hear
that there's a book, and the publishers get.
Speaker 9 (12:28):
Really excited when they hear that there could be a movie.
Speaker 8 (12:31):
So it really does become a circular economy, and in
the best possible way, and a very creative one. And
the other thing about the books, and what makes this
different from other jobs, is that sometimes you'll get a
call on or sometimes you'll be.
Speaker 9 (12:47):
Able to take a book that is out of print.
Speaker 8 (12:50):
In the case of you know, two years ago, there
were two books that were from the early aughts.
Speaker 9 (12:57):
One was You're So.
Speaker 8 (12:57):
Not Invited to My Botman's Fat, which was a title
that just we kept saying, this is a movie, but
how do we put together and convince people that it's
not a niche, that it can really resonate on this
universal level. And we found a writer and sent it
to Adam Sandler and he said yes, and the rest
is history.
Speaker 9 (13:15):
But that book was not a new book. It was
not a hot book. Similarly, Horoscope was a book that
I mean, I didn't even know.
Speaker 8 (13:22):
I'm pretty aware of all of our library and it's
a deep library, but I had never even heard of Horoscope.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
And we got a call.
Speaker 8 (13:28):
And now that movie is coming out in ment so
sometimes it really is the gift that keeps on giving.
It can be very surprising how deep the well is.
People will say I'm looking for a boarding school movie,
and in fact we probably have three of them. So
that makes it very different from other positions.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Because we have such strong foundation in our concepts in
our books, we're patient with the adaptations, so similar to
what Alisa was saying earlier, we're not chasing it. And
so there have been several iterations of some of the
(14:07):
shows you've mentioned during the development process that didn't move forward,
but we never gave up on the concept because we
believed it would be a successful series. So that's something
I think also all of us working at the company,
you know, at Leasta and I are ten plus years,
we have such a depth of knowledge of the material
(14:27):
that once we meet a writer or we hear a
target that someone's looking for, we can reach back in
and say, you know, we tried this five times, but
maybe this is the one that's going to make it.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
Is the luxury to be a because that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
That's interesting, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Let me ask you.
Speaker 9 (14:48):
Lesson, you know, what.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
What kind of big picture learning is about the modern
television landscape.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Did you learn from the you experience?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
You know, in the industry, it was very close. We
tracked that you started. You know, it was a very
distinctive show. Incredible star in Penn Badgeley, who we had
Variety had as a cover feature last year in twenty
twenty three, a very successful cover for us. You know,
it was a great It was the same show. It
was a great show. It did not succeed on the
(15:21):
linear basic cable. It went to Netflix, and we know
the risk.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
We were all very disappointed in how it performed on
Lifetime because we knew in our heart that we had
something really special.
Speaker 7 (15:32):
We all believed it was really special, and then.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
When we heard that Lifetime was picking us up to
a second season, it was all very exciting. We had
met Lesson, I had met with Bella Bajara and Stacy
Silverman at Netflix when they were running the international division,
and we said, we have the show at Lifetime, here's
the script. This could be something for your international agenda
(15:58):
because they were buying American shows and so them as
originals for Netflix. And literally twenty four hours later, Bella
called and Stacy called us and said we want.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
This, and so that's a good call.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
We were able to go to the studio and say
Netflix wants this for international, regardless of what Lifetime thinks
of us and what our future.
Speaker 7 (16:19):
Is at Lifetime, we have this piece and so that
deal was made. Do you want to continue to keep?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (16:28):
So that deal was made and then Lifetime did pick
us up for a season two. They had a twenty
four hour kill switch, and they it seemed as though
they were not going to they were going to renege
on the second season. So we immediately called Netflix and said,
you're going to be able to have the show if
you want it, and they absolutely stood up and grabbed
(16:50):
it and put it on Linny. They put it on
the domestic platform almost a year before they were planning to.
Speaker 7 (16:58):
And that's when it became an enormous hit.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And it was interesting because it was like there wasn't
a gigantic marketing campaign.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
It just found its audience.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Is it just as simple as there's a whole lot
more eighteen to forty year olds watching Netflix than there
are Lifetime these days?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
In this case, I don't think it was a question
of linear versus streaming so much as that is where
did the where does the demo for the show live
and how do they want to watch the show?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
That's right, Yeah, and I think, look, they've been.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Tremendous partners and really supportive of the show. But I
think in this instance, it was the audience finding the
show more than the show being served up to them.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Let me ask you on just a a on the
more macroeconomic level. You know, obviously a lot of changes
in television. The syndication market is in, you know, various
stages of being kind of reinvented. Does that cons earn
you long term as a producer of series?
Speaker 9 (18:02):
Does because we.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Are fortunate to have had several hit shows go the
distance under the traditional model, and we have the benefit
of seeing the money those shows kick off. We're also
fortunate enough to have screaming hits and see the money
those shows kick off.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
And it's a different business.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
And you know, I think the business is very profitable,
it's very sustainable. It is not comparable, and we would
love to have opportunities where they're second and third revenue streams.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
From our shows.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
And until there's a shift in the model, which maybe
there will be, we're gonna continue to plug away and
do what we do, but.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Would I love to see some return to that traditional model. Yeah.
Do I see anyone diving in and kind of paving
the way. I don't.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I'm very curious to see kind of as we really
kind of shake out from the impact of the strikes
and all the all the evaluation that I'm very interested
to see whether if there's a there might be a
bounce back in linear television that could be completely you know,
delusional optimism.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
On my part as a fan of broadcast television.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
I think the Yellowstone and only Murderers I'm putting in
quotations experiments.
Speaker 7 (19:44):
What a concept.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, maybe that's indicative of where the business is going,
where shows are platformed across right windows simultaneously or reaching
as broad an audience as possible, so.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
That the marketing dollars really can be as effective as
they can.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Be, and you bring down the upfront costs and share
them back any more.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Don't turn the page just yet. We'll be back with
more from Alloy Entertainment after this pause for monetization, and
we're back with more from the Home of Gossip Girl,
Pretty Little Liars, and you, Elisa.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
The film business is no walk in the park either.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Right now, Can you tell me how you approach Do
you look for a certain amount of things that can
be done theatrically?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Do you look to sell straight to streamers?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Some titles tell me about sort of how you go
about developing your slate.
Speaker 9 (20:54):
We have had great success in streaming.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
As of late.
Speaker 9 (21:03):
On Netflix and three.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Number ones in a row.
Speaker 9 (21:06):
So we have been very fortunate that our audience is
the alloy audience.
Speaker 8 (21:14):
Is there, but they show up for streaming, whether it's
on their phone, on their laptop, whatever. I think that
that's been great for us, but we still love the
theatrical experience and hope to make movies for theatrical.
Speaker 9 (21:29):
It was obviously a joy to see.
Speaker 8 (21:31):
People you know return in some form over this past
year and post COVID, and we hope to do more
of it. That said, I think streaming will be a
big core of our business because that's where our audience
primarily lives. Although my daughters fifteen tells me that on
her TikTok feed theaters are coming back, so let's.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Know, we would love for that to be part of
our business. But we also want to have wins. So
if we developing a movie like Purple Hearts or you're
setum invited to my bio Mitzvah. We are cognizant of
who the audience for those movies are, and.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
We want to put it.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
In a place where it's going to have success and
where we are going to have success and not have
the pressure of delivering on something that in this current
market feels really challenged. We want to remain the biggest
fish in the YA pond.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
But we are really running our grown up business, and
if you look at our past eighteen months, our two.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Biggest successes are you Joel Goldberg's in his late thirties
at this point and Purple Hearts, which was a grown
up romance, and so we are focused on that. Our
book business currently is about twenty five percent books for adults,
although WYAT titles.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Are read by adult women.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
By the end of twenty five, it's going to be
fifty to fifty and that's really the focus.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And that's driven by a couple things.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
One is the CWN free form aren't here anymore, and
they were the primary buyers of our team shows or
shows with team protagonists.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Even if we were sitting here five years ago, that
would have sounded like, oh, come on, you're kidding, you know.
It's just a measure, and it's not a finger pointing,
but it's just a measure of how the market has changed.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
They for so many years were so vital to our
business and such great partners, and we had just phenomenal
success together. So that being said, we need to pivot
the business. We're still gonna have YA shows and YA movies,
but there.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Are fewer homes.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Let me ask you, lets to kind of complete the circle.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You mentioned that you acquired the company some your like
around late ninety nineteen nineties, and then at some point
Warner Brothers came in as the owner. Can you talk
about what led to that, what that has brought to you.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
There have been many corporate transactions over the thirty plus
years I've been in this business. At one point I
acquired the company with Amberg sharers who wrote the Traim
Pants novels from the original founder. We eventually sold the
business to what was Alloy dot com, which.
Speaker 9 (24:32):
Was a.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Company selling skateboard apparel and trendy clothing through a catalog
and website. Is that how Alloy became Alloy became so
we became Ali Entertainment.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
It's kind of a great name.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
They were in the media and marketing business and we
were a small.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Public company during the odds.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Eventually we went private and our investors put Alloy Entertainment
on the market. At that point in time, we had
seven shows on the air. We were doing tremendously well.
We still are doing tremendously well. And Warners was the
most logical buyer for the business.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
Our TV business was there.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
We had three monster shows with them at the time, Gossip.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
They actually probably had a better sense of what we
were worth than our owners did. Yeah, really did from
us the people who worked at the company. It was
the best outcome because we knew the party as well.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
We had a great working relationship. You know that we
were talking about the lot earlier, just the dream of
this being our home.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So they Warner Brothers TV acquired the business from the
private equity owners in twenty twelve. We've operated as a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Talviison Group since that. All
of our series we produce through WBTV. Our movie business
is independent, and that has been a great relationship.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
One of Brothers pictures in Newline are very specific businesses,
and we are a very specific business. Where there are overlaps,
we absolutely want to be in business, and where there are,
the company has been.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
Generous enough to us go elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I mean that seems like the best of all possible worlds.
Plus again, folks, I cannot say enough about the beautiful wood.
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
(26:51):
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
up for our free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't
forget to in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief Variety. My guests today
are the leaders of Alloy Entertainment. You may not know
the name Alloy, but you know their TV shows and
movies Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, You, Vampire Diaries, Sisterhood
(00:34):
of the Traveling Pants, Purple Hearts, and the Ohso Charming.
You are so not invited to my about mitzvah. The
company has an unusual approach to developing content because it
also has a very busy book division that provides the
vast majority of the ip that drives the company. Here
in this interview, we get the lowdown on Alloy's unusual
(00:57):
business model from three key players CEO Leslie Morgenstein, TV
chief Gina Girolamo, and film leader Elisa Koplovitz Dutton. The
trio explain here how they've been able to thrive in
the YA space and why they are now looking to
grow up a bit, as they describe it. Morgenstein also
(01:19):
walks us through how the company wound up being owned
by Warner Brothers but still operates with great autonomy. That's
all coming up after the break, and we're back with
more from the leadership team at Alloy Entertainment. Les Morgenstein,
(01:43):
Gina Jerromo, Elisa Dutton of Alloy Entertainment.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you so much for inviting me to.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Your beautiful offices here on the Warner Brothers lot. It's
my first podcast recording of twenty twenty four, and I'm
excited because Alloy Entertainment is a company I've covered a
long time, but I have really wanted to get to
know you all better and get a little bit behind
the scenes of how you create your content less from
the thirty thousand foot view, can you tell me sort
(02:11):
of what is Alloy's approach to nurturing and generating content.
You have an incredible track record over the last fifteen
twenty years of very buzzy television shows that really have
penetrated the culture in a way that is hard to
in our mass fractured media environment these days. What is
your approach? Sure?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And thank you for coming here and visiting with us,
and we're pleased to be your first pot of the year.
It's a pretty organic story and IP is such a
buzzword or buzz phrase these days, and companies are so
desirous of it. We never sat down and said we're
(02:54):
going to become an IP company. It was more of
a process of a group of people who love storytelling
and had a good knack for what's a commercial idea
building a business over many years. So the company started
in the book business and originally was a production company
(03:18):
for hire, producing a team book series called Sweet Valley High,
and eventually.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Got smart enough to know that.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
It needed to own its own properties and began brainstorming
ideas like what's something we want to see, what's something
we think will resonate with the audience, and putting those
ideas together with great writers, so a nose for concept
and a nose for talent, and that shop eventually produced
(03:49):
Vampire Diaries and The Sister of the Traveling Pants and
Gossip Girl and a very popular middle grade book series
that became a movie called The Click, and.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Pretty Little Liars and The Hundred and You. And the
thing that.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Really makes us unique, which you mentioned at the center
of it, is a group of creative people who develop
ideas internally and then go out and find the best talent,
whether that's a novelist or a TV showrunner or a
screenwriter to make it come to life.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So that's an interesting It sounds like a large part
of the ideas, the concepts that become books and television
shows and potentially movies start in house and then you
marry the writer. Would you say that's more common than
a writer coming to you with a pitch.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yes, I mean these days we do have lots of
relationships with book writers where we'll have a long term
deal and it will be more collaborative, so sit down
with the writer and just have brainstorming sessions.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
But the traditional.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Model, which we still employ on at least half of
our new book projects and we produce about twenty books
a year, come from our group. And there's a team
of editor writers in New York who get together on
a regular basis. This team in LA less frequently and
(05:21):
they just have creative sessions, and that can be very freeform.
Come into the room with an idea, can be a
pitch off of a magazine article or our show you
went to, or it can be very specific like it
was many years ago when Pretty Little Liars was birthed,
and that was a development assignment, which actually came from
(05:45):
our TV office.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
And the problem is, what's a team Desperate Housewives?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
And on the face of it, that doesn't make a
lot of sense, like teenagers.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Are not housewives.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
But when we talked about what was at the heart
of that show, murder Mystery and then I deal like Suburbs,
you kind of see that DNA in what pretty old
liars came to be. So getting back to your question,
the model has been and will continue to be.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
We are self generating.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
That's the thing that makes Alloy a viable business regardless
of what's going around us in the industry.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You're not beholden to the big pitch with the three
Oscar winners and the clock and you must pay, you know,
a small fortune to even get your foot in the door.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Correct, And we're not chasing the hot new book. We're
not going after the Sunday New York Times magazine article.
We are coming up with great ideas we believe in
and nurturing them over time. And like I said, you know,
the various teams of the book team and Gina and
(06:52):
TV and Lisa in movies has done a fantastic job
marroring those ideas with great writers.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So I would love your perspective on how does it
how does it inform and help the process of developing
television shows or movies when you are working with literary properties,
people that are thinking in novelistic form, but you've got
such a you know, you've got a hand in shaping
that novel.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Is that that? That's again a kind of a.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Twist on the on the typical I love this book,
I'm an option in the manuscript.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Yeah, I mean, I'll jump in and I would say
that we are all huge book lovers and TV and
film lovers.
Speaker 6 (07:33):
It's a natural instinct to want to protect the concept
as much as possible, but also understanding that each medium has,
you know, specific rules for what works if you will,
and so I think working with the book team in
New York on a specific idea, they'll sometimes ask us
(07:55):
to weigh in early in the stages of a book
being developed. If it's eyed for television, we can give
feedback that would help expand the world or the characters
or the stories, or once the book is written, when
we're meeting with writers, we can.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
Talk about ways to adapt several characters into only a few,
or you know, hyper focus on a location of a
book and give it specificity that would make the television
show even more special. So I would say that's that's
part of the joy of being on the ground floor
(08:33):
in this company. It's all very fluid and we all
communicate to one another regularly.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So you can even think in terms of seasons like
you can you can project out ahead on something you
feel very strongly about.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
In terms of how to keep it going right, like
potential something absolutely, yeah. I think it's whether it's something
that we option outside of our library or something within
our library. And you know, oftentimes we're working with books
that are multiple book series, so we can sit and
give a writer five novels that continue the foundation that's
(09:07):
built in the first book and expands the world in
a way that they can then take on.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
That was the case with Pretty Little Liars.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
When the final version of the show premiered, the seventh
book had just been released, so those writers had seven
novels that they could dive into and pull story and
character and.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Murders, and from a sales and revenue standpoint, like do
you see is it kind of.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
A virtuous circle. The books come and the you know,
when you coordinate that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
The reality of the book business today is the company
has really transitioned from being a book business with a
film and TV office to being a film and TV
business that has an internal IP generation machine that in
great success, is profitable. But we now are much more
(10:04):
cognizant of our book business exists to feed film and
TV and the communication is much more frequent than it
used to be, and it's much more two ways. So
there are many books that have started as that would
be a great idea for a show or that would
(10:24):
be a great idea for a movie, and recently Purple
Hearts is an example of that, where that began as
a movie pitch and one of our executives here had
read or heard a true story about contract military marriages
(10:46):
and called names it is this the basis for a
romantic movie? And I was like, Yeah, I love that.
Let's just get going on a script. So we did that,
and unfortunately at the time we're on a able to
set it up. But we loved it so much, so
let's turn it into a book. And we did, and
we published the book and then came back to it
(11:09):
in features, and obviously we're fortunate enough to put it
together with Sophia Carson.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
And Wiz Allen, and the movie went on. It was
a great success.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
But that that is typical of the model now where
the starting point can be over here and can go
back to the book team, and the book team will.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Jump on it if it makes sense in this book
as well.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
How is it different working at Alloy in this process
than in you know past in your past lives, at
other at other creative shops.
Speaker 8 (11:38):
The book's really become our superpower because it gives us
the kind of luxury of time to invest and be very.
Speaker 9 (11:47):
Hands on and involved as producers.
Speaker 8 (11:51):
We are kind of we have a we have a
healthy slate, but because we are not we have this
kind of stable of books and continuous kind of new
new flow of material coming our way.
Speaker 9 (12:05):
We can really just focus on the work, which is
a luxury. And I would say that it's.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
Wonderful to be able to you know, if you have
a feature idea, or you hear something that a studio
is really looking for. To be able to run that
by our book business and then talk about what that
would look like in book form is amazing because we
all know the studios get really excited when they hear
that there's a book, and the publishers get.
Speaker 9 (12:28):
Really excited when they hear that there could be a movie.
Speaker 8 (12:31):
So it really does become a circular economy, and in
the best possible way, and a very creative one. And
the other thing about the books, and what makes this
different from other jobs, is that sometimes you'll get a
call on or sometimes you'll be.
Speaker 9 (12:47):
Able to take a book that is out of print.
Speaker 8 (12:50):
In the case of you know, two years ago, there
were two books that were from the early aughts.
Speaker 9 (12:57):
One was You're So.
Speaker 8 (12:57):
Not Invited to My Botman's Fat, which was a title
that just we kept saying, this is a movie, but
how do we put together and convince people that it's
not a niche, that it can really resonate on this
universal level. And we found a writer and sent it
to Adam Sandler and he said yes, and the rest
is history.
Speaker 9 (13:15):
But that book was not a new book. It was
not a hot book. Similarly, Horoscope was a book that
I mean, I didn't even know.
Speaker 8 (13:22):
I'm pretty aware of all of our library and it's
a deep library, but I had never even heard of Horoscope.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
And we got a call.
Speaker 8 (13:28):
And now that movie is coming out in ment so
sometimes it really is the gift that keeps on giving.
It can be very surprising how deep the well is.
People will say I'm looking for a boarding school movie,
and in fact we probably have three of them. So
that makes it very different from other positions.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Because we have such strong foundation in our concepts in
our books, we're patient with the adaptations, so similar to
what Alisa was saying earlier, we're not chasing it. And
so there have been several iterations of some of the
(14:07):
shows you've mentioned during the development process that didn't move forward,
but we never gave up on the concept because we
believed it would be a successful series. So that's something
I think also all of us working at the company,
you know, at Leasta and I are ten plus years,
we have such a depth of knowledge of the material
(14:27):
that once we meet a writer or we hear a
target that someone's looking for, we can reach back in
and say, you know, we tried this five times, but
maybe this is the one that's going to make it.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
Is the luxury to be a because that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
That's interesting, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Let me ask you.
Speaker 9 (14:48):
Lesson, you know, what.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
What kind of big picture learning is about the modern
television landscape.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Did you learn from the you experience?
Speaker 1 (14:58):
You know, in the industry, it was very close. We
tracked that you started. You know, it was a very
distinctive show. Incredible star in Penn Badgeley, who we had
Variety had as a cover feature last year in twenty
twenty three, a very successful cover for us. You know,
it was a great It was the same show. It
was a great show. It did not succeed on the
(15:21):
linear basic cable. It went to Netflix, and we know
the risk.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
We were all very disappointed in how it performed on
Lifetime because we knew in our heart that we had
something really special.
Speaker 7 (15:32):
We all believed it was really special, and then.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
When we heard that Lifetime was picking us up to
a second season, it was all very exciting. We had
met Lesson, I had met with Bella Bajara and Stacy
Silverman at Netflix when they were running the international division,
and we said, we have the show at Lifetime, here's
the script. This could be something for your international agenda
(15:58):
because they were buying American shows and so them as
originals for Netflix. And literally twenty four hours later, Bella
called and Stacy called us and said we want.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
This, and so that's a good call.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
We were able to go to the studio and say
Netflix wants this for international, regardless of what Lifetime thinks
of us and what our future.
Speaker 7 (16:19):
Is at Lifetime, we have this piece and so that
deal was made. Do you want to continue to keep?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (16:28):
So that deal was made and then Lifetime did pick
us up for a season two. They had a twenty
four hour kill switch, and they it seemed as though
they were not going to they were going to renege
on the second season. So we immediately called Netflix and said,
you're going to be able to have the show if
you want it, and they absolutely stood up and grabbed
(16:50):
it and put it on Linny. They put it on
the domestic platform almost a year before they were planning to.
Speaker 7 (16:58):
And that's when it became an enormous hit.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
And it was interesting because it was like there wasn't
a gigantic marketing campaign.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
It just found its audience.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Is it just as simple as there's a whole lot
more eighteen to forty year olds watching Netflix than there
are Lifetime these days?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
In this case, I don't think it was a question
of linear versus streaming so much as that is where
did the where does the demo for the show live
and how do they want to watch the show?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
That's right, Yeah, and I think, look, they've been.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Tremendous partners and really supportive of the show. But I
think in this instance, it was the audience finding the
show more than the show being served up to them.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Let me ask you on just a a on the
more macroeconomic level. You know, obviously a lot of changes
in television. The syndication market is in, you know, various
stages of being kind of reinvented. Does that cons earn
you long term as a producer of series?
Speaker 9 (18:02):
Does because we.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Are fortunate to have had several hit shows go the
distance under the traditional model, and we have the benefit
of seeing the money those shows kick off. We're also
fortunate enough to have screaming hits and see the money
those shows kick off.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
And it's a different business.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
And you know, I think the business is very profitable,
it's very sustainable. It is not comparable, and we would
love to have opportunities where they're second and third revenue streams.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
From our shows.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
And until there's a shift in the model, which maybe
there will be, we're gonna continue to plug away and
do what we do, but.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Would I love to see some return to that traditional model. Yeah.
Do I see anyone diving in and kind of paving
the way. I don't.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I'm very curious to see kind of as we really
kind of shake out from the impact of the strikes
and all the all the evaluation that I'm very interested
to see whether if there's a there might be a
bounce back in linear television that could be completely you know,
delusional optimism.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
On my part as a fan of broadcast television.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
I think the Yellowstone and only Murderers I'm putting in
quotations experiments.
Speaker 7 (19:44):
What a concept.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, maybe that's indicative of where the business is going,
where shows are platformed across right windows simultaneously or reaching
as broad an audience as possible, so.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
That the marketing dollars really can be as effective as
they can.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Be, and you bring down the upfront costs and share
them back any more.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Don't turn the page just yet. We'll be back with
more from Alloy Entertainment after this pause for monetization, and
we're back with more from the Home of Gossip Girl,
Pretty Little Liars, and you, Elisa.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
The film business is no walk in the park either.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Right now, Can you tell me how you approach Do
you look for a certain amount of things that can
be done theatrically?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Do you look to sell straight to streamers?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Some titles tell me about sort of how you go
about developing your slate.
Speaker 9 (20:54):
We have had great success in streaming.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
As of late.
Speaker 9 (21:03):
On Netflix and three.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Number ones in a row.
Speaker 9 (21:06):
So we have been very fortunate that our audience is
the alloy audience.
Speaker 8 (21:14):
Is there, but they show up for streaming, whether it's
on their phone, on their laptop, whatever. I think that
that's been great for us, but we still love the
theatrical experience and hope to make movies for theatrical.
Speaker 9 (21:29):
It was obviously a joy to see.
Speaker 8 (21:31):
People you know return in some form over this past
year and post COVID, and we hope to do more
of it. That said, I think streaming will be a
big core of our business because that's where our audience
primarily lives. Although my daughters fifteen tells me that on
her TikTok feed theaters are coming back, so let's.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Know, we would love for that to be part of
our business. But we also want to have wins. So
if we developing a movie like Purple Hearts or you're
setum invited to my bio Mitzvah. We are cognizant of
who the audience for those movies are, and.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
We want to put it.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
In a place where it's going to have success and
where we are going to have success and not have
the pressure of delivering on something that in this current
market feels really challenged. We want to remain the biggest
fish in the YA pond.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
But we are really running our grown up business, and
if you look at our past eighteen months, our two.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Biggest successes are you Joel Goldberg's in his late thirties
at this point and Purple Hearts, which was a grown
up romance, and so we are focused on that. Our
book business currently is about twenty five percent books for adults,
although WYAT titles.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Are read by adult women.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
By the end of twenty five, it's going to be
fifty to fifty and that's really the focus.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And that's driven by a couple things.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
One is the CWN free form aren't here anymore, and
they were the primary buyers of our team shows or
shows with team protagonists.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Even if we were sitting here five years ago, that
would have sounded like, oh, come on, you're kidding, you know.
It's just a measure, and it's not a finger pointing,
but it's just a measure of how the market has changed.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
They for so many years were so vital to our
business and such great partners, and we had just phenomenal
success together. So that being said, we need to pivot
the business. We're still gonna have YA shows and YA movies,
but there.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Are fewer homes.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Let me ask you, lets to kind of complete the circle.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You mentioned that you acquired the company some your like
around late ninety nineteen nineties, and then at some point
Warner Brothers came in as the owner. Can you talk
about what led to that, what that has brought to you.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
There have been many corporate transactions over the thirty plus
years I've been in this business. At one point I
acquired the company with Amberg sharers who wrote the Traim
Pants novels from the original founder. We eventually sold the
business to what was Alloy dot com, which.
Speaker 9 (24:32):
Was a.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Company selling skateboard apparel and trendy clothing through a catalog
and website. Is that how Alloy became Alloy became so
we became Ali Entertainment.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
It's kind of a great name.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
They were in the media and marketing business and we
were a small.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Public company during the odds.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Eventually we went private and our investors put Alloy Entertainment
on the market. At that point in time, we had
seven shows on the air. We were doing tremendously well.
We still are doing tremendously well. And Warners was the
most logical buyer for the business.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
Our TV business was there.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
We had three monster shows with them at the time, Gossip.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
They actually probably had a better sense of what we
were worth than our owners did. Yeah, really did from
us the people who worked at the company. It was
the best outcome because we knew the party as well.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
We had a great working relationship. You know that we
were talking about the lot earlier, just the dream of
this being our home.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So they Warner Brothers TV acquired the business from the
private equity owners in twenty twelve. We've operated as a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Talviison Group since that. All
of our series we produce through WBTV. Our movie business
is independent, and that has been a great relationship.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
One of Brothers pictures in Newline are very specific businesses,
and we are a very specific business. Where there are overlaps,
we absolutely want to be in business, and where there are,
the company has been.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
Generous enough to us go elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I mean that seems like the best of all possible worlds.
Plus again, folks, I cannot say enough about the beautiful wood.
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
(26:51):
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
up for our free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't
forget to in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
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