A few hours before investor-producer Jeff Sagansky went off on the streaming business model at last weekโs NATPE conference, I had a great conversation about the transformation of the content business with a few people in the middle of it all: Kevin Mayer, the former Disney executive who co-founded the Blackstone-backed Candle Media, which has bought all or part of Reese Witherspoonโs Hello Sunshine, CocoMelon studio Moonbug Entertainment, Will Smithโs Westbrook (ouch), and the ATTN media company, among others; Jessica Reif Ehrlich, the longtime media analyst and managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; and Kevin Beggs, chairman of Lionsgate Television Group. We talked about what the Great Netflix Correction means for content producers, how Hollywood would hold up in a recession, and whether the age of bidding wars is over. They agreed to let me run excerpts below that have been edited for length and clarity.
Matt Belloni: This panel was supposed to happen in January in Miami. I basically threw out my outline because everything has changed in the past five months. Weโll get into that but Kevin, youโve bought very disparate businesses. Whatโs the through line? Like, are there synergies or are they just silos that youโre going to package together?
Kevin Mayer: There are synergies. Weโre going to keep the creative energies and the distinct creative approaches separate. But just like at Disney, you buy brands, and the monetization can be centralizedโdistribution, sales, some of the production facilities and production financing, H.R., all the back office stuff. But [creatively] there is some synergy between the two groups. Reese Witherspoon has a great idea for a kids book called Busy Betty. Weโre going to make that into a series and sheโs working directly with Moonbug to bring it out on YouTube. There is a tight integration between these companies.
Belloni: The market is really starting to question the…