YouSaid · the spoken record

David Maisel

lines on the record: 156
first: 2023-06-07
most recent: 2023-06-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“All the planning gets done right there in that same floor, which is normally never done with the studio, which was Kevin and I. But I guess there's another thing that people should hear about is I had this philosophy that studios, Hollywood studios, had this unnecessary layer of management called studio executives who hired the producers. Our model was there's no studio executives. We were the producers of the movie. And so Kevin and I were technically studio executives, but we were working on the film Kevin Every Day meet with a significant chunk of my time because I was also co-CEO and we didn't have that layer. So we all”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just talked you through was the biggest, Tim. It was getting the job at Marvel, getting the financing in place, convincing the board, getting the distribution deal, getting the rights back to Iron Man, getting the board to agree with us on Robert Downey, and getting the internal politics of Marvel like there are in every company settled. So by that spring of 2006, two years before the movie comes out, we have all those pieces in place. And we didn't have an office. We took the Mercedes-Benz dealership in Santa Monica Boulevard. Playboy had an office in the very top corner and they were having financial difficulties. And I sublet it from Hefner and put a Marvel Studios sign outside that cost $10,000. And we announced our presence. And we just would work there 18 hours a day. We moved pre-production for a movie, which is where.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was a key part. I mean, I think with those two pieces in place, Kevin and I were off to the races with John and Robert to make this film, which is, I think, this month, you know, it's our 15th anniversary of release.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Favreau, plus he seemed very committed to it. His career obviously has taken off in the past 15 years tremendously, and he's shown his talent in so many other ways. And Robert Downey, I think, originally came from John and Kevin. They both were proponents for Robert as studio chairman. I had to give the final thumbs up and thumbs down on that, but I agreed with them knowing Tony Stark from the comics and Robert's work. You know, it wasn't obvious. I mean, Robert had never had a box office success. He had just been arrested a couple years earlier for drugs and spent time in jail. So it's not who you bet your company on. And he came in and did a video audition, which is also rare. And I remember taking that recommendation to Ike and the board and showing him that video audition. And they asked a lot of tough questions, but they also agreed.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and he was just coming off as a thura. And we felt like we knew how to do the comic book part of things, like the action and the comic book-y part of stuff. But we also knew we didn't have a lot of money to make the movie. I could green light to 165 million. I told my board, I'd make the film at a budget that would allow it to break even at a percentage, I think two-thirds of X-Men. And so my budget for the film was about $100, $105 million. Now that's sounds like a lot, but it wasn't, I mean, Batman that year was $230 million. And so that allowed us to have some action, but not a lot. So we knew we'd have an hour and 45 minutes of Tony Stark in his workshop or talking to Pepper Potts. And John was great on those scenes and is great on those scenes and also getting the best out of talent like Robert Downey. So I think that was something we all saw.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of people think of John today for his Star Wars stuff and a lot of visual effects. But at the time, he was more known for swingers and for those types of films.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There wasn't these external things we needed, like financing or distribution deals. We had that. We had the rights back. We had a clean structure in the company. And I promoted my ex-assistant into the creative realm. He became our number two guy, creatively Jeremy Latcham. We hired Ludy Esposito and Victoria Alonzo to amazing talents early in that period of time. All of us then focused on making this movie. And John Favreau was identified as the director and Robert Downey as the actor. That was the two big decisions.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To give perspective on that, we talked about how in 2004, 2005, it was primarily raising the money and getting distribution partner in Paramount. I was then promoted the vice chairman of the studio in that period. And in 2006, Avi left the studio. And then I was running the studio myself. And I promoted Kevin Feigey, who was a young kid that was helping Avi on script notes who I'd gotten to know very well. admired him his creativity and his love of the comics. I promoted him to be my president of production and I was chairman of the studio and promoted to that. I also was fortunate to be promoted to office of the CEO with Ike and John of the parent company. And so it's relevant because with those pieces in place, we were able to focus solely on making that film, right? There was no more internal politics.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were splitting toys 50 50 with Universal, and that became way in our favor, and Hulk Hans were our number one toy. So we were thinking of Hulk potentially as the first movie, and then Iron Man came back. And Kevin and I were both really excited about Iron Man, as was Avierad, who is still the studio. He left in early 2006. And so we zeroed in on that. And I think. I don't know exactly why other people missed it. I think what we were excited about was the man inside the suit. Like we love the sexy suit of armor like most people do. But Tony Stark is such a cool character. And if you don't see Tony Stark, you don't see how good the movie can be. And so I think that was probably the breakthrough for the three of us.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was even practical given the cost of Asgard And so for a while, we didn't know what the first movie was going to be. I was able to get the rights for Hulk back. I mentioned Ron Meyer went to become chairman of Universal from CAA earlier. And so Ron, I knew very well. And I texted him and asked him for meeting. And they had done the first Hulk movie with Aang Lee, which was critically well received, but not box office-wise. And they were owned by GE at the time. And I said, Ron, are you ever going to make a Hulk movie? And he said, no, probably not. And I said, what about if I finance it? And you distribute.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“didn't have that many options again right so when we closed the financing we didn't have iron man we listed 10 characters and those 10 characters were led by captain american thor this thing called avengers which people thought was a british spy tv show and the avengers weren't defined in ordeal so it could be as with the comics different characters in the versers right so it was sort of a weird category of a property there was black panther in there there was dr strange but nobody cared about those characters at all that people thought of black panther as a terrorist group from the 60s dr strange was a small comic i think we had cloak and dagger in there shang shi which finally made it as a movie power pack that people know these names i mean there weren't that many big names and i'm not sure we even put thor in in the beginning because there was disagreement internally whether thor”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Tim, the part that I guess with both the bankers and with Paramount is I would strongly make the case creatively for why I thought Iron Man would be a success and why the MCU, which wasn't called at the time, could be a success. And then also Avi and Kevin would come into these meetings with the bankers and with the distribution partners to talk about their experiences on those movies of X-Men and Spider-Man. So we had the sexy halo effect of producers on those movies even though we weren't actually Full producers and all those things, especially with the bankers, were really important. And with Rob and Paramount, I think it was more of the financial trade for them, but they saw the success of Spider-Man with Sony and hoped that they could get that upside, which they did.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's actually important because it can eat up all your profits on a movie if you get charged too much. We had like a 10% distribution fee, which is really attractive as well. I think George Lucas had the lowest I'm aware of, it's six or seven percent for Star Wars.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I understand the Would inflate the costs that they got reimbursed. So they would say they spent $150 million on marketing, but 20 million of that's overhead. Another 10 million some odd cost”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Printed advertising. So I remember Jeffrey Katzenberg had a distribution deal with Paramount and he was running TreeMorks Animation and he basically coached me on what terms I should ask for and mentored me on that. So we had a deal that was really good. There was no non-cash charges. There was no overhead charge to us.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they listened, and Rob trusted me from our times at Disney. He knew me pretty well. So the past relationship helped and he knew I wasn't careless with my analysis or my statements. And so for at least for Rob, I can't speak for Brad, but for Rob, he understood, and when he finally listened to where the break-even was for them, he saw it was a good bet. In the upside, he had distribution rights to like, I think five or ten movies. In the downside, you know, he basically broke even if the film didn't do well. And there's a lot of other games like studios make money internally, even on P&A.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a very different world, yeah. So, why paramount? When I was at Disney, I got to be friendly with a guy named Rob Moore, who was running one of the senior people at the studio at Disney. He was vice chairman of Paramount at this time. He was on his way to a Laker game and I tackled him in the parking lot and just bugged him enough because he didn't want to be late to the basketball game that he agreed to. Seriously, he greets you, like, you know, have a meeting with me. And then Brad Gray was his boss who Aviarad knew. And so we sort of tag team these two men and convinced them that this was a good bet. And to your point, we showed him that they were the last money. They put up the last $150 million. They got the first $150 million back. So the film only had to do like a percentage of X-Men for them to at least get their money back.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Many years. And I think for seven or eight years and never thought it was worthy to make into a film. And they let the rights expire and give it back to us.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So at the end of the day, only one person said yes, which was paramount, you know, part of Viacom. But the way we got there, I mean, at the time, this is really important. In 2003, 2004, 2005, Marvel wasn't the marvel it is today. So everyone that's listening, many people probably don't remember that Marvel wasn't this huge thing, that it's been the past 15 years. And in Hollywood, if it was, by the way, I never would have gotten this opportunity. So Disney or somebody else could have bought Marvel for 500 million much earlier if they wanted to. And so the studios, nobody wanted to distribute these movies. You know, it wasn't just Sony. It was, you know, universal and others. We had obstacles. Now we wanted great terms, but nobody really believed in these properties. And Iron Man New Line, which is part of Warner Brothers, they had the rights for many.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, that's a good question. No, if they got stuck with the whole loan. Yeah, then they're sort of paying themselves, I guess. Yeah.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they took risk because at the time the deal closes, they're obligated to put up the 525. So they got their success fee, I think, right at that time. And then they resell most of it to other people pretty immediately. So I don't know, I'm trying to remember back, this was 2003, 2004, 2005, but they had risk when the deal closed for, I don't know if it was for half hour or for one day or for two days, but they had risk for a period of time before they resold all that. And that's when they get their success fee. Once the money's guaranteed.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Taking out one. I learned this in real time doing this because we really didn't have a banker helping us on this deal too much. And so it was a man named John Turitson, who was the general counsel of Marvel, who is important to mention because he was the closest person and still is to Ike. And he kept my head in the game and he helped me get through this process. And many times I thought of quitting. Ike probably thought about firing me. And he probably I know he talked us both off the ledge many times. So if it wasn't for John, there's no Marvel Studios either. I'm either fired or I quit. Probably fired. It's a pretty detailed thing, but I was very greedy. I wanted the interest rate to be lower and we got it insured by a company called MBAC. Most of the debt. So it became AAA debt, which is then easy to sell to pensions and easy to sell to individual investors.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out of this? What does the bank want? Well, they really got, I think, a 3% success fee with this deal. And they held the debt for all of probably a half hour till they flipped it to somebody else. So there was incentives for everyone to get this deal done. And that was important to figure out.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of people are now looking and learning that Marvel Studios was a relay race. Stan Lee and the original comic creators created the characters. And then the baton went to Ike and Avi and Avi specifically doing these license deals and Ike supporting him. And then the baton in 2003 went to me. And then we can get to later on. I passed the baton to Kevin Feige in 2010. And he's still writing the studio. If I didn't have the numbers of X-Men and Spider-Man to point to and run scenarios to my board internally and to the bank, what if, you know, we just do half of those numbers or two-thirds of those numbers for their stress case scenarios? Yeah, I mean, they never ran a stress case scenario like at doing a third of those numbers. If they did, we would have failed. So they wanted this deal to happen. And, you know, there's incentives. We go back to street smarts of Mike Ovitz, right? What is Merrill want?”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that was only one of the things because even with the money that came in, we still needed a distribution deal with a studio. All that money was contingent on a major studio putting up $150 million to market the movie.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We probably came to agreement in the fall of 2004 and closed it in the spring of 05. And, you know, things always get renegotiated until they're closed. Best way to put it. Now all those guys, it turned out to be one of their best loans they ever made, obviously. And I'm friends with a lot of those bankers still. It was an interesting time.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that would have been easier to structure. And perhaps my board would not have cared. Half is better than nothing of the movie. And I was very greedy. I wanted Marvel to keep 100% of the upside because also I was one of the largest individual owners at that time with my stock options. And so I was very tenacious with Ike, but I was also very tenacious with Merrill Lynch that we keep 100% of the upside. And no deal is easy. They tried to renegotiate and make us put up a third of the budget some other way. And I was lucky, I was not lucky, I was fortunate, I guess, to be able to convince them not to do that at the end. So it was very precarious for a while.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was after Avengers Endgame in 2019. David, the movie was a terrific accomplishment. And we know that it all started with you, your vision, and your tenacity in pushing to achieve that vision. The word tenacity is about those hurdles you just mentioned, right? It was tough. That was a huge hurdle to get over having the correct financing that would work. I've never said this publicly. I could have showed up in the boardroom and given up half the equity and the same terms for the other 50% of the money.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eventually, when the financing came together, it's important for Marvel fans to realize that it was tender at the time. If we were not able to raise riskless capital like that, the MCU might never have occurred. Or if I got there six months later and those other movies were licensed, it would have been. Marvel or any IP holder making their own $100 million plus movie was revolutionary. Like nobody to this day, I'm only aware of Marvel and Angry Birds who's done that. And Angry Birds I was part of after I left. So it was a crazy idea, Tim. And to Ike's credit, he did give me that audience. He sent me an email that I have behind me recently thanking me for my tenacity and basically said I can actually read it. One second.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly And actually, even better because we were able to get 5% of 100% revenues as a producer fee. So even if the film lost money, we were making 10 to 20 million. And the bank let us keep all of the non-film revenues like toys and video games in a different waterfall. So even if the 4 at bats lost, we were making 25 million per movie. And that's $100 million and the whole company was worth $200. It was not a deal that the board could say no to, but they also got enthusiastic about it by the end of 2004.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pitched a lot of different entities, but turned out to be Merle Lynch, who took the gamble with us and helped structure it. And it was structured, as I mentioned, as pure debt, so very low interest rate. And the only collateral were the film rights to 10 Marvel characters, of which we could make four of the movies. And a lot of people misunderstand that. They think we pledged 10 of our characters as collateral. It wasn't that at all because In the worst case scenario It only got collected if we lost money on those first four movies. And then those six characters, we owned all the rights besides film. And if a film was ever made by the bank, whoever collected this collateral, we got the same license fee that we get if we just licensed it that day to a party. So there was no opportunity cost.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Heard that point or really understood it, given that we neither Kevin nor I had ever made a movie ourselves. Like I said, and then fourth, we would keep all the ancillaries as well, the toys and video games. So there's a lot of reasons for this to happen. The challenge of not having risk is normally insurmountable. Thank God again for timing like we talked about, the bond bubble of 2004 was happening. So it was a time where there was loans being made that shouldn't have been made. And a lot of people were enamored with Hollywood as they get enamored every few years. And so I was able to pitch that, give me four at bats. And if one of them hits, then every movie's a sequel after that. And when they ran their models, they were able to get past their investment committee to the point where there was no equity component.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Structuring that's related, it was this idea of the universe. Again, not a word that we used at the time, but it was the vision of intermixing all the characters. So if we owned first to my board, the argument was if we own our own studio, it means we get the full financial upside that they understood very well. Number two, we decide a green light when the movies get made. That they also understood because they only sold toys really at the time. And the toys were contingent on a movie, which they didn't control the timing of. Now, when you're doing a public company and you're giving guidance every year, how can you give guidance if you don't even know what movies are going to get made, right? And so controlling green light was important. Full creative control, I felt that people like myself and Kevin Feige eventually, because we care about the movies, would make better movies for the fans. I'm not sure my board really...”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what was important at the time is I asked the board to at least give me six months. And what that meant is not to license any more movies. They were about to license Captain America and Thor to two major studios. I think it was Warner Bros. and Sony. And Thor specifically was very close to being licensed. And I basically had to hold my breath in the board meeting and say, if you do that, I can't do anything. I need at least those characters to put together something that somebody would finance as a slate. And they gave me that six-month time. And so during 2004, I put on my MBA hat. I spent a lot of time in New York and was able to raise the financing that we needed. It was about half a billion dollars of what turned out to be. I mean, it sounds crazy to say, but for those that are interested, it was no risk. It was non-recourse. Marvel never had to pay it back, you know, no cash collateral.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I would argue for the studio in the board meetings, and it was basically told to be quiet, maybe not those words. My last name was in Spielberg and not bring it up again unless Marvel had no risk. Not little risk, but no risk. And so”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this part we're going to get into, which I'm happy to do. Like you said in the beginning, I've never talked through in this way. And I've also not done press of any significant note in the past 10 years. So a large amount of this is still coming to light. And so some things people might know and some things they might not. But in 2004, we had a very small office Santa Monica Boulevard. I think Ike was definitely interested in making more money for entertainment. My job was really how can we make more money without taking any significant risk. Had a career of bankruptcy type of companies, Remington and now Marvel, and those people are not ones that take big capital risk on big grandiose visions, right? And so in the board of directors was a bunch of ex-bankruptcy guys, basically. And Sid Gannis, I remember, who is the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, was the one Hollywood person there.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My title was president of what was then called Marvel Studios, which wasn't a studio. We didn't bring any money. We didn't have distribution and marketing. We weren't making the movies, but it was called Marvel Studios from a title point of view.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. He was very smart. I gotta tell you, he was very smart business person. And then I wasn't really seriously. I was going to carve that out of my Marvel deal. And I think Marvel was going to let me do that. And then I saw Michael get arrested. And so I let that fizzle right that period of time. But it was like the other thing that I was looking at. And then third, Hef was circling me about potentially helping him run Playboy at the time, which was an IP company. But Marvel was the part where my focus was the highest. And I started right away, basically two weeks after that meeting with Ike at the end of 2003.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he said, I want you to tell my life story through my music videos. And I was like, whoa. And that turned into a one or two month set of discussions with Michael about doing a 50-50 deal where I'd have, he put in all his music videos and all the IP. I'd be able to produce it. And we both had vetoes on each other. And he even, I got him to agree that he would perform randomly once every couple months thriller. So you'd go to the Broadway show and you'd see Michael Jackson actually perform, like be like a lottery, right? And Josh Grod was my lawyer on that. So I have the deal agreement.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had one other job that I was looking at, which I'm only going to raise, and I've never told this publicly because of your question about theater. But I got a phone call in the fall of 2003 from a very high-pitched voice who said, hi, this is Michael Jackson. And he went on to say that he had seen Fossey on Broadway and loved the show. And it was a personal call. I don't know how he got my phone number. And I thought it was fake, right?”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I pitched him at Mara Lago in November of 2003. And I remember that flying to Palm Beach and having lunch there, and Trump came by who's close with Ike. They're still very close. And I was introduced to Trump. And Trump said something about he had a TV show starting soon, which turned out to be the apprentice, and he was excited about that. That's all I remember from that conversation. And I pitched Ike in the same way I pitched Ovitz. Ike did not see and agree that they should do their own films right away, but he was open-minded enough to offer me a job and give me a lot of stock options at market and give me a chance to fight for it internally. And Ike is now, I think the largest individual shareholder of Disney.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Equity position. It was. Yeah. Because he got it out of bankruptcy. He got out of bankruptcy and he kept it. And so Ike was the person I really needed to pitch.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ike and obviously known each other for many years and obvious start as a toy creator. And he did the original license deal with Spider-Man. He did the original license deal with Fox for X-Men. And that's what the route that Marvel was on at the time was licensing these movies and continuing to license their films. Ike owned, I think, 40 or 50% of Marvel at the time, even though it was a public company. And he was in charge of everything.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it shows you how small this town is. My lawyer who negotiated my deal with R Emanuell in Endeavor was a man named Josh Grode, who was also Aviarad's lawyer at the time. And I told my lawyer my interest. And he said, oh, I can introduce you to Avi. Now, to show you how this town is really small, Josh is now the CEO and president of legendary entertainment, which is a big mini studio owned by a lot by the Chinese. And so he's become his own studio chairman and pretty powerful company with the King Kong movies and other things like that. So you mentioned studio. At the time, Avi was in charge of what was called Marvel Studios, but it was really a small shop of giving script notes to license movies. Avi successfully saw the potential of Marvel films and started licensing the movies post the bankruptcy.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the good news. The bad news was I didn't know anyone at Marvel. I knew Marvel had licensed a lot of its properties like Spider-Man X-Men. I didn't know how many that they had licensed beyond that. I had never made a movie before in my life. So there's a lot of things that were obstacles. And in the next month or two, I got an introduction to a man named Avia Rod and Ike ProMutter, who were the two guys running Marvel, the public company at the time.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was very boring. Sweatpants sitting in my rental apartment across from the park. I'm there, Fairfax, where I still have my studio, same building.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The universe was what if after the first movie, every movie after that was a sequel or a quasi sequel, which required all the characters or a lot of the characters to show up in multiple movies. And that led me again to Marvel because I knew about the vast universe of characters and that this would be a perfect way in my mind to make every movie after the first one a sequel or quasi-sequel. It came up like over 24, 48 hours that weekend, the whole thing.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The toys of Spider-Man or the Toys of Hulk or the Toys of X Men, very little money from the movies. And I was frustrated with that as an investor. I didn't think it was a good model to grow enterprise value. And so I was very focused on Marvel right away. So luckily I didn't have to look at my second choice. I knew I was personally interested in it. And then I had this hypothesis or model at the time, which was I knew how bad the first movie business was. you spend, in this case, $100 million on something you hope people show up. You have research can help you a little bit, but very little. It's pretty random. Stars at the time could maybe open the movie. But it's a horrible, not a horrible, but a pretty bad business. But the sequel business was amazing because statistically you could predict the revenues plus or minus something and you could manage your profit margin, not whether you made profits. And so the big idea I had, which was now is called...”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. You either make the movies yourself or you internal producers or you hire other producers to do it, and then you market and distribute the films, which is. Universal, Disney, Fox, and so on, Sony. And they made all the movies. So everyone, every IP holder then and even now would license their properties to these studios. And so Spider-Man was famously licensed the Sony. Sony would make the decision when there's a movie, how much they're going to spend, creatively what it was going to be, and market and distribute that movie and keep the vast, not the majority, but like 95% plus of the profits. So an IP holder like Marvel would only get a piece of the money and they'd have like script notes, like certain rights, but nothing very heavy. Like you couldn't make Peter Parker do some crazy job that would, you know, wasn't relevant to the comics or something like that. And then normally ancillary is like toys would be split between the studio and the rights holder. So the way Marvel got to a 200 million valuation was off.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what a studio should mean is that you bring all the elements to the table. You have the money, you have the properties, you have people that either make the films or hire producers.”
2023-06-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #676: David Maisel of Marvel Studios Fame — Never-Before-Heard Tales of Hollywood Dealmaking, The Art of Aiming Big, Lessons from Power Broker Michael Ovitz, Combining Business Smarts with Street Smarts, The Making (and Importance) of Iron Man, Selling to Disney for $4 Billion, and Much More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT