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"Hollywood has an issue..." ‍Simon Pulman Watch the short. Full episode in comments.

Ok...Lets talk about what's just happened.

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World building with Igor Simic 🔜 GDC. This video is worth your time 👌

GOTY!!! 🔥 Sandfall Interactive | Kepler Interactive |Guillaume Broche | François Meurisse | Michel Nohra | Lorien Testard

"What i'd say about the video games adaptions is..." ‍Simon Pulman Watch the short. Full episode in comments.

During my conversation with entertainment lawyer Simon Pulman, he casually dropped a line that unlocked everything I’ve been wondering about Hollywood’s creative drought: “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” That single insight explains the seventh Jurassic Park, Disney’s Snow White remake, and why original scripts gather dust while franchises multiply endlessly. In this week’s Before 5 on Friday, we explore the economics of fear reshaping the entertainment industry. Pulman reveals how asymmetric accountability has created a system where backing an original vision that fails is career suicide—while greenlighting a sequel that flops is simply viewed as a reasonable business risk. Meanwhile, gaming creators—many between 15 and 25—are forging direct, long-term relationships with their audiences. These aren’t built around opening weekends but sustained over years. When Five Nights at Freddy’s premiered on Peacock and still made $80 million on opening weekend, traditional studios were baffled. “They haven’t factored in the community value,” Pulman explains. Perhaps most revealing is what Pulman now tells young creators: “I’m not sure I could, in good faith, recommend they go into film or television. I’d say go into games, social media, the creator economy.” And here, the great paradox of modern entertainment reveals itself: The industries most afraid of failure may be engineering their own obsolescence—not through bold risks gone wrong, but through the slow accumulation of safe bets no one will remember. Ask your son, daughter, or anyone under 25 about Blockbuster, and you’ll get the point: the ultimate failure is irrelevance. Read the full newsletter via the link below and watch the podcast now live on YouTube. P.S. I’m always looking to speak with interesting people exploring the evolution of entertainment. If someone in your network comes to mind, tag them in the comments—I’d love to connect. #EntertainmentDeals #CreativeRisk #GamingIndustry #MediaTransformation #BusinessOfStorytelling #Transmedia #BFOF ‍‍‍‍‍

Been meaning to watch this for a while. Just watched the first episode. Hooked already #MobLand‍ ‍

Nearly a quarter-century into the 21st century, and Hollywood still hasn't figured out what makes a story world endure across platforms. Meanwhile, Jeff Gomez has been building them since before most executives knew what "transmedia" meant. In this week's "Before 5 on Friday", I've captured a conversation with the architect behind some of entertainment's most expansive universes - from Pirates of the Caribbean to Avatar to Spiderman to Halo. What struck me most about my conversation with Jeff, wasn't just his impressive portfolio, but his diagnosis of the industry's fundamental misunderstanding: the approach of story worlds as real estate developers rather than architects. The distinction matters. Developers subdivide properties for immediate return; architects design integrated experiences where each element supports the whole. One builds for the quarterly report; the other plants trees whose shade they may never sit in. The results are evident everywhere. Marvel once built architectural masterpieces but increasingly parcels out narrative requiring a "PhD in Ant-Man to understand Black Widow." Meanwhile, phenomena like Five Nights at Freddy's and Minecraft build devoted communities years before box office success. The fundamental error is misunderstanding the nature of the value exchange with audiences. Studios ask how they can extract value from IP; revolutionary creators ask how they can infuse more value into the experience. Read the full conversation to discover how this approach is transforming entertainment and what it means for the future of storytelling. #Storytelling #TransmediaStrategy #EntertainmentIndustry #ValueCreation #BFOF

In 1981, a young Japanese game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto created a barrel-jumping arcade game about a gorilla. It also featured the debut of a little-known character called 'Jumpman'. Few Hollywood executives paid attention. By 2023, Mario had become the face of a $1.36 billion blockbuster movie that outgrossed nearly every traditional Hollywood franchise that year. The pattern repeats itself endlessly. The bold create; the risk-averse eventually pay top dollar to co-finance and/or acquire. This week's "Before 5 on Friday" features my conversation with Simon Pulman, the renowned entertainment lawyer who understood this power shift long before his peers. As Pulman explains, "The traditional entertainment deal is the movie studio will want to take everything in that IP except the things reserved." But that paradigm is crumbling. Video game companies approach IP from the opposite direction: "This is our IP. We’ll give you the right to make a movie. But everything else, we reserve." It's a fascinating reversal of fortunes that explains why Kingdom Come: Deliverance II vaulted over one million sales on its first day, and why Five Nights at Freddy's achieved an $80 million opening weekend despite a day-and-date streaming release. Pulman cuts to the heart of it: "The Exorcist is what people in their 60s thinks of as a valuable ora IP. Five nights at Freddy's is an actual valuable ora IP." This shift brings both opportunity and existential questions. "Hollywood is risk-averse, but it's taking a big risk in the long term, because if the value of these catalogue brands diminishes, then it's going to be left with nothing." The full Purpose Made Podcast episode drops soon. Until then, enjoy this glimpse into the shifting tectonic plates of entertainment dealmaking with one of the entertainment industries finest. Newsletter linked below. #EntertainmentIndustry #Transmedia #IPRights #GamingIndustry #MediaDeals

"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." ‍Simon Pulman Watch the trailer. Full episode in comments.