July 2014 – Chairman's Blog

July 14, 2014July 15, 2014

Manka Bros. To Produce Lots Of Event Series

Manka Bros., Khan Manka, Herb Allen's Sun Valley Conference 2013, Sun Valley Lodge, Bin Tran, Vin Tran, Lee S Ainslie III, Yousef Al Otaiba, Hans-Holger Albrecht, Paul G Allen, James Anderson, Marc Andreessen, Michael Angelakis, Tim Armstrong, Nikesh Arora, Neil M Ashe, Emilio Azcarraga, Manvinder S Banga, Lionel Barber, Craig R Barrett, Willow Bay, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Marc Benioff, Jeffrey Berg, James Berkus, Michael S Berman, Mark Bertolini, Gary Bettman, Jeff Bewkes, Jeffrey P Bezos, Aneel Bhusri, The Right Honorable Tony Blair, Gregory R Blatt, Anthony H Bloom, Michael R Bloomberg, Steven R Boal, Scott A Bommer, Cory A Booker, Jeffrey H Boyd, Sergey Brin, Glenn Britt, Tom Brokaw, Michael J Brown, Howard G Buffett, Susie Buffett, Warren Buffett, John Burbank, Stephen Burke, Erin Burnett, Ursula Burns, John E Bush, Jeanie Buss, John A Canning Jr., Chase Carey, Wences Casares, Mark Casey, Kenneth Chenault, Peter Chernin, Brian Chesky, Richard Chilton, Chris Christie, Lewis Cime, Adriana Cisneros, Gustavo Cisneros, Vittorio Colao, Timothy Collins, Patrick Collison, Timothy Cook, Anderson Cooper, David Corkins, Delos Cosgrove, Dick Costolo, Cristian Croitoru, Henry Crumpton, Jose Luis Cutrale, Will Danoff, Philippe Dauman, Christopher Davis, Alfonso de Angoitia, John DeGioia, Diego Della Valle, Brian Demain, Andre Desmarais, David DeVoe, Feroz Dewan, William DeWitt, Barry Diller, Daniel Doctoroff, Jonathan Dolgen, John Donahoe, Jack Dorsey, Michael Duke, Mathias Dopfner, David Ebersman, Wesley Edens, Marvin Edwards, Eric Eisner, Michael Eisner, John Elkann, Thomas Evans, Randel Falco, Jose Antonio Fernandez, Michael Ferror, Niall W. A. FitzGerald, Thomas Friedman, Michael Fries, Tommy Frist, Daniel Fulton, Michael Fux, Mala Gaonkar, Whitfield Gardner, William Gates, Melinda Gates, Julius Genachowski, Daniel Gilbert, Thomas Giovine, David Goldberg, Roger Goodell, Bing Gordon, Donald Graham, Brian Grazer, Brad Grey, John Griffin, Andreas Halvorsen, Reed Hastings, General Michael Hayden USAF, James Heavener, John Hendricks, John Henry, John Heyman, Kazuo Hirai, John Hock, Reid Hoffman, Won Pyo Hong, Lisa Hook, Ben Horowitz, Drew Houston, Robert Iger, David Ignatius, Martin Indyk, Phillip Jackson, Eli Jacobs, Paul Jacobs, Robert Johnson, Salar Kamanger, Peter Karmanos, Alexander Karp, Michael Karsch, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Keating, Brian Kelly, Muhtar Kent, Joseph Robert Kerrey, Dara Khosrowshahi, Seth Klaman, Joel Klein, Peter Klein, Philip H Knight, Victor Koo, Robert Kotick, Robert Kraft, Henry Kravis, Ynon Kreiz, Blake Krikorian, Ananda Krishnan, Stan Kroenke, Daniel Lamarre, Michael Larson, Martin Lau, Michael Leavitt, Jay Lee, Eric Lefkofsky, Theordore Leonsis, Max Levchin, David Levin, Phil Libin, Martin Lipton, Bryan Lourd, Kenneth W Lowe, Michael Lowenstein, Dan Lufkin, Dennis P LYnch, Michael Lynton, Maurice Levy, John Malone, Robert Marcus, Morris Mark, Donald Mattrick, Kathleen A McCarragher, General Stanley A McChrystal, Andrew McKenna, General Montgomery C Meigs, Lorenzo Mendoza, Ron Meyer, Roberto Mignone, Hiroshi Mikitani, Bill Miller, Kenneth Miranda, Thomas Monahan, Leslie Moonves, Luis Alberto Moreno, Dan Moskovitz, Craig Mundle, James Murdoch, Rupert Mudoch, Lachlan Murdoch, Nathan Myhrvold, Michael Neidorff, Jonathan M Nelson, Vivi Nevo, Sam Nunn, Michael E O'Hanlon, Daniel J O'Keefe, Don O'Neal, Ronald L Olson, Evan Osnos, CL Butch Otter, Michael Ovitz, Larry Page, Stephen G Pagliuca, Saul Pannell, Mark Papa, William Pappendick, MIchael Pausic, Minxin Pei, Francois-Henry Pinault, Mark Pincus, Laurene Powell, Lawrence F Probst, Rebecca Quick, Thomas Rabe, Jay Rasulo, Jerry Reinsdorf, Danny Rimer, Richard Riordan, Ambassador Charles H Rivkin, Brian Roberts, James Robinson IIi, James Robinson IV, Fernando Rodes Vila, Brian Rogers, Congressman Mike Rogers, Charlie Rose, Daniel Rose, Wilbur L Ross, Haim Saban, Karim Sadjadpour, Sheryl Sandberg, Ricky Sandler, Ted Sarandos, Fayez Sarofim, Nassef Sawiris, Eric Schmidt, John Schneider, Christopher Schroeder, John Scully, Allan Selig, Nicole Seligman, Eric Semler, William Siegel, Herbert Siegel, Ben Silbermann, Christopher Silbermann, Louis Simpson, Eduardo Sirotsky Melzer, Andrew Sorkin, Sir Martin Sorrell, Thomas Staggs, Cristina Stenbeck, David Stern, Michael Stone, Sir Howard Stringer, Robert Swan, Peter Thiel, Mark Thompson, Sebastian Thrun, Thomas Tull, Peter Ueberroth, Joseph Vacanti, Jeffrey Van Harte, Owen Van Natta, Martin Varsavsky, Leftie Vaughn, Michelangelo Volpi, Alexandre Von Furstenberg, Dian von Furstenberg, Casey Wasserman, David Weinberg, Judd Weinberg, Jeff Weiner, Harvey Weinstein, Wallace R Weitz, Robert Werbel, Michael White, Meg Whitman, Jim Wiatt, James Williams, Fred Wilpon, Jeffrey Wilpon, Fred Wilson, David J Winters, Nicholas Woodman, Major General Amos Yadlin, Jerry Yang, Jed York, David Zaslav, Dirk E Ziff, Gianfranco Zoppas, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos, Tony Wible, Marissa Mayer, General Stanley McChrystal, John Kerry, Michael Bloomberg, Attila the Hun

Good evening from my house in the Seychelles!

I flew here directly from Herb Allen’s worst Sun Valley conference ever.

Maybe he should just stop and hand it off to Herbert Allen, Jr. Jr. (if there is such a thing).

There’s really no point to these blow fests every year.

The only thing we learned this year was that if you are powerful in business you probably suck at comedy.

It’s nearly 10pm here and I’m bored out of my mind.

Sometimes liquor is a great cure for boredom. Not this time and the internet is awful in the summer with everything being written by interns while the normal writers are on vacation. (Actually, the internet is pretty much always awful.)

I did notice on Deadline.com (which is the reason I’m blogging) that Spike TV is producing “Tut” – an event series starring Sir Ben Kingsley based on the life of King Tut.

SIR BEN KINGSLEY ON SPIKE TV?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Spike TV is the lowest of the low. Maybe a few WWE wrestlers can make cameos in “Tut” and cross-promote.

It seems like this kind of production would need muscle guys slathered in oil screaming at each other.

Is it that easy these days to get Sir Ben Kingsley in a TV series?

Or has his career sunken so low that he has to appear on Spike?

Either way – Manka Bros. is leaping into this phenomenon called “Event Series” with an incredibly ambitious slate that I just thought of in the past few minutes.

Highlights from our upcoming productions include:

“Attila” – A 20-part event series based on the life of Attila the Hun.

“Stalin” – A 15-part event series based on the life of Joseph Stalin.

“Arianna” – A 19-part event series based on the life of Arianna Huffington.

“Quixote” – A 9-part event series based on the life of Don Quixote.

“Thor” – A 12-part event series based on the life of the Norse God Thor.

“Khan” – A 30-part event series based on the life of Khan Manka (Sr.)

“Einstein” – A 12-part event series based on the life of Albert Einstein.

“Super” – A 17-part event series based on the life of Super Dave Osborne.

“Confucius” – A 5-part event series based on the life of Confucius.

“Fillmore” – A 13-part event series based on the life of Millard Fillmore.

“Wagner” – A 20-part event series based on the life of Robert Wagner.

“Wagner” – A 6-part event series based on the life of Richard Wagner.

“Picasso” – A 4-part event series based on the life of Pablo Picasso.

(Note: All of these may star Sir Ben Kingsley or actors who know Sir Ben Kingsley.)

——————————————-

The list goes on and on.

I can think up names of historical figures all day long with the best of ’em. (Are you paying attention, Ben Silverman?)

And Manka Bros. is going to own this market of thinking up event series ideas based on people’s lives (ideas that strangely didn’t appeal to anyone in Hollywood over last few decades even though the source material was always just sitting there).

I may return to the States later this week to attend Comic-Con even though they said they wouldn’t invite me back after my last keynote address.

Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

July 10, 2014July 10, 2014

Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014 – Improv Night

Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014

Day 1: The End Of Cynicism

Day 2: Pivot

Day 3: Improv Night

You know what? F these young tech dorks!

The great John Grisham once wrote there is a “Time To Kill” (or Jesus said it in the Bible – I don’t know)… but last night was almost my time to kill several asshole billionaire millennials.

I just wanted to strangle them with those tight t-shirts they’re so proud of wearing.

Herb Allen has lost control of this conference. He has been overly enamored and completely overrun by the arrogant pricks that are the Silicon Valley t-shirt mafia.

Let me step back…

After a fucking long day of interviews and presentations from the likes of Phil Jackson and Larry Page (Larry talked about robots – that’s the pot calling the kettle black – he IS a robot!) in which they said everything and yet nothing, all we in the captive audience wanted to do was relax, have a drink and a little fun.

Every year, there is always one night that is set aside for some type of entertainment in which we, the attendees, are the entertainers.

It could be a karaoke night. A boxing tournament. Or even the controversial (and truly horrific) “Burning Mogul” event from a couple of years ago.

This year, Herb decided it would be fun to put on skits and songs like kids do at real summer camps. It sort of sounded like fun – many emails were sent back and forth from everyone and we all agreed.

Warren Buffett fought very hard to put on some sort of Broadway musical but there weren’t enough female moguls available to fill all the parts of something like that.

So short little rehearsed sketches or songs was the final decision.

Tim Armstrong was going to be at the piano (he plays better than Lang Lang, you know) and would accompany anyone that needed it.

It was all set.

Harvey Weinstein and I were going to do the “Dave’s not here” bit from Cheech & Chong. I had that record memorized when I was younger.

But then punk ass Zuckerberg decided he didn’t want to do a skit or song. He wanted to do improv and have an improv jam.

An improv jam in the Great Hall of the Moguls (The Limelight Ballroom)?

The fuck?!

And Herb Allen caved immediately and said it was a great idea. Much better than what he had planned.

So the skits were off and I witnessed what was possibly the worst display of comedy I have seen since our pilot episode of “My Wife Left Me For Bucky Dent.”

I would have preferred to sit and watch Barry Diller play video games on Twitch than to watch this terrible terrible improv show.

True horror is watching Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Weiner and Ben Horowitz improvising a rap version of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song (on an audience suggestion by Jeff Bezos).

Words can’t describe the discomfort we all felt when General Stanley McChrystal was pulled up into a scene where he was asked to get a reservation at a Mexican restaurant from an unintelligible Mexican waiter (played painfully by Les Moonves).

The General was genuinely angry and absolutely flustered by the whole experience.

It was gut-wrenching.

But the young punks ate it up.

I haven’t seen people laugh at something so awful since I was kneed in the nuts by Sumner Redstone in front of his family.

Other lowlights include:

A Charlie Rose chiquita banana bit (no further comment necessary)

A painful first date improv which took place at a laundry mat featuring Marissa Mayer (who still refuses to fix her thrashed voice – though she was the first to arrive, well ahead of schedule) and Michael Bloomberg. There was so much silence and embarrassment that people started shouting out things for them to say. They still stood, unable to come up with anything and then just stopped.

To finish, Harvey Weinstein jumped up and did a sort of one man show where he is ordering God to make some changes on Earth. It sounds funnier than it was because his changes were so stupid and it went on like 25 minutes.

It was a complete humiliation for everyone involved.

The coming together of old and new media took a huge step backwards last night.

Just a massive epic fail.

Oh well – today’s panels are dominated by old media guys talking about content. It’s our day to shine!

Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

July 9, 2014July 10, 2014

Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014 – Day 2 – Pivot

Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014

Day 1: The End Of Cynicism

Day 2: Pivot

Day 3: Improv Night

I hate buzz words.

I don’t use them. I make fun of those that use them.

I didn’t go to business school so I didn’t learn how to speak cliches in meetings.

I went to drug-taking-son-of-movie-mogul school and we didn’t use buzz words except for “far out.”

It seems that everyone you hire from Ivy leagues schools has lost their ability to express themselves in a natural way.

Yet we keep hiring them because there are only so many drug-taking sons-of-movie-moguls in the talent pool and we can’t take a chance on someone from Arizona State (seriously).

But today, a buzz word is apt.

Manka Bros. and Hollywood MUST PIVOT!

Last night, as I got hammered with my old media buddies and talked about the houses we own and the places we’re planning to go for the summer – I noticed over in a corner a bunch of the young tech heads who weren’t getting that drunk and who weren’t talking about anything other than the products they create.

We have NO CHANCE against much younger people who want to do nothing but talk about their work.

There are too many distractions in Hollywood.

We are rich men living rich men lives.

We drink a lot of expensive wine and scotch.

If we’re just going to concentrate on our work all the time we may as well live in a fleabag apartment in Pacoima and take the bus to work.

The spoils are the reason we got in this business.

So here I am with Rupert (who is not allowed to buy my company at any price. I’m a real mogul – not a hired mogul) and Haim Saban and a few other old media guys at the bar getting lit.

Over in one corner, sporting various wearable devices (Google glasses, Oculus viewfinders, GoPro cameras, etc.) are Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and the Pinterest guy and the GoPro surfer guy… and they’re freakin’ talking about the shit they make!!

And then I spot Bob Iger wearing that virtual reality helmet.

What?! Bob Iger?!

You see, Bob is no idiot.

He knows what the Hell is going on.

Though he does look ridiculous in his high collar shirt with the Oculus thing on his face pretending to be skydiving.

All this change has been happening and we have been so ignorant and so resistant!

I left my old drunk friends at the bar and squeezed my way into the hacky-sack circle of tech punks and I learned a few things.

First of all, according to the Google guys, we need to get a YouTube channel and probably buy some multi-channel network (called MCNs) of some sort.

There is a MankaBrosStudios YouTube channel, but surprise surprise, we don’t own it.

I think we should buy it back for whatever it costs and maybe one of those gamer channels where dumb asses pay to watch other dumb asses play video games on the internet.

YouTube is buying something called Twitch and I think we need to get into that as well. Some Twitch channel that dumb asses will pay us to watch.

I have ordered my assistant, Vicky Adler-Modry, to give these instructions to the Manka Business Development group to make all of this happen immediately!

(Note: She shouldn’t have to do that because, as you know, reading my blog is mandatory and subject to termination if you don’t!)

Manka Bros. must PIVOT, DISRUPT, LEAN IN and EXECUTE!

CAPISCE?

Today, there is an endless stream of horrific PowerPoint presentations that I said I would attend. There is break this afternoon before our dinner tonight and annual variety show. FYI, Harvey Weinstein and I are doing an old Cheech & Chong bit which should surely kill in that room.

If anyone needs to reach me – the afternoon window is your only chance.

Make this shit happen or all of you are toast and I’ll restaff with new recruits from Arizona State!

Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

July 8, 2014July 10, 2014

Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014 – Day 1 – The End of Cynicism

Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014

Day 1: The End of Cynicism

Day 2: Pivot

Day 3: Improv Night

Well, fuck, it’s that time of year again.

I contemplated not going at all to the Herb Allen’s Sun Valley snorefest, but decided it was in my company’s best interest… ah, fuck that, I just wanted to get away from Hollywood which is so freakin’ boring in the summer.

But something magical happened to me on the two-hour flight up here from Burbank.

Captain Randy let me fly the plane for a bit over the mountains and it was just so beautiful that I actually started to smile. And I decided then and there to try and make this week a POSITIVE experience.

Over the past few years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), I was so negative about the pointlessness of the whole week, that I didn’t even try to have a good attitude.

(I mean, seriously, it is hard to have a good attitude when the planned events include the Mogolympics, Burning Mogul – and who could forget 2012’s acid trip experiment – see right.)

But none of that this year, I am going to be a willing participant no matter how stupid the activity.

I may even try to drum up a little business for the studio.

We haven’t done any major deals in a while and we’re just sitting on a bunch of cash which I really haven’t found any use for (except for a few personal real estate transactions).

One deal that definitely won’t happen, Manka Bros. will not buy DreamWorks Animation so stop with the texts, Katzenberg – though I will keep the champagne you sent to my room.

So, I have a arrived – one of the first ones here as always. As I sip my champagne (not the first of the day – I had a couple of belts on the plane) while dictating this blog over the phone to my assistant, I am genuinely excited about what is to come.

There are great changes happening in our business – even though my mogul brethren and I hate to acknowledge it – and we must embrace these changes or die.

We don’t want the dorks from Oculus Rift taking over the store.

WE will continue to produce and control the best content known to man (and wo-man) and no one is going to take that away from us.

Movie studios have always been the incubators of the world’s greatest creative minds and NOT relic-filled museums.

But I digress so that I may drink.

I understand the best bartender on the planet, Bin Tran is back at his post in The Drankin’ Hole after taking last year off (family emergency my ass).

Things are already looking up.

Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

P.S. – I wonder whose job it is to make sure Marissa Mayer doesn’t sleep through dinner tonight?