Invest Like The Best
Episode 263 Betting on Passion
Invest Like The Best

Episode 263: Betting on Passion

Invest Like The Best

Episode 263

Betting on Passion

Peter Chernin is the co-founder of The Chernin Group. We cover lessons learned from his time running News Corp and Fox, how he has been able to identify powerful secular tailwinds across his varied career, and his thesis of investing in content that people are passionate enough to pay for.

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[00:03:06] - [First question] - Business and investing lessons from producing Titanic and Avatar

[00:06:44] - Defining great content and why James Cameron’s franchises have done so well

[00:10:26] - Contributing factors to box-office domination of pre-existing franchises

[00:12:56] - Tailwinds in his earlier career and identifying them in time to get behind change

[00:16:07] - Identifying Showcase was a subscription business early on, unlike broadcast businesses

[00:19:40] - Signals of passion and how powerful niche audiences can be 

[00:23:24] - What a phony aggregator is and the slow dissolution of the middle market

[00:27:01] - The era of unbundling and direct relationships with superfans

[00:30:27] - Lessons learned from building Hulu

[00:34:29] - Working with Rupert Murdoch and qualities that separate him from the crowd

[00:37:07] - Defining what bravery means in a businesses sense

[00:39:22] - A movie he’s made in the past decade that he’s most proud of

[00:43:27] - The keys to being an effective partner to creative individuals

[00:49:53] - What exists today that may change the future landscape of media writ large

[00:52:19] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Betting on Passion

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Peter Chernin, who has had a hall of fame career in the entertainment business. Peter ran News Corp and Fox for 15 years between 1996 and 2009, before co-founding the Chernin Group, which has become one of the leading investment firms in the consumer space. Along the way, he has also produced a number of blockbuster films, including Titanic, Avatar, The Greatest Showman, and The Planet of the Apes trilogy. Please enjoy this wonderful discussion with Peter Chernin.

Blockbuster Lessons

Patrick
Peter, thanks so much for doing this with me. I thought an interesting place to start, given the wide berth of your career, would be with two movies that everyone would be familiar with. Those being Titanic and Avatar. Be interesting to hear, obviously, James Cameron behind both of them, how Titanic came to be or that partnership came to be. But was business and even investing lessons, if you think about the movie as a huge outlay of capital during a return, what business and investing lessons stand out from the production of those two movies?

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