Strategy+Business – August 2019

121

game I’d written. It was filled with exactly the same kind of epic stunts and
incredible action pieces you’d see at the beginning of a Bond film. I explained
that the video game industry was now larger than the movie business, and that
for the first time, with the latest advances in computer graphics and motion-
capture technology, it was possible to create compelling stories with lifelike
characters in games.
“There’s no difference between writing a game, or a TV show, or a mov-
ie,” I said. “But the challenge — for all of us in this room — is to create
those compelling characters, and tell those great stories, whether it’s for 60
minutes in a TV show, two hours in a movie, or 11 hours in a game. We all
want the audience to be riveted and feel that they haven’t wasted their time
or their money.”
To my surprise, in the Q&A that followed, no one asked about video
games. Rather, all the questions were variations on one topic: “How do we
make James Bond films?” “How do we make big international action films?”
“How do we make movies that play all over the world and compete in the in-
ternational marketplace?”
Maybe it was because the hour was late, or that I felt a sense of camaraderie
with the audience, but I let my guard down, spoke off the cuff, and gave what
started out to be a tongue-in-cheek answer.
“Well,” I began, “You don’t. You can’t. In Hollywood, we know how to
make those big movies. We burn through $2 million a minute making them.
And even then, they bomb half the time. They’re not refrigerators or air con-

fea

tur

e (^)
tec
h (^) &
(^) in
no
va
tio
n
121