Assertion Partly supported
A Take-Two Competitor Once Faced 500 Sexual Harassment Claims
“So one of our competitors at one point had 500 sexual harassment claims at their company.”
Assertion Supported
ZMC Executed a Hostile Takeover of Take-Two Without Personal Capital
“The way we did this deal has never happened before, and I'm pretty certain it will never happen again, because we essentially did a hostile takeover with no money.”
Insight
Studio Systems are Economically Superior to Talent-Auction Boutique Systems
“A boutique system is generally bad and a studio system is generally good or can be good. The studio system was long gone. And studio system means your creative talent. All your talent is on the payroll. Boutique system is they're not on your payroll. They can …”
Opinion
Bobby Kotick Created the Most Value in Pure-Play Gaming
“I would argue that, I mean, for pure play, probably Bobby Kotak has with Activision.”
Opinion
Grand Theft Auto is the Most Valuable Entertainment IP Ever Created
“I think if you counted every, like, Mario Kart and Call of Duty and a bunch of others, it's not entirely clear, but I think in terms of the value of the IP, most people believe it's the most valuable entertainment IP ever created.”
Insight
Purely Data-Driven AI Cannot Generate Entertainment Hits
“Clones don't sell. All hits are by their very nature unexpected. That's the most important thing to take away. Things that are data driven in their entirety can't be unexpected.”
Opinion
The Movie Business is a Terrible Business Economically
“Let's not go into the movie business. It's a terrible business, you know, as a business. It's fun creatively, but as a business, it's a bad business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Video Games Retain the Profitable Studio System Abandoned by Hollywood
“Video games to this day is a studio system. In success, you obviously pay your creative people, and we are, Incredibly generous in the way that we compensate our creative people for success, but the company also has an opportunity to create a return.”
Assertion Contradicted
BMG Sold Its Take-Two Stake for $14M Right Before GTA Released
“So we sell the stock in the open market for, wait for it, fourteen million dollars. So a month later, this public company launches the first property that we had completed into the market.”
Assertion Supported
Zelnick Won an 88% Shareholder Vote to Take Over Take-Two
“The general counsel comes into the meeting room that we're in, and he says, well, we don't have the final vote, but we have a provisional vote. You have 88%. He said, so will you accept that, or do you want us to keep counting? I said, we'll accept that. And t…”
Disclosure
ZMC Only Pursues Corporate Turnarounds as the First Team In
“We have a rule, we only, we're, we only do turnarounds if we're the first team in. Like if someone tried and failed, we don't do it.”
Insight
Calling a Company a 'Family' Creates Unnecessary Angst
“I never say the word that executives use something like we're a big family here. We're not a big family here. This is an enterprise. Like my family's at home. So we don't have all the angst around being a family.”
What-if
Borderlands Survived Only Because of a $50M Last-Minute Art Overhaul
“He said, it means fifty million dollars of incremental dev costs, a lot of money to us, and another year. And it was on a release schedule, which we didn't ask. And I was like, I dug in. I mean, I would, I don't give, like, knee-jerk answers. I dug in and did …”
Disclosure
Grand Theft Auto VI is Roughly 18 Months Behind Schedule
“I think we're about 18 months behind the original date. Not, not much more than that.”
Opinion
The 1980s 'New Media' Rush Mirrors Today's Corporate AI Frenzy
“So they realized, like, we need a new media guy, like the way today everyone needs an AI guy or AI, you know, army.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Historical Network TV Production Resembled Lottery Economics
“Let's not go into deficit network television production. Just a bad economic business. Different today than it was, but it was really bad then, where you would deficit these shows in hopes of creating enough episodes that you could syndicate them. And if you d…”
Insight
Entertainment Companies Cannot Maintain a Competitive Advantage Through Distribution Alone
“You can never have a competitive advantage in the entertainment business through distribution only. That's why Netflix produces content. You can start with distribution only if you're a pioneer, but you got to immediately go into production and productions.”
Insight
Backing Down From Debates With Barry Diller Guaranteed Failure
“And if you back down, if you didn't argue, you were done. I understood it wasn't personal. Just wasn't personal.”
Assertion Contradicted
Take-Two Acquired BMG Interactive for 20% Equity Worth $20M
“It's a little tiny public company with a, I want to say roughly a hundred million dollar market cap, and they agree to give us 20% of their company in stock for the business, such as it was. So, twenty million dollars.”
Assertion Contradicted
Atari Produced More E.T. Cartridges Than Total Consoles in Existence
“Because they didn't really have a lot of experience in how video games were made, they basically, they made the game in five weeks and put it in the box, and it was a terrible game, and then they manufactured more games, more cartridges than there were Atari c…”
Assertion Partly supported
Warner Communications Took a $400M Write-Down on Atari in 1982
“I think they took a write down in 82 of four hundred million dollars, which was a lot of money in 82 for Warner Communications.”
Assertion Partly supported
Dirty Dancing Held the Independent Box Office Record Until Blair Witch
“I greenlit derby dancing, which was the, Highest grossing independent film of all time then and stayed that way for a very long time and until pop quiz what? Blair Witch. Many years later.”
Assertion Partly supported
Rupert Murdoch Overleveraged News Corporation Across 150 Banks
“He over leveraged the company during my tenure there by buying Star. And the company had real trouble with its debt facility. And my recollection is they had a diversified debt facility with like a 150 banks and a whole cross default mechanism.”
Disclosure
Zelnick Left 20th Century Fox for a 95% Pay Cut
“I left. I took a 95% pay cut and moved my family from our beautiful house in West L.A. To Atherton to a rental house that was going to be torn down.”
Strauss Zelnick