Speaker 1: Wimbo Kelly one K six will come.
Speaker 2: In twenty eighty nine Detroit.
Speaker 3: Roble Force is obsolete and has no hope of becoming heroes.
Speaker 3: That is until a mysterious code virus infects the UA
Speaker 3: one oh one bots and no one besides Robo Force
Speaker 3: can stop them. Robo Force, the animated series premieres April
Speaker 3: twelfth on TV, which also happens to be the most
Speaker 3: watched free TV and movie streaming service in the US. Producer,
Speaker 3: director and friend to the show, and also founder and
Speaker 3: CEO Today Sale Come, Brian Volkwiss is back to tell
Speaker 3: us all about Robo Force the animated series and I
Speaker 3: suspect the future of streaming entertainment as well.
Speaker 2: Brian, nice to have you back on sir. How you doing.
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure, and I do not use that term lightly.
Speaker 5: It is literally always a pleasure. I was in a
Speaker 5: good mood before I saw you. Just now now I'm
Speaker 5: in a great mood.
Speaker 2: So thank you, well, thank you.
Speaker 3: We had a nice conversation before this conversation off air,
Speaker 3: and it seems that my NERD credentials have expanded greatly,
Speaker 3: very quickly.
Speaker 2: Share that story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm reading this great book Now it's funny.
Speaker 2: I know the.
Speaker 4: Author's name, Steve Kozak. I don't know the name of
Speaker 4: the book, but it.
Speaker 5: Is about the Star Wars Holiday special. And I saw
Speaker 5: this name Mo Kelly all throughout the book, so I
Speaker 5: was like, oh, I'm talking to him tomorrow. So I've
Speaker 5: been reading your name all over because we're doing press
Speaker 5: worldwide international tour for Robo Force, and that is.
Speaker 4: The book I I'm reading while on the tour.
Speaker 3: Hi praise and I appreciate you for that, But let
Speaker 3: me respond in kind. Everyone has seen your work, and
Speaker 3: I mean everyone. Some may have seen your comedy specials
Speaker 3: you produce for Kevin Hart, Jim Gaffigan, Andrew Schultz, built
Speaker 3: Ingwell and others. Some know you work with icons on
Speaker 3: Earth series installments. I'm always intrigued as to what motivates
Speaker 3: you in this media space. What makes a good story
Speaker 3: to tell or show?
Speaker 5: In my mind, anything good needs two things, heart and humor.
Speaker 4: And you know I always give two examples.
Speaker 5: The perfect examples of that premise are seven you know,
Speaker 5: the Brad Pitt Morgan Freeman movie and Bride'smaids.
Speaker 4: Seven Dark Mean, What's in the Box?
Speaker 5: The John Doe, Oh, the terrible blood gore. There's also
Speaker 5: a lot of humor, like a lot just because you've
Speaker 5: got a library card and make your Yoda one of
Speaker 5: the funniest lines of all time. Conversely, Bride'smaids, people pooping
Speaker 5: in stores, getting drunk at parties, knocking over fountains. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of heart in that movie. There's a lot
Speaker 5: of pathos the movie. Yes, it's about all the girls
Speaker 5: getting back together and all the craziness at a wedding
Speaker 5: and everything, but it's also fundamentally about friendship and marriage,
Speaker 5: so you need both.
Speaker 4: I'll give you an even crazier example.
Speaker 5: The greatest movie of last year, The Beekeeper. Yes, I
Speaker 5: said it, dumbass action movie, stoopidter I get it.
Speaker 4: I dressed like him for Halloween.
Speaker 5: But it literally opens if you watch the movie again,
Speaker 5: if you haven't seen it, it literally opens with like
Speaker 5: this pretty powerful scene between Jason Statham and Alicia Rashad,
Speaker 5: Thank you, Like this pretty intimate scene of them, like
Speaker 5: not sexually intimate, but like two people having coffee as
Speaker 5: the sunsets this very powerful surrogate mother story where her
Speaker 5: surrogate like.
Speaker 4: And then it's a dumbass action movie, but that scene.
Speaker 5: It makes the movie work, and without that I wouldn't
Speaker 5: be talking about it right now.
Speaker 3: It's interesting you said that not to name job, but
Speaker 3: I was just speaking to the director of The Beekeeper
Speaker 3: and also his latest film, A working Man, David Ayre,
Speaker 3: last week on this show. So it's it's almost serendipitous
Speaker 3: that you happen to mention The Beekeeper. But I can
Speaker 3: see where you're coming from. Let me ask you this
Speaker 3: as well. Animation has seemingly gone under a remodel over
Speaker 3: the decades. What was originally just for kids is now
Speaker 3: for adults and kids, and this underlying action figure market
Speaker 3: also supported by both I need not tell you that,
Speaker 3: but why do you I think animation has become ageless,
Speaker 3: and it's appeal ageless in many respects.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I think it's because we start I always say, like
Speaker 5: the beginning of what we now call pop culture. I
Speaker 5: really would argue our current definition started with Planet of
Speaker 5: the Apes, because Planet of the Apes it.
Speaker 4: Was before Star Wars to a.
Speaker 5: Certain degree, you could argue from a pop culture point
Speaker 5: of view, it.
Speaker 4: Was before Star Trek.
Speaker 5: Even it was the first brand that had a movie,
Speaker 5: then another movie, toys, then a TV show and everything else,
Speaker 5: plates bowls, t shirts. So it's like we've gotten to
Speaker 5: this multi generational.
Speaker 4: Stage of pop culture.
Speaker 5: I played with Bumblebee, I played with Optimist Prime. So
Speaker 5: does my six year old kid last night. And I
Speaker 5: think that's a huge part of what's also happened with animation,
Speaker 5: because the same way I grew up watching Transformers and
Speaker 5: my parents didn't. When my kids got into Rescue Bots
Speaker 5: initially and Dino Trucks and now Transformers, I'm with them, like,
Speaker 5: I'm so excited to sit on the couch with them
Speaker 5: and watch this. And that wasn't going on in the
Speaker 5: nineties or eighties, let alone the seventies.
Speaker 4: So I think that.
Speaker 5: Had a lot to do with the switch, the transition.
Speaker 5: And a great example of that is the original X Men,
Speaker 5: which of course now we call X Men ninety seven.
Speaker 5: But I watched X Men by myself, but in retrospect, yeah,
Speaker 5: I think my parents would have loved it too.
Speaker 3: How do you in your mind effectively translate, explain, describe
Speaker 3: the subtleties, the nuances. Because you talked about Rescue Box,
Speaker 3: we could talk about Transformers, we can talk about rober
Speaker 3: Force as we are going to and how that occupies
Speaker 3: different spaces and people dinal box people understand the subtleties
Speaker 3: and nuances because I know someone's listening, Like my eyes
Speaker 3: are glazing over. I don't understand the differences in all
Speaker 3: these properties. How is it different? Why is it different?
Speaker 3: Why do people find themselves attracted to one summer?
Speaker 5: All Not to be cheesy, but you're asking in a
Speaker 5: good way. You're asking a very simple question. So I
Speaker 5: have to give you a very simple answer. It's the writing.
Speaker 5: The writing creates the characters. And everybody talks about.
Speaker 4: The world and world building and cannon.
Speaker 5: You know, we use these big artsy fartsy words like
Speaker 5: I'm teaching a class at NYU.
Speaker 4: The truth of the matter is it's about characters.
Speaker 5: Like I always have responded to Jedi Luke and Ahsoka
Speaker 5: Tano like so yes, I love Star Wars as a whole,
Speaker 5: but that which brings me into Star Wars is a
Speaker 5: very specific Luke Skywalker, not even a new Hope Luke
Speaker 5: and Ahsoka twenty five thirty years later kept.
Speaker 4: Me into it.
Speaker 5: You know, I was watching Wicked for the second time
Speaker 5: with my daughter Sunday night, and like, again, this is
Speaker 5: gonna sound crazy, but the whitest man ever I relate
Speaker 5: to Elthabah. So I'm sitting here almost forty nine white
Speaker 5: guy from Queens connecting to a black woman playing a
Speaker 5: green woman in a movie, and like, that's who I
Speaker 5: connect with.
Speaker 2: What do you think that connection is there for you?
Speaker 2: Before we go to your daughter?
Speaker 5: I think it's because my life and career are similar
Speaker 5: to the whoop.
Speaker 4: I almost said the S word to the stuff. Not
Speaker 4: that word. I said it S word. My life and.
Speaker 5: Career, especially my career, just happens to connect with what
Speaker 5: she's going through in the movie.
Speaker 4: My daughter, who.
Speaker 5: Is eleven and has not yet had her teeth kicked
Speaker 5: in the way we all do. After we leave our home,
Speaker 5: our parents home, shenects with Gutland. So again, forty nine
Speaker 5: year old guy from New York eleven year old girl
Speaker 5: born and raised in la Completely different connections. But that's
Speaker 5: what makes anything great is you have something in there
Speaker 5: for all of you, for everyone, I mean, and that's
Speaker 5: what pulls you in a character.
Speaker 3: Brian Volkwiss, we have to take a quick break, but
Speaker 3: that is a great stopping point and we can all
Speaker 3: marinate on that.
Speaker 2: During the break.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about Robe Force, the animated series,
Speaker 3: which is going to premiere on April twelfth on two BM,
Speaker 3: speaking with Brian volk Weiss, front of the show, of course,
Speaker 3: but president and CEO of Nasal Company more in just
Speaker 3: a moment, can't if I Am six forty Live everywhere
Speaker 3: in the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 6: You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
Speaker 6: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Someone has to turning down one on one.
Speaker 3: They've been attacking people and we have the power to
Speaker 3: start it.
Speaker 4: You sure you wouldn't want to join us? Well? That
Speaker 4: went well.
Speaker 5: What was unthinkable a few days ago has become a pattern.
Speaker 2: Those one on ones were infected with some ro code.
Speaker 4: You got this, You're program to lead? You got this?
Speaker 1: You got this?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Duke, she's going to figure this out.
Speaker 4: We need to do so before she does. Using the
Speaker 4: entire army of you a one on ones to attack
Speaker 4: humanity isn't a liberation, it's a slaughter. Heart.
Speaker 3: I Am six forty Later with mo Kelly, We're live
Speaker 3: everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We're talking about Robo Force,
Speaker 3: the animated series, which is going to premiere April twelfth
Speaker 3: on TUB and We're going to talk about it right
Speaker 3: now with Brian volge Weiss, who has been on the
Speaker 3: show a number of times. You know his work from
Speaker 3: Icons on Earth and his many comedy specials that he's produced,
Speaker 3: and animation and action figures. He does a little bit
Speaker 3: of everything. But right now, let's talk about Robo Force,
Speaker 3: the animated series. I got to ask you, Brian, sometimes
Speaker 3: I think the city of Detroit gets a bad rap.
Speaker 3: It seems like it's nothing but bad news and media
Speaker 3: when it comes to the city. RoboCop Detroit, Assault on
Speaker 3: Precinct thirteen Detroit, The Betsy Detroit, The Crow, dark Man,
Speaker 3: Evil Dead Detroit.
Speaker 2: You get by point, why Detroit for Robo Force.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you an answer you're not even gonna believe.
Speaker 5: But I will say this before I answer you. I
Speaker 5: believe the Detroit that we showed is positive. You won't
Speaker 5: see any burnt out buildings or any of the other stuff.
Speaker 4: But here's why it's in Detroit. It's funny to me
Speaker 4: you started with this question.
Speaker 5: We were this close to buying Robo Cop, so I
Speaker 5: had found out while making movies that made us. I
Speaker 5: was in Dallas, which is where RoboCop was shot for
Speaker 5: the most part with Ed Newmyer and Ed Newmeyer over
Speaker 5: dinner mentioned this wacky thing called Sonny Bono law, which
Speaker 5: meant the rights were going back to him in about
Speaker 5: nine months. So we made an offer and we were
Speaker 5: getting close to acquiring robo Cop.
Speaker 4: And while that was all going on, we were developing.
Speaker 5: I hope I don't confuse everybody with all the robos
Speaker 5: robo Force. So I said to myself, when we get
Speaker 5: the deal done for RoboCop, we will have RoboCop and
Speaker 5: robo Force work together. Well, I don't know if you've
Speaker 5: heard of this company. You seem smart Mode, but maybe
Speaker 5: you don't notice. There's a company called Amazon, and this
Speaker 5: is going to blow your mind.
Speaker 4: They got more money than I do.
Speaker 5: They bought MGM while we were negotiating. So when I
Speaker 5: thought we were about to get the deal done, Amazon
Speaker 5: came in bought MGM. And remember I told you they
Speaker 5: got more money than I do. So we ended up
Speaker 5: not getting RoboCop, but we were already in pre production
Speaker 5: on robo Force, so we left it in Detroit.
Speaker 2: Let's talk more about robo Force set the stage for
Speaker 2: the story for me.
Speaker 5: So the story of season one we took from real life.
Speaker 5: What happened in real life was the toy company that
Speaker 5: made robo Force came up with this huge, crazy idea
Speaker 5: for the biggest toy launch of all time, robo Force.
Speaker 5: Most toy lines launch with seven characters. Robo Force launch
Speaker 5: with thirty two characters. Most toy lines first waves start
Speaker 5: with maybe one vehicle. Robo Force started with three vehicles.
Speaker 4: You never have a play set for a first wave.
Speaker 5: The biggest playset you've ever seen, of course, except for
Speaker 5: the USS flag.
Speaker 4: They go to Toy Fair.
Speaker 5: And for anybody who doesn't know what toy Fair is,
Speaker 5: imagine like the Sundance Film Festival for toys. But imagine
Speaker 5: if there were no other film festivals, only Sundance.
Speaker 4: That's toy Fair.
Speaker 5: So they go to Toy Fair nineteen eighty three, they're like,
Speaker 5: look at this, isn't this great? And everybody thought it
Speaker 5: was great. Toys r US made the biggest order in
Speaker 5: the history of toys.
Speaker 4: R US two million units of robo Force Wave one.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: You might be asking yourself, well, if it was such
Speaker 5: a big deal, how.
Speaker 4: Come nobody really knows what robo Force is?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: That announcement was on a Tuesday guess what was announced
Speaker 5: on Thursday, Transformers. So Transformers comes out, destroys robo Force.
Speaker 4: Sticking with the same comp.
Speaker 5: Robo Force toys r us order two million goes to
Speaker 5: two fifty KB had done.
Speaker 4: Half a million order.
Speaker 5: Goes to fifty destroys to robo Force. Not only that
Speaker 5: bankrupts the company that made it. So we took that
Speaker 5: story and made it our DNA. So at the beginning
Speaker 5: of robo Force, essentially you see Roboforce getting announced to
Speaker 5: the world like Yay, we're the best.
Speaker 4: We're gonna save the world.
Speaker 5: Across town an evil company, Utopia Ages they announced their
Speaker 5: new robots, the UA one o Ones. The UA one
Speaker 5: o ones are much better than Roboforce, and robo Force
Speaker 5: is decimated. So for fifteen years, the members of Robofce
Speaker 5: have miserable lives, horrible jobs, they fall apart, they get
Speaker 5: into fights with each other.
Speaker 4: It's terrible.
Speaker 5: Then, believe it or not, the UA one o ones
Speaker 5: they get hacked, they get corrupted, and guess who is
Speaker 5: the only force that can stop the UA one o
Speaker 5: ones robo Force.
Speaker 4: You got it?
Speaker 5: Wow, never we can invite you to Jeopardy. So that's
Speaker 5: our story. So the story takes place fifteen years after
Speaker 5: they had their teeth kicked in and their shins broke
Speaker 5: and all of that. And this is what I can
Speaker 5: promise anybody who watches. It's a redemption story. There is
Speaker 5: not a single character at the beginning of the series
Speaker 5: that's the same at the end. Heroes become villains, villains
Speaker 5: become heroes, and you're watching everybody evolve in a way
Speaker 5: that's really I think typical of life in that it's
Speaker 5: your experiences, you know, going back to Wicked, it really
Speaker 5: is your experiences that make us. And we show that
Speaker 5: Robo Force rising basically all but from the grave.
Speaker 4: They learned a lot in.
Speaker 5: Those fifteen years of being in the wilderness, and now
Speaker 5: they're finally getting their shot at being heroes.
Speaker 3: My time is run short with you, Brian Vogewise, very
Speaker 3: quickly tell me the significance of this being on two
Speaker 3: B and the future of streaming as you see it.
Speaker 3: You have that free model where everyone else struggles seemingly
Speaker 3: with charging the subscription.
Speaker 5: Why to be so we were very lucky, you know,
Speaker 5: we financed Robo Force and then we took it out
Speaker 5: to the market. So it was obviously a little risky,
Speaker 5: but we got a bunch of offers and we went
Speaker 5: with tub because they remind me of like the early
Speaker 5: days of streaming in that they're very aggressive in a
Speaker 5: good way.
Speaker 4: They're very confident, and they really.
Speaker 5: Picked their battles carefully, and one of the battles that
Speaker 5: they picked was that they are free, so they've made
Speaker 5: it so easy for anybody to sign up, and that's
Speaker 5: part of the reason, I think, other.
Speaker 4: Than Netflix in the YouTube I think to be.
Speaker 5: Is number three overall and number one as it relates
Speaker 5: to the rise and percentage of all the viewers that
Speaker 5: they have. So we wanted to be with a partner
Speaker 5: that was kind of young and scrappy like us, and
Speaker 5: like would fight to win and not just be like, oh,
Speaker 5: let's put it out and see how it does.
Speaker 4: That was our goal and we have had no better partner.
Speaker 3: We can't have a better guest. Brian Volk Weisse Robo Force.
Speaker 3: The animated series premiere is April twelfth. On to me,
Speaker 3: Brian Volk, wise, thank you so much for always coming
Speaker 3: on and sharing your work with us. And you know
Speaker 3: it's not going to be the last time, so I
Speaker 3: look forward in advance to our next meeting.
Speaker 4: At Zoe's Mode. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: It's Later with Mo Kelly KFI AM six forty. We
Speaker 2: are live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 6: You're listening to Later with Mo Kelly on demand from
Speaker 6: KFI AM six forty