Thomas Tull is your favorite movie mogul — you just don't know it yet. The founder of Legendary Pictures has financed a string of runaway hits, from the Batman franchise to 300 to The Hangover. His knack for spinning nerdy dude fare into box office gold, coupled with a plum coproduction deal with Warner Bros., has made him a major Hollywood player. That's especially impressive for a 39-year-old who entered the biz less than five years ago. The cinema and videogame buff came to film from the world of venture capital and private equity, bringing with him a new system of financing: He raised a production fund of more than half a billion dollars from private equity sources. With 14 projects under its belt and seven in the pipeline (including an adaptation of the Warcraft videogame series and a Clash of the Titans remake), Legendary might soon live up to its moniker.
Wired: Before you founded Legendary, you ran a private equity fund that invested in tech companies. How did that expertise translate to the movie business?
Thomas Tull: My job was to identify opportunities and then work with those companies to make them grow. How are you going to get attention? Do your financials make sense? How will you market it? Will it work internationally? What sort of afterlife will it have? So we view each movie almost like that.
Extended InterviewRead the full interview with Thomas Tull on Underwire.Wired: Was it hard persuading companies to back you?
Tull: The first one we approached, the meeting lasted about 12 minutes. Their exact quote was "Wait, you want us to invest in a production company for movies? Can we get you a bottled water on your way out?"
Wired: But you weren't asking them to sink all their money into one film — you were putting together a portfolio of films, and the hits would balance out the flops, right?
Tull: That's absolutely right. The reason we needed an enormous amount of capital is that we want to be here for the long haul. We're not rolling the dice, doing one or two movies and seeing what happens. Our first go-round with Warner Bros. will end up being a seven-year, 45-picture deal.
Wired: You're developing geek favorites — games, comics, TV shows, and films adored by the Comic-Con crowd. What do you look for when considering a title?
Tull: Quality — the Tiffany properties. In the investing world, that wins out as well. If there's something that's over-leveraged or seems too good to be true, most of the time it is.
Wired: Legendary/Warner productions give directors a great deal of control — Chris Nolan on the Batman movies, Zack Snyder on 300 and Watchmen. How involved are you in the process?
Tull: We're a full-on production company, which can sometimes mean being very hands-on. But what am I going to tell Chris Nolan? He's a genius. All I do is find out what he wants for catering, then stay out of the way in a corner somewhere, maybe clap softly.
Wired: Do you see any new directors breaking out like Snyder and Nolan have?
Tull: Louis Leterrier. He did the Incredible Hulk remake, and he's doing Clash of the Titans for us now. I love his energy.
Wired: What gives a videogame potential as a movie — say, Gears of War, which you're also developing?
Tull: That's my favorite game of all time. It's set in a kick-ass world, there are great characters with backstories, and the point of view is very cinematic.
Wired: 300 had top-notch production values but cost only $60 million. Can we expect more like that?
Tull: There's a picture that Warner is bringing together now, a supernatural Western (based on a DC comic book) called Jonah Hex. I can't say what the budget is, but it looks like an awful lot of movie for the price. More and more things are going in that direction with filmmaking. If directors can figure out how to make a big movie without a huge budget, it's a badge of honor for them.
Wired: Are there trends or properties you'd avoid because everyone's jumping on the bandwagon?
Tull: I've heard a lot of people talk about the vampire genre that way. You can overcome saturation — 300 got made on the heels of a lot of sword-and-sandal movies. But today's audiences can smell the lack of authenticity. They walk out of theaters texting their friends, "That was awful." If I go to buy videogames or hit a comic book store, people are so open about what they do and don't like. They're a very well-informed, opinionated crowd.
Wired: Do you still like to geek out with the clerks at comic book stores?
Tull: Oh yeah.
Wired: But can you safely reveal your secret identity? What if you're found out?
Tull: That's the good part, right? Guys like Christian Bale have to deal with that stuff. No one cares who I am!
Senior editor Chris Baker (chris_baker@wired.com) wrote about oceanic utopias in issue 17.02.
