In everything coming up Amazon today, Jeff Bezos and his entertainment crew landed the cover of the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
RELATED POST: Spike Lee’s new film will be Amazon’s first original movie — debuting first in theaters, then online
As Amazon is celebrating its 20th anniversary with its big Prime Day, it’s perfect timing to take a look at a few things the company has in store, especially entertainment-wise, for its Prime audience of 44 million people in the U.S.
The feature includes a Q&A with Bezos and a longer piece about how the head of Amazon Studios Roy Price is transforming Amazon into a Hollywood player when it comes to making original entertainment and honing in on the Studios’ next big goal — making movies. Earlier we reported that Amazon Studios has already signed on Spike Lee to make its first major film for debut in theaters.
It’s pretty fascinating that a company that was basically seen as a zero in Hollywood is now emerging as a hero. As THR reports:
As far as Hollywood was concerned, Amazon was the studio equivalent of community college. “It was my last choice,” recalls Jill Soloway, the Six Feet Under writer who sold Amazon the Transparent pilot in 2013. She remembers asking her agent why she’d want to pitch a TV show to the place “where I buy my paper towels.” Two years later, the Transparent creator, who recently signed an overall deal with Amazon said to be worth $4 million a year, has changed her tune. “They don’t want anything anybody else has,” she gushes. “They want stuff that really f—s up the status quo.”
Here are few Bezos’ quotes from his interview with THR:
How content helps sell toilet paper:
“It’s how our whole model works. When people join Prime, they buy more of everything we sell. They buy more shoes, they buy power tools and so on.”
On sharing viewership numbers:
“I don’t think it’s useful. I don’t want our team obsessing over ratings. I want them obsessing over quality. If they can pull that off, we will have millions of happy viewers.”
On how big that Prime audience is getting:
“We grew 53 percent year-over-year, so it’s a big number. And it’s a global audience.”
On Woody Allen’s big freakout at Cannes, where he said he “regretted” agreeing to do an original series for Amazon:
“I breathed a huge sigh of relief. You know Woody. If he ever gets optimistic, then I’ll be worried. As long as he’s pessimistic and anxious, I think we’re in good shape.”
On how involved he gets in the creative process:
“I’ll give you the alternate scenario that would be horrific in my mind, which is that I’m sitting there in Seattle and Roy is sending me early drafts of Transparent season-two scripts and I’m giving Jill [Soloway] ideas. How in the world could I possibly help Jill? I can help Jill by leaving her alone.”
Watch Price, Soloway and actor Jeffrey Tambor discuss Season 2 of Transparent in this Hollywood Reporter video below:
