Valuetainment - ＂The Project Was Orphaned＂ – The Pendragon Cycle Almost BROKE The Daily Wire

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00:00:05.220 Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game?

00:00:07.280 Well, statistically speaking.

00:00:08.840 Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. 0.99

00:00:13.280 That's not really what I do.

00:00:15.440 Is that because you don't have any knees? Or...

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00:00:30.000 In regards to the movie that you did, what was the name of the movie that you did, the big one?

00:00:33.700 The Pendragon Cycle.

00:00:34.660 The Pendragon Cycle.

00:00:36.040 Were you going for, like, was that your strategy to say, you know what, screw it, I'm going to go for all the marbles,

00:00:41.680 because if we nail this, this could be our house of cards.

00:00:43.840 This could be our, you know, this could be our show that's going to bring us from whatever,

00:00:47.980 2 million subscribers to 10 million subscribers.

00:00:50.480 We could be a householder.

00:00:51.480 Was that kind of your strategy?

00:00:53.220 Absolutely, yeah.

00:00:54.280 You know, if you look at the history of the films that we did during my tenure at The Daily Wire,

00:00:58.360 they get bigger and bigger as we go.

00:00:59.520 you take bigger and bigger risks because you can't you can't run the same play twice you know

00:01:06.100 the first play was to acquire a movie that we didn't make dallas sonnier's run hide fight

00:01:11.280 written and directed by kyle rankin it's a fabulous film we're very lucky to get it and we got it

00:01:17.280 because uh dallas kind of got canceled in hollywood after having made this film and it didn't have a

00:01:24.180 home and you know it was ben who actually saw the opportunity ben uh had interacted with dallas in

00:01:29.060 the past and he spoke to dallas and heard about the challenges dallas the dallas was dealing with

00:01:33.340 with run hide fight and he called and said hey you need to talk to this dallas guy i think there's

00:01:37.480 you know this could be a movie that we could pick up and and it had always been part of our strategy

00:01:41.840 to move into making culture not just criticizing culture and then immediately after that i tried

00:01:48.040 to acquire another film and it didn't move the needle for us at all kind of same budget range

00:01:52.560 also an acquisition a licensing deal didn't move the needle for us so now we need to now we have

00:01:58.560 to actually go into production on something.

00:02:00.260 And we made an overall deal with Dallas.

00:02:02.900 And we produced Terror on the Prairie with Gina Carano.

00:02:06.220 And it did very well for us.

00:02:10.260 But I sort of learned by then, well, you've got to continue to...

00:02:14.440 I sort of learned this from Elon Musk.

00:02:16.820 And it's that in a certain kind of company, this isn't true for every company.

00:02:21.120 Like, you couldn't do this if you had an accounting firm.

00:02:23.640 But in certain kinds of companies, part of what you're selling to the audience

00:02:27.100 is a vision for what the future can be.

00:02:30.740 The Daily Wire was saying to our audience,

00:02:32.280 there is a future where conservatives aren't losing.

00:02:35.240 There's a future where we have political power and cultural power.

00:02:39.960 And, you know, if you look at Jeremy's Razors

00:02:42.180 and some of the things we did in consumer goods,

00:02:43.900 where we're also represented in the consumer goods space,

00:02:48.900 where every single company isn't against you all the time.

00:02:52.740 And as you sell that vision to the audience,

00:02:55.020 The vision has to be ahead of where you are because it has to inspire.

00:03:02.000 Elon's great at this.

00:03:02.980 Elon's, you know, I'm sure you've got a deposit in on a Roadster or whatever, the Tesla Roadster.

00:03:08.220 I've got a deposit on you.

00:03:09.440 When are we going to get it?

00:03:10.300 I don't know.

00:03:10.880 Do you think he's going to give it to you?

00:03:12.020 Yeah, because that's the other thing you have to do.

00:03:13.920 You have to deliver on those promises.

00:03:15.820 So you're always making a promise that's a little further ahead than where you are.

00:03:18.840 And you can keep that going as long as you come along behind it and deliver.

00:03:23.680 So we sold the Gina Carano movie before we made it.

00:03:28.280 And then we made it, and it was good.

00:03:30.600 We sold the kids' platform, Binky, before we made it.

00:03:35.940 And then we released it.

00:03:37.180 The model is, if you want us to do this, come help us support this, or what is the sequence?

00:03:41.840 Well, we never use support because we don't want people to think of it as donations.

00:03:46.380 It's a for-profit business, but it is like, come alongside us and help us build the future.

00:03:51.320 Your subscription gets you everything that we are now,

00:03:53.700 but your subscription is also going to get you the things that we will be

00:03:56.040 as a result of your subscription.

00:03:57.580 And so same with Pendragon.

00:03:59.000 We told the audience about Pendragon when we first acquired the rights.

00:04:05.560 We took them along on the journey with us as we made it.

00:04:08.380 And, yeah, it was bigger than anything we had ever made.

00:04:13.600 It's bigger than anything any conservative media company has made in my lifetime.

00:04:16.600 How successful was it?

00:04:18.560 I've been gone for a year when they released it.

00:04:19.820 post you yeah it's post you yeah okay were you in it at all or just so you know i know nothing

00:04:25.180 about the story are you in the movie are you not in the movie i directed um two of the episodes

00:04:30.380 and i was what you call the showrunner okay so i oversaw the writing room i oversaw the set

00:04:35.520 you know i didn't oversee the set from the point of view of like dallas sonia who's running the

00:04:39.060 crew but i was that i was the lead creative on set so i was in eastern europe for i was in not

00:04:44.480 I was in Hungary and Italy and Romania for six months

00:04:47.700 and substantially made the show,

00:04:50.840 you know, with the team, made the show.

00:04:52.820 But the show was released a year after I left.

00:04:57.420 Do I think it was as successful as we had hoped it would be?

00:04:59.980 No, I don't think it was successful

00:05:00.980 the way that we hoped it would be.

00:05:02.380 I think it was orphaned

00:05:03.720 in the same way so many other projects were orphaned.

00:05:05.520 You know, when the CEO and founder of the company,

00:05:09.300 who was also the creator and showrunner of the project, leaves,

00:05:12.660 of course that project's going to be orphaned to a large degree. The company changed even the

00:05:17.400 strategy that it was pursuing. But Pendragon made perfect sense as the next step in the strategy

00:05:24.340 that we had been running for the last five years. It was the next big step. We had released content

00:05:31.300 that had made the kind of money that Pendragon would have had to have made to pay for itself.

00:05:35.160 So it's not as though we got so far ahead of ourselves that we would have to achieve a success

00:05:39.160 unlike any other just to break even.

00:05:41.860 No, we would have to replicate past successes

00:05:43.980 in order to break even on the show.

00:05:46.040 But it was certainly a bigger bet than any that we had taken up until that time.

00:05:50.620 Do you think that brought unnecessary pressure on the company?

00:05:53.540 With you being gone six months, Romania, all of that,

00:05:56.200 where you're not doing the day-to-day operation at the headquarters?

00:05:59.220 Yes.

00:06:00.460 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:01.040 What would you have done differently?

00:06:02.900 I don't know.

00:06:04.560 Certainly there were mistakes there.

00:06:07.100 I'm not even talking about mistakes.

00:06:08.440 To me, it's more about...

00:06:09.500 Well, it's learning mistakes.

00:06:10.700 No, what I'm not trying to...

00:06:12.820 That's not where I'm going.

00:06:13.680 What I'm trying to find out is purely strategically.

00:06:15.740 Like, was it better for you to be at the home office

00:06:18.940 operating and hiring somebody else to run that show?

00:06:22.860 That's what I mean.

00:06:24.020 What I would have done differently

00:06:25.120 is I would have taken my executive team with me.

00:06:27.600 It's not that I would have stayed behind

00:06:29.800 because both things are true.

00:06:32.540 The company was engaged in the largest,

00:06:34.760 most consequential project it had ever been engaged in.

00:06:37.560 it needed all of our best talent to shepherd it and we still had a company to run and it needed me

00:06:45.000 to be there shepherding it so what's the answer to that well the answer to that is

00:06:48.840 i should have we should have treated it as though not that i went to hungary with dallas sonye to

00:06:55.060 make a movie but the daily wire went to hungary to engage in the next huge project that we were

00:07:01.740 going to engage to and you might say well that's not scalable over time but i'm not talking about

00:07:06.060 over time i'm talking about the first time i have a very different opinion to me it was you were you

00:07:10.420 were trying to hit a grand slam and if it goes your your uh reed hastings jr you're a you know

00:07:20.400 you guys could have gone from two to 20 million if you're at 20 million now everybody's coming to

00:07:24.300 you saying hey what are we doing the 50 million auto movie the 100 million auto movie and i think

00:07:27.940 you have to take a risk like that to see if it's going to land or not i'm telling you i remember

00:07:32.840 We're about to go to Tuscany, Italy.

00:07:34.480 I'm taking my 20 best guys.

00:07:36.880 I'm renting this, you know, 17-bedroom property on the top of the hills.

00:07:41.300 And 20 guys, 10 couples.

00:07:43.020 Let's go live on a higher chef.

00:07:44.200 We're going to have a good time.

00:07:45.580 And before going, there's a guy named Carl DeMoss and one other guy.

00:07:50.100 They tell me, go watch House of Cards.

00:07:52.540 I said, House of Cards?

00:07:53.480 Yeah, go watch House of Cards.

00:07:54.560 On what?

00:07:55.500 On Netflix.

00:07:56.240 What's Netflix?

00:07:56.980 I literally wasn't on Netflix.

00:07:58.280 So I go download Netflix, and I'm like, I can't just watch one episode.

00:08:03.200 I stayed up all night watching every one of the episodes in season one.

00:08:07.180 And then I get on the flight in the morning.

00:08:08.440 I have no sleep.

00:08:09.700 What did House of Cards do to Netflix?

00:08:12.240 Take House of Cards out. 0.91

00:08:13.280 House of Cards took Netflix.

00:08:14.700 House of Cards is probably the most successful show of all time.

00:08:19.520 Because if you say, how much money did House of Cards make?

00:08:21.600 $200 billion.

00:08:22.660 That's right.

00:08:23.000 Made $200 billion.

00:08:23.600 Yeah, yeah, that's right.

00:08:24.420 That's right.

00:08:24.740 So that kicked it off. 0.60

00:08:25.620 So, you know, from an operator to an operator, I respect that you have the balls to take that kind of a risk.

00:08:30.840 It's not easy to do. 0.67

00:08:31.620 You've got to do it.

00:08:32.600 But also, if it doesn't hit, you've got to take the heat with it as well, and that's kind of how this thing works.

00:08:37.100 You're either going to go or you're not going to go.

00:08:38.340 Today, everybody's talking about SpaceX, the biggest, you know, he's a trillionaire now.

00:08:43.840 4,400 people are millionaires.

00:08:45.880 You know, 33 people that are non-executives, non-directors, non-VPs, non-managers.

00:08:52.280 Their stock today is worth $200 million to $400 million.

00:08:55.100 Think about that, right?

00:08:56.200 $200 million to $400 million.

00:08:58.180 These are not leaders.

00:08:59.560 These are not people that you know, right?

00:09:00.840 One guy was like, you know, just a regular job that they had.

00:09:03.760 But go back and look at the first three, Falcon, you know,

00:09:06.400 the failures that they had back to back to back.

00:09:09.060 And so does the business model become,

00:09:11.560 so if I'm going and doing a $50 million project,

00:09:13.820 let's just say three projects, I'm doing $50 million.

00:09:16.220 Do I have to have on the back end $200 million ready?

00:09:19.680 So if two of them fail, I need the next one and the next one and the next one?

00:09:23.640 So how much of this is fundraising?

00:09:24.920 Because you need a lot of money.

00:09:27.560 You need a lot of money.

00:09:29.280 The Daily Wire grew completely out of cash flow for a decade.

00:09:33.820 We took on $4.7 million of investment the day we started.

00:09:38.960 And we grew to $200 million plus revenue engine over the course of a decade,

00:09:45.740 completely out of cash.

00:09:47.720 Now, by the time we got to Pendragon,

00:09:49.300 we knew that if we were going to make these larger entertainment plays,

00:09:51.860 that's not going to continue to work.

00:09:53.180 because the business model up until that point

00:09:56.660 was most of our content, not all, most of our content,

00:10:00.520 we made it, put it through post-production,

00:10:05.140 released it, and started monetizing it in the same day.

00:10:09.520 Well, you can't do that with a movie.

00:10:10.960 You know, a movie's a multi, in some cases,

00:10:12.420 in the case of Pendragon, it's a multi-year project.

00:10:13.960 In every case, it's a year-long project

00:10:15.760 or an 18-month-long project.

00:10:17.360 So your capital's getting tied up for a lot longer.

00:10:20.180 Now, the subscriptions can bring you in

00:10:21.340 a lot of revenue really fast once you release it,

00:10:23.180 but you've tied up that capital.

00:10:24.680 So we'd never really been in a business before where we were tying up capital.

00:10:28.680 And that's part of what was going on in the last couple of years at the Daily Wire,

00:10:31.700 was thinking differently about the structure of the business

00:10:33.780 to make it possible to bring on capital in ways that we had never

00:10:37.500 sought to bring on capital before.

00:10:40.280 And one of the advantages of never having brought on capital in all these years

00:10:44.800 is that we had freedom of action, freedom of decision.

00:10:49.040 We were able to be nimble.

00:10:50.340 We were able to move very, very quickly.

00:10:52.680 One of the benefits of being able to bring on capital is the founders can get a little

00:10:56.640 liquidity, and you can make things that tie up capital.

00:11:00.080 You can make Pendragon.

00:11:01.480 You can make whatever was going to come after Pendragon.

00:11:03.620 I know The Daily Wire has made at least two movies since I left.

00:11:05.960 They're not out yet, but it's not as though they've pivoted out of entertainment.

00:11:09.440 They've pivoted away from my sort of strategy around some of that, but they haven't pivoted

00:11:13.360 out of entertainment.

00:11:14.480 And all of that requires thinking differently about capital, which requires changing how

00:11:19.640 some governance works and requires changing how some structure works that's that's a natural

00:11:25.880 consequence of some of those changes yeah very interesting you know it'll be interesting to see

00:11:31.380 who else comes in does it how especially with now with ai are we going to start seeing guys making

00:11:36.360 cartoons takes off subscribership on the conservative side i don't know but uh you know

00:11:42.280 to me i do think the model of being decentralized of smaller creators not needing to be part of a

00:11:49.380 big company may disrupt the one big, gigantic, conservative company we built.

00:11:55.860 Maybe I'm wrong.

00:11:56.520 We'll see what happened there.

00:11:57.500 Can I push back on that for a while?

00:11:58.420 Do so.

00:11:58.780 I'd love to, yeah.

00:11:59.620 Because I don't think you're wrong.

00:12:00.440 Obviously, we live in the moment of the independent content creator.

00:12:03.300 My argument is that's just a moment like every other moment.

00:12:09.400 But look what you do here.

00:12:11.220 This isn't an independent content creator operation.

00:12:14.160 This is a business.

00:12:14.920 I mean, you've built a massive business around your brand,

00:12:18.480 extending out from the business that you had already been very successful with before you started this.

00:12:22.820 But ultimately, Patrick Bet David is the – you're not Joe Rogan making a show with one guy at your house

00:12:31.920 that happens to be the biggest show in the world.

00:12:35.460 You're still right now sit here as a businessman who has ambition way beyond the content that you create every day.

00:12:41.860 And a lot of the guys who move into this space have those kinds of aspirations,

00:12:45.680 but you and I both know how hard it is to do what you do.

00:12:48.720 We both know how hard it is to actually build and scale,

00:12:51.160 how much risk you actually have to be willing to take,

00:12:53.380 how many mistakes and failures and losses you have to make and then recover from,

00:12:58.140 even just the emotional ability to recover from major losses.

00:13:02.120 There are people who are way better than you and me who didn't succeed

00:13:06.440 because they couldn't overcome just the emotional reality of the losses that they had to take. 1.00

00:13:10.500 And you and I are kind of stupid. 0.99

00:13:12.040 We slam our finger in the drawer and we go, well, I'm going to learn not to put my finger in the drawer. 1.00

00:13:15.900 And then three days later, you slammed a whole different finger in a whole different drawer, you know.

00:13:19.760 And so I do think that we live in the moment of the independent content creator.

00:13:23.620 But in the end, business is hard.

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00:13:34.660 We had the choice to make it cheap.

00:13:36.800 We chose neither.

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00:13:40.200 We chose true Italian craftsmanship, each pair touched by 50 skilled hands.

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00:14:10.820 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.

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Valuetainment - June 18, 2026

＂The Project Was Orphaned＂ – The Pendragon Cycle Almost BROKE The Daily Wire

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