Jeffrey Katzenberg and Kimball Musk reveal Nova Sky Stories, aiming to create a third stadium entertainment vertical with drone shows

next guest. We have two folks coming into the TBPN Ultra Dome. We have Jeffrey Katzenberg and Kimell Musk. Welcome to the show. How are you guys doing, gentlemen? Welcome to the show. Hey, happy beer. How are you guys? Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Uh it's a good day in the market.

We are wearing white suits to celebrate the market's uh rise. I was going to ask. We need a white we need a for wearing the white hat. Obviously, you know, you probably saw that this is happening. Came prepared. We have something to celebrate on our side, too. So, it's great. Please.

Uh yeah, we're excited to hear about it. Kick us off. What are you what what are you sharing? Well, uh Jeff Jeffrey and I have been uh uh getting to know each other over the past couple of years and uh I've been building a company called Nova Nova Sky Stories which builds stories in the sky using drone art.

So light drones that tell 80 to 90 minute stories like a movie or like a broadcast broad like a Broadway play. Yeah. And there's just no one better in the world that I could imagine joining as a strategic adviser, board member, and investor to Nova Sky Stories.

Help us build an X- brand in family entertainment and have a lot of fun doing it. Yeah, I remember Palmer Lucky was posting about the fact that there are only like three businesses in the entire United States that do just skyriting.

Like it's an incredibly uncompetitive space if you can figure out how to how to do something in the sky.

And it's just something that no one thinks about and yet and yet you know you could imagine what his point was like what's the next version of this and this is clearly yeah it feels like very it's techno optimist entertainment I remember the the couple days after the fourth this year in Malibu we had the worst air quality it was like India level air quality because of all the fireworks that had been going off.

If you walked outside, it it felt like you just looking around it looked like you were in a cloud. And I was just thinking, we have drones. You can put them in swarms and you can provide this incredible entertainment. And this has come up recently, too.

We've we've uh we've told a number of friends companies that they should do drone advertising in the sky and we don't have a vendor and and there's no does not not a great vendor.

But yeah, walk us through what these will these shows will look like in in practice kind of what what what the actual how experience will be like. So So before we do that, I just want to because it's kind of fun and I know there's a chance that this will um uh catch you off guard here, please.

Which, you know, I have that ambition. So and I met at Bernie man. No way. away. Oh, yeah. See, there you go. There you go. What time of day was it? Was it like 2 a. m.? It was really Yes, it was, actually. Years ago, uh, Kimmel did this light show at Burning Man. And it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

It It was art in the sky. It's not fair to, you know, sort of look at this through the lens of, you know, fireworks or promotion or marketing because this was genuinely a a very a brilliant uh deployment of this technology that was just at a whole another level.

So anyway, we first got to know each other just a little bit then and then uh he's gone off and done this extraordinary job of very organically building out the business. Um you know fundamental to it is just the state-of-the-art technology around drones.

You know everybody now just thinks well everybody has drones and anybody can put them up in the air maybe just not these drones. These are you know very precision built. their their the design of them.

There's all sorts of interesting things I'm learning about them that allow them to swarm together as you said, Jordy, you know, in a way that can create very very very strong imaging um and choreography and programming and the application of AI to design programming around it.

And so the analogy that I've uh sort of come to to feel, you know, is is analogous for me at least is in uh 1990 I saw a little short film called Luxor the Lamb. Yeah. Which if you remember was the very first piece of CG animation created by John Lacader and Steve Jobs.

And out of that came the partnership with Disney and Toy Story and Pixar and all of the amazing things was just transformative because it was it wasn't just um uh a tool. It actually created a new form of storytelling.

And I believe that what Kimell has very successfully created already today is a platform to create something that is going to be as innovative and I think as impactful and important as CG animation was 30 years ago.

That's how unique uh this is and how powerful I think it will be as a storytelling platform to create branded family entertainment in very large venues, global, all of those things.

uh creating characters, creating original IP and also being able to work with the greatest IP in in the world to create shows around it where But anyway, that's a lot to Yeah.

I mean, I I the the thing that's so exciting to me is just like the like the the uh the wonder that you can inspire in a in a kid, you know, imagine they walk outside, it's it's night and in the sky is this, you know, it could be some character from from Frozen or or something like that where uh there's you just flying through the sky.

I mean, the other thing about the drones, they can start out the size of uh two or three football fields cubed. I mean like literally bigger than your mind can possibly imagine and then they can come down to you know the size of your hand and come land on your hand. That's crazy. That is insane.

How how what like when you think of these like sort of fleets I don't know if that or swarms if that's exactly the right word. Um how many you know if you guys are going to do a show at a at something like a a festival or a carnival or something like that. Uh how many individual drones would go into something like that?

Is it is it hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands? It's it's a real physics problem. So So you the way to look at it is you're trying to evoke emotion. You're trying to make sure you connect with the audience, but you also have to match it to the venue.

So if you if you have the Rose Bowl, you can do 10,000 drones and I mean just completely melt people's minds in the most epic ways. And it's really fun to do that. I've done that a few times with Bren. We'll do that again sometime soon. Uh but but you can also actually do it with a smaller number too.

It's a you can get down to four or 500 600 drones and still still convey the emotion and get the character across, get the connect with with but the goal is to connect with the with the audience. Uh the audience is is is definitely a ticketed audience.

People are paying to see a show that is 80 to 90 minutes long or maybe 45 minutes with an intermission and then another 45 minutes so that you can more like a Broadway play. It it but it's it it can be really any size. Of course, when it's big, it's pretty great.

I imagine there there have to be limitations to like uh to like the storytelling though, right? Because you have to physically move the drones from one place to another. So, you can't exactly do the kulasha effect. You can't exactly have a cut, a hard cut or can you do that? How do you solve that?

Well, actually, yeah, because there and that's what's so exciting about it, I think, and why we're going to get some of the greatest storytellers in the world excited about creating for this new medium as opposed to sort of just retelling something else because you can think of this as uh one dimension, which is a screen.

Yeah. And if you have a screen with 10,000 pixels, right, pretty high, very closely interesting, you know, choreographed together, you can, and remember these things, it's not just a light in this in it. These are sophisticated um uh Oh, right. It's not like a single bulb, right?

It's you can have effectively a tiny screen on each on each drone, right? Literally. and lasers and effects and all sorts of things that they cuz that's what you know he's been investing in and building and they you know they these things are patented and he's the only company in the world that builds them in.

So this is not like taking a you know military drone or you know from uh you know I mean typically the ones that see these warehouse military drones that are repurposed. Yeah. This is a division of Intel they were innovating on it for 10 years. Uh they First of all, safety.

When you're flying 10,000 drones, I mean, something will go wrong unless you are absolutely dedicated to safety. And we're proud to say uh 10 years of Intel and three years with Nova, 100% safety record. Very proud of that. So, you have to really think about safety.

And then there's a level of of sophistication just gets that's where the boy the fun comes in. And uh you can you can play with fire. I mean, we're actually our our drones could carry their own fireworks of all different kinds of shapes and sizes, not just like a typical firework.

That is, for example, you can actually a dragon breathe fire. Wow. It's real fire. Yeah. Yeah. So, so even just thinking about what you can do with fireworks, if you have a delivery mechanism into the sky where like pinpoint like you see the fireworks go up and sometimes they have shapes, but it's still very random.

It's not exactly as choreographable as as you'd think if you had more precise control. Yeah. And we're able to get a firework to go off with a 5cm cube in in space. This is incredible. Yeah, I remember.

Where do you where do you uh uh you don't have to dox to the exact location, but how do you how do you test how do you properly, you know, test this product when I imagine you have to go find you have a you do have a secret location in Colorado. We're based in Colorado, deep in the Rocky Mountains.

And it has to be pretty darn deep in there. Yeah. Because some of the shows we do will be 3,000 drones and no one's allowed to see it. Oh, sure. Because uh if they see it kind of a surprise.

We really want to want to Well, and somebody some some hiker at some point will walk over a hillside and some other drone some other drone pilot will be like, I'm going to fly my drone over to take some video. Well, yeah. Somebody's going to think it's a UFO. You need counter UAS for for protection.

Would you guys ever uh we we love advertising here. We're we're big fans of advertising. Would you ever consider uh part partnering with with the right company? Is is that a vertical that you care about at all? We do do sponsor shows. No, we do we do sponsorships all the time. Yeah. So, someone will sponsor a show.

Uh sometimes that that that simply means, you know, it's a thank you to to them. Other times it is, you know, their logo in the sky. It it just it just needs to m match the audience uh approach. But it's but it's it's a we're all kind of figuring it out here.

What what we're learning with advertisers, they they want to do the right thing for the audience as well. Sure. They they want to be recognized for it. They want, you know, they want to build their their their audience or their their brand. Well, what's the right way to do this? Well, it's all kind of new.

So, let's you know, sometimes we go over the top and sometimes they're not doing it enough. But, but thing you want to do is you want to learn from what people have done successfully in the past, but also mistakes that have been made in the past.

And you know, one of the things I think we would all agree about today is, you know, I continue to love movies, love going to movies. I think it's a singular great experience.

Go into a, you know, with a couple hundred other people and get on that roller coaster ride of a of a movie uh is very special, but honestly, sitting there for 25 minutes of uh trailers and commercials before it is beyond annoying. I mean, it just Yeah. incentivizes you to show up late, right? Yeah, totally right.

So, but let me uh just we should share with you a little bit like you know what's the ultimate goal here and there's a little story that I've uh been retelling here the last couple of days because um it does you know sort of give me a a perspective on this which is is that uh I remember going to see Elton John for the first time at the Trouador and then I remember 20 years later going and seeing Elton on at Dodger Stadium.

And today you can see Kimell's dream at the Trouador and it's pretty amazing and pretty spectacular and you can see the talent and the potential of it and five years from now it's not going to Dodger Stadium and you know during you know seventh inning stretch having a drone show for 10 minutes.

It's going to Dodger Stadium to see a great Nova experience there. A something with a a great story to it, huge production value to it, and as Kimell said, something that has heart and emotion, something that the whole family can enjoy together.

And if you think about it today, there are really two principal uses of the big stadiums around the globe. soccer stadiums, uh, football stadiums, baseball stadiums, there's sporting events, and they're concerts.

And our goal, our that we look at is is that five years from now, there's going to be a third vertical there. And it is going to be these types of shows um that come through on a regular basis because once you create a show and design a show, it can be in any language.

You can travel around the, you know, like a concert. It feels like something, it feels like something that's can be as immersive as the sphere, but it doesn't cost billions of dollars to set up somewhere new, right?

You know, it's really interesting because when the camera came on here and I saw you guys dressed in white, the first thing I thought about is you must be going to see the Backstreet Boys. Oh, yeah. At the We're always ready. We're always ready.

like I just figure, okay, these guys are going to the sphere to see the boys tonight. But you got the you got you're you got the right uniform. We do. We're always ready. I saw some videos from the factory boys. Are you guys uh uh what what's the um Well, I have a couple questions.

One, how do you think about form factors in the long run? Is this something 10 years from now, would I be able to hire some local company to set one of these up and for for like a my son's birthday? Right. No, it's quite different. So, so the the think about us, we we are already operating in 40 countries. Mhm.

We we go do events that are more uh right now we're filling, you know, 3,000 5,000 person uh event venues. So, all ticket and then eventually we'll get to Dodger Stadium more like 50,000 people.

But, but the the the folks that will do something more for a one-off event, you know, which which will which will probably get easier over time. Right now, it's still very hard to do this. aviation approvals and so forth. It it'll be someone else. Nova, our goal is to build the next Pixar.

We want to we want to we want to uh on the other hand, Jordy, I mean, you know, given the track that you're on, you know, 5 years from now, you could hire Elton John come play a birthday party at your house right now. That's what I'm saying.

I just we have we all have mutual friends that might say it's I'm it's worth it for me to hire Novo for my kids' birthday party. I'll give you guys, you know, 5 million bucks. I spoke too soon. As I understand, everybody does private. Yeah, everybody. Everybody. Uh, what do you guys have planned?

Uh, what do you guys have planned for for Burning Man this year? Uh, I'm assuming you're both going back. I'm going to make it out next week. Uh, enjoy the week. It's uh my 27th year, so I'm gonna go out in a row. I work with one of the artists and I love the love the event. I do it for the art.

It's just uh so so wonderful. Have you guys gone? I've never been. Never been. Never been. Might have to go if this is We could be the first guys to I mean I I we can't be the first the first guy. We fit in with with white suits like this on the ply. I think they get pretty covered in dust.

Well, everybody's covered because you could go there dressed in this and within hour it will look like that because the dust just covers everything. Doing the show doing the show live from the plywood I think would be deeply at odds with the the ethos. Uh but uh but there would certainly be some funny interviews.

I'd like I'd love to interview you guys at 2 a. m. after you first met. So, what are you guys going to work on together? Um I have more questions. Yeah. What's going on? So, I I I'm interested in kind of like what technology the business is focused on building.

Pixar obviously had to invent a lot of CGI technology and then some of that wound up spinning out and people made other graphics uh CGI movies. Pixar created Renderman that became its own kind of product.

I imagine that like the software to let an artist actually create on a fully three-dimensional canvas, but not just pixels on a screen. Um, actually a a physical canvas of drones flying around. There are limitations. There are physical simulations that need to run. I imagine that you'll need to build a system for that.

Is that internal? Are you going to partner with someone on that? So, our version of Render Man is called Genesis. Okay. And so what what animators do and we we we're recruiting this is a shout out to all the animators out there. We're recruiting the best animators in the world.

We we we we know how good you are and we want you to to join our team. And our version of renam is called Genesis.

And so what a what an animator will do is they might use some of the tools they're more familiar with like Cinema 4D or something to get started and then they then they have then they upload their their ideas and animations into into Genesis our version of Random Man. Yep.

And it converts the whole whole piece into drone managing the physics of the drones and a lot of AI in this process to figure out where where do the drones go? How literally how long do the drones get to move?

Like if you're if you're thinking about Mickey Mouse in an animation, it can move like this and it's just no problem. Oh, well now hold on. Drones actually physically move. So the so the the actual animation changes from from like this like this.

It might move it a little slower and then if you do need to move it fast, it'll actually move the the the LED lights instead of the drones and it'll actually be an illusion of the drones moving very very fast. But that's all part of our Genesis tool.

So So that part is internal to Nova and we continue to develop that and we do we do have ambition for it to to make that level of a difference like Render Man has done for for animation in movies. That's great. on on the hardware side. Uh what lessons are you taking from your experience with Tesla uh to this business?

Well, the thing that I learned so much with Tesla, I do work with AI a lot there, but it's the spatial AI. So, full self-driving is not it's not LLM. It's a completely different approach to to to to learning models. Yeah.

And um it's actually very very similar to to to drone to to moving drones in space and moving them around in in the air and um the the lessons that I'm learning about being able to uh this might be a little inside baseball on AI but uh using the transformer technology to to do to do predictive video that you learn from Tesla and then the the scale of the hardware which has gone from you need something the size of this room to something that that can, you know, be the size of an iPad to something that for when it gets to be for drones would be, you know, something that would be, you know, half the size of an iPhone where I'm I'm able to watch that happen.

And then, of course, once you get there, then you you you can you can imagine what can happen. You can even design for it, but you got the actual hardware has to get small enough. And then and once you get there, then you just start to imagine the magic that's possible.

Uh, this is a question maybe for both of you, but actual goals I have with with our drones is to be able to speak to the drones and have the drones react to you and at a scale of 10,000 drones and that's actually possible.

You just need inference engines on the drones that that are we're just not at that hardware scale yet but we'll get there. Um on ter in terms of market structure by the way that that that uh I mean people people have been experimenting this with with various models this idea of like uh you know generative imagination.

So just imagining something talking about it and just having the sky react would feel 10,000 drones and it will it'll actually form in a way that responds to you. It's it's all possible without the the hardware is not solved yet but the hardware is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

My worry is that you guys are gonna get get the reach the achieve this vision internally and then become so addicted to just sitting back and watching your own. The beauty is that you can literally touch you can literally touch grass while watching one of these. You can do it outside like it's a drive-in movie theater.

It's fantastic. It solves a problem. You can you can you can enjoy the screen while touching grass. It's the best. Um on on market structure, I'm interested to know right now it feels like the company is extremely vertically integrated. You own the drones.

You develop the IP, you might work with someone, but eventually you're building the software, you're running the shows, you're taking in the ticket revenues. Uh, in the long term, do you see that there will be like an AMC or a Lowe's or a theater chain or an owner operator or a franchisee?

Is there some world where your focus narrows? Yeah. Now, our focus is on on content and technology. So, we want to be the Pixar. Yeah. We're very excited to work with uh ticketing partners or with you know Dodger Stadium will have probably ticket master and that's fine.

We work with theater which is a fantastic promotion partner uh around the world. Uh we are focused on content and technology. The venue the venues have been built. Yeah. You know it's like of course you don't need to build you don't need to build movie theaters or own movie theaters to be in the movie business.

You're at the whim of whoever controls the ticketing for that venue. So you do you do have to work with whoever that is and we're agnostic. We there's some ones that are better than others but at the end of the day uh we we love all of them and we we want to we want to work with all of them.

Well you guys partner with uh cruise ships. Have you thought about that potential? You're far out at sea. We have some very very interesting innovations happening on the cruise ship side but it'll be unveiled probably about a year from now. Makes sense. Anything else J? No. This is super super exciting.

Thank you guys for coming on and sharing. I just want to ask be make sure to be careful flying these over the Amazon. There's some unconted tribes. I don't know where that idea came from. If the first thing that they see is a is a Nova Sky story, I think uh it' be difficult to to recover.

So anyways, great great chatting with you guys. Come back on anytime. So send us a selfie from the Backstreet Boys tonight. So, we will and send us send us a selfie from the playa. We'll talk to you soon. Awesome. Cheers, guys. Have a good one. Thanks for having us, guys. That is just wild.

I I honestly am so excited for those to be everywhere. For sure. I want Sky Stories everywhere I go. And you know what you have to settle for until Skytory is able to run out ofome advertising for you? Adqu. com, baby. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable.

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If you actually want to do a drone show right now, adqu can help you get set up with engage with them and run some run some out of home ads. Um what uh Elon says join XAI and help build a purely AI software company called Macro hard. Uh Microsoft macro hard.

It's a tongue andcheek name but the project is very real in principle given that software companies like Microsoft do not themselves manufacture any physical hardware. It should be possible to simulate them entirely with AI. He's really taking shots at Microsoft lately coming for Satcha.

Hopefully this uh this this did not that I see get a Satcha reply. But when Satcha Times Yeah. When Satcha claps back with the corporate speak that just hits super hard. I'm so there for it. I'm cheering. Uh it's uh it's a fun little uh Neo and Morpheus are fighting on the timeline moment. Uh anyway, we have our next