I noticed in your background that you were involved in the “New York Rock Exchange,” and I couldn’t tell at first whether that part of your music interests or had to do with your mechanical engineering background!
Yeah! Well, actually I graduated in ’95, and my first job was designing the amusement park rides at Universal Studios, and then I was a toy designer for a while… then I got into music, and then I got into, you know, movies and TV… This is like, my fifth career.
Wow, yeah, definitely a long path you have there, it seems like.
That’s one of the cool things about an engineering degree, in that it prepares you to be successful in a lot of different areas.
Right! So the thing that makes Legion M unique is obviously the way you’re funded, through your sort of crowdfunding format, allowing fans to buy a piece of your company. I was curious, what strengths do you feel that structure has over the more traditional production style?
Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think it really gets at the heart of what Legion M is about. You know, we founded this company because of changes to securities law that, for the first time, allowed for something like this. We are the first entertainment company that was built — like, literally from day one — from the ground up to be owned by fans. There’s probably two main reasons why. First of all, the fundamental premise, like, if you’ve got an entertainment company that’s owned by a large group of people — in our case, you know, we’re talking about some of the most passionate fans in the world, it gives you a huge competitive advantage when your product’s on the market. Because when our movie launches, we bring with us a group of people who are financially and emotionally invested in it. So we know they’re going to come out, they’re going to bring their friends, they’re going to talk about it on social media, they’re going to be able to create that sort of grassroots buzz that a traditional studio would kill for but frankly money can’t buy. But the other side of it that not everyone realizes at first glance is just this idea that by having so many people invested in the company and its success, we have a legion of people that can help us find new IPs, test different content, and all that sort of stuff. It’s an extremely powerful model. It’s one that was never possible until two years ago when the JOBS Act passed. We think it’s got the potential to make us one of the most influential movie companies out there.