Castle Rock and New Line each have their strengths, but the great thing about New Line is that they are a real focused-market, niche-market player who understand franchises. They probably understand the franchise business in motion pictures better than anyone else out there.

I come from a time when pop music was the coin of the cultural realm and in a certain way was the only coin of the realm; movies didn't matter as much, and not TV - it was all about pop music. In the era when I started - which was the early '60s - it was all about singles leading to albums.

The early seasons of 'The Simpsons' had a great deal of heart. That's what I'm trying to pull from, the kind of stuff that goes straight to kids' hearts. When they're watching, they don't necessarily know why they love something.

Castle Rock and New Line each have their strengths, but the great thing about New Line is that they are a real focused-market, niche-market player who understand franchises. They probably understand the franchise business in motion pictures better than anyone else out there.

Up until the time Turner Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera, it was essentially an independent studio whose planning cycle had to be nine months. You got a pickup in January, and you put it on the air in September. That's been the cycle.

I really like dating stories, like in Betty and Veronica comics; I like David Lynch and H.P. Lovecraft for the dark gut-wrenching stuff, and I'm inspired by Miyazaki's films for the subtle heart-warming moments, as well as the moments that blew up my imagination.

My background is that I've spent a lot of time marketing entertainment. One of the old saws in package goods is you can take something that is popular and you can make it more popular. But if you take something less popular, you can't automatically market it into the same success as something that's already popular.