Welcome back to 5AM StoryTalk’s audio podcast — a place to talk about stories in all their forms, the craft that goes into them, and the role that art plays in our lives. Today, I'm joined by friends — and super-producers — Erica Lee (John Wick universe) and Blye Pagon Faust (Academy Award Best Picture winner, Spotlight). We’re going to dig into how the film/TV industry has changed since I met them more than 15 years ago, how their monster successes have reshaped their careers, what the most valuable kind of script in Hollywood is right now, and so much more.
The best way to enjoy this free conversation is to click on the podcast play button right now and just listen to an unabridged version of it in all its incredibly intimate detail. If you prefer to read these chats, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered; the article below been trimmed for length and edited for clarity. But again, it’s considerably shorter than what you’ll find listening to the podcast.
Erica, Blye, and I discuss the following (amongst many other things):
What era they would choose to work in if given the chance to climb into a time-traveling DeLorean
The impact of establishing themselves as producers in a still incredibly male-dominated industry, especially for Erica who works primarily in action
How the film/TV landscape has transformed over the past 20 years…and not for the good, from the death of the mid-budget financier to the streamers
Erica’s initial reaction to the John Wick script when it was still called Scorn, how the film evolved, and her surprise at the extent of its success
Blye’s difficult journey to getting Spotlight made, a film about the systemic cover-up of sexual abuse by priests against children that would go on to win the Best Picture Oscar
How both Erica and Blye have had to dramatically pivot in how they pursue their careers
The power of the “undeniable” script and great ideas in general
Advice for aspiring and emerging screenwriters and producers
Lastly, a bonus episode is available now. Erica, Blye, and I dig even deeper into the state and future of the film/TV industry, contemplating what AI might do to it (including how they'd feel if they found out one of their screenwriters was using it to write work for them), and if they're still having fun given, well, the shit state of everything. We start by discussing how they know a project is right for them, which might prove of interest to aspiring screenwriters.
Today I’m joined by my friends Erica Lee and Blye Pagon Faust, who are two of my favorite U.S.-based producers. After only talking to artists for so long, I wanted to mix things up by helping 5AM Story Talk readers and listeners understand a bit more about how the sausage gets made, but also how the film and TV business has changed in the past 15 years and where it might be heading. In the cases of Blye and Erica, I was also intrigued by the fact that they produce such different things, but have grown into monsters in their field. I wondered what insights their disparate experiences and instincts might produce as we talked. The fact that the two of them hadn't yet met was just icing on the cake – I absolutely wanted these two to know each other.
Listen, I want to tell you everything both of these brilliant people have accomplished in their careers, but that's just not going to be possible, but there's too much. You're going to have to settle for the CliffsNotes version.
Let's start with Erica. Her first producing credit was on John Wick back in 2014, albeit as an EP. She brought the project into Thunder Road Films. It obviously went on to become a huge hit, one of those insane zeitgeist moments in our culture you just don't see coming. I sat down with her a week after it was released and it still hadn't quite settled in, what was happening. But it kept growing and growing and, as a result, has become one of the few original Hollywood action franchises of the 21st century.
By its sequel, Erica was producing with a capital P alongside her boss, Basil Iwanyk, which is how she eventually became a partner at Thunder Road. She's been across the John Wick universe ever since, from sequels to TV to spin-offs like Ballerina, which is coming this year. She's also produced or EP’ed Sicario and its sequel, Wind River, The Informer, Kandahar, Silent Night, and this past year, Monkey Man, which was Dev Patel's just outstanding, incredibly fun directorial debut.
As for Blye, I mean, winning the Best Picture Oscar for Spotlight (2015), does it get much cooler than that? Spotlight literally changed lives. It changed how people thought and talked about the sexual abuse that was rampant in the Catholic Church and the systemic covering up of it by the Church's leadership – just gross, monstrous shit start to finish. It was based on a series of news articles that earned The Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. This has become something of a specialty of Blye's, finding true stories and helping shepherd their adaptation from page and real life to screen and podcasts.
Today, she's the co-founder of Story Force Entertainment with Cori Shepard Stern, and she's produced the documentary films Belly of the Beast – for which she won an Emmy – Rewind, The Grab, and Zurawski vs. Texas. Her TV work has been getting a lot of attention, too. She's behind the docuseries “LuLa Rich”. and “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets”. Obviously, she's still trying to change the world and thank the old gods and the new for it.
Blye, Erica, and I are going to cover a lot in this part of our conversation, which is available to all subscribers. From John Wick to Spotlight to the challenge of getting movies up these days, to working with screenwriters to the idea of the undeniable idea or script – something my friend screenwriter Jamie Linden recently proposed to me. You’re also going to hear what they’ve learned from 20 years in the business about what makes a great script that the market will react to – their answers might surprise you.
In the bonus episode that I’ll share in two days, Erica and Blye will be back to go even deeper into our conversation for 5AM Story Talk's paid subscribers. If you're not yet a paid subscriber, you'll get another 30 or so minutes of the three of us discussing the state and future of the film/TV industry, contemplating what AI might do to it (including how they'd feel if they found out one of their screenwriters was using it to write work for them), and if they're still having fun given, well, the shit state of everything. You might take special interest in their answer to my question about how they know a project is right for them.
This is a great opportunity to hear two producers working at the highest levels of their game speak intimately and honestly about what goes into making films and TV series these days. I know I enjoyed getting to know both of them better through this chat.
And now, without any further delay, let me introduce you to my friends, producers Blye Pagon Faust and Erica Lee…
CH: Thank you for joining me today. I'm big fans of both of you, as you know, and I'm looking forward to having a conversation about what you guys do as producers.
BLYE PAGON FAUST: Great to be here.
CH: So, I'm going to jump in. Doc Brown pulls up in a DeLorean and tells you to hop in – he'll take you at to any point in Hollywood's history for you to keep making film or TV or whatever else you want to do. Where do you go?
ERICA LEE: That’s a fun question. I think I always feel like I sort of like just missed the heyday of the film business. So, I think, for what I do – which is like a lot of mid budget mid-range thriller action movies – I feel like the late ’90s, early 2000s would have been really fun to kind of been at my peak. Just because I feel like we could have gotten so many movies made and, you know – not to be like crass – but made so much more money. Like, they were just so much more robust than it is now. Honestly, like in a spot where it would be easier and I’d have more product and just more fun.
You know, Basil, my partner was an executive in the late ’90s at Warner Brothers and I hear the crazy stories, and I just think it was more fun. I'm jealous of those times. I mean, it's still a fun job, you know, comparatively to like my brother, who's an accountant – but it can be a grind. And I feel like I just sort of missed the heyday.
BPF: I always wonder though, don't you? It always sounds so good in, like, retrospect, but living it, was it really that much more fun? I don't know. Maybe it was. I don't know.
EL: Yeah, maybe it would have been harder in some respects. You know, as a woman who works primarily in that genre too, it is sort of hard-ish, but so many walls have already been broken down for me by others. I guess it's fun to dream about it though
CH: What about you, Blye? Where in history would you go?
BPF: I think there's something to be said for the idea of being a woman in the producer's chair. You think back to the heydays of the ’70s and the movies that were made then. But you think about the women who had to, you know, lead the charge and what they had to go through. So, I definitely I think a more current place in history is more palatable for someone, especially like me, who doesn't live in L.A., who has sort of been a nomad knocking around and been outside the system. I think that looking back, really kind of thinking about what was the ideal time? Frankly, it was probably right after Spotlight. 2016, 2017. Because we do film, we do scripted, we do docs, we do podcasts, we do it all – and it sort of was like, the world was your oyster [back then]. There were so many options and opportunities at the time. There was so much money coming in. The streamers were still there. All the studios were there. Participant was still there. So many projects were alive and well, and people were paying silly money for doc features, or series, or whatever it may have been. And having already had all those trailblazers ahead of us in terms of producers as women, it definitely felt like a good time, and we sold and set up a lot of things which feels very different to 2025 – but we'll get to that, I'm sure.
CH: Oh, we will, we will. Erica, with John Wick, did you know at the script level that that was going to be something major? I think I saw you a week after it was released, and I was still kind of stunned by how much I enjoyed it and the reaction by fans.
EL: That's the beauty of John Wick, right? It sort of found its way. The script was called Scorn. It was like a very different movie. I knew that it had a great hook. I'm a dog lover and I remember reading it, and I emailed Basil, “There's something about this script. I think it's the dog. The villains are awful, there's so much hokeyness, but I think there's something there.” But the making of that movie was a complete dumpster fire, right? Like the directors hated each other. We lost the financing many times over, the checks didn't clear, we shut down, Basil was paying for wardrobe on his credit card. And then we screened it for domestics and everyone walked out.
Lionsgate bought the domestic for nothing on July 17th, and that day they're like, “We have notes.” We're like, “Well, the movie's done. We have no money. So, this is what it is.” And they're like, “You know what? We have no Saw this year. Let's put it out in October.” It was so arbitrary.
We screened it at Fantastic Fest and Harry Knowles tweeted, “This is what action movie should be.” At that point I thought, “Okay, I think people are going to be into this.” But still, it made like 30 million bucks at the box office, which was not – I mean, it was good, but we weren't popping bottles of champagne. It had an enormous life on VOD in the afterlife. And that's when they called and we're like, we think we should make a second one. But no one saw it coming.
CH: I wanted to ask a follow up about that with it now entering the realm of a shared cinematic universe and continuing to develop that while also trying to avoid anything like audience burnout – what's the approach to make sure that each of those new projects feels new while also still giving people what they want from the universe? Is that something you guys spend a lot of time thinking about?
EL: Yeah, I think you have to, right? I mean, it's not like Marvel. There's no IP. There's nothing underlying. There's no canon. So, we're making it up as we go along. We shot John Wick 4 three years ago. Ballerina will come out two years later. So, there is a bit of time in between. We talk about that all the time cause we're developing spinoffs and it's like, how much of the reoccurring characters, how much new mythology do we build out? We're lucky enough to have Keanu [Reeves] in Ballerina, but that won't be all of the spinoffs. But yeah, I think it's challenging. It's like, what's the new way? But the good thing is, we've built an interesting world that gives little snippets. So, I think people are really interested in the backstories and kind of learning more about the characters they love – but it's got to be worth it, you know? Chad [Stahelski] is super involved. Keanu's very involved. So, it has to be good to sort of make the cut.
CH: And, Blye, I'm a fervent believer that all art changes lives in some way or another, sometimes very abstractly, but Spotlight literally changed lives and even saved lives. How hard was that to get made?
BPF: Well, it was it was seven years from the day that we got the rights of the journalists involved to the day that it premiered on screen. So, yeah, these movies, as we all know, [there’s] a long road to getting where they need to go. And timing is everything.
Spotlight was set up a DreamWorks. I mean, we had pitched it. I won't won't bore everybody with the details, but there was were a few writers who had kicked the kick the tires before Josh [Singer] and Tom [McCarthy] ultimately came on to do it together. And we had other talent that was involved at various different points, but we had set it up with DreamWorks and then DreamWorks ultimately decided not to make it, and then we partnered with Open Road who went and made it. But there were so many twists and turns along the way that, yeah, it was one of those “Who knows if this is going to ultimately get done?” A lot of people who would say to us, “Nobody wants journalism movies. Hollywood's not interested. You got to have a love story.” There is no love story in here. “Nobody wants to see a movie about kids being abused.” You know, the litany of excuses, they're all there, but everybody gets that on any movie, and you just have to persevere and put the right package together and find the right team.
CH: Do you think it could get made today?
BPF: Ooh, good question. I do. I think it still could get made independently. First, I don't think that this is like a streaming play, or a studio play, but yeah. I mean, look at the movies that were nominated this year for the Oscar or the made the shortlist. It could fall within that realm.
I would say though, the cost might be different. We made it for just under $20 [million and I think you'd be hard pressed to be able to make a movie for that price today for that kind of movie. Currently, I think you'd have to find a way to bring it down, but I think you could ultimately do it.
CH: Did it take a toll on you and Nicole [Rocklin]? I feel like I discussed it with Nicole at some point, but making something that intense…was there an emotional toll?
BPF: You know, it was generally a really all-around positive experience. The one thing I would say is that it opened our eyes to things that I just didn't know existed. I didn't know the details behind the Catholic church story first and foremost – the abuse. It's sort of like Pandora's box. Once you've let it out, it feels like it could be everywhere. And it definitely changed a lot of perceptions. But the people involved [became] lifelong friends, the characters themselves to the filmmaking team. And I just think that the continuing impact that it had has been overwhelmingly positive and the reaction that we got even from the Catholic church itself [is the same].
I [also] think we dodged a bullet in many ways, too, in terms of just making a product that was so factually correct and in line with what really happened. It was very hard for us to be ultimately attacked at the end of the day, which was good.
CH: I'm curious. Both of these films – John Wick, Spotlight – I suspect have enabled you to make a lot of films in many ways. Their success set, larger things in motion for both of you, is that fair to say?
BPF: It has definitely been good in terms of our productivity since then. However, I would say scripted, you would have thought that it would be a layup from then on out. I think we thought that too. But most of the projects that we have done since then have been in the unscripted space. We've done a lot of feature documentaries and series documentary series podcasts, but we have not yet done another scripted – and that's not for a lack of having set up a number of projects in both the limited series space, the feature space and all that. It's been hard to get those across the finish line, especially in terms like the milieu in which we play, and it gets harder and harder with each passing year, I would say.
CH: Erica?
EL: Yeah, I think I probably had the opposite. We were studio producers for forever prior to John Wick. Basil had a first look deal at Warner's. And then we went independent, and John Wick was the first movie and Sicario was the second movie.
So, sort of in like one year and a half, those two movies came out and I think branded us as an independent company, John Wick made its investors their money back – which is really sort of, I feel like how you get anything going in this town – and Sicario was just a movie that was kind of like fancy pants, right? Like it was people's favorite movie of the year. It was Oscars and Telluride film festival, Roger Deakins, all sorts of those things. I think, look, success always begets success, it opens different doors. Also, there's like a branding element. I think I was able to sell Monkey Man “from the producers of John Wick”. It’s on many of the trailers of the other subsequent features that we do, which … becomes like the canon of your movies, right? The body of your work. And if you can consistently prove yourself, and the product is good, but also that you are a company that they want to work with, right? Like you do what you say you're going to do, you deliver on time and on budget, and.you’re a nice human – I mean, let's be honest, the barrier for entry is very, very low [in that regard] these days. [Laughs]
So, we've had a lot of opportunity. It’s helped. It's really helped,
CH: Is there a negative at all? And does it set you on a path as a company, maybe creatively box you in, in a way that wasn’t your original intention?
EL: I mean, I'd be lying if I said I had an original intention when I sort of got into this business. You sort of go where it takes you. I think the art of our business and Thunder Road is the pivot, right? Like, the Warner deal was great, but they were only making superhero movies and we were producers who just produced. We didn’t have a director at the helm or some fancy writers’ company was just. We just produced. That said, now everyone's producing. Managers are producing and it's, like, everyone can do it – actors. So, I think, I certainly still lose out on projects to fancier people and our joke is, John Wick was nominated a Golden Globe last year and National Board of Review was starting to sort of acknowledge choreography and stunts and, and stuntmen and action moves, which is great. It should be. But it was funny. We were in a lot of different rooms at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, and I sometimes looking around and think, “Do we feel like the like…I don't know…the distant cousin at the wedding sitting next to the Marty Scorsese table?” [Laughs.]
CH: Blye, you referenced earlier, you know, that you haven't got a narrative feature up since Spotlight and you've transitioned now to – I wouldn't say transitioned, but you've evolved into also producing documentaries. Can you contrast that process of identifying stories with developing them with features. Are they that different for you at an experiential level, but even an emotional level?
BPF: Well, you know, we're still doing we're still developing a lot of narrative features as well. We had a somewhat robust narrative limited series pipeline in development over the last few years, and a number of the streamers, one by one, they've gotten killed as that sector has just been sort of eviscerated.
My partner, Cori, is directing, I'm producing. We deal in a lot of true stories. [You] take a kernel of an idea and then flip it into a spec or a pitch or whatever it was. That's and we found Spotlight. [After that], a lot of stuff that came to us were true stories and, I think, as Erica just said, you start to realize, “Yeah, this will never get made.” So, it's like that efficiency of like, “Well, we'll never get made as a scripted feature. It just doesn't have those elements, but it's an amazing story. So, is there another medium in which it should live?” It was the perfect timing [because that’s when we saw] the rise of docs in the streaming space. There was an appetite for them. And so, we were able to parlay a number of these things that we decided weren't necessarily right for scripted into the docs and also too, since then, in the podcast space. So, for us to be involved, a good story is a good story. Just what medium are you telling it through?
CH: So, I’m curious about your decisions to become producers, or just come to Hollywood in the first place. Blye, when you came to Hollywood, was it to become a producer, or did you have other ambitions? I mean, in this world where now anybody can do it, as, as Erica was saying — and you have 84 credits on every hit TV series as a result — what was that original goal and did it have anything to do with the type of of stories you're telling now?
BPF: Not at all. This was in the era before the ubiquitousness of the internet and all that. I grew up in Washington state. I went to college in the Bay Area, Santa Clara, and I wanted to go to L.A. But I gave myself a year, and then I was going to law school. I didn't know anything else. I didn't know that there were other jobs, like the role of a producer and executive or an agent. I mean, I kind of inherently knew those things kind of existed, but I didn't know what I didn't know.
And so came I down and did that quickly, then I went off to law school at UCLA, which I loved. Then became a lawyer, which I hated. But I got to see what all those people from the Stark producing program were doing. And I thought, “Oh my God, I'm miserable at my desk, but what they're doing is far more interesting to me.” That was when I, as an attorney, started working with someone else who was in the entertainment space and ultimately ended up jumping off to partner with them.
That's kind of like the start, but no, I had no clue. The first things that we sold was like family comedies — which is ridiculous, if you think about it. I'm not funny.
CH: How about you, Erica? Did you always know it was Hollywood or bust for you?
EH: I went to Florida State. In college, I was like, “I'm going to go to Hollywood. I want to work in TV” cause I love television. Like, if my children ever said something like that? It's so crazy, there was no paying attention. No one was paying attention to what I was doing. My parents were MIA most of my childhood. So, I sent my resume to all of these places, and I got an internship on “Days of Our Lives”. I was a junior in college, which was like the ultimate moment for me. It was so exciting.
[After college], I was a Friedman temp. I don't know if you remember what those are. I would like go office to office and work for like horrible agents get yelled at, and then I interviewed at CAA a couple of times, and then finally got a job working for Jimmy Darmody, who's a talent agent, who interviewed like eleven boys and me and liked that I was from Jersey because he was from Jersey. Like, so arbitrary, right? And I worked for him for like a year and a half. I also just sort of didn't know what producing was. I knew I didn't want to be an agent, though, at the end of that.
Basil and Jimmy grew up together and were best friends, and one day Basil called and was like, “Do you wanna be my assistant? I asked, “Are you going to interview me?” “No, you’re fine. If you work for Jimmy, you're fine. he's like, I have this deal at Warner's. I'm leaving for my first movie. I'm going to Vancouver. So I'm not even going meet you. Just, like, show up. And so, that 20 years ago, which is crazy. And when I tell that story out loud, it makes no sense.
CH: So Thunder Road has pretty much been your only real job in Hollywood? That really is crazy.
EH: Everything I've learned is, I guess, from osmosis. Basil’s very much like, “I'm going to, like, throw you in the deep end, and you're just gonna figure it out.” I went on set a couple of movies as his assistant and then, I don't know, I just sort of like started doing it. Then he started having kids, and he didn't really want to go on set anymore, and so it just became this like slow progression of me kind of doing a lot more and there was always other executives. I mean, Cole, there were lots of them, but I sort of…I don't know. I'm like the cockroach that survives it all, and here we are.
BPF: I was going to say, Cole, for people who are listening — I think there's something really amazing in Erica’s story that I did not have, which I think is incredible. That’s mentorship. Their willingness to just give you the chance to earn the opportunity, to give you the opportunity to go to do it and to sink or swim, and to give you the responsibility, and to just let you take that and run with it — that's extraordinary. Truly. It just puts you miles ahead of everyone else.
EH: But also — and I always say this to like the younger generation — you have to take so much shit and make so little money for so long. It was always like, “How are we going to pay the rent?" I think that's sort of like helps with the producing, where there's no job too big or too small and as Basil’s assistant, it could be anything. That's what producing is, right? Like, you show up one day, and the movie has fallen apart. You got to fix it. Or you’ve got to fucking cast the pigs that are working in the scene. It's like anything is possible. You're doing it all. And so it's just like, “Do you have that in you?” And I don't think a lot of people do.
CH: Switching gears a little to screenwriting, which is such a part of producing, of course. A screenwriter friend of mine I believe you’re both familiar with, Jamie Linden – Erica, you’ve worked with him – he brought up the idea of an undeniable script. A script so good, it can’t be ignored. And yet, so many scripts we love don't get made. Do you think that there is such a thing as the undeniable script? Or the undeniable idea?
EL: I feel like if a script is undeniable, it usually at some point has some life to it even if it may go through many incarnations. A script we just launched it at AFM, I've been working for seven years, and it's had three different directorial incarnations and will have four different leads by the time we shoot it. And so I think the timing of things is sometimes meant to be, but I think if the story is right and the roles are right, and all the parts sort of fit together and it still feels timely, then it'll get made. I don't know if there's an undeniable reason. I think that's cyclical. Like, I'm sure someone is writing some L.A. fire script right now that feels undeniable to make – though that feels reactive to so many elements. But usually, if there are really amazing roles, some actor at some point will want to do it, who has enough juice to get it done.
BPF: Totally agree. I think about like all those scripts too over the years that made the Black List and the incredible ones that were just so amazing not even on the Black List, they do find a way. It just takes time. Like you said, Erica, I mean, it's just all the pieces have to come together. The timing has to be right, but they usually find a way.
EL: Well, the hard part about the Black List is the Black List is a lot of good writing, but not movies. Or not commercial movies, or not, you know, fully thought-out pieces, I think. I feel like a lot of them are these biopics that work like in the moment.
BPF: Right.
CH: Erica, do you, do you have a sense at this point of what makes a great screenplay as opposed to 20 years ago? Have you learned anything about scripts that you didn't know then?
EL: It’s so funny. When I first started working for Basil, we'd all have like our stacks of scripts and I would be like, “These aren't good enough.” And he’d ask, “But is there a kernel of an idea in there that is good and is worth workshopping and developing?” He really taught me what development is and how to make scripts so much better. He's still like amazing at that and still better at it than me. Today, I think I have a better sense of like, you know, reading something now, reading the tea leaves on something. I think you just sort of can call things faster, right? Like, is this writer ever going to get it there? Are we, am I ever going to get the level of cast that I need with this director? I think I'm more pragmatic, too. I have been around enough to now know there's so much therapy and nuance and, like, cajoling – there are so many other things that go into producing than just finding a good script. [Though], I do think that at the end of the daythe unencumbered amazing script is like the golden ticket in this town, right? So if you have that, then you can do anything, but it's not how a bill becomes a law anymore, unfortunately.
BPF: Unless you're, like, sitting on a pot of money and you can fully finance the production of the movie, you are not going to get a naked, amazing script landing in your lap. Not going to happen. You're going to have to go out and develop, find the idea, develop it, create it, all of that.
EL: Yeah, or overpay for it.
BPF: Yeah.
EL: I mean, that's my favorite question to write, to ask writers, especially like during the strike – what's in the vault? You know, what's unencumbered that's been hanging around that had seven shots, but didn't make it? Those are often the best scripts
CH: Well, thank you so much for this, you two. We're going to be to keep talking for my paid subscribers, but I've really enjoyed the conversation so far. I look forward to what we get into next.
As for you reading at home, come back for the bonus episode — which you can listen to here — where I’ll be talking with Erica and Blye about the state and future of the Hollywood industry, screenwriting with AI, good or bad, and a whole lot more. There’s going to be a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, but maybe even some illumination. If you’d like to hear more about all this, you can upgrade to a paid membership now for $6 US a month or $60 a year. For that, you get full access to hundreds of articles and educational resources for screenwriters, my podcasts’ in-depth bonus episodes, and nearly a hundred of my intimate artist on artist conversations with similarly giant filmmakers, authors, and comic book creators. I hope to see you there!
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