Sound Picture Founder and Producer Justin McGoldrick on Adapting Podcast IP for Film and TV

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff Umbro: Today on Podcast Perspectives, we are joined by Justin McGoldrick.

How long does it actually take for a podcast to become a TV show or film?

Justin McGoldrick: I actually keep a note card next to my desk that says, Do you wanna spend the next five years on this? Because that's what it usually takes.

Jeff Umbro: Justin's career spans some of the biggest names in entertainment, from the mail room at William Morris Endeavor to executive roles at MGM, Sony Pictures, and Illumination Entertainment. In 2018, he became the head of TV and film development at Gimlet Media. After nearly five years at Spotify following the Gimlet acquisition, Justin launched Sound Picture in 2024, partnering with studios including Hyperobject Industries, LAist Studios, Kaleidoscope, and Project Brazen to bring audio stories to life on screen.

Welcome to the show Justin.

Justin McGoldrick: Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Umbro: So turning a podcast into a television or film vehicle seems very out of reach to so many people. So I wanna bring your role down to Earth a little bit and ask you to begin by explaining just what you do every day.

Like what does a successful project look like?

Justin McGoldrick: A successful project will go through a lot of different phases, but in terms of breaking down my day, it's often listening to a lot of podcasts, reading a lot of scripts as samples to see who might be the right creative fit to adapt the podcast I'm listening to. Meeting with writers, directors, actors whose work I admire, who I feel inspired by, and who I could potentially package withthe material I'm listening to.

And just staying in touch with agents, managers, executives, getting a sense of where the marketplace is, what buyers are looking for. And by buyers I mean, you know, film studios, TV studios, networks. And then you know, in success, once a project actually gets sold, I will be across the project from start to finish. So working alongside the rights holders and the writer, director, other creative elements being, you know, a steward of the project. It's not my vision, but I'm working every day to ensure that someone else's vision gets realized. And, you know, that involves translating studio and executive notes. It may mean solving really idiosyncratic dilemmas that you might never be able to read about in a textbook, but that just sort of come up when you have a lot of really passionate, creative people coming together and you know, working a project, pushing it through the development pipeline. Going through several rounds of scripts of notes, attaching the creative elements that actually get a project green led into production.

And then from there, I'm, I'm on set, you know, alongside the other creative collaborators. And then also seeing a project through post and marketing and really, you know, from grain to glass, seeing a project through from start to finish.

Jeff Umbro: When you're on set, are you providing notes or are you just watching, or does it depend on the project?

Justin McGoldrick: It really depends on the project. I will often be there as a support system. My notes are not necessarily gonna be my personal feelings about it, but rather ensuring that like, you know, we're actually following through on the vision that everyone committed to that, you know, if the financiers see the material, they're gonna be happy with it.

But also just being there, you know, as, as strategic, emotional, and creative support for other people who, who are really tasked with seeing the vision through.

Jeff Umbro: How did those early experiences at the studios, especially at places like Sony and Illumination, prepare you for what you'd eventually do in podcasting?

Justin McGoldrick: So I've worked at Ivan Reitman's production company, which was a pod on the Sony lot. It was called Ghost Corps, and they were relaunching the Ghostbusters franchise. They also ran a company called the Montecito Picture Company that I was a junior executive at, and they were relaunching Baywatch and had a whole array of, of.

Jeff Umbro: So like the The Rock version of it?

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, exactly. You know, at that time we had just come out of a run of really, I mean, superb studio comedies, and I, at that time, I loved going to comedy shows. I loved the fact that I could scout new talent online, that I could go to comedy shows and find standups who might have original ideas that I could develop.

Then I was embedded at a company run by someone who's sort of a forefather of comedy in the last, you know, 40 years. And I saw in real time the marketplace conditions move so like swiftly towards the need for proven, you know, established IP that even for, you know, a company like Montecito slash Ghost Corps, the things that they were really getting made were the things that were based on, you know, global IP. And that sort of shift led me to jumping to illumination, which at the time they were developing, you know, I was working on sequels to Minions and Secret Life of Pets and Sing, but also, you know, Shrek 5 and Super Mario Bros., and really some of the biggest, you know, billion dollar IP in the world.

And I got to see how deliberate and intentional they were about managing that IP and that, you know, that that was not alchemy. That was a very, very thoughtful approach to how to find stories that have global resonance that lean into comedy as a way to reach audiences across languages and to celebrate really rich, beautiful worlds that deliver on the promise of a cinematic experience. But I also was finding that the things that I personally cared about were podcasts where these sort of minor key character driven stories, again, in really specific worlds, but, that had, you know, more of that kind of Squid and the Whale touch to them.

This was around 2018 and Gimlet was just about to release the adaptation of Homecoming on Amazon, and I got a call, you know, asking if I'd be interested to meet with them because they were looking to build an in-house utility at Gimlet where rather than, you know, having to always align with another producer outside of the company, they as rights holders could be both the rights holders and the producers, creative, strategic sort of directional producers of getting projects off the ground. And so, yeah, it was this sort of perfect marriage of right time and right interest and just, I was very, I, you know, I had been a real evangelist for the podcast industry. Like I, I mentioned, I was, listen, I always listen to, to audio books and I found myself in every meeting I was in, always coming back to the latest thing I was listening to. And so I wanted to follow that and go to a company that at the time was really kind of at the leading, cutting edge of what was happening.

But it was, yeah, it was this perfect marriage of something that I loved, which was podcasting. And then something that I, that I knew, which was film and TV.

Jeff Umbro: So that was 2018. You moved to Gimlet. They kind of had like a little sub-company underneath the Gimlet umbrella called Gimlet Pictures, and they were focused on podcast to screen adaptations, which at that point in time were still pretty rare. And you were employee number two of that division. So what did it look like to build a TV and film development arm from scratch within the inside of a bigger institution?

And this was pre-Spotify.

Justin McGoldrick: This was pre-Spotify by about six months. It was a dream come true, like couldn't have asked for a better experience. I was working. I was working with Chris Giliberti, who founded Gimlet Pictures, who was an early, very early employee at Gimlet and is absolutely the visionary for how you know, they were able to convert.

It was a great time to be at a podcast company, great time to be selling TV and in film and so we had a great run. I mean, I think, you know, for a year and a half, every project we pitched, we sold, and this was scripted projects, unscripted projects, features, TV, animation, live action. Really, you know, it felt like overnight webuilt a slate of things we could be really proud of.

And you know, a lot of that came from the team at Gimlet that was producing fiction shows run by Mimi O'Donnell. And then a lot of it was, you know, coming from Reply All or some of the formats on the unscripted side, like Heavyweight or Science Vs that you could envision what, you know, maybe a TV version of that looked like.

Jeff Umbro: I want to talk about a couple, like specific projects, but, but more broadly, a lot of these, like have seen the light of day, some of them have not. Using Heavyweight as an example, is there still a world where that could be adapted, and if so, what does that look like now that it's with Pushkin?

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, I can't speak specifically to the right situation for Heavyweight, but, but certainly for, like, generally speaking, if a project were to get pitched and sold, usually the deals run for 12 months or 18 months, and often there will be an optional additional 12 months or 18 months that the financier can trigger.

And so a podcast can be, you know, any rights deal will typically take a project, make it exclusive to a particular party for 12 months or 18 months or 24 months or 36 months, that comes at a fee. But once the rights become available again, there's a few different ways to go, but you certainly could go back out to market with it. There could be a passionate executive that wanted it at one company now is at another and they're gonna fight for it and champion it and feel like, you know, it's something they're gonna go to the mat for. You could re-engineer the creative and come up with a different take with different partners, certainly did that a number of times on projects, and then reapproach the market and sell it again. There's various other ways to kind of not let a project, whether on the vine, but, but, you know, keep sort of cracking at it if it feels like, you know, everyone is still invested in seeing that adaptation, you know, followed through.

Jeff Umbro: When you were like first joined Gimlet, you just mentioned that Homecoming was already about to premiere, so I know you weren't there when that was first pitched or developed, but that show is often cited as like one of the most successful podcast adaptations to date.

What did you learn from that experience? What are the qualities that made it translate from audio to screen so well? Were there learnings there that you tried to mimic across other campaigns or other IP that you were trying to develop?

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, certainly Sam Esmail coming to the table. A lot of that was thanks to CAA and, and you know, they, they packaged it up with Sam Esmail, with Julia Roberts. You know, they made it an undeniable package. It was, I think, Julia's first, you know, TV project, and there was just something really exciting and sexy about the fact that it was based on a podcast which no one had really seen before.

It was certainly still at that time where a lot of film actors, prestige film actors were doing TV for the very first time, and that created a lot of excitement. And so she is an example of, you know, being able to really drum up that enthusiasm because it was her first one.

Jeff Umbro: Beyond Homecoming, Gimlet had several other projects in development during your time there. Can you talk about some of those? Dolores Roach on Amazon Prime?

Justin McGoldrick: Dolores Roach, you know, that that was in a lot of ways, something that I felt I contributed a lot to, you know, as a, just an advocate for the project. And we sold it to Blumhouse very early in my time at Gimlet. And then, you know, it did take five years from that sale for the show to finally come out.

And that was, you know, a series that I was in Toronto producing on behalf of Gimlet and on behalf of Spotify for, you know, the, the pilot shoot, which was the summer of 2021, and then for the actual series shoot in the summer of 2022. But yeah, I mean, for the audience it reaches, it's got a great cult hit status. Yeah, I'm, I'm really proud of the show. It is a miracle it got on the air, you know. It's about a cannibal and it's funny and dark and emotional and has some really horrific kind of body horror elements that I don't think have ever been on TV before. And for all of those reasons, I think it was, you know, a huge creative success.

Sometimes shows don't find, you know, the audience they need to survive. Sometimes they need a little more time, you know, and I think had the writer strike not been going on and had the actor strike not been going on, and had it not been a moment where the industry was sort of reassessing the bets. It was, it was taking, you know, maybe we would've had a season two. I think it's very likely we would've had a season two, but that's why you need a bunch of projects.

Jeff Umbro: Was Amazon Prime giving you like numbers or any kind of feedback as to how the show is performing? Or is it just a black box where you just say like they either want more or they don't want more?

Justin McGoldrick: We had a room for season two of the show, so they had invested in seeing through what the next season would look like. And, you know, I think we figured out in the process of making Dolores what worked and what didn't. And so the scripts and the team on season two, the writer's room really delivered on what we felt made the show special.

And so it's a shame that we won't be able to get it made, but you move on to the next one. We don't get, you know, direct feedback on performance. It was for the first few weeks in the top 10 on Prime, so it, you know, it was number two for behind Jack Ryan, which had also just premiered. And, you know, you could look at this as counter programming to that pretty on, on pretty opposite ends of the spectrum.

But, you know, I think shows like Jack Ryan perform a lot better on Amazon than a show like Dolores Roach. So kudos to them for taking the chance on something as bold as Dolores. And yeah, very, very grateful to have had the chance to at least get one season of the show knowing how challenging the material is.

Jeff Umbro: I have to ask what happened with Man of the People, which for anyone who doesn't know, is a Reply All episode that was optioned and it had Richard Linklater and Robert Downey Jr. attached. Are we ever gonna see that?

Justin McGoldrick: No, I don't think so. In our imaginations, yes, I, you know, link, both of Linklater's most recent films I absolutely loved, but most things that you learn about are probably, you know, the 10% of the things that are actually, you know, happening between in packaging and sales of projects, and.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah, they want to build buzz and hopefully that helps to get it made. It sounds a lot like Homecoming, like Julia Roberts, Sam Esmail, big names on both sides of the, the camera, so I, I get it. There's a zillion factors like timing, money, partnerships, et cetera. But that one I think was, was a really special piece that everybody was hoping to see.

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, I appreciate that. And that came in, you know, came together a bit before my time too, but I think it's just a testament to just how tough it is to get a project made and why it really is a miracle when you see anything on the air 'cause of the number of hurdles that you have to go through to get a company to invest millions or tens of millions of dollars into a single idea.

And so even when you have all of the creative element, even when you've done everything right and you've put together all of the pieces that make it as risky, a proposition to a financier as possible still doesn't mean you're gonna get the result you want, and that's just part of producing.

Jeff Umbro: We've seen Spotify move on from Gimlet. We've seen Amazon move on from Wondery. A lot of these bigger institutions seem to have decided that they can make more money doing something else. Is it as simple as that, that they just think that there's like a better business model somewhere else? Or is there like some other problem or like ghost in the machine here?

Justin McGoldrick: A lot of it is that simple. You distill any business down to how much money, what they're investing in returns for them. Like it, that makes a ton of sense to me. I think the Hollywood bubble burst at the same time, I couldn't even quantify to you how much more challenging it is now than it was five years ago.

Jeff Umbro: Well, it's also like the amount of access that people have to content. Now, I don't wanna be that guy, but like I was just listening to an interview today about somebody making a movie with Sora, and they're like, you know, things that would've cost $200 million now you can do on your cell phone. And I'm not advocating that. All of that has factored into a lot of the decision making that these bigger orgs are making.

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't, I don't blame them for that. And I think, you know, the changes that they've made to where their priorities are have probably benefited their stock prices and just to the overall kind of health of their businesses, so.

Jeff Umbro: Which is important, but not everything. And, and that's the piece that we all live in the fringes of.

Justin McGoldrick: Exactly right. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro: Let's talk about the money side of things. How do podcasters actually make money from these deals? What does a payment structure look like if I'm selling a podcast to a TV studio. Like we don't have to talk about specific dollars, but what is a producer fee? What's an option fee? What is a development fee?

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, so what you probably are gonna see is an option fee that could range wildly from five grand to a hundred grand, even higher.

Jeff Umbro: If it's Robert Downey Jr, it's gonna be higher.

Justin McGoldrick: Maybe, maybe not. I mean, you know, again, just like with podcasts, budgets coming down. Same thing in TV and film, and so I think, you know, option fees are less than they used to be, but yeah, you're gonna see, you know, an upfront payment of an option that gives, you know, that financing party the exclusive right to develop the adaptation. And that basically gives them that exclusive right for 12 or 18 months. If you are lucky enough to get a green light, then you're gonna see the purchase price kick in, and that can often be seven to 10 times the amount of the option fee. And let's say you get through the first 12 months and they're not sure yet, they're like, we don't have a, we don't, we haven't found the right writer. We, we don't have the, the right, we still believe in this, but we need more time. They would then pay the option fee again. And the difference between those two option fees is that the first is applicable to the purchase price. So let's say it's a 10 grand option with a hundred thousand dollar purchase price, they'd be paying a hundred thousand total.

So, you know, a 10, and then 90.

Jeff Umbro: So you get 90 if they make it.

Justin McGoldrick: Right. And, but if, but if the second is additional, so you would be looking at 110. The, typically, the second option is not applicable to the purchase price. And then some deals will be bifurcated for the rights fee. And then the other element will be the actual producing services. That's a more complex fee structure, depends on who you're selling to. But if you are expecting to be an active participant on the adaptation, or rather if you're expected to be, you know, an active participant on the adaptation, then you'll have basically two deals that are made, one for the rights of the podcast you own, and then one for the producing services and those deals. Structures can vary.

Jeff Umbro: Do you have any cool stories?

Justin McGoldrick: I got the whole array of stories. I teach a college course about the entertainment industry, and you'll have to en enroll in that class if you want to hear some of them.

Jeff Umbro: All right, so taking a step back, you have had this incredible journey through the entertainment industry starting in the mail room at WME and then to MGM, Sony Pictures, illumination Entertainment. Can you walk us through that path and what drew you to the business of film and television?

Justin McGoldrick: I love stories. I think as a kid it felt like a really alluring career path. You get to be creative, you get to have a lot of influence over culture. There is, you know, certainly the sense growing up like, oh, I can have like a really lavish lifestyle and I think that that probably draws a lot of people to the business.

Jeff Umbro: Everyone saw Entourage.

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, exactly. It, it all started with Entourage. Really, for me it was like seeing big fantasy epics as kids, like X-Men and Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, but then seeing Noah Baumbach, like Squid and the Whale as like a teenager and sort of seeing this whole other world of cinema that just felt like, you know, the thing that, you know, connected to me in, in a really personal way.

My mom's a great storyteller. My grandfather was a great storyteller, and so I just have always loved listening to stories and even as a kid, you know, listening to audio books.I did a lot more than I did read, which sort of comes back around to my career later. I moved to LA with, you know, the aspiration of wanting to be a producer and having some sense of what that meant, learning a lot more after I got here. The creative element of being able to read scripts, give notes, collaborate with people who are more talented than me, that was that, that all felt like a really good fit for my interests. And then I like the process of putting things together and, and being alongside others who are, who are really, you know, the, the visionaries.

And so yeah, it just was a great fit. I did what a lot of people do when they move to LA and wanna work in entertainment. I went to a mail room at a talent agency and that gives you just a very introductory, kind of grad school look at how the business actually works versus, you know, how you see it portrayed on TV.

Jeff Umbro: It's almost like a cliche at this point. I was a glorified assistant at the book publicity job that I had before Podglomerate, and I sat next to the accountant. It was just a coincidence. Sitting next to the accountant taught me 90% of what I know about the business today at Podglomerate, because, you know, I just watched her pick up the phone and call people and ask why they hadn't paid their invoices.

The things that you don't ever think about are really the pieces that will make a system run.

Justin McGoldrick: Yeah, and often those can be the most exciting and interesting elements of a project, you know, like just the kind of strategic maneuvering and often simply the alchemy of like a project coming together you can't really predict or plan for. And, you know, sometimes the stars align.

Jeff Umbro: We're almost out of time, but I do want to spend a minute talking about Sound Picture. Walk us through what you're doing, who you're working with, how that differs from Gimlet and Spotify.

Justin McGoldrick: Certainly, so Sound Picture, it's a production company. It's a TV and film production company, and I partner with podcasters, sometimes creators, sometimes music rights holders, and find opportunities in TV and film. I'm not a manager or an agent. I work really closely with rights holders' reps. But yeah, I am a producer proper, really being that advocate and steward of a project from start to finish, just like my time at Gimlet and Spotify, but now working with a wider array of rights holders, usually podcasters, and usually podcasters who are not embedded, whose work is not controlled by, you know, a big conglomerate or they're not embedded in a, you know, a bigger company. So it's oftentimes independent podcasters who have a lot of interest in TV and film, and are just looking for someone who's going to put in the calls, who's gonna stay active and driving a project forward, really from start to finish. So finding the right creative elements, writers, directors, actors to package up the adaptations and then work with their reps to sell the projects, pushing the project through development on set and through post and marketing and all of the things that you sort of expect a producer to do.

But rather than having a specific genre that I focus on, you know, I have friends that focus on genre romcom. My focus is finding audio IP to adapt for TV and film. And, and that means projects span scripted and unscripted features and TV, very similar to, to my time at Gimlet.

Jeff Umbro: If someone is listening to this, are there boxes that they should check before they call you? What would those boxes say?

Justin McGoldrick: I am limited by what the market is, marketplace is looking for right now. So I have a good sense of what that is, but I would just say, you know, does it feel like an idea that has commercial resonance, and that's a good starting place. But, I, you know, door's wide open. I, I truly listen to as many podcasts as I possibly can to the detriment of, well actually, you know, my Fitbit is grateful for all the steps I get while listening.

But I love consuming podcasts and always eager to hear more.

Jeff Umbro: And you all should take 'em up on that. soundpicture.co. I'm sure you'd love to hear your ideas. I'll leave us with like an anecdote. We launched Missing Pages a few years ago, and which was a literary true crime like serialized show. And we had intended on pitching this out for IP derivative stuff. And I got three or four emails from development agents that hit me up and all of them wanted to talk about like, how can we turn this into a TV show?

And, and I went down that rabbit hole and, and soon learned, I have a cool idea, but like I don't own the rights to any of the thing in the show. We're just reporting on the subjects that are in there. They don't need to work with me or do anything with us if they don't want to because we don't have that kind of access.

So I, I'll say as well, if you are going to be the person that's gonna develop this into a project with Justin or otherwise, make sure that there's something there that kind of differentiates you from anybody else who could do it.

Justin McGoldrick: I think the proprietary nature of whatever it is that's getting shopped is the most critical thing.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you Justin. Really, really appreciate your time and I literally have 25 questions on my sheet here that I didn't get to ask you, so we'll have to do this again soon.

Justin McGoldrick: Let's do it again.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Justin for joining us. You can find him online at LinkedIn or at soundpicture.co.

For more podcast related news info and takes you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing marketing or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerate.com.

Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all socials @podglomeratepods. This episode was produced by Chris Boniello and myself, Jeff Umbro. This episode was edited and mixed by José Roman. Thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Erin Weiss, and Sheeba Joseph, and a special thank you to Dan Christo. 

Thank you all for listening, and I’ll catch you all in a few weeks.