Adam Torres and Payhuan Shiao discuss Immortal Studios.
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Show Notes:
How is Immortal studios disrupting Hollywood? In this episode, Adam Torres and Payhuan Shiao, Founder, Creator & CEO at Immortal Studios, explore Immortal Studios and how it is disrupting Hollywood with its entertainment model and distribution.
About Payhuan Shiao
Peter is our Founder and Chief Executive Officer, leading Immortal Studios in creating a new story universe to awaken the hero within everyone and defining a new business model centered around direct user engagement. Peter has a decades long career leading innovative entertainment and media ventures between the East and West, and has been active in empowering underserved communities.
Peter’s favorite past time as a boy was reading Chinese Wuxia novels (many of them written by his father Shiao Yi who is an accomplished author in the genre), and drawing these martial heroes he read about. Because of these stories, he aspired to be a modern day Xia, the transcendent martial Knight who mastered themselves, and stood for righteousness and justice in a world of great stakes, poetry, romance and consequence. Peter pivoted from politics to a new career in media as a means of expressing his mission for social transformation through stories. He feels incredibly blessed to come full circle back to his original love with Immortal
About Immortal Studios
Immortal Studios is an original content studio devoted to the martial arts fantasy genre, Wuxia 武俠. Through sharing stories of self-empowerment, self-discovery, connection, they hope to awaken the hero within you. Heroes are sometimes found in the least likely of places. Let’s start by looking within to awaken your hero.
The martial arts fantasy genre, or Wuxia, is an embracing one. Though founded in ancient traditions, they believe the genre represents values critical to modern times. While the heroes certainly have “superpowers,” these abilities are founded on the concept of qi, and are acquired through self-cultivation, training, willpower, and connecting to Nature/spirit. This means that literally everyone can become a hero. Immortal Studios want to create content that inspires discovery because they believe in each of us is a hero waiting to be awakened or reawakened.
Our goal is to take Wuxia to the global mainstream. We want to do this with an authenticity and respect of the tradition that we believe is missing in other representations of the genre and by interacting with contemporary ideas and situations.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right, so today my guest is Pehwan Xiao, and he is the founder, creator, and CEO over at Immortal Studios.
Pehwan, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. So, so a little, a little backstory for our audience. So I met pay one, maybe a was it a couple of weeks ago or so at an event? I believe. Yeah. At a light event. That’s what it was at off the top. And I, and you were telling me a little bit about about immortal studios and what you were, what you were up to.
And I’m like, oh man, I gotta have you on the show. Like this is going to be fun. So that, that’s some backstory as how we got here today. So we’re recording this February 6th. How are you doing in this rain, man? It’s going crazy in LA right now. It is going crazy, but showing positive signs, starting to dry up just a little bit.
Yeah, I saw, I, my mom called me yesterday. She’s like, hey Adam, I got a late call and I’m like, oh, people don’t, my mom doesn’t call me very late, she’s she’s east coast, so don’t call me very late unless something’s up. So I’m like, you know, immediately answer the phone and she’s like, are you okay? I’m like, what do you mean am I okay?
What’s going on? She’s like, I saw the news and they’re all glued to the news. I’m like I just, I just walked back from the Apple store, mom. Thank you for updating me that we’re in a state of emergency. It was getting pretty hairy, you know, just out of my home office. I’ve been watching, watching my pool and it’s never been this full before from, from raining.
I’m basically about two in one or two inches from my, my, my swimming pool, basically overflowing. Oh, wow. That is a, yeah, that, that, that never happens. Huh. That, that, that, that’s never happened. So, so, yes, it’s something real. Wow. And the new normal. And the new normal, unfortunately. So pay one disruption, Hollywood, two things when I think of Immortal Studios and what you’re up to, like, like, how are you doing this?
You know, there’s, just on, on several fronts. First of all, as you know, as a long time. Producer, creator and innovator within Hollywood. It’s not like I’m coming in out from outside the industry and saying a bunch of fanciful sounding things. so I think, but Hollywood has been right for disruption for quite some time.
Part of it is that just , from a business model perspective, it’s been operating on an engine that was created over , 100 years ago. You know, let’s make a widget, we’ll make it, and then we’ll go ahead and distribute it, we’ll send it. It’s hard to believe that, right? Yeah. Imagine, imagine other industries.
Imagine a car, right? What if we were still, like, oh, we’re operating off the Model T, like, without certain innovations? Like, you’d be like, what? Like, it doesn’t make sense. No, it doesn’t. Continue. I’d just like to bring that out. No, no. And Hollywood has kind of been built and run and governed by some of the major studios.
So, between the major studios that control. Most of the major activity, and they have kind of an iron clad, somewhat iron clad relationship to all the major means of production distribution. so they’re able to kind of effectively lock out a lot of the innovation. And part of piece when I talk about disruption is fundamentally, I think changing how content is developed, produced, and marketed in one of the ways we’re innovating and disrupting business as usual is that we have kind of brought the minimum viable product approach and MVP approach, which is kind of what given the world, all of our major technology projects that were able to bring their innovation to a live audience.
Group of customers and in concert with their reactions in real time, trying to modify and change things up until they’re perfected. In concert with customers. So Hollywood is, has never really had an MVP for the content that it produces. And, and one of the, our first acts of innovation has really bringing in, in the MVP concept to Hollywood through digital comics shown in producing real live comics, in concert with real fans who are customers in real time.
We’re able to reflect and change and augment things to their specifications and to the way they like it. In real time. I was always a big growing up comic fan. I’m still a big anime fan, like that’s probably if you go on Netflix or any of my other, like that’s what you see, like, that’s all you’re going to see.
So my algorithm is trained. Where did it start for you? Were you always into comics? Was it anime? Was it like, like, how did that part of it start for you, that fascination? Well, I’ve been a lifelong, I would say, a pop cultural fan, you know, my way in was actually through both comic books and martial arts novels, so I’m an avid consumer of, those kind of things, but of course, the comics predates this MVP concept, because everybody knows that, You know, comics and what they were able to build and in concert with fans created the Marvel and the DC universes of today that are roughly the number one and number two global franchises ever, which is crazy because if you think about the early years of like Stanley when he was trying to take it to the movies and and everybody thought he was crazy.
Like that was extra and what’s interesting is what you’re talking about, that hold that the industry has on it. I mean, I can’t prove this, but it’s pretty convenient that after they own it, right, then all these things get produced. But when he owned it and he was trying to be out there as a dependent, trying to get these things produced, it wasn’t happening.
Well, I mean, look, there was a time that it was not a no, it was not a no brainer. Agreed. Agreed. And of course in this day, and Marvel never really had the data and the engagement, so they were kind of running an analog version of what we’re talking about. Totally agree. Totally. Now with, now with social media and now artificial intelligence, one is that we can fundamentally Make the, the business of making, selecting, developing, producing far more in tune with, fans and actual users of the content, rather than having it come out, you know, the day before that it’s distributed and hopefully marketed.
it’s just about really buying really expensive marketing and distribution to get it in front of people, whereas the approach that Immortal has taken is really, it’s far more intelligence and engagement oriented than it’s ever been. So that’s one way that Hollywood is being disrupted by what we’re doing.
And, and of course. Anytime you bring in a new voice or a new perspective, we’re disrupting Hollywood, which has really been the domain of, I think, of Western pop entertainment by building a, an AAPI, Asian, Asian, American kind of Eastern story verse led story verse in Hollywood. That’s also another way of disrupting it, which is bringing new diverse voices and perspectives.
Into what is essentially a global business. So I think we’re disrupting it with a different kind of ideology and ideas that that whose time has come in truly making Hollywood a global business that it’s always intended to be as opposed to serving the voice and perspectives of frankly, a smaller minority of people.
Talk to me about how maybe that, concept has been received up to this point, because I feel like historically things have been so siloed, right? Like, you know, what box to put somebody in, and then that’s the storyline, and this is the way we do things, and this is the way, you know, like, how has that been received?
It’s been phenomenal. If you consider that, Asian faces up until maybe 10 years ago was never seen as really suitable to, play, a real protagonist in real roles. Hard to believe, hard to believe, but yeah, not too long ago. It was not believed it was possible. Yeah. And of course now to this day where, Asian faces are regularly.
Top lining major global sensations, whether it’s Shang Chi or everything everywhere all at winning all the major categories in the Oscars. So it’s a, it’s a phenomenal moment and frankly, it’s still not enough if you, consider the demographics of it all. So this is a trend we haven’t even seen top off.
Oh yeah, this is just like, this is baby stuff right now. I don’t know how to say this is baby stuff to what the potential is in the market. up until now, as you know, ultimately, entertainment is always about IP. And when you’re remaking things for the fifth or sixth time, and you consider that Asian cultures and stories have been around for thousands of years, and are Incredibly pervasive.
It’s almost as though the, the industry woke up one day and realized, oh my goodness, there’s so many vast sources of IP that, that we haven’t really ever considered in this new day and age, as now they’re looking for the next thing , and against this backdrop, we’re seeing our genre, the martial arts fantasy genre, really replacing it.
the space of Marvel and DC and capturing the imagination of, young people, everybody 30 and under. and you, I think you talked about your love affair with anime and manga. Two people have now really discovered this as the next prequel in place. it’s a really exciting moment.
And, we’ve been able to really capture all of that. in what we’re doing, whether it’s the MVP or a focus on a genre that has been really, really trending incredibly strongly. That not have an interconnected world yet. And this is where we’ve come in. So, between taking advantage of this cultural Zeitgeist moment of a different kind of representation to a 1st, To how we actually run the business and now to to the inclusion of artificial intelligence to really build out and support human creators that the things that we’re doing at an immortal are all very innovative and indicative of the new Hollywood that’s upon us.
How does play into this? Like, I’m curious. well, first of all, just concluded our first three year run, so where we’ve, effectively acquired one of the, the best martial arts fantasy libraries ever, so 61 titles, strong, thousands of characters. Congrats on that, first of all, congrats from inception to an accomplishment like that, like, that’s huge, congrats.
it is huge, so it automatically licensed. The comparisons to the marvels in the dc’s and we’ve also assembled the deep domain expertise from the editor in chief of marvel to the head of 20th century fox global to the head of publishing from dc. We’ve assembled deep domain expertise and games movies.
and comics, and we’ve now successfully launched six major, major campaigns through Kickstarter that have now put all of our comics in the one percentile of performance with diehard pop cultural fans, we’ve assembled tens of thousands of readers who are, who are now. You know, very regularly supporting our initiatives, so these and we also have now partnered with you know, some of the top creators, the writers and the artists on on our platform.
So we’ve assembled a very formidable group of assets that now position as to take the generative AI to the next level, because we have a data set of characters and stories that in our domain that is unparalleled. So we’re not kind of borrowing other people’s IP, we’re uniquely using our own IP in an unfettered way.
We also have human creators that we can lean into to really still lead the revolution of, and, be empowered by artificial intelligence as opposed to asking the machine just to write out of thin air. So between the human creators, the stories that we have, the preexisting IP and the deep domain expertise, and without an attachment to legacy businesses and practices, that , when you’re a Hollywood major studio with, you know, tens of thousands of employees, you can’t really change that quickly.
You’re so wedded to how things were done before you simply couldn’t even move, even if you wanted to. So we don’t have the freight that kind of weight. So as a nimble newcomer with all of the different assets that I just shared, we’re in a unique position to, to really take AI for what it is, which is.
A moment to revolutionize entertainment, which is super interesting. Yeah, that’s interesting because on 1 end, some of the other industries that are affected by this, like, I’ll pick on 1, for example, like banking banking is. They’re obviously the, online, or I shouldn’t say obviously, but the, the online banking, like some of the infrastructure, some of the popped up, like just online only banks that have come up and become massive pretty quickly, where another bank maybe has, you know, 150 year, you know, lineage.
And one is a little bit more nimble. I mean, they both have their pros and cons, but both of them are still under all of this regulation and all of this weight. period, even though that new bank may be disrupting because they don’t have a bunch of branches everywhere and all that expense. But if you think about something like entertainment, where it’s about the creators, it’s about the story, it’s about the imagination, the team, the distribution, the like, there’s really no limit to the creativity.
And it’s really just comes down to the leadership and what, they, and the vision, right? Like there’s, it is. Set for a huge disruption, unlike some of the other industries that have already been disrupted. But this one seems like it could go further, possibly faster. Who knows? It can, it can. And for us, what we’re seeing is that our ability to come up and deliver stories cheaper, faster and better and more targeted is unparalleled and unprecedented.
Once you know how to use it. So we’re, in the, in the process of building our own LLM again, off of the own properties and our own creations that have been humanly created. But now that we, know what the configurations of our creations are, we’re in a place to really make it go a lot faster and more targeted and cheaper.
Than it’s ever been. So, you know, in a generation. Go ahead, gimme a little bit of background onto, ’cause I, I’m just not completely familiar with it, on the martial arts fantasy genre, like teach me a little bit about the genre, please. Well, this original name in Chinese is the W genre.
And this has been around for thousands of years. is the original superhero genre, and part of its unique story is that it’s deeply related to the practice of Kung Fu. So Kung Fu, practiced in the East, has always delivered real superhuman strength and powers. And when these people in real life started to take on heroic deeds, it inspired the original stories and legends.
And over time these legends became comic books or novels and once movies were invented, of course, they became the stuff of movies. And in the 70s, along with Bruce Lee and the discovery of Eastern, of a lot of these Kung Fu films, they came out and became, you know global genre.
So that’s kind of the story of Wushan and inspired things like, like Star Wars, and of course, The Matrix. And now replacing superheroes as kind of a new mainstream kind of heroic vibe. And we see this progression because is kind of leaning into something that the superheroes no longer do, which is, how do you become heroes?
Yeah. So there’s a whole democratized, the hero’s journey where this is, where superheroes have kind of leaned into, oh, it’s radioactive spiders, it’s technology, it’s alien technology. It’s a lot of things that aren’t really germane to us in the real world. Whereas I think in this, moment of confusion and disempowerment, the storytelling with characters that really have a real human aspect to the journey with a lot of philosophy and real empowering, real empowerment is kind of, more relevant than ever. So that’s kind of a trajectory of of the genre itself And I came into the genre as a kid because my father was one of the top creators So I kind of grew up reading and understanding it and then I started practicing kung fu over 25 years ago and through a series of really amazing experiences I became a member of the shaolin temple and kind of was able to walk into the kind of behind the scenes of how these Yeah, heroes and these archetypes and these practices real exist.
So so man, that’s amazing So who better to be i’ll say this who better to be leading this movement and at immortal studios I mean you’ve seen it and also i’ve seen it and i’ve Back to the stories and the history and the culture. Yeah, so I consider myself a lineage holder of this unbroken literary genre and now really bring in all of those perspectives.
And roughly, when you look at the martial arts fantasy genre, the wuxia genre, there’s been a lot of sub influences. But just start with Bruce Lee. So Bruce Lee is kind of you mean, and by sub influences, do you mean maybe they pick, just pick pieces here and there? Is that what you mean?
Well, there’s different types of influences. So there’s been a grounded kind of more realistic kind of combat training scenario. That’s where Cobra Kai, that’s where Karate Kid would be. This is where Bruce Lee would be. And this has to do with the type of Kung Fu and the type of scenario. So these are more grounded.
And then you have kind of like the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragons of the world. Things are more stylized and the type of combat become far more supernatural almost. This is when they’re starting to jump around. Of course, this is actually through the deepening of the Chi, of the force. And so that is another.
rich sub genre that’s been part of this wuxia martial arts fantasy conversation. And then above that, you have kind of the zoo warriors. You have where Keanu Reeves has been in the Matrix. So things are now becoming very supernatural. They’re becoming intergalactic. And the type of combat is more supernatural.
Fireballs and energy starting to surface. And then the realm beyond that is like the realm of the monkey king. This is now intergalactic. You have interplanetary. You have heavens and hells. You have enlightenment. You have the buddhas and the gods. So that’s also a form of wuxia and that kind of action And subgenre is very prevalent in gamers throughout the world these four pillars have never been put together in one interconnected world And what we’ve now effectively done is we’ve brought all four of those influences into one interconnected world in a universe of content and stories that we’re now directly feeding into so that we’ve now kind of philosophically and creatively harnessed all of those elements into one interconnected world, which we shall have never had.
So we’re kind of breaking new ground and also breaking it outside of. a strict historical sense, because a lot of this stuff, usually people expect it to take place in kind of ancient Asia somewhere. Now we’ve made the whole playground modern day, and of course there’s Angelinos who’ve now made it based here in the City of Angels.
Amazing. These are some kind of new ways we’re breathing new life into this timely genre, making it far more globally palatable and accessible. so in storytelling in general even, obviously, Wu Shao is a little bit newer to me. I didn’t, quite know. Now, now I feel like I have a much better You probably, you were not familiar with the word, but you already knew the stories.
Absolutely. Which is what I usually come across. Like, oh, I didn’t know I was a fan of Wu Shao, but after I’ve spoken and heard about it, I’ve been a fan for a long time. Absolutely. but I’m curious in terms of, especially because of just your lineage with it you’ve obviously studied and you’ve been around it a lot longer than most that are newer to the genre, obviously.
Do you think, and if I’m off on this, this is just I’m just curious. Do you think that the fact that these stories have been, and some of these storylines and narratives have been refined really over thousands of years? I mean, to me, that’s like the ultimate test, because if something lasts that long, Like that generation after generation buying into something.
I feel like it has staying power. Like it’s more refined. The best kind of tends to stick over time. Would you agree with that statement? Or am I, am I reaching, am I reaching? No, no, no. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s real IP. Yeah. and the reason why they continue to exist and even flourish is that there’s a fundamental humanity in them.
And there’s a reason why, because we are bred and, we need heroes. We need that kind of inspiration. We really desire it. And we also want the lessons and the journeys of these heroes we follow are to be things that we could actually follow and adhere into our own lives. So, so, I think this is that moment.
Amazing. I think that’s a great way to end it, Pehwan. We need heroes. That being said That is our mission, by the way. Our mission is to awaken the hero in everybody. And that’s the mission of Immortal. I love it. how do people follow Immortal Studios get, engulfed into the work, into the comics, into the whole community?
How do they do that? Well, they can come and check us out at immortal studios. com This is where they can go deeper. They can follow us on social on Instagram. We are immortal underscore who shot that’s W. U. X. I. A. and I’m also active on Instagram as ancient futurist. So, these are 3 really good ways to get involved and stay engaged with me and also the work that we’re doing at immortal.
Fantastic. Well, again, appreciate you coming on the show. And to the audience, as always, appreciate you tuning in. Hey, you heard, you heard Pei Wan. We need heroes. Hey, be my hero right now and hit that subscribe button. Okay? That’s your invitation. And if you really want to be a hero, then don’t forget to leave that review because we sure do appreciate it here over at Mission Matters.
And Pei Wan seriously, I appreciate you making time out of your schedule to To come and educate myself and also the audience on, on your work at a Mer at immortal studio. So thank you. Thank you, sir.
