Universal’s Michael Moses: My Modern Movie Playbook

The legendary chief marketing officer on selling urgency in the streaming age — and what we get wrong about Gen Z

The death of theatrical movies has been greatly exaggerated, says Universal’s chief marketing officer, Michael Moses.

“All the evidence that we have is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha really love going to movies,” Moses tells me on this week’s episode of The Rushfield Lunch. “There was a way of thinking that those kids were raised on the isolation of a small screen, and they wouldn’t know or crave a communal experience. But I think we’re seeing the exact opposite.”

Moses would know, since he’s where the rubber meets the road. In his more than 25 years at Universal, Moses has crafted expert campaigns for blockbuster hits like Wicked and Oppenheimer, plus franchises like Minions and Fast & Furious. He’s also one of the most thoughtful executives I’ve encountered in the industry, well aware of how the audience’s intelligence can be underestimated.

“We have a whole generation that’s very adept at never seeing advertising, and so the methods have become more challenging,” he says. “But I haven’t seen many recent examples of a real piece-of-shit movie finding great success. People are more demanding. If they’re going to go through the exercise of going to the theater, it’s got to be worth it.”

Watch the full interview above or read on for an edited transcript of our conversation, where Moses breaks down how you market “urgency” in a streaming world, why premium formats like IMAX are becoming a generational badge of honor and why directors like Christopher Nolan and Ryan Coogler may now be bigger brands than many traditional movie stars.

We also get into the Chalamet effect — “a generational actor and a generational promoter,” as Moses calls him — the return of comedies and what actually cuts through for an audience trained to skip ads.