This piece was born from watching the trailer for Dreams of Violets, the fully AI-generated feature programmed at Tribeca, and from my own reaction to that trailer alongside other examples of AI-generated film and video content I have seen over the past year. AI is already part of the creative process. It is already being used for research, development, image generation, pitch materials, previs, budgeting, marketing, post-production support and countless other tasks. Pretendi

In a previous blog, I talked about the collapse of pre-sales and how streamers have unintentionally hollowed out parts of the independent film ecosystem. One example stood out. The Electric State. Netflix reportedly spent around $320 million producing the film, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made. Which raises a pretty uncomfortable question: What if that same money had been spread across 50 independent films instead? Not because all 50 films would’ve been gr

Warner Bros. recently defended the performance of T he Bride! A $90M film (plus $65M marketing) that opened to $7.3M domestically and $13.6M globally, by calling it a “bold swing” in a risk-averse industry. They’re right about one thing. The industry is risk-averse. But they’re wrong about this being risk. Because this isn’t risk. It’s concentration. The Illusion of Risk Spending $150M+ all-in on a single film isn’t bold. It’s fragile. You’re concentrating all your exposure i

It’s a dangerous question to ask, because it forces us to examine whether the industry that celebrates bold filmmakers would still allow them to emerge. In 1992, a former video store clerk made a low-budget crime film called Reservoir Dogs . The film premiered at Sundance, disrupted the festival and announced the arrival of a singular voice. Before that, he had sold the script for True Romance . That filmmaker was Quentin Tarantino. The obvious narrative is one of talent and