Independent - The Film3 Feed
The Film3 Feed
Posts tagged with independent(15)
Apr 27
The Reckoning Hollywood Didn't See Coming
The most expensive films ever made are underperforming. Franchise fatigue is realer than real. Theatrical attendance has been declared dead so many times it’s practically a meme. And yet — somehow — a horror film made for pocket change sells out midnight screenings. A niche drama with no stars and no studio backing finds its audience and keeps it. A scrappy, weird, specific little film does what a $200 million blockbuster can't.
Apr 20
Stop Performing. Start Making.
There's a version of film3 that exists entirely in pitch decks and Discord threads. Gorgeous whitepapers. Detailed roadmaps that go out eighteen months and somehow never fully arrive. Projects announced with fanfare and quickly forgotten, somewhere between the bear market and the next shiny thing. I've been in the space long enough to know the difference between someone building and someone performing building. The gap is almost always the same thing: they haven't sat down and done the actual work.
Apr 13
Film3 is Punk.
In 1976, the major labels owned everything. They owned the studios, the pressing plants, the distribution, the radio airplay, and the narrative about what music was allowed to be. Getting a record deal meant getting permission from people who had never picked up an instrument in their lives. The gatekeepers didn’t care about your sound or what you wanted to say. They cared about their margin. So a bunch of kids in London and New York stopped asking. The Ramones played two-minute songs so fast that they blew through traditional barriers.
Mar 23
The Book of Film3
People have been asking me what film3 is for years. At festivals, in DMs, after panels, at events with filmmakers who sense something shifting. What is film3? How does it work? How do I get involved? I've answered the question more times than I can count — in conversations, in twitter spaces, on stages, over coffee, over beer, in articles, the list goes on. Every time, I gave the best answer I had. But a passing conversation was never going to be enough. So I wrote the book. This is my story.
Mar 9
You Are Now the Studio
IndieWire published a piece recently that stopped me mid-scroll. The headline was "Don't Call It a Comeback: How Independent Film Will Be Rewired in 2026." It's a sharp analysis of where indie film actually stands right now — not the hopeful spin, not the doom spiral, just a clear-eyed look at the new operating reality. One line in particular landed like it was written directly at me: "Producers are asked to think like founders. Directors are expected to articulate not just vision but value."
Mar 2
Our AI Agent Raises the Money, We Make the Film
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: our AI agent is raising funds from other AI agents to produce a human-made stop motion animated film (and even trolling us a little for being so analog). Auctobot's pitch deck has no pictures. No emotion. Just code — a machine-readable investment memo delivered agent-to-agent, onchain, returning a yes or a no. And when it's a no, collecting data on why, so the pitch gets sharper with every pass.
Feb 23
Creator-Owned Cinema Is Here
Last week, I wrote about how Markiplier's Iron Lung — a $3 million community/self-financed horror film — debuted at number two domestically, expanded from 60 theaters to over 4,161 through a grassroots fan campaign, and has now crossed $48 million worldwide without a studio, a distributor, or a single institutional gatekeeper saying yes. That story was about proof of concept: A creator who owned his work, activated his community, and kept the economics. It's the film3 playbook minus the blockchain complexity.
Feb 16
The $44 Million Proof of Concept for Film3
Two weeks ago, a YouTuber did something Hollywood said was impossible. Mark Fischbach — better known as Markiplier to his 38 million subscribers — self-financed a science fiction horror film called Iron Lung for $3 million. He wrote it. He directed it. He starred in it. And when he shopped it to studios and distributors looking for a theatrical release partner, he was turned down across the board. One executive openly mocked the idea that the film would find an audience. So he distributed it himself.
Feb 9
MIXED: 211 Films, 44 Countries, One Night in Portland*
Last Wednesday, I found myself in a packed Tomorrow Theater for MIXED*, a hybrid film showcase curated by my friend Garett Stenson. The concept was simple but ambitious — 211 films submitted from 44 countries, distilled into a single evening in Portland, Oregon. But MIXED* clearly had bigger ambitions than a typical screening — less curated showcase, more catalyst for the kind of conversations independent filmmakers actually need to be having about AI.
Jan 25
Cyon Media and the Future of Film3 Distribution
Last week I had one of those phone calls that reminded me there are genuine people out in the world building film3 tools that actually want to put power into the hands of the makers. Meet Cyon. The women behind the company, CTO Tracie Mitchell and CEO Lotta Stenroos, understand that the film industry has long been defined by gatekeepers — from studio executives to streaming algorithms. For independent filmmakers, that system often means limited creative control.