Indie - The Film3 Feed
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 itās practically a meme. And yet ā somehow ā 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 cannot.
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.
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. The gatekeepers didnāt 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 became legends.
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. I've answered the question more times than I can count. But a passing conversation was never going to be enough. So I wrote the book. This is my story.
You Are Now the Studio
IndieWire published a piece recently that stopped me mid-scroll. It's a sharp analysis of where indie film actually stands right now ā not the hopeful spin, not the doom spiral, just a clear-eyed look at the new reality. Producers are asked to think like founders. Directors are expected to articulate not just vision but value.
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. This is the first agent-to-agent production.
Creator-Owned Cinema Is Here
Last week, I wrote about how Markiplier's Iron Lungā a $3 million community/self-financed horror film ā debuted at number two domestically. That story is proof of concept: A creator who owned his work and activated his community.
The $44 Million Proof of Concept for Film3
Mark Fischbachābetter known as Markiplierāself-financed a science fiction horror film called Iron Lung for $3 million. After being denied by studios, he distributed it himself.
Women in Film and the Rise of Film3
For over a century, women's stories have been underfunded and undervalued. Yet the landscape is shifting through film3, reflecting a more diverse reality.
The Onchain Studio System
Weāre building our first real-world film3 studio where animation, storytelling, and blockchain share the same roof.