There’s a scene near the end of Il Demonio (The Demon) — Brunello Rondi’s 1963 film, so thoroughly vanished from circulation that finding a watchable copy feels like a minor archaeological triumph — that made me stop the frame and sit in silence.

A peasant woman, believed to be possessed by the devil in a sun-scorched village in southern Italy, bends herself backward and begins to walk on all fours with her belly facing the ceiling.

You know this shot. You’ve seen it in The Exorcist.

William Friedkin cut his version — Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) crab-walking down the stairs — from the 1973 theatrical release because the wire work wasn’t convincing enough. He restored it, digitally removing the wires, for the 2000 re-release, and it became one of the most discussed scenes in horror history. What almost no one discusses is where he almost certainly found it: in a low-budget Italian film made a decade earlier, shot in the actual villages of Basilicata and Calabria. In Rondi’s version the effect lands perfectly. There are no wires. There is only the woman, the stone floor, and a creeping, documentary-precise dread that settles in the chest and stays there.

This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern — and it sits at the heart of one of the most wasted cultural opportunities in contemporary cinema.

Thesis One: Italy Helped Build the Language

Italian horror didn’t borrow a visual vocabulary. It created one.

Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello Spazio, 1965) follows a crew that responds to a distress signal from a remote planet — which turns out to be a trap set by a dead civilization seeking new bodies to inhabit. The landscape is littered with skeletal remains in armored suits. Watch it before you watch Alien (1979): the distress beacon as lure, the derelict spacecraft, the fossilized crew member, the bio-mechanical atmosphere that H.R. Giger translated into one of cinema’s most iconic design languages. The debt is so substantial that Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon later acknowledged taking the giant skeleton idea directly from Bava — he simply couldn't find a better way to introduce the concept.

Bava’s Bay of Blood (Reazione a Catena, 1971) went further: two of its kill sequences were reconstructed almost shot-for-shot in the first Friday the 13th films, without credit. Dario Argento’s formal innovations — the killer’s subjective camera, the operatic use of color, the Goblin scores pressing against the image — became the shared inheritance of De Palma, Carpenter and Craven, absorbed so thoroughly that their Italian origins became invisible.

What Italy was exporting was not imitation. It was origination: a complete set of tools for cinematic fear that the rest of the world adopted and claimed as its own.

Thesis Two: Italy Built an Industry

Here is where the story gets genuinely remarkable.

Italian horror of the 1960s and 1970s was, in the truest sense, an export industry — engineered from the ground up to travel. Producers recognized early that the domestic market was not the primary target. Horror generated modest returns in Italian theaters. The real appetite was abroad, particularly in the United States, where American International Pictures distributed Italian gothic horror on drive-in double bills alongside Roger Corman, and in a European circuit hungry for something that felt both foreign and viscerally familiar.

The strategies that followed were sophisticated. Directors adopted Anglo-Saxon pseudonyms — Bava became "John M. Old," Margheriti became "Anthony M. Dawson," Assonitis became "Oliver Hellman" — to make the films appear American. International casts were assembled for their exportable look. Since the Italian industry post-synched all dialogue anyway, a multinational cast cost nothing extra. You could shoot with an American lead, an Italian crew and a German co-producer, dub the whole thing in London and nobody in Los Angeles could tell the difference.

The result was a body of work so consistently in demand internationally that it routinely attracted foreign pre-sales — making Italian horror structurally independent from the domestic financing apparatus that would later strangle Italian cinema. When Italian television absorbed film financing in the 1980s and 1990s and public subsidies began their long decline, most of Italian cinema became dependent and fragile. Horror, at its peak, had been neither. It had been pre-sold to audiences who wanted it before it existed.

But the most underappreciated dimension of this industry was not its originality alone. It was its responsiveness.

Thesis Three: They Read the Room

Italian horror producers were not only brilliant originators. They were also extraordinarily fast at reading audience signals and producing into global appetite — including demand generated by films they had partly inspired in the first place.

When The Exorcist became a global phenomenon in 1973, the Italian industry moved immediately. L’Anticristo (The Antichrist, Alberto De Martino, 1974), starring Carla Gravina, offered a possession narrative rooted in Italian Catholic tradition rather than American suburban anxiety — darker, stranger, and in some respects more psychologically disturbing than its model. In the same year, Ovidio G. Assonitis (directing as “Oliver Hellman”) released Chi Sei? — known internationally as Beyond the Door — which reached American audiences rapidly enough to generate a plagiarism lawsuit from Warner Bros. When Jaws rewrote the rules of summer cinema in 1975, Assonitis was back within two years with Tentacles (1977), a creature feature shot in English with an international cast and distributed directly into the American market.

This was not cynical exploitation. This was industrial intelligence: a read of what audiences were responding to, followed by rapid production of something that fed that appetite — often with enough creative divergence to be genuinely interesting rather than merely derivative.

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Fast Forward to 2026

Mark Fischbach — Markiplier, 38 million YouTube subscribers — self-funded, directed, starred in and self-distributed a horror film called Iron Lung to over 3,000 cinema screens. The film became an indie phenomenon. But what made it work was not just the film. It was the process made public.

For years before release, Fischbach brought his audience inside the making of it — the creative decisions, the financing struggles, the setbacks, the choices. His community didn’t just watch Iron Lung. They had followed its creation, argued about its direction, lobbied for its theatrical release, bought tickets in groups to make screenings viable. By the time the film opened, the audience had been co-invested for years.

Now look at what the Italian producers were doing in the 1970s.

They were reading audience signals — through distributor feedback, box office data from foreign markets, and the sheer speed of pre-sales — and producing into that market with remarkable agility. The mechanism was different. The logic was identical: understand what your audience wants before you make it, and let that understanding fund the work. The Italians did it structurally, through an international distribution network that transmitted audience appetite back to Roman production offices. Markiplier did it directly and transparently, in public, on YouTube. Different technology. Same model.

The Market Is There

And the market they are both addressing has never been larger. Horror is the genre that most reliably generates high returns on modest production budgets, which is why Blumhouse built an empire on it and why Eli Roth could sell 10% of his production company directly to his fans for $6 million, specifically to make the kind of uncompromising horror that studios wanted softened.

Streaming has dismantled the last remaining barriers to international distribution. The success of South Korean and Japanese horror on Netflix has proven definitively that audiences will cross any language barrier for quality. Shudder has built a global subscriber base around precisely the kind of cult and international horror that Italian cinema produced at its peak. The platform infrastructure that once required a partnership with American International Pictures now fits in a phone.

And horror, almost uniquely among genres, is positioned to benefit from AI-assisted production in ways that preserve rather than diminish its essential qualities. Horror lives at both extremes simultaneously — in atmosphere and suggestion, a frame held one beat too long, the presence of something just outside the visible; and in spectacle, the creature design and practical effects that gave us Freddy Krueger and Art the Clown. AI addresses both. The irreducibly human creative decisions get extended without being replaced. And the budget ceiling that once made ambitious creature work the exclusive domain of well-funded productions comes down dramatically — putting the full range of the genre within reach of a small, independent team.

No More Excuses

Italy sits on a catalogue that the world has been plundering, uncredited, for half a century — and on a set of cultural raw materials that no other country’s cinema has properly explored: the folk superstitions, the baroque visual heritage, the particular Italian relationship with death, beauty and corruption existing simultaneously. Rondi documented all of it in Il Demonio with an anthropological precision that Friedkin studied and adapted. It is still there, waiting.

The exportable brand was built once before, from nothing, by producers working with small budgets, borrowed equipment and an instinctive understanding of what international audiences wanted before those audiences had asked.

The horror ecosystem is over $104 billion and estimated to grow toward $182 billion by 2032. The tools to make, distribute and reach audiences independently have never been more powerful or more affordable. The participatory model — read your audience, build for their hunger, let them in, bypass the gatekeepers — is one that Italian cinema practiced at industrial scale before anyone had a name for it. The only thing missing is the decision to start.

The spider-walk was Italian first. The alien distress signal was Italian first. The audience-responsive genre industry was Italian first.

It is time to be first again.

Steven Soderbergh just told the world he’s using AI to complete a John Lennon documentary and a Spanish-American War epic. Last week, the Academy announced that only roles “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” are eligible for acting awards — and that screenplays must be “human-authored,” with the right to investigate any submission.

Two moves. One industry. Completely opposite directions.

And somehow, they’re both right.

The reflexive take is that this is a war — human creativity versus machine efficiency, authenticity versus speed, art versus slop. But that framing misses what’s actually happening. Hollywood is not fighting AI. It is drawing the legal perimeter of authorship. And the creators who understand that distinction are going to own the next decade.

The Academy’s rules are a design brief, not a death sentence.

What the Academy is actually saying is this: we don’t care how you make the film. We care whether enough human intent survives in the final work to make it legible as art, not output. Soderbergh himself admitted it: AI “desperately requires very close human supervision.” That is not a concession. That is the entire point.

The critics calling his John and Yoko documentary “Liverpudlian slop” are missing the ratio. Ninety percent of the film is archival stills. The AI-generated sequences (roughly ten minutes) exist specifically where no literal imagery could. That is a creative decision, not a surrender. The question is not whether AI is present. The question is who is directing it and why.

Prompting is not a button press. It is a discipline.

Soderbergh’s own description gives it away: “you need a Ph.D. in literature to tell it what to do.” That is not a complaint about the technology. It is an accurate description of what prompting actually demands — precision, cultural reference, tonal control, the ability to constrain a system that will otherwise drift into generic noise. In horror production, where I am currently working across multiple AI models simultaneously, that drift can often be a gift: the uncanny wrongness of a broken prompt can produce something no deliberate output ever could. However, in a historical epic, it is a liability. The hybrid creator knows the difference and adjusts accordingly.

This is what separates orchestration from automation. Automation replaces judgment. Orchestration requires it.

There are two kinds of orchestration, and you need both.

The first is creative: combining tools, models, and human editorial judgment into something none of them could produce alone. The director conducts; the machine plays. The output may involve AI, but the vision is irreducibly human.

The second is strategic: structuring the workflow so the final work retains enough demonstrable human authorship to be protected, credited, and monetized. This is not cosmetic. This is the difference between intellectual property and a floating digital artifact that belongs to no one and can be claimed by anyone.

The Academy’s rules are forcing this second kind of orchestration into the open. Creators who have been vague about their process — or who have leaned too heavily on generation and too lightly on direction — are being asked to account for themselves. That accountability is not a penalty. It is a standard. And standards, historically, separate professionals from amateurs.

The real threat is not AI. It’s passivity.

The backlash to Darren Aronofsky’s AI-generated series, the Late Night With The Devil controversy, the discomfort around The Brutalist‘s accent refinement — none of these failures came from using AI. They may rather have come from using it without sufficient craft, transparency, or human editorial authority. The audience is not opposed to the tool. It is opposed to the absence of a director.

Some critics have invoked Satoshi Kon’s Paprika as the definitive counterargument: hand-drawn surrealism built entirely from human imagination, proof that cinema has always had the tools to build dreamscapes without algorithmic assistance. It’s a fair point — and a beautiful film. But it mistakes the argument. Nobody is claiming AI dreams better than Kon did. The claim is narrower and more interesting: that a skilled director can deploy AI as a specific instrument within a larger human vision, precisely the way Kon himself used 3D CGI selectively inside an otherwise hand-drawn world. The question was never AI versus human. It was always who is conducting, and how well.

Raoul Peck used AI-generated images to illustrate misinformation in his Orwell documentary. Radu Jude used it satirically. Both cases worked because the human intent was legible. The AI served a vision. It did not replace one.

Soderbergh has always been a systems thinker — he has shot films on iPhones, compressed productions to skeleton crews, and built independent distribution models while others waited for studio greenlight. His AI experiments are consistent with that logic. The question is not whether he should use the tools. It is whether he can maintain directorial authority over them clearly enough that the work survives as his.

Authorship is not a wall. It is a skill.

In a world flooded with generated content, the scarce resource is not production. It is judgment. Taste. The ability to know what to keep, what to discard, and how to make the machine serve a larger intention without erasing the human fingerprint.

The Academy’s new rules, the industry’s defensive posture, the audience backlash — all of it is pointing toward the same conclusion. Pure automation produces output. Orchestration produces authorship. And authorship, in this industry, is the only thing that has ever been worth owning.

Not prompt. Orchestrate. Not generate. Direct. Not replace. Combine.

The future does not belong to the creators who reject the machine, or to the ones who surrender to it. It belongs to those who can move between both worlds without losing authorship in the transition.

That is the orchestrator's edge. And right now, most of the industry is still arguing about whether to claim it.

$300 million. That’s what Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi would have cost under a traditional studio model. A globe-trotting thriller requiring 200 distinct locations — Antarctica, Antigua, Las Vegas, and dozens more — with the travel, set construction, lighting crews, and logistics that each one demands.

Director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow) made it for $70 million instead.

The difference? Every single location was generated by AI.

Twenty shooting days. One converted car showroom in West London, wrapped in gray screen and tracking points. Actors, costumes, props, and minimal physical set builds — stairs, platforms — physically captured. Everything else built in post by a team of 55 AI artists working with Acme AI & FX’s custom pipeline. The result, according to producer Ryan Kavanaugh, is 100% photorealistic environments matched precisely to camera movements and performances.

The film heads to Cannes in May seeking distribution. The audience test is still ahead. But the production argument is already settled.

This Isn’t a Tech Demo. It’s a Category Shift.

The $230 million gap between what Killing Satoshi cost and what it would have cost is not a production efficiency story. It’s a financing story.

A $300 million production is a studio exclusive — a bet that only an institution with the balance sheet and risk appetite of a major can absorb. A $70 million production with a realistic theatrical path is a fundable independent. It can attract private capital. It can be greenlit by producers who don’t need a boardroom of executives to approve a slate. It can be made.

AI didn’t just make this film cheaper. It moved it from one category of possibility to another entirely.

McKinsey, in a recent analysis of generative AI’s impact on the $181 billion global content creation value chain, described the shift this way: the Hollywood adage of “fix it in post” is giving way to “fix it in pre.” AI front-loads quality control into pre-visualization and pre-production, compresses physical shooting schedules, and makes the cost structure of ambitious content legible in a way it has never been before. Studio executives cited in the same research expect efficiency gains of 80-90% in VFX and 3D asset creation.

That’s not a marginal improvement. That’s a structural change in what content costs — and therefore in who can finance it.

Soderbergh Sees It Too

There’s a useful irony in the fact that Steven Soderbergh — the director who recently called Hunting Matthew Nichols “truly unnerving” and helped launch an independent Canadian horror film onto 1,000 screens — is now building AI into his own production workflow.

Soderbergh is currently finishing a John Lennon and Yoko Ono documentary in which, as he told Filmmaker Magazine, he has “been working with AI lately.” His description of how he’s using it is worth pausing on: “AI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space. And that’s been really fun because you need a Ph.D. in literature to tell it what to do.”

He added the caveat that matters: “Like every other piece of technology, it desperately requires very close human supervision.”

This is the formulation that cuts through the noise of the AI-in-Hollywood debate. Not AI as replacement. Not AI as threat. AI as a precision instrument that expands what a filmmaker can put on screen — provided the human with the vision is directing it.

Soderbergh is also developing a Spanish-American War film he intends to make with “a lot of AI,” telling Filmmaker Magazine the subject “becomes more timely every day.” A period war film — historically one of the most expensive genre propositions in cinema — is now on the development slate of an independent-minded filmmaker who has spent his career finding ways around the studio system’s constraints.

The Global Proof of Concept

While Hollywood navigates union agreements and public perception, India’s film industry — the most prolific on earth — is running the experiment at scale.

Collective Artists Network, whose AI studio Galleri5 is producing content for JioStar and major Bollywood productions, reports AI cutting production costs to one-fifth of traditional filmmaking in genres such as mythology and fantasy, with production timelines reduced to a quarter. CEO Vijay Subramaniam has put the cost reduction figure at 60-70%. Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia have all made early bets by partnering with Indian filmmakers. One Bollywood production house expects content generated or assisted by AI to account for one-third of its revenue within three years.

The technology is not coming. It has arrived, and it is being deployed at production scale by studios that are not waiting for permission.

What Actually Gets Disrupted

The instinctive fear around AI in filmmaking is that it displaces talent — actors, writers, directors, cinematographers. The Liman production tells a different story. Killing Satoshi employed 107 cast members and 154 crew. The human creative core was preserved entirely. What AI replaced were locations — the logistical infrastructure that drove the budget from $70 million to $300 million.

The disruption is not to the people who make films. It is to the argument that making certain films requires a studio.

That argument — that complexity requires institutional scale, that ambitious content demands a balance sheet only a major can provide — has been the studio system’s most durable competitive advantage for a century. It was never really about taste, or relationships, or marketing muscle. It was about the ability to absorb risk at a scale no individual investor could match.

AI is compressing that risk. When the risk compresses, the gatekeeping argument compresses with it.

There’s a phrase gaining quiet traction in certain corners of the industry: creators are the new studios. Doug Liman just made a globe-trotting thriller with a star-studded cast for $70 million on a soundstage in West London.

It’s becoming difficult to argue otherwise.

Read more on the distribution side of this revolution — how independent content creators are bypassing traditional gatekeepers entirely — in the previous post.

April 10, 2026. Over 1,000 screens across North America. $600,000 in the first weekend. Production budget recouped in 72 hours.

No studio. No traditional distributor. No marketing budget.

Hunting Matthew Nichols — a found-footage Canadian horror film shot in 12 days for $275,000 — just did what the industry said couldn’t be done without the machinery. Director Markian Tarasiuk and writer-producer Sean Harris Oliver didn’t wait for a distributor to believe in them. They flew to Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Knoxville, sat down with exhibitors directly, and made the case themselves. They also built an ARG-style puzzle trail online that mirrored the film’s found-footage mystery, turning prospective audiences into active investigators before the first frame flickered.

Steven Soderbergh called it “a sneaky, simmering take on the true crime folk horror genre that boils over and becomes truly unnerving. Given the shocks, I would bet audience participation is guaranteed. And stay for the credits.” Variety, Deadline, and Bloody Disgusting all covered the rollout — not because a studio sent a press release, but because the story was too structurally significant to ignore.

They are not the only ones.

The Markiplier Moment

One month earlier, content creator Mark Fischbach had shaken the foundations from a different angle.

Iron Lung — self-financed for $3 million, written, directed, and starring Fischbach under his handle Markiplier — started with a plan for 50 theaters. Then he did something studios cannot manufacture: he asked his 38 million subscribers to call, email, and visit their local theaters to request screenings. Fans who happened to work in exhibition vouched directly to their managers. What began as a handful of venues ballooned to more than 3,000 screens in North America and 4,100 worldwide.

Opening weekend: $17.8 million domestic, $21.7 million globally — finishing a remarkable second, and on some individual days first, to a Disney-backed Sam Raimi release. From a $3 million film with no studio and no traditional marketing spend. Just a creator community built honestly over 13 years.

Fischbach said it plainly: “There is a want to go see movies. There is a yearning to go see them. And the business can work. But for some reason, everyone in this industry thinks that a movie needs to cost $200 million... It’s absurd. The technology is there for pretty much anybody to make what they want to make.”

The mechanism of his success is not replicable by a marketing department. Authenticity built over years, delivered to an audience that treats a creator’s work as a shared event, is structurally different from a studio release. You cannot buy it. You can only earn it.

The New Ecosystem

These aren’t isolated miracles. Boutique labels — Subtex, Rich Spirit, Sumerian Pictures, Watermelon Pictures — are emerging precisely to serve this new logic, treating releases as community events rather than product launches. Not all of them are winning yet. But the direction is unmistakable, and the door is widest for content creators who arrive with their own audience and their own data.

Meanwhile, the legacy giants are consumed by consolidation. The Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger, valued at approximately $111 billion and expected to close in Q3, has its shareholder vote set for April 23 and a DOJ review running through summer. While the lawyers and bankers work out who owns what, the new infrastructure is being built around them.

The AI Layer

The reason lean productions are now viable at scale isn’t only audience ownership — it’s the technology layer that has systematically compressed the cost of everything that used to require a studio’s infrastructure.

Horror and thriller content is arguably the space most naturally suited to AI-augmented production. The genre rewards constraint. Limited locations, psychological tension, atmospheric worldbuilding: these are precisely the areas where generative tools deliver the most immediate return. Pre-visualization that once required months now happens in days. Localization that demanded expensive dubbing pipelines is being replaced by AI-driven tools that preserve emotional register across languages at a fraction of traditional cost. A $275,000 Canadian horror film can now credibly target European and Asian markets on release day — something that would have required a distribution deal and a six-figure budget a decade ago.

Predictive audience mapping has undergone the same transformation. Markiplier’s team used real-time box office intelligence to scale dynamically from 50 to 3,000+ venues based on live demand signals. That capability is becoming accessible to any independent team willing to build it into their workflow from the start.

The aggregate effect is a fundamental compression of the overhead that once made studio infrastructure feel necessary. The functions it performed are being automated. The argument for surrendering creative and financial control — we’ll absorb the risk, you take the deal — is losing its leverage.

The Future: Many Hollywoods

The gatekeeping model is cracking because the risk has been decentralized. When a content creator owns their audience, their data, and their distribution logic, the traditional studio proposition stops making sense.

The Paramount–Warner behemoth will dominate certain tiers of content for years. But it will increasingly dominate a tier that a growing share of audiences is actively choosing to look elsewhere from — while the creators who have built real communities quietly construct the infrastructure that comes next.

That infrastructure already exists. It opened on 1,000 screens in April for $275,000. It crossed $21 million globally for $3 million. It is being built one subscriber, one exhibitor conversation, one AI-assisted pre-visualization at a time.

The question is no longer whether this model works.

The question is whether you’re building toward it — or waiting to be disrupted by it.

The Hollywood executive didn’t slowly fade away. It was optimized out.

I was a studio executive for many years. Watching today’s consolidation tear through the entertainment industry—and the human cost that follows—I can’t help but recognize how different the business once was. I lived my Hollywood career when the market was still vibrant, competitive, and run primarily by movie executives, not highly paid accountants and algorithms.

In 2005, if you lost a job at Paramount, the town was still big enough to absorb the shock. You could look toward Fox, Sony, or Universal. It wasn’t effortless—losing a job never is—but the ecosystem was liquid. You dusted yourself off, worked your network, and had a real shot at finding a new chair.

Today, the lot is empty. The music has stopped, and half the chairs are missing.

As we watch the post-consolidation “optimization” process at Paramount/Skydance—and at other companies positioning themselves for an M&A exit—we aren’t just seeing layoffs. We are seeing a digital version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where human functions are subtly replaced by AI agents and efficiency protocols.

The “Studio Executive”—that titan of the 20th century—is being erased.

A Carousel of Petty Humanity

I learned this the hard way. Being fired is always disorienting, but for a C-suite executive, the financial blow is often softened by severance. The real violence is emotional. It is a sudden, psychologically destabilizing “loss of status.”

But the hardest part isn’t losing the title. It’s the sudden confrontation with a carousel of petty humanity.

The silence is immediate. It starts with the assistant you saved from the Xerox room—suddenly terrified to be seen talking to you, as if being let go was contagious. It extends up to the “friend of a lifetime” in a top industry position, whose line suddenly goes to voicemail.

Arthur C. Brooks, in his brilliant book From Strength to Strength, calls these “Deal Friends” (as opposed to “Real Friends”). These are people who are friends with the deal, or friends with the Chair. They were never friends with you. When you stand up, the friendship stays seated.

Luckily, I found I had made a lot of “Real Friends”—colleagues, former bosses, even clients—who not only remained but became business partners.

But the lesson was seared into me: The Corporate Tribe is a myth. It is a temporary alliance of utility.

The Agentic Executioner

Which leads me to the real question: does the Studio Executive job even make sense anymore?

If we look at the hierarchy today, it is a barbell. At the very top, you have the “God-King” CEOs (the Ellisons, the Zaslavs). At the bottom, you have the gig-economy creative (the writers, animators, directors).

In the middle? A horde of walking dead—not individuals, but roles.

We must be honest: a lot of these “intermediate” corporate jobs were useless from the dawn of time. The late anthropologist David Graeber famously labeled them “Bullshit Jobs”—roles designed for people specialized in holding meetings about meetings, preparing strategy decks that no one reads, or supervising people who don’t need supervision.

In the 2000s, with historically high profit margins, the industry had enough fat to support these “Royal Courts” of VPs and SVPs. Today, Private Equity, consolidation, and new technologies strip-mine these layers first.

Ed Zitron calls this the “Rot Economy.” He argues that modern executives stopped building things and started financializing things. They don’t know how the movie is made; they only know how to massage the spreadsheet to make the quarter look good.

This is why the current layoffs feel different. It isn’t just a cycle; it’s an extinction event.

Take the recent internal memo from Paramount/Skydance. David Ellison—a leader who brands himself as a technologist—ordered a return to the office 5 days a week starting January 2026. This seems like a contradiction for a digital-first company. But it’s not a contradiction; it’s a filter. Whatever the stated rationale, the effect is clear: whoever doesn’t align is graciously phased out.

He didn’t say “AI,” but he didn’t have to.

We are entering the era of the Agentic Executioner. An AI agent doesn’t need a “Director of Operations” to tell it to schedule a meeting. It doesn’t need a “VP of Strategy” to run first-pass analysis on a P&L. It doesn’t need a sales executive to draft a licensing package. It just does it.

If your job is “coordination,” “supervision,” or “process management”—you are the target. The “human middleware” is being deprecated.

The Only Way Out

So, is there still room for an executive in Hollywood?

Yes—but not for the kind that needed politics, opacity, and institutional inertia to survive.

The executive of the next decade won’t be a custodian of hierarchy. They will be an entrepreneur embedded inside—or entirely outside—the corporation. Someone who understands technology not as a threat, but as leverage. Someone who can orchestrate AI systems, decentralized pipelines, and human creativity into something coherent.

I tend to agree with Evan Shapiro: the future executive is a Corporate Creator.

But let me sharpen that definition. This isn’t someone who “manages” people. It’s someone who makes decisions under uncertainty. Someone who understands audiences as living systems, not demographic slides.

This executive doesn’t survive by controlling access. They survive by creating value others can’t replicate. They don’t hide behind decks. They tell stories—with data, with instinct, with taste.

And Taste, finally, is the real moat.

Because AI can generate infinite content, but it cannot decide what matters. It cannot feel when something is culturally early, emotionally false, or historically inevitable. That judgment is learned, earned, and sharpened through failure—often through losing the chair entirely.

The era of the Empty Suit is over. The lot is empty.

But for the first time in decades, that might mean something liberating. Because when the chair disappears, so does the illusion.

And what remains is the only thing that was ever real: what you can actually do.

Generative AI has an engine problem: it is running out of quality fuel. For years, the industry relied on scraping the messy, copyright-laden open web, but that tank is running dry. Now, for the first time, a major studio has agreed to provide the premium, high-octane alternative.

In mid‑December, Disney announced a three‑year agreement to license more than 200 characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars into OpenAI’s Sora video model and ChatGPT Images, alongside a 1 billion dollar equity investment and deep API usage across the company. Fans will be able to prompt short videos with Mickey, Simba, or Darth Vader inside a controlled Sora environment, and a curated selection of those clips will appear on Disney+. Meanwhile, Disney gets preferential access to OpenAI’s tools for internal production and employee workflows.

On the surface, this looks like an “AI gimmick” to entertain kids and goose engagement on Disney+. Underneath, it’s something much more important: a template for how Hollywood can solve AI’s “input problem” without giving up control of its crown‑jewel IP—and how creators might eventually participate in that value instead of being pushed out.

What is the “input problem”?

Modern generative models live and die on their training data. The better and cleaner the inputs, the more coherent, controllable, and commercially useful the outputs. For the last few years, the industry has mostly addressed that need the lazy way: scrape the open web, hoover up copyrighted material at planetary scale, and hope fair‑use arguments can outrun the lawsuits.

That approach is now hitting a wall. News publishers, record labels, authors, and studios are suing. Regulators are circling. Creators are understandably furious that their work has been turned into model weights without consent, credit, or compensation. And on the technical side, models trained on noisy, unlabeled, or legally dubious data are harder to steer and harder to deploy safely at industrial scale.

In other words: everyone needs better inputs—legible, high‑quality, clearly licensed datasets that can be pointed to in a contract, not just in a research paper.

How Disney turns IP into clean fuel

This is where the Disney–OpenAI structure gets interesting. Disney is not handing over its entire vault. The license is narrow and specific: more than 200 animated, masked, and creature characters, plus environments and props, are cleared for Sora and ChatGPT Images, while human likenesses and voices are explicitly excluded. That gives OpenAI exactly what a video model craves—consistent, stylized, richly annotated visual worlds—without touching the most sensitive labor issues around actors.

From OpenAI’s perspective, that corpus is a goldmine. Instead of synthesizing a “Disney‑ish” style from scraped frames and bootleg uploads, Sora can now train and fine‑tune on canonical assets, with a clear contractual basis for doing so. The inputs are higher fidelity and the legal risk is lower. For a model that aspires to power ad campaigns, branded shorts, and interactive experiences, that mix of fidelity and legal clarity is exactly what brands will pay for.

Disney, for its part, isn’t simply renting out characters. It becomes a major customer of OpenAI’s APIs, pulling those same models into its own pipeline: previs, concept art, animatics, background animation, synthetic crowds, internal tools for marketing and planning. The studio is effectively saying: We will give you premium inputs; you will give us premium tools.

There is also a structural bonus: the deal designates Sora as a kind of licensed sandbox. Fan videos created inside that sandbox can be curated for Disney+, and, crucially, Disney’s rights to those derivatives are baked into the terms up front. Instead of chasing takedowns of viral AI mash‑ups across the open web, the company can let a controlled amount of fan fiction flourish inside its own walls and participate in the upside.

What this means for Hollywood

If you zoom out, this is less a one‑off partnership and more a prototype for how studios might engage with AI going forward.

First, it reframes IP as an input asset class. For a century, studios treated their catalogs as libraries to be licensed downstream to broadcasters, DVD sellers, streamers. In an AI‑native world, those same catalogs can be licensed upstream into models as structured training data. The business question shifts from “Who gets the Sunday night window?” to “Who gets to feed on our characters when they train the next generation of agents?”

Second, it resets the power balance with AI labs. When all your data comes from scraping the open web, the labs hold the leverage. When what you need is recognizable, global IP—Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar—the leverage tilts back to the rights holders. Disney has used that leverage to get equity, tool access, and operational benefits rather than just a check. Expect Universal, Warner, and others to come knocking next, each with their own flavor of character packs and guardrails.

Third, it forces unions and guilds into a more nuanced conversation. A narrow license for non‑human characters is not the same thing as green‑lighting AI to replace actors or writers, but everyone can see the slope. If AI tools make it cheaper to produce animation and VFX, who participates in those savings? If a fan‑generated short built in Sora becomes the seed of a spin‑off series, how are the human writers, designers, and performers acknowledged?

These questions are uncomfortable, but at least they’re now anchored in a concrete deal structure instead of hypothetical doom scenarios.

Where decentralization and democratization fit in

As someone who spent years inside the studio system and now spends as much time talking to indie creators as to lawyers, this is the part that matters most.

Right now, Disney’s Sora sandbox is not decentralized. It’s a tightly controlled, corporate‑owned walled garden. Fans can play, but Disney owns the ball, the field, and the scoreboard. That’s fine as a first step: it shows that the “input problem” can be solved with licensing, not just scraping, and it proves that legacy IP and frontier AI can coexist. The risk is that if we stop here, we simply rebuild the old studio system inside new AI rails.

The next step is to push that model toward shared ownership.

Imagine a version of this architecture where:

• Character packs are issued as on‑chain licenses, transparently defining what models can do with which IP.

• Fan‑created shorts that cross certain engagement thresholds automatically earn a share of the revenue they help generate.

• Creators can “bring their own models” into interoperable sandboxes instead of being locked into a single platform’s rails.

• Collective bargaining over AI doesn’t just negotiate what cannot be done, but also how new value flows back to the people whose work powers these systems.

The Disney–OpenAI deal doesn’t deliver that future. But it does something important: it acknowledges, in binding contracts and real money, that inputs are not a free lunch. They are assets. They can be licensed. And once that principle is accepted at the very top of the IP food chain, it becomes much harder to argue that individual artists and smaller rights holders have no seat at the table.

Where this goes next

Over the next 12–18 months, expect three things:

1. Other studios will try to replicate the model, each with their own mix of carrot (character packs, equity upside) and stick (lawsuits, takedowns).

2. AI companies will begin to compete not just on model performance, but on the quality and provenance of their training inputs—“Disney‑grade” data versus whatever they can scrape.

3. Creators and their representatives will push to turn these sandboxes into genuine revenue streams instead of just free R&D for the studios.

If you work in entertainment, this is a good moment to stop thinking about AI as a mysterious black box and start thinking about it as a contract question: Who provides the inputs? Who controls the outputs? Who gets paid when value is created in between?

Disney just showed one answer. It won’t be the last.

If you look at the global entertainment landscape today, one thing is clear: Animation is no longer just a “genre” or a medium for children. It has evolved into the primary engine of modern pop culture.

We are seeing a massive cultural shift, driven largely by the explosion of anime, which has grown from a niche interest into a dominant global force with demand surging 118% in the last two years alone.

But to understand why this is happening, you have to look at the biggest hit you might have missed: K-Pop: Demon Hunters.

The Cultural Binder

This Sony Pictures Animation/Netflix film didn’t just perform well; it became a “monster smash,” creating a “monocultural moment” that outperformed established pop stars on the music charts.

It succeeded because it is the prototype for a new kind of content: the Cultural Binder.

Unlike the rigid “house style” of traditional Disney films, Demon Hunters is a collision of styles. It blends 2D anime influences with 3D depth, authentic Korean folklore with Western superhero beats, and K-pop aesthetics with global action. It rejects the idea that content must be “localized” for one market. Instead, it trusts that the internet and on-chain generation—which has no borders—will instinctively understand this shared aesthetic language.

As Crunchyroll’s president Rahul Purini recently noted, this generation craves stories that are “real and different”—darker, more complex, and culturally fluid.

But here is the problem: The traditional Hollywood machine is built to kill exactly this kind of risk-taking.

The $200 Million Straitjacket

The “gold standard” animation pipeline—perfected by giants like Pixar and Disney—is a financial fortress. A single feature film often requires several years of labor and budgets that may exceed $200 million.

This “gatekeeping of cost” is a creative straitjacket. When a movie costs $200 million, it cannot be “dark,” “experimental,” or “niche.” It must be a four-quadrant, family-friendly, merchandise-driven event.

This economic model actively prevents studios from telling the very stories—like Demon Hunters or adult-skewing anime—that the audience is actually demanding.

But that barrier is about to vanish.

Enter OpenAI: The New Competitor

The news that shook the industry recently wasn’t a sequel announcement. It was the revelation that OpenAI is officially entering the film business. They are backing a feature-length animated film titled Critterz.

This isn’t a tech demo. It is a declaration of intent. OpenAI is no longer just a tool provider; they are entering the arena as a direct competitor to the legacy studios.

The vital statistics of Critterz represent a new industrial standard:

• The Timeline: Nine months (vs. 3-4 years).

• The Budget: Under $30 million (vs. $200 million).

This represents an 85% reduction in cost and a massive acceleration in speed.

Crucially, OpenAI isn’t claiming to replace humans entirely. Critterz is a “hybrid” production. It employs human writers (the team behind Paddington 3) and human voice actors, but it uses generative AI models to handle the heavy lifting of design, rendering, and asset creation.

This mirrors the disruption we are seeing in live-action TV. While a high-end studio drama still costs $3-6 million per hour, we are seeing the rise of “micro-dramas” produced for roughly $60,000 per hour (about $1,000 per minute). The economics of production are collapsing everywhere.

It all leads to the big question: Can a combination of today’s generative tools actually hold a narrative together?

The Test Drive: One Afternoon in the Cockpit

I decided to put this to the test using a real-world project, an adult-horror animated project in development at Synthetic Frame called The In-Betweeners. It is exactly the kind of “risky,” R-rated concept that the traditional $200 million studio model would struggle to greenlight.

My challenge was simple: Create a reasonably compelling, visual proof-of-concept teaser for this project. And instead of taking months, I wanted to do it in one afternoon.

The challenge with AI filmmaking isn’t just generating a pretty image; it is the sheer complexity of the infrastructure. Producing a trailer requires directing, editing, sound design, and a unified creative vision.

HeyFlo, a proprietary algorithm that we are developing and testing, acts, among other things, as an orchestrator—a digital production manager that leverages multiple generative AI models simultaneously to hold that entire creative and technical infrastructure together.

I acted as the director, giving HeyFlo the creative vision. It then coordinated the “crew”:

• Sudowrite and Claude handled the script structuring and narrative breakdown.

• Midjourney generated the art and style frames.

• Hailuo AI, Kling, Runway Gen-4, and Luma’s Dream Machine generated the video motion.

• ElevenLabs provided the character voices.

• Suno composed the original score.

• DaVinci Resolve’s neural engine assisted in the final assembly.

The Result

Is it Critterz? No. Is it Pixar? Not even close.

But looking at the result, it serves its purpose. It has some basic narrative coherence. It showcases the idea we intend to develop, and it acts as a credible teaser for a project that previously lived only in our notes.

The total cost for the compute credits and API calls? Under $20.

This experiment confirmed something profound and empowering. The revolution isn’t just about lowering costs; it is about accessibility. Until now, the technology required to visualize a story at this level was locked away behind massive budgets and multi-year timelines. It was inaccessible to all but a few.

Generative AI has unlocked those doors. Today, any creator can test-drive a high-concept idea, visualize a world, and produce a tangible asset instantly.

The tools are all here. The revolution is here. You just have to test-drive it.

A few days ago, out of pure curiosity, I decided to watch an episode of NCIS. It’s reached season 23 (which premiered on October 14), and I had abandoned it somewhere around season 13, after Tony and Ziva left. I thought, “If it’s come this far, and they’re still churning out spin-offs from ‘Origins’ to ‘Sydney,’ it must have evolved into something extraordinary.”

Ten minutes in, I turned it off. My God, how boring.

And not ‘boring’ as in ‘cheap’—it still has all the action and polish of a network show. It was ‘boring’ in its fundamental rhythm. The pulse was so predictable, and its dramatic texture so thin, that it was impossible to stay engaged.

It’s already a challenge, in an age where we’re all spoiled by the dopamine-hit storytelling of a Vince Gilligan or a Taylor Sheridan, to accept that the “procedural” still exists. But this was something else. With the legacy squad gone, NCIS felt pointless—slow, with characters so flat and one-dimensional they make the streaming-era anti-heroes look like Shakespeare.

And to think, I’m still part of that target demographic—the one that supposedly falls asleep in front of the TV, keeping the audience meters running so the ad breaks still have value.

But nothing. The show, like so many others of its kind, induces narcolepsy.

This realization was jarring because I spent years selling that very show across half of Europe for CBS. NCIS (and to a degree, CSI) was a goldmine. It was the driving force—more so than movies—for entire content packages, much of which the broadcasters didn’t even want. Before that, when I was at Paramount, it was the same story with big-screen tentpoles like Mission: Impossible. Securing them sometimes became an obsession, often blowing the deal’s financial and strategic terms far out of proportion.

When I started at CBS, NCIS was a financial battering ram. In countries like Italy, it could hit audience shares of 14-15%, triggering lucrative ratings bonuses on top of the main, already strongly maximized license fees. If I had one or two of those shows in my catalog, I knew most of my annual sales budget was already made.

But now, who still watches it? And what chance does a once-powerful franchise like this have of surviving in the new era of micro-dramas and AI-enhanced content?

The Four Horsemen of Irrelevance

It’s not just that the show got old. The world around it changed, and this kind of content is being attacked on four fronts at once.

1. The Generational Chasm: An audience raised on Fortnite and TikTok has a different internal clock. They crave participation, remixing, and personalization. They don’t want to just watch a show; they want to intervene in it, alter it, and make it their own. A rigid, one-way procedural is an artifact from another century.

2. The Rise of “Local” Content: As a studio executive, I sold American content as a formidable, high-quality alternative to riskier, more expensive local productions. Today, that equation has flipped. Authentic local productions are booming, audiences have a higher “identification” with them, and they are dominating the cultural conversation in their home territories.

3. The Geopolitical Ice Age: The biggest shift isn’t just on-screen; it’s in the real world. The “soft power” I used to trade on is eroding. With America’s growing political isolationism and the perception of rising “xenophobia,” U.S. content is no longer the default cultural reference. It’s just one more option on the menu, and an increasingly stale one at that.

4. The AI Tsunami: Finally, technology is disrupting the entire production and distribution process, allowing anyone to become a studio. This is the ultimate “unbundling” force.

These forces are pushing “legacy” U.S. content toward irrelevance. So what is the future for these massive, aging IPs?

The answer might be to let them go.

The Heretical Solution: Unbundle the IP

This is where things get truly radical. I was recently listening to Matt Belloni’s podcast, “The Town,” where he interviewed Edward Saatchi, the CEO of a startup called Fable. Saatchi is developing an app called “Showrunner,” which bills itself as “the Netflix of AI.”

The concept is as brilliant as it is terrifying: it’s an AI-driven platform that allows users to create their own animated episodes of TV shows from simple prompts.

Fable famously—and controversially—used South Park to demonstrate its research, creating new, unauthorized episodes that were good enough to make Hollywood panic. Now, Saatchi says he is in talks with major studios to license their IP. The goal is to allow fans to create their own new, licensed episodes of their favorite (perhaps canceled) shows, or even insert themselves as characters.

This is the “remix culture” from Factor #1, turned into a business model. It’s a solution that directly addresses the new generation’s desire to participate. Amazon has reportedly invested, and Fable is in discussions with other studios, including Disney.

A Legal Nightmare, or the Only Path Forward?

As an entertainment lawyer, my first instinct is to see the profound and dangerous legal implications of “loosening” control over IP. For a century, the studio’s entire value has been built on hyper-controlling its IP.

But as a strategist, I see the frightening logic.

The alternative, as Saatchi implies, is twofold:

1. Irrelevance: Your IP ages, your audience leaves, and your franchise dies.

2. Disruption: Creators will simply use AI to generate infinite new, non-infringing variations—imitations that are similar enough to compete but different enough to be legal.

Fable’s model offers a third path. And here is the genius of it: Saatchi explains that the studios would own all the infinite “variations” created by fans. The platform even has a revenue-sharing model for its original content.

This isn’t a transfer of sovereignty; it’s an exchange. The studio trades absolute creative control (which is becoming worthless anyway) for platform ownership of a million new fan-generated assets. It turns your audience from passive consumers into active, free-of-charge creative partners and brand ambassadors.

If “baby boomers” like me are starting to feel narcoleptic watching these shows, “millennials” and “Generation Z” have already disengaged. Unless IP holders invent something this radical, these franchises will die.

The only way NCIS sees season 30 might be to let a 19-year-old fan in Sydney write it, perhaps for a serialized micro-drama. And then, long live Gibbs. Long live Ziva.

I recently had an encounter with a new kind of intelligence. It was a prototype of an agentic AI, and its domain was personal finance. This isn’t another chatbot. An agentic AI is a system that acts—it takes your goals and executes complex, multi-step tasks on your behalf.

In a matter of minutes, it did what a small army of human advisors would have taken weeks to accomplish, if they ever got around to it at all. It performed a deep-dive analysis of my entire financial life, poring over dozens of KIIDs, unreadable clauses, analyst reports, and my entire investment history. It then proceeded to highlight, with surgical precision, all the “financial junk” that various intermediaries had systemically palmed off on me over the years.

It didn’t just diagnose; it operated.

It promptly upended and rebalanced my entire portfolio, clinically eliminating all the mutual funds after explaining that they had never once outperformed their benchmark index. It replaced them with far more efficient ETFs and other instruments, showing me with unnerving clarity all the money I would save in commissions and hidden fees alone.

As a final flourish, it programmed a “sub-agent” to provide a daily market snapshot and monitor my financial situation “minute by minute,” indefinitely. Its sign-off was a perfect blend of corporate cheer and digital finality: “Anything else I can help you with?”

The experience was, in a word, extraordinary. But the feeling that settled in after the “wow” wasn’t reassurance. It was a chill.

It was the chill of a sudden, sharp epiphany. I realized that if this technology had existed just ten years ago, a chunk of my former career—that prestigious, high-level post as the head of Southern European tv strategy for one of the biggest Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures—would have probably never existed in the first place. Or, if it had, it would have quickly ceased to.

I’m not in that job anymore, so I consider myself safe. But the demo was like visiting my old office and finding a single, hyper-efficient algorithm sitting where my entire team used to be.

This isn’t some distant, theoretical threat; it’s a direct hit on my own past. A not insignificant part of my role involved licensing the studio’s massive library to television networks across various European territories. We were selling everything from “I Love Lucy” and “Happy Days” all the way to “NCIS” and “CSI.” And boy did we sell it well.

But what did this “high-level” job actually entail?

It meant things like supervising the preparation and optimization of availability lists of content (movies, series etc). It meant checking on the status of the local language dubs (a task, by the way, that AI is already swallowing whole). It meant analyzing the performance of our shows versus competitors, generating financial and statistical comparisons, and establishing price brackets and strategies for negotiations. And then, the grand finale: the “negotiation” itself, conducted mostly over phone and email with clients, when not attending overcrowded, often inconclusive marketing events like MIPCOM.

Looking back at it now, through the lens of the finance bot who (literally) put my house in order, I cannot think of a single function that an agentic AI couldn’t perform with terrifying efficiency. In seconds. Without errors. Without delays. Without emotion.

It could appoint sub-agents to handle, in real-time, all the connected needs: the marketing, the (largely standardized) licensing agreements, the financial planning, and slotting the deals into our annual sales budgets. It could probably even whip up an animated Keynote slideshow to impress the boss at the next sales meeting.

And what about the famous human contact, what was elegantly called client relations? A cold, hard look suggests that, too, could be managed perfectly well by one agentic AI talking to another. Without expensive travel. Without expensive hotels. Without emotion.

This is precisely what’s happening right now. It’s almost poetic that David Ellison, having just acquired my old stomping ground, Paramount, is adamant about employing artificial intelligence to power up the merged companies (with Warner possibly folding in soon!) and flood the system with new content at unparalleled speeds and efficiency.

The official narrative is of course “optimization.” The subtext is “replacement.” AI steps in to manage content, of course, but also to remove the messy, expensive, human friction from the system.

You only truly get the real impact of a technology when it touches you personally. For instance when it takes a function you know was once considered “indispensable,” a job that justified top-tier skills and salaries, and makes it look trivial.

Agentic AI isn’t coming. It’s here. It’s right behind the door, just waiting for us to step away from our desks for a moment. The world is truly changing and it’s doubtful in the direction that even we, the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for technological progress, ever hoped for.

Has Skynet officially gone live?

Let’s talk about the safest bet in the entire, wildly risky entertainment business.

It’s not superheroes. It’s not toy adaptations. It’s horror.

As a media analyst, I look at the horror genre and I don’t just see monsters; I see the industry’s most reliable workhorse. While other genres often implode under the weight of $300 million budgets, horror is the gift that keeps on giving.

The numbers are staggering. Between 2014 and 2024, horror’s share of the domestic box office more than tripled, growing from just under 3% to nearly 10% (and some analysts put it even higher). This year alone, we’ve seen micro-budget marvels like Terrifier 3 become the first unrated film in history to smash the $100 million mark, and indie darlings like Longlegs become the most profitable, talked-about films of the summer.

Why? Because horror is the perfect global content. It’s financially lean, it’s endlessly malleable for cross-platform franchising, and it taps into a vast, devoted global fan base. A scream is the most portable, easily localized unit of human emotion. You don’t need to understand complex cultural nuance to know you’re supposed to be scared.

But all that financial talk is just the appetizer. My relationship with the genre is far more personal, which brings me to my new television.

The 4K Confessional

I recently inaugurated a new 85-inch 4K TV—my new altar to cinema. The first offering? Obvious. My favorite film of all time: William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.

I’ve seen this movie well over a hundred times. I’ve read the books—from Mark Kermode’s definitive studies to Nat Segaloff’s recent celebration of its 50th anniversary and even William Peter Blatty’s wonderful pamphlet, “If There Were Demons Then Perhaps There Were Angels.” I’ve mainlined the documentaries, from “Fear of God” to “Leap of Faith.” I am, in short, obsessed.

But this time, watching the 4K remaster struck from the original negative, it was different. It wasn’t just better; it was present. It felt less like watching a 50-year-old film and more like having the 1973 theatrical experience resurrected in my living room.

And it terrified me. Again. Perhaps more than ever.

This begs the question: How? How does a film from 1973—a film that, let’s be honest, is less a “horror movie” and more a visceral, complex, theological thriller—still retain this raw power?

We live in an age where AI can generate any nightmare we can conjure in seconds. Our practical effects have been perfected, and our digital ones are seamless. Yet this film, built on the handcrafted genius of Dick Smith’s legendary makeup (transforming a teenage Linda Blair while simultaneously aging a 30-something Max Von Sydow into the ancient Lankester Merrin) and the brutalist practical rigging of Marcel Vercoutere, still feels more dangerous, more real, than anything a render farm can spit out.

When I talk to other fans, everyone has their own Rorschach test for its terror. Some cite the trauma of their Catholic upbringing. Others see a harrowing metaphor for the helplessness of watching a child succumb to mental illness or a disease we can’t understand.

For me, it’s not the spinning head, the projectile vomit, or even the crucifix. It’s the micro-moments of existential dread, the ones that prove the film’s true horror is psychological.

These are five moments (of many) that still crawl under my skin:

1. “There is only one.” As a desperate Father Karras lists the various demonic sub-personalities he believes are in Regan, Father Merrin cuts him off with that cold, lapidary line. In one stroke, he dismisses Karras’s psychiatric framework and confirms the monolithic, singular nature of the evil they face.

2. “In time.” Karras, trying to test the demon, asks it to open a bedside drawer a second time. The demon, speaking through Regan, doesn’t refuse. It replies, with the hoarse and terrifying voice of Mercedes McCambridge, “In time.” It’s a terrifying assertion of power: I will, but on my schedule, not yours. You are not in control here.

3. The Welcome. Mere minutes after Merrin arrives at the McNeil house, before he has even seen the child, the demon roars his name—”MERRIINNN!”—from the top of the stairs. It’s a greeting that says: We were expecting you.

4. The Stopped Clock. In the Iraq prologue, just before leaving the dig, Father Merrin stands in the curator’s office. Suddenly, the large pendulum clock on the wall simply stops ticking. It’s a quiet, supernatural punctuation mark. The laws of physics are being suspended. Time is up.

5. The Silence in the Tub. After the chaotic party scene where Regan predicts an astronaut’s death and urinates on the rug, she sits silent and expressionless in a bathtub. It’s the eerie, terrifying calm before the real storm—the last moment as a “daughter” before the “demon” completely takes over.

The Human Source Code

This brings me back to the present. We are in an era where A.I. has democratized entertainment. Tools that were once the exclusive domain of Hollywood’s most expensive FX houses are now available to any creator with a laptop. This will, without question, unleash an incredible wave of creativity, especially in horror, where imagination has always outpaced budgets.

But The Exorcist is the ultimate proof that spectacle is not dread.

AI can generate a monster, but it cannot generate doubt. It can create a jump scare, but I doubt it can, (yet), craft the agonizing, perfect three-act dramatic structure of a priest’s crisis of faith. Nor believably show the despair of a mother who is losing her daughter to an incomprehensible, irrational evil. It can render an effect with pixel-perfect accuracy, but it can hardly write a line as simple, and as profoundly terrifying, as ‘There is only one.’

AI already empowers us to visualize almost anything we imagine, and sometimes it goes even beyond our own creative intentions. But this 50-year-old masterpiece reminds us that true, lasting horror isn’t only about what you see. It’s about what you feel—a visceral, human emotion that an algorithm can try to imitate, but hardly originate in a way that resonates so deeply and lastingly with our own primal fears.

The ground beneath Hollywood has been trembling for a while now. But this week, we saw quite an undeniable fissure appear. An article in Variety just announced the launch of enGEN3, an AI-powered platform for building cinematic universes. On the surface, it’s a venture between two entertainment companies, Goldfinch and The Squad, designed to give independent filmmakers the world-building tools typically reserved for major studios.

Beneath that surface lies a deeper shift. This isn’t just better software for indie creators—it marks decentralization’s leap from niche concept to industrial reality, turning the philosophy of artistic freedom into tangible, empowering technology.

The Prophet and the Movement

At the heart of this venture is filmmaker Jordan Bayne, founder of The Squad and a passionate, longtime evangelist for creative freedom. For years, Bayne has been a leading voice in the Film3 movement, a framework built on a simple, revolutionary idea: creators should own and directly monetize their intellectual property without depending on the traditional industry gatekeepers.

This isn’t Bayne’s first foray into challenging the status quo. Her “Meta-Cannes” film festival, now in its fourth year, has run parallel to the prestigious French festival, showcasing a cutting-edge, on-chain virtual cinema that blends blockchain technology with filmmaking, a powerful declaration of intent. Now, enGEN3 is the execution. The platform gives filmmakers “studio-level tools to build cinematic universes with fan participation,” enabling stories to branch effortlessly across film, games, and print.

And she’s not alone. Visionaries like Darren Aronofsky with his AI storytelling studio Primordial Soup, and industry titans like Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron, are also grappling with these new technological frontiers. They see what’s coming. But enGEN3 is where the preparatory work of the Film3 movement finally culminates into a market-ready tool.

Disruptors Hollywood Can’t Outrun

The launch of enGEN3 couldn’t be timed more perfectly. It arrives alongside a convergence of factors that will compound its disruptive energy, creating a perfect storm to challenge the Hollywood establishment. Here’s just a few examples:

1. Audience Revolution

The old guard is losing its audience. Younger generations, raised in the interactive realms of video gaming and the fast-paced world of short-form content, are shifting to new means of consumption. They crave community participation and creator engagement. This is why we’re seeing such a steep rise of micro-dramas on platforms like ReelShort and why interactive storytelling is no longer a novelty but an expectation. Legacy studios, built on the one-to-many broadcast model, are fundamentally unprepared for this shift.

2. Dinosaur in the Boardroom

The massive, century-old studio entities and their executives will try to adapt. They will desperately attempt to understand the incoming generation’s expectations and profit from the new creator ecosystem. But many lack the professional agility, and native understanding to intimately tackle these new technologies. They are conglomerates built for a world that is rapidly disappearing. While they form committees, the rebels build platforms.

3. Money Gets Real with Stablecoins

For many, the crypto economy has been a casino, too volatile and unstable for serious business. The rise of Stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like the U.S. dollar—changes everything. They reinforce trust and create a reliable financial railway for a new, tokenized entertainment economy. This “reset” monetary system will allow for transparent, instantaneous royalty payments, fan-led project financing, and direct-to-creator monetization, making the complex and often opaque accounting of Hollywood obsolete.

4. Cambrian Explosion of AI

AI is rapidly democratizing every stage of content creation and distribution. Advanced generative AI can now assist in writing, storyboarding, special effects, and ultimately creating Hollywood-grade final footage. As these technologies evolve, they will solidify independent, monetization-ready distribution pipelines. The need for massive studio infrastructure—sprawling lots, enormous marketing departments, and layers of executive oversight—will diminish. When a small, talented team can create a cinematic-quality feature from a laptop, what is the purpose of a multi-billion-dollar studio?

The first project on enGEN3, a sci-fi anime pilot called “By Blood & By Bone,” already embodies this new paradigm. It integrates two separate Web3 anime collections from different blockchains, demonstrating a new model for community-driven storytelling and shared IP ownership. As Dave Kebo, the writer, puts it, they are creating a model “that benefits both creators and fans”.

This is the future. Jordan’s nascent platform is the proof-of-concept for a new global entertainment ecosystem where creativity, technology, and freedom combine. The old corporate Hollywood faces a stark choice: fight for prolonged survival on its own terms, or boldly lean into a disruptive, creator-led future powered by groundbreaking innovation.

The promise of a blockchain-powered creator economy has always been a seductive one. We were pitched a revolution—a transparent and equitable system built on the rails of Web3 that would finally dismantle the old guard of Hollywood gatekeepers and put the artist back in control. It’s a powerful vision: a world where value flows directly from the audience to the creator, no questions asked, no middlemen taking their cut.

Yet, the full realization of this vision has been more deliberate than explosive. The primary reasons have been clear to anyone building in the space: the extreme volatility of most crypto-assets made them impractical for real-world business, while a persistent lack of regulatory clarity created unacceptable legal risks. This led pioneers to a brilliant compromise: they embraced the principle of decentralization, but not its native infrastructure. Visionary projects like Legion M and Angel Studios have masterfully mobilized huge, fan-owned communities, proving the power of the decentralized model, while pragmatically keeping their core financial operations off-chain for safety and stability. But that era of compromise is ending. A solution is emerging, not from a new protocol, but as a core component of a global economic shift—one that could change everything.

Let’s be clear: the engine of this entire movement is tokenization. And no, this isn’t about flipping JPEGs. It’s about a radical redesign of ownership. Tokenization is the mechanism that turns the rights to any asset—gold, stocks, real estate, and most importantly, a creator’s IP—into a liquid, programmable, and verifiable token that lives on the blockchain.

A movie’s distribution rights, a song’s master recording, a character’s brand license—these are no longer just clauses buried in a 100-page contract. They become living assets that can be managed, traded, fractionalized and monetized with code. This is the bedrock of the creator-centric ecosystem.

The Unlikely Savior: A Strategic Shift

So, what was the missing piece? Stability and trust. And here’s the plot twist: the solution isn’t coming from a new DAO or a privacy coin. It’s coming from a strategic decision forged in Washington.

The United States is facing a monumental economic challenge, grappling with unprecedented debt levels and the classic dilemma of managing its domestic economy while serving as the world’s reserve currency. As prominent analysts have pointed out, history shows that such moments often require a “monetary reset”—a fundamental rewiring of the system to maintain dominance.

Enter the regulated stablecoin.

This is not just about creating a convenient digital dollar. This is a calculated geopolitical move. By establishing a clear framework—like the one proposed in the “GENIUS Act”—the U.S. is laying the groundwork to ensure the dollar remains the undisputed king in the era of digital currency. It’s a strategy to export the dollar onto the blockchain rails that will power the next generation of global commerce, creating a permanent, structural demand for U.S. assets to back these new digital dollars.

Money 3.0: The Creator’s New Operating System

What does this grand geopolitical chess move mean for the entertainment industry and decentralized business models? It means the chaotic, experimental phase is over. The U.S. government’s strategic need for a dominant digital dollar is (inadvertently?) creating the secure, stable, and trusted environment for the creator economy to finally go mainstream.

his is the dawn of Money 3.0: a system built on blockchain and tokenization that is more secure, inclusive, and ready for the creative industries. With a regulated, on-chain dollar, the game completely changes:

• Programmable Royalties: Tokenized assets are programmable. This means smart contracts could finally displace Hollywood’s “creative accounting.” Imagine royalties being paid out instantly and automatically to every single contributor the moment a movie is streamed or a song is played. No more audits, no more black boxes—just transparent, automated value distribution.

• A Booming Financial Layer: This isn’t a niche experiment. The world of blockchain-based finance is already exploding, with over $200 billion in value locked and growing fast. This is a deep, liquid financial system ready to power the next generation of creative projects.

The revolution we were promised is finally arriving, not through a chaotic uprising, but through a structured, strategic, and incredibly powerful financial reset. The paradox is that a centralized, state-backed move is the very thing that may unlock the true, decentralized potential for creators.

But what counts is for the show to, at last, go on-chain.

Something fundamental is shifting beneath the surface of our screens—not just in how stories are told, but in who (or rather, what) is telling them. While the entertainment industry has always thrived on the unpredictable sparks of human creativity, we now stand at the threshold of what researchers are calling “hybrid intelligence”: the seamless blending of human and artificial intelligence in creating content that is neither entirely human nor machine-made, but something greater—something new.

Over the past few years, the headlines have been brimming with fears: AI will replace writers, algorithms will kill artistry, machines will drown out the human voice. Yet, the real revolution is subtler—and far more interesting. The true power of AI in entertainment isn’t about one side winning over the other, but about what happens when human ingenuity and machine intelligence combine, each amplifying the other’s strengths.

Hybrid intelligence is not just a technical vision, but a necessity born of complexity. Modern entertainment—be it motion pictures, TV series, games, or immersive experiences—demands a scale of ideation, production, and distribution that outpaces any single creator or technology. Here, AI excels at rapid data analysis, pattern recognition, iteration, and production workflows. Humans bring narrative intuition, emotional nuance, ethical judgment, and cultural context.

When GenAI is tasked with scanning mountains of genre data, generating dozens of story variations, or suggesting new visual motifs, it leaves the creator free to focus on emotional resonance, meaning, and refinement. The “division of labor” becomes less a compromise and more a dynamic creative feedback loop. AI is not the rival in the creative process—it is the collaborator who never sleeps, never tires, and who constantly pushes for new combinations that humans might otherwise overlook.

More Than the Sum: The Case for Hybrid Content

Recent studies underscore an essential insight: human-AI teams don’t always outperform the best individual contributor—but in content creation, synergy often unlocks something genuinely original. In media production, AI might automate color grading or suggest trending narrative arcs, while humans make final judgments and inject surprise. In animation or VFX, AI tools generate hyper-realistic digital humans or lifelike backgrounds, yet it is the animator’s sense of timing and personality that gives a scene its soul.

Examples abound: collaborative scripts that blend algorithmic plot suggestions with writerly subversion; interactive experiences where audience data influences story beats in real time; recommendation engines that personalize not just what is viewed, but how it’s delivered. Disney recently established a dedicated VP role to oversee AI-human collaboration, underscoring the need for orchestration between intuition and automation.

The real paradigm shift is psychological. For decades, creative work has been taught as a solitary, often agonized pursuit. Yet, hybrid intelligence asks us to replace the metaphor of “the genius artist versus the soulless machine” with that of “the improvising band”: human and AI, listening, responding, riffing—always in dialogue. The most exciting frontier is not human or AI, but the “third mind” that emerges from their interplay.

This is not only a matter of efficiency, but of possibility. With hybrid intelligence, small studios and independent creators can match the technical muscle of larger rivals, rapidly prototyping ideas and iterating with AI “assistants” that democratize what was once exclusive to blockbuster budgets. As with past technological leaps (the piano roll, the synthesizer, digital editing), what first looks like a threat soon becomes a palette extension.

Proof of Concept: Horror as the Perfect Laboratory

If there’s one genre demonstrating the promise of hybrid intelligence today, it is horror. Why? Horror thrives not on star power or outsized budgets, but on atmosphere, novelty, and deep audience psychology.

2025 is a breakout year: horror accounts for nearly 15% of the U.S. box office—a record high, with hits like Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines, and Weapons surging well beyond their modest budgets. Social media virality, guerrilla campaigns, and AI-driven analytics have turned horror films into global phenomena, transcending the traditional limits of cultural exportability. Studios like Blumhouse and Cineverse are leveraging generative AI for market prediction, rapid teaser production, and tailoring narratives for diverse global audiences—without diminishing the authenticity of the creative voice.

Moreover, AI can prototype scares, analyze heart-rate data for optimal tension, and create VFX sequences that elevate fear to new levels. Yet, it is the writer, director, and the audience’s primal fears that guide the final form. The horror genre—unconstrained by the need for high-priced casts or established IP—is where boundary pushing is most rewarded, and the spirit of hybrid intelligence is at its rawest and most effective.

Two notable examples of human–AI collaboration in creating hybrid entertainment content are Marvel’s use of AI-generated opening credits for “Secret Invasion” in collaboration with Method Studios, and Blumhouse Productions’ partnership with Meta to develop new horror scenes and visual storytelling with their new generative AI tool Movie Gen: while AI handled rapid generation of chilling visual sequences, human directors curated, iterated, and made final storytelling decisions—illustrating a workflow where AI empowers visionaries to iterate quickly while preserving unique creative intent. “Artists are, and forever will be, the lifeblood of our industry,” Blumhouse founder and CEO Jason Blum said in a statement. “Innovation and tools that can help those artists better tell their stories is something we are always keen to explore, and we welcomed the chance for some of them to test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it’s still in development.”

Towards a New Creative Compact

The history of entertainment is also a history of collaboration—among artists, craftspeople, financiers, technologists. What AI now offers is not creative replacement but creative multiplication. Hybrid intelligence invites filmmakers, producers, and storytellers to rethink the boundaries of authorship and embrace new ways of working—where surprise, empathy, and machine-enabled invention intertwine.

The future of content is not a fight between art and algorithm, but an alliance. Horror shows us that when creators embrace this new alchemy—when they see AI as an improvising partner, not a foe—they can scare, delight, and innovate for global audiences in ways no one creator, or machine, could ever do alone.

The next golden age of entertainment won’t be written by AI or by humans in isolation. It will be forged by both, working together—one scene, one scare, one story at a time.

Something has shifted. And if you work in or care about media, communication, or entertainment, you’ve probably already felt it—even if you can’t quite name it yet.

That “thing” is geopolitics.

No longer just a subject for diplomats and economists, geopolitical influence is quietly becoming one of the most important forces shaping what gets funded, what gets made, and what people watch—or don’t.

Let’s start with what’s happening under the surface.

Over the past two decades, the entertainment industry enjoyed a relatively open global market. Streaming platforms expanded worldwide, co-productions between countries flourished, and “content” felt, for the most part, borderless. But that window is closing. Fast.

From trade wars and sanctions to the recent wave of anti-DEI policies under the Trump administration, national agendas are now shaping the creative economy. In an increasingly fractured global landscape, storytelling has become not just cultural but political—sometimes even strategic.

Take a closer look:

• China has tightened restrictions on Western content, while promoting homegrown narratives aligned with state ideology.

• India is investing heavily in national streaming platforms and imposing content localization rules.

• Even in the U.S., the backlash against inclusive content is being used as a political tool, with funding, awards, and institutional support increasingly tied to ideology.

These aren’t isolated trends. They’re part of a much bigger picture—a shift from what analysts call “monetary dominance” to “geopolitical dominance.” In plain English: the world is no longer just reacting to money or markets—it’s reacting to power, identity, and influence.

And it’s already changing the game.

Studios are adjusting. Risk tolerance is shifting. Projects that may have been greenlit for their artistic value five years ago now get scrutinized through a political lens.

Global releases are getting trickier. What works in one country may get censored or outright banned in another. Messaging has to walk a geopolitical tightrope.

Filmmakers and showrunners are being pushed toward localized or nationalistic narratives, especially where state funding or strategic media initiatives are involved.

At the same time, new financial models are emerging. With the dollar’s global dominance under pressure and inflation reshaping investor behavior, platforms are experimenting with crypto-backed content, decentralized production models, and international co-financing structures that sidestep traditional gatekeepers.

So, what does this mean for the future?

It means that creatives, producers, and investors will need to develop a kind of geopolitical literacy. Understanding audience preferences will no longer be enough. You’ll need to understand political climate, trade tensions, and narrative risk.

It doesn’t mean every story has to become political—but it does mean every story now exists in a political context, whether we like it or not.

We’re entering an age where culture is capital, and control of narrative equals power. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—it just requires awareness, adaptability, and a willingness to engage with the world beyond the script.

Whether you're making a film, financing a show, or building a brand, it’s time to start thinking geopolitically.

Because the world is no longer just watching. It’s watching with an agenda.

Imagine scrolling through your favorite social media platform and seeing an influencer with millions of followers, landing major brand deals, and setting fashion trends—only to realize they don’t actually exist. Welcome to the era of AI-powered virtual avatars, a technology that is set to disrupt gaming, film, music, and social media in ways we’ve never seen before.

Companies like AvatarOS are leading the charge, recently securing $7 million in seed funding to develop AI-powered digital influencers, game characters, and celebrity-backed avatars. This signals a massive shift in how we define identity, creativity, and monetization in entertainment.

But this is only the beginning. Virtual avatars are on track to redefine entire industries, from streaming and gaming to Hollywood and fashion.

AI-generated avatars are not just a passing trend. Their rise is fueled by three major forces:

1. AI’s Creative Evolution – Generative AI models are now capable of creating hyper-realistic faces, voices, and even personalities that evolve over time.

2. The Rise of Digital Ownership – Blockchain and NFTs allow for authenticity and ownership of digital identities, making virtual influencers a viable business model.

3. The Creator Economy’s Expansion – Social media is moving towards brand-friendly, controlled, and scalable content creation. AI avatars eliminate human limitations while offering 24/7 engagement.

What does this mean for the entertainment industry? Let’s break it down with some examples.

1. Social Media & Influencer Marketing

The age of human influencers is about to face its biggest challenge yet.

Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela, a computer-generated model with millions of Instagram followers, have already shown that AI-driven personas can attract brand partnerships with top-tier companies. But with AI advancements, the next wave of avatars will be far more interactive, evolving based on audience engagement.

The effect will likely be for brands to shift toward AI influencers for consistent and scalable content, with human influencers starting to collaborate with AI counterparts, making hybrid influencer models a norm. Fully autonomous digital personalities will emerge, capable of engaging fans, adapting in real-time, and even live-streaming.

2. Gaming

Gaming is the industry that will benefit the most from AI avatars.

Why?

Because AI-generated characters will become:
Playable avatars that evolve dynamically based on user interaction.
Non-playable characters (NPCs) with AI-driven personalities, responding uniquely to different players.
AI-powered esports competitors that challenge human players in real time.

Companies like Sony PlayStation are already experimenting with AI-driven in-game characters, which means virtual companions, enemies, and even AI-generated protagonists are just around the corner.

3. Film & TV

Hollywood is no stranger to digital doubles, but AI avatars will take things further by creating entire virtual actors capable of leading films.

Imagine AI-generated actors starring in major blockbusters, without the need for real-life actors, as well as fully customizable AI extras, reducing production costs and increasing creative flexibility.

Deepfake technology and AI face-swapping tools are already being integrated into Hollywood productions. Old Hollywood icons have been “revived” with AI avatars, extending their presence beyond death. This happened even before AI technology reached its current level of sophistication:

• Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016): Despite Cushing's passing in 1994, advanced CGI techniques were employed to bring Grand Moff Tarkin back to the screen as well as a digital recreation of a young Princess Leia.

• Oliver Reed in "Gladiator" (2000): After Reed's untimely death during production, CGI was utilized to complete his remaining scenes, ensuring the continuity of his character's role in the film.

• Brandon Lee in "The Crow" (1994): Following Lee's accidental death on set, digital face replacement techniques were employed to finish his performance, allowing the film's completion.

  At one point news circulated that James Dean would be digitally recreated for a film, but the project was ultimately canceled.

All of this raises ethical concerns, but one thing is clear: AI avatars will forever change, and are already changing, casting, talent contracts, and digital rights.

4. Music Industry

Virtual musicians aren’t new—Hatsune Miku, a holographic pop star, has performed at sold-out concerts for years. But AI-generated artists will soon become chart-topping sensations, producing entire albums without human intervention: AI-generated voices will replace session singers, record labels will launch AI avatars as proprietary artists and AI concerts will be interactive, with real-time audience engagement through virtual experiences. Try one of the many AI-powered music creation platforms like Suno and test the technology yourself: you’ll be amazed at how much talent you have as composers.

Companies like Sony Music have already removed 75,000 AI-generated deepfake songs—a sign that the music industry is aware of the massive impact AI avatars will have.

5. The Metaverse

In the Metaverse, AI avatars will play an even bigger role. People won’t just use them for entertainment—they’ll become an extension of our digital identity. They will represent us in decentralized social platforms while AI-powered NPCs will populate virtual worlds, making interactions feel more real.
Fashion, gaming, and entertainment will merge, allowing users to own, trade, and customize AI personas: the metaverse economy will be built around AI avatars as digital assets, where owning a unique virtual identity will be just as valuable as real-world branding.

The rise of AI-powered virtual avatars marks a paradigm shift in the way we engage with entertainment, branding, and digital identity. What once seemed like science fiction—fully autonomous influencers, AI-driven actors, dynamic gaming characters, and even virtual musicians dominating the charts—is now a reality unfolding before our eyes. As technology blurs the line between the artificial and the authentic, industries must navigate both the boundless opportunities and the ethical dilemmas that come with it. Are we witnessing the dawn of a creative revolution, or are we stepping into an era where human artistry takes a backseat to algorithms? One thing is certain: the entertainment landscape will never be the same again. The question is—are we ready for what comes next?

Imagine a cinematic universe where fans, creators, and AI collaborate in real-time, shaping narratives without the oversight of traditional studios. This is no longer a distant possibility—it’s happening now. Nearly two years after its architectural foundation was laid, 2137AD is finally taking shape as a fully decentralized cinematic universe, leveraging blockchain, AI, and DAOs to rewrite the rules of storytelling.

Since the inception of this ambitious audiovisual project, creative aspects have intersected almost daily with their technological counterpart, exposing the team to the technical complexities of building an infrastructure capable of supporting increasing content flows and the interaction with, and within, the community for which all this is being envisioned.

The evolution of artificial intelligence and its models have, on one hand, simplified and enhanced the creative process, but on the other, required nearly constant adjustments to adapt to the ever-changing demands of an evolving technological landscape.

At the heart of any cinematic universe, and this is not the only one we are exposed to, is its storytelling framework. In a decentralized model, content is created in a collaborative and modular fashion, where multiple creators contribute to an expanding lore while maintaining interoperability between different story arcs, characters, and worlds. This is how 2137AD’s creator, Luigi Forlai, envisioned it to become.

Key aspects of decentralized content creation include:

• Onchain Character and Lore Expansion: Writers, artists, and filmmakers mint their creations as NFT-based assets, ensuring provenance, monetization rights, and seamless integration into the broader universe.

• Decentralized IP Ownership: Unlike centralized studios that retain full rights, contributors to a decentralized cinematic universe can co-own IP rights through tokenized governance models, ensuring a fairer distribution of creative control and revenues. Think of governance tokens like voting shares in a decentralized movie studio. 2137AD will manage two categories of tokens, $2137AD for trading and $ADGOV for governance.

• DAO-Governed Story Development: Decision-making on major story directions is driven by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), ensuring community participation and alignment with fan expectations.

For decentralized content to function smoothly, blockchain infrastructure must provide both scalability and security. The technological layer consists of:

• Interoperable Storytelling Systems: AI-driven procedural content generation and decentralized databases enable seamless cross-media integration, ensuring assets and narratives maintain coherence across different mediums (films, games, metaverse experiences).

• Decentralized Storage and Distribution: Platforms like IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) ensure that content is stored and accessed in a decentralized manner, reducing reliance on centralized servers.

• Smart Contracts for Governance and Distribution: Automated and self-executing contracts handle key aspects like royalty distribution, content licensing, and community governance decisions.

Without a robust technical foundation, the decentralized cinematic universe would lack the necessary mechanisms for scalability, security, and dynamic content evolution.

The economic model of a decentralized cinematic universe must enable sustainable funding, fair profit distribution, and incentivized participation. This is where Web3-native financial tools come into play:

• Creator Royalties via Smart Contracts: Transparent and automated revenue-sharing mechanisms ensure creators receive fair compensation for their contributions.

• Crowdfunded Production via Tokenized Assets: Through fractionalized ownership of NFTs or DAO-funded initiatives, supporters can invest directly in projects, securing early access, voting power, or future revenue shares.

• Metaverse and Interactive Economy: The cinematic universe extends beyond traditional films, allowing token holders to engage in immersive experiences, purchasing digital collectibles, and participating in onchain storytelling events.

• Governance Tokens for Decision-Making: Community members holding governance tokens can vote on critical project decisions, from script development to casting choices. On this point 2137AD will be supported by Origami, a Silicon Valley web3 DAO accelerator founded by Ben Hun.

The synchronization of financial incentives ensures that both creators and audiences remain engaged in the long-term growth of the ecosystem.

The decentralized cinematic universe represents the next evolution of entertainment, where blockchain-powered ecosystems empower collaborative storytelling, creator sovereignty, and transparent financial models.

2137AD is not just a cinematic universe—it’s a blueprint for the future of entertainment. As blockchain and AI continue to evolve, decentralized filmmaking will push the boundaries of who gets to tell stories and how they are owned, governed, and experienced. The question is no longer whether decentralization will reshape entertainment—it’s how far creators and audiences are willing to take it.

While technical, financial, and legal aspects are essential pillars of any decentralized cinematic universe, at its core lies creativity—the driving force that shapes worlds, narratives, and experiences.

The 2137AD universe is built on the premise that a post-apocalyptic world is reborn through numerous colonies, each attempting to reconstruct civilization in its own way, with unique ecosystems, stories, characters, and conflicts.

With bestselling novelist Joseph Nassise (acclaimed author of the Templar and Jeremiah Hunt Chronicles) leading one of 2137AD's flagship projects and renowned visual artists like Nina Sabina Caballero and Stefano Baldassarri crafting key colonies within the ecosystem, the project stands on a solid creative foundation. This ensures that the cinematic universe unfolds quickly, coherently, and, above all, with a combination of human and AI-generated content of the highest quality, pushing the boundaries of immersive storytelling in ways never seen before.

For one of our early colonies, Mentalis, whose concept is showcased here and to whose production I had the pleasure to participate through Decentrivity Studios, we have used a combination of Midjourney, Lumalabs’ Dream Machine, Runaway, Kling as well as Everlabs and Udio to support voice overs and soundtracking. The presentation is completely AI-generated and so will the episodes of the web series based on the concept.

The combined use of the latest generative AI technologies is significantly enhancing the authenticity and consistency of visual outputs. These tools leverage state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, including deep generative adversarial networks (GANs), neural rendering, and transformer-based models, to create highly realistic visuals, animations, and even fully realized digital characters. By integrating multiple AI systems—where one specializes in generating high-fidelity textures and environments, another refines facial expressions and emotions, and yet another ensures character consistency across frames—content creators can achieve an unprecedented level of realism.

This multi-layered AI synergy allows for better narrative continuity, preventing common issues such as inconsistencies in character design, voice modulation, and movement fluidity that were previously a challenge in AI-generated content. As these technologies evolve, the gap between AI-generated and traditionally produced media continues to narrow, enabling more immersive, high-quality digital experiences that blend seamlessly into mainstream entertainment.

Who and what professions in the entertainment business will survive the invasion of agentic AI?

Most tech companies seem to be accelerating their development on this specific AI enhancement, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently predicting that it will transform the software landscape to the point of making traditional business applications obsolete. Projections indicate that by 2028, over 33% of enterprise apps will integrate agentic AI, with venture capital investment in this technology expected to surge from the current $5.1 billion to over $47 billion by 2030. According to both financial and tech analysts, no sector or industry will be immune to the penetration of this new technology, posing a real risk of entire professional areas disappearing. And that any initial resistance to adopting it—driven by an attempt to preserve roles and positions—will likely be overcome by its unparalleled efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

But what exactly is agentic AI?

Very broadly, the term refers to artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomously performing complex tasks, making decisions, and adapting to changing environments without direct human intervention. Unlike traditional AI, which primarily functions as an assistant requiring prompts and supervision, agentic AI can independently initiate and complete workflows, making it a revolutionary shift in automation and a significant evolution beyond current Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude. The rapid development of agentic AI is driven by major tech companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google DeepMind, and Meta, alongside emerging startups such as Adept AI and Imbue, which are focusing on AI agents capable of handling business logic, customer service, software development, and financial operations.

In the entertainment and media industry, agentic AI is poised to transform content creation, audience engagement, and production processes. Several companies in the entertainment industry, such as Promise, Fable Studio and even Lionsgate (through its partnership with Runway) are actively developing and integrating AI in their businesses. AI-powered agents could autonomously edit videos, generate scripts, personalize recommendations, and even manage virtual influencers, paving the way for a new era of AI-driven storytelling and digital experiences.

A major area that could be significantly affected by agentic AI is content sales, distribution, and marketing. Traditionally, sales teams compile sales histories, conduct comparative product analyses, and assess audience ratings to curate content offerings for buyers. With agentic AI, these tasks will be performed autonomously and in real-time, allowing AI-driven platforms to assemble tailored content packages based on a client’s specific needs, complete with financial offers and draft deal memos pre-integrated. AI agents could also predict optimal pricing strategies, anticipate market trends, and end up executing real-time contract negotiations, ensuring maximum revenue efficiency with reduced or no human intervention. Similar automation may extend to talent booking, licensing agreements, and marketing campaign execution, where AI agents will track market demand, optimize promotional strategies, and negotiate ad placements across digital platforms. As agentic AI continues to evolve, entertainment management may shift from human-led operations to fully autonomous AI-driven ecosystems, reshaping the industry’s economic model and significantly reducing operational costs.

For some, the best strategy is to learn to understand this technology and master it from the start, with the goal of making it an ally that works for us 24 hours a day—not to replace us, but to protect and enhance us.

Lattice’s CEO Sarah Franklin advocates for treating AI agents as integral team members, complete with onboarding processes and performance metrics. This approach ensures that AI systems are aligned with organizational goals and culture, fostering a harmonious human-AI collaboration.

Research from the University of California, Berkeley, on the other hand, underscores the importance of preserving human agency in AI interactions. The study suggests that while AI systems can enhance efficiency, they should be designed to augment rather than replace human decision-making. Ensuring that AI remains a tool under human control is vital to prevent potential loss of human agency and unintended consequences.

Where agentic AI will eventually take us is anyone’s guess—whether it’s a utopia of effortless efficiency or a dystopia where our AI agents become so good at time management that they start scheduling our coffee breaks. But for now, the safest bet is to keep training our own agent… before it decides to train us instead.

The digital revolution has reshaped the entertainment industry, offering new opportunities for creators and fans alike. While platforms like Film.io and Book.io are applying decentralized principles to film and literature, the potential for a globally accepted cryptocurrency specific to the entertainment sector remains largely untapped. Such a cryptocurrency could serve as a universal medium of exchange, seamlessly facilitating transactions across platforms and types of content. Let’s explore the viability of such a cryptocurrency, drawing on existing models from the gaming sector and discussing how these could inform the future of entertainment finance.

The Current State of Decentralized Entertainment Communities

Several decentralized platforms have already begun to shift the entertainment landscape, leveraging blockchain technology to connect creators directly with their audiences. Film.io, for example, offers an innovative way for filmmakers to finance and distribute their projects by engaging their communities and issuing tokens as rewards. Similarly, Book.io allows authors to self-publish and interact directly with readers, bypassing traditional publishers. In these ecosystems, blockchain helps ensure transparency and security, but the tokens used remain confined within their respective platforms. The next logical step is to create a universal, entertainment-specific cryptocurrency that can transcend these limitations, enabling creators to monetize their work and fans to engage across various platforms seamlessly.

Cryptocurrencies and Tokens in the Current Framework: Viability and Scale

Cryptocurrencies and tokens are already being used successfully in several industries, and the gaming sector has emerged as a prime example of how these models can scale. The play-to-earn (P2E) model in gaming, where players earn cryptocurrency through in-game actions or achievements, is a perfect reference for how such a system could be applied to the broader entertainment industry.

• Gaming Sector's Pioneering Role: The gaming industry has seen rapid adoption of cryptocurrency models. Games like Axie Infinity and Decentraland have demonstrated how blockchain and cryptocurrency can be integrated into gaming economies. In 2021, Axie Infinity saw over $1.3 billion in total sales, with players earning cryptocurrency by breeding and battling fantasy creatures called Axies. These earnings, which are paid in Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens, can be traded on exchanges, giving players the opportunity to convert them into real-world money. As of late 2021, Axie Infinity had more than 2.8 million daily active users, and the game’s native cryptocurrency, AXS, had a market capitalization exceeding $10 billion at its peak.

• Economic Scale and Adoption: The success of play-to-earn models provides strong evidence of the economic potential of entertainment-specific cryptocurrencies. In the case of Decentraland, players can buy virtual land using the MANA cryptocurrency, which has facilitated over $1 billion in transactions since the platform's inception. These models show how a cryptocurrency can drive economic activity and create new ways for creators and consumers to interact. Moreover, they highlight the scalability of blockchain-based financial systems, with millions of users already engaged in these ecosystems.

• Relevance to Entertainment: The adoption of cryptocurrencies in gaming presents a valuable roadmap for the entertainment industry. If platforms in the film, music, and literary sectors were to integrate similar token-based economies, they could unlock new revenue streams for creators and provide fans with greater control over how they engage with content. For example, film producers could use tokens to raise funds, while audiences could pay for content or engage in exclusive fan experiences, all within a decentralized ecosystem. The model could even extend to merchandise and fan-driven content, further enriching the creator-fan relationship.

The Need for Universal Participation

For a truly global cryptocurrency to succeed in the entertainment industry, at least the main existing platforms—ranging from gaming to film and music—would need to adopt the new cryptocurrency within their ecosystems. Platforms like Film.io, Vabble, Book.io, and others would be key players in driving this transition. Each would need to allow for the use of the cryptocurrency for transactions, whether it's for financing content, purchasing tickets, or supporting creators.

This participation is crucial to create a unified system where the currency is accepted across the entire entertainment ecosystem. If major platforms embrace this shift, the cryptocurrency could gain traction quickly, with creators, fans, and distributors all benefiting from a common medium of exchange.

Economic Benefits: Unlocking New Revenue Models

The introduction of an entertainment-specific cryptocurrency could significantly enhance revenue generation within the industry:

• Direct Creator Support: Just as play-to-earn models allow gamers to earn rewards, creators in the entertainment industry could earn cryptocurrency directly from their fans through tipping, patronage, or selling exclusive content. This could reduce reliance on traditional distribution channels, allowing creators to retain a larger share of their earnings.

• New Monetization Models: Creators could offer special experiences, early access, or even exclusive behind-the-scenes content in exchange for cryptocurrency payments. These new monetization models would help diversify the ways in which creators can earn revenue and engage with their audiences.

• Transparent Revenue Sharing: Blockchain’s transparency could also streamline royalty payments, ensuring that creators are paid fairly and on time. Smart contracts could automate this process, ensuring that revenue from content sales is split in accordance with predefined agreements, reducing administrative overhead and disputes.

The growing success of decentralized models in gaming provides a clear blueprint for how an entertainment-specific cryptocurrency could work in the broader entertainment industry. By offering a unified, easily tradable currency, blockchain technology has the potential to reshape how content is created, distributed, and consumed. The viability of such a cryptocurrency depends on the active participation of key platforms, and as seen with the play-to-earn model, the transition from niche tokens to global currencies is both feasible and potentially transformative. With the right support and adoption, an entertainment-specific cryptocurrency could help create a more equitable, transparent, and profitable ecosystem for creators and fans alike.

The 2024 edition of the Tech in Entertainment Summit, organized and coordinated by journalist and cross-industry expert Valentina Martelli, has just concluded in Los Angeles. Prominent media figures and experts - executives, lawyers, entrepreneurs and creators - have discussed the impact of new technologies on the future of the industry.

Decentralization was one of the central themes and its financial, commercial and legal aspects were analyzed in a research paper entitled“Infinite Worlds”, the first in a series of studies about blockchain, artificial intelligence, and immersive technologies.

“Infinite Worlds” was introduced by Amy Peck (Founder and CEO of Endeavor XR), John Attanasio (CEO and Co-Founder of Toonstar), Martin Berg (former CEO of DX, Independent Advisor, author of “In Transit” newsletter) and Niccolò Messina (CEO and Founder of Insurgence), who contributed their authoritative perspectives on where the entertainment industry is heading.

AMY PECK - Founder and CEO - Endeavor XR

The media and entertainment industry has undergone numerous transformations over the last several decades, but the advent of Web3, powered by blockchain technology and AI, will likely be one of the most revolutionary. Web3 represents not just an evolution of the internet, but a shift in power dynamics that can redefine how content is created, shared, and monetized. For both creators and consumers, Web3 offers unprecedented levels of transparency, ownership, and control to both creators and consumers.

This will be a slow evolution, but an important and disruptive one. The media machine, including studios, music labels, distributors, agents et al, may be forced to reinvent themselves or be relegated to a fading corner of the entertainment industry.

As this new media landscape evolves, the rise of Web3 signals a departure from traditional centralized models. While there is some value to the existing centralized construct, decentralized networks will enable direct interactions between creators and consumers, eliminating the need for intermediaries. Blockchain's transparent and immutable nature ensures that transactions and content ownership are verifiable and secure. This paradigm shift empowers artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators to reach their audiences directly, fostering a more genuine and unmediated connection.

One of the most promising aspects of Web3 for media and entertainment is the opportunity to build entirely new business models. Smart contracts—self-executing agreements encoded on the blockchain—can automate the distribution of royalties, ensuring creators are paid fairly and directly for their work. This will usher in a future with creators at the forefront, gatekeepers diminished, and audiences enjoying unprecedented levels of engagement. As we embrace this decentralized paradigm, the possibilities for innovation, collaboration, and creativity are boundless.

Beyond these new business models, the creation process itself can expand to include fan investors, co-creators, or even ever-evolving content. Creators can build worlds with stories embedded, all happening in real-time, giving the audience free reign to move through the story as the creator imagined, or following other narratives entirely. Musicians have already enabled fans to use their voice and/or likeness to co-create songs – all via smart contracts. Both the artist and the co-creator share in the success.

We have only scratched the surface of these new models. As more creators make their work available in new and exciting ways, offering co-creation opportunities to their fans, entertainment may evolve into living, breathing art forms that expand and contract with artist and user input. Storytelling may become world-building, with multiple storylines to match multiple revenue streams.

This paper explores where we are today and the future promise of this brave new world of entertainment. This is just the beginning.

JOHN ATTANASIO - Founder and CEO, Toonstar

As a child of Saturday morning cartoons, I grew up in what we now know was a golden era of animation. Iconic characters like Fred Flintstone, Scooby Doo and George Jetson were born and led to a thriving US animation industry. This was thanks in large part to the genius of the team of Hanna-Barbera, who created efficiencies in the production model and leveraged a new form of distribution, called TV, enabling them to launch more shows, and grow the industry.

Generations of children were entertained and inspired by the characters created during this era, and their shows have stood the test of time as cultural icons. But today nearly 80% of all the animation jobs have been outsourced overseas, and what US productions remain are slowly winding up on the chopping block. Why? Because US-based productions are expensive and time consuming, creating an environment where taking a chance on a new creator or a new show is a risky proposition. Legacy Hollywood is stuck in this gatekeeper economy, where few people have keys to the kingdom. But today, AI technology in a variety of forms is beginning to change the landscape for creators.

AI-powered production tools are democratizing network-grade animation and unlocking opportunities for a new generation of storytellers, while new distribution models are empowering creators to broadcast their brand directly to consumers. And audiences are flocking to these new platforms, showing the clear demand for fresh voices and new content. From machine learning and Generative AI tools that supercharge production to voice dubbing tools that support international expansion, these tools are empowering individuals to develop, produce and distribute content. They have the potential to unleash a new era of animation, with new creators and more diverse creators having the opportunity to launch projects. They can also serve as a model for how Hollywood can move forward.

We find ourselves at a critical juncture in the entertainment industry, where fewer projects are being made and original stories have become a rarity. So instead of resisting change from a new technology, perhaps it's time to embrace the opportunities AI presents and figure out how to use the tools responsibly to launch new creators and uncover new IP. New technologies have always encountered some initial fear upon introduction. When the printing press was introduced, the machines were destroyed by scribes, and the printing press salesmen were driven out of town… initially. But in the end, the result was net positive, because the printing press triggered a renaissance of creativity and productivity. Six centuries later, technology may very well do its thing again for the animation industry, and Hollywood at large.

MARTIN BERG - former CEO DX, Independent Advisor

In the fast-evolving landscape of entertainment, the traditional franchise model faces significant pressure to adapt to an era defined by audience participation and decentralized ownership. Traditional entertainment giants like Disney and Marvel rely heavily on established business models that prioritize sequels and high-budget productions to capture audience attention. This approach has served as a reliable means to maintain engagement through "attention compounding" and brand trust. However, it leans on a one-dimensional fan experience, where the audience remains passive and largely disconnected from creative influence. In today’s media-saturated world, this model increasingly risks audience drift, as younger generations crave interactivity, co-creation, and a sense of belonging to the franchises they love.

The project outlined in the recent paper offers a striking counterpoint to the passive consumption model that defines legacy franchises. Rooted in blockchain and AI, it envisions a franchise ecosystem where fans are not just viewers but co-creators and even stakeholders. Similar to concepts in my recent essay, "Bringing the Audience In," this project advocates for moving beyond top-down content delivery and into a model that allows for decentralized cinematic universes. Here, the fan’s role is no longer limited to consuming sequels or engaging in peripheral fan spaces. Instead, blockchain-enabled ownership models allow fans to hold a piece of the IP, aligning their interests directly with the franchise’s success.

Traditional franchises might hesitate to explore such models due to deep dependencies on capital-intensive structures, which prioritize short-term gains over long-term community building. Their entrenched business models, reliant on capital to cut through the noise and maintain market dominance, make it challenging to pivot to decentralized, fan-centric frameworks. The paper references cases like the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and other onchain-native projects that demonstrate how user participation can drive organic franchise growth. These projects invite fans into the creative process from the outset, fostering fan-made content and feedback loops that amplify the brand without resorting to high-stakes marketing budgets. This aligns with the “community activation and ownership” principles I discussed in my essay, where the power lies in enabling fans to shape the franchise’s trajectory.

As we move toward a decentralized entertainment future, where fans and creators operate within a shared ecosystem, the boundaries between these roles will continue to blur. By embracing decentralized platforms, the project not only proposes a more equitable model for creators but also champions a vision of participatory storytelling. Such a model could redefine success in entertainment, measured not only by box office returns but by the depth of fan engagement and the collaborative evolution of content. In a content-abundant world, the franchises that “bring their audience in” may well lead the next era of fan-powered entertainment.

NICCOLO’ MESSINA - Founder and CEO, V-Channels and Insvrgence

AVOiDing The Disaster. When I founded Insurgence, my vision was clear: to create a platform where filmmakers, often overlooked by traditional distribution channels, could thrive. With a background in data analytics, I saw the untapped potential of online video platforms, particularly YouTube, to bring cinema to audiences that had long been denied access due to economic or geographic barriers. At the heart of this vision was a simple question—What if we could use data to give people exactly what they were searching for?

But today, we are confronted by a far more complex and urgent question: In an environment where movies have become commodities, where revenues per film are dropping to historic lows, what is the future of emerging filmmakers? The shift in the entertainment landscape has been seismic. The traditional theatrical model is on life support, and consumers are consuming content at unprecedented speeds, with attention spans shrinking and options multiplying. At the same time, the rise of AVOD has become the primary—if not the only—viable revenue stream for independent films. But AVOD platforms bring their own set of challenges: revenue per view is significantly lower, competition is fierce, and the window for a film’s visibility is narrow.

This new reality poses a critical dilemma for independent creators. How can emerging filmmakers survive, let alone thrive, when their work is treated as disposable content in an oversaturated market? How do they stand out when films are consumed quickly and monetized based on brief engagement rather than long-term value? And, most importantly, what is the next business model that will allow us to continue discovering and nurturing new talent in this environment?

At Insurgence, we’ve spent years developing strategies to adapt to these challenges. We’ve embraced AVOD as a core business model because it democratizes access to content—allowing viewers who cannot afford subscription-based services to watch films for free, supported by advertising. This has given us the opportunity to reach massive audiences, but it has also forced us to rethink the economics of filmmaking. With revenue-per-film dropping, we’ve learned that success is no longer determined by a film’s budget or star power, but by its ability to capture and hold attention. This means that filmmakers must not only be creative artists but also strategic marketers.

To survive in this new landscape, emerging filmmakers need to be armed with data—real, actionable insights into what audiences are searching for, watching, and engaging with. The traditional model, where filmmakers simply hope their work will find an audience, no longer works. Today, success is about understanding audience behavior at a granular level, from the keywords they search for to the types of stories that resonate in specific regions.

At Insurgence, we use data as a compass. We help filmmakers understand how to position their work, what genres and themes are gaining traction, and how to maximize their chances of success. But even with the best data, the industry’s structural issues remain. The commoditization of films means that, more than ever, filmmakers are battling for relevance in an oversaturated market. Many are left wondering: Is it possible to make a career out of independent filmmaking when every film is competing for fractions of pennies on AVOD platforms?

This is where our next challenge lies: to create a sustainable model that not only provides filmmakers with the tools and insights they need to succeed but also reinvents how we think about revenue, visibility, and longevity in the film industry. We are exploring new ways to stretch the lifecycle of a film, from experimenting with digital windows and exclusive launches on various platforms to leveraging international dubbing and localization to expand a film’s reach. We are committed to finding answers because the future of independent cinema—and the discovery of new talent—depends on it.

At Insurgence, we are not just building a company. We are creating a movement to ensure that emerging filmmakers have the opportunity to be seen, to succeed, and to shape the future of cinema in an industry that is undergoing a massive transformation.

We’ll share more from “Infinite Worlds” soon, analyzing in greater depth the technical, legal and commercial implications of decentralization.

Low-budget horror continues to captivate audiences and deliver extraordinary returns, as demonstrated by the box office success of Terrifier 3. This genre continues to thrive as a financial and creative powerhouse in the unpredictable world of cinema. Produced on a modest $2 million budget, Terrifier 3 grossed over $85 million globally. This success highlights horror’s unique ability to consistently drive both creativity and commercial returns.

In fact, Terrifier 3 is just the latest in a long line of top-grossing, low-cost horror movies, following in the footsteps of groundbreaking hits like Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, and Get Out, which all showcase the genre's ability to achieve widespread commercial success. The combination of fear as a globally relatable theme, tightly controlled budgets and easy localization makes horror a relatively safe entertainment investment, with the potential to spawn long-lasting, highly lucrative franchises. While horror is not immune to failure (and a recent American Film Market report provides a comparative analysis that shows that it’s not all rosy), it remains one of the most secure investments as long as produced within sustainable budget parameters.

Redefining Horror: Indie Innovators and Modern Powerhouses

In the past, it was the studios, particularly Universal, that fueled a prolific output of horror films, bestowing the world with many immortal cinematic classics. In recent decades, however, it has been independent production and new generations of creators that have redefined the genre. Directors like John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, and George Romero profoundly reshaped the genre, pushing its boundaries with inventive storytelling and bold stylistic choices. Film festivals such as Frightfest and Sitges, along with specialized horror platforms like Bloody Disgusting and Screambox, have become pivotal venues for discovering the next wave of filmmakers and potential major franchises. For fans, these venues are more than just entertainment; they are hubs for discovering hidden gems, discussing emerging trends, and celebrating the creativity that makes horror such a dynamic and boundary-pushing genre.

Over the past decade, several new production and distribution companies have emerged with horror as their core business, achieving remarkable success.

Blumhouse Productions, for example, has established itself as a modern powerhouse in the horror genre, leveraging a unique strategy centered on producing high-quality films with tightly controlled budgets, often under $10 million, while granting filmmakers substantial creative freedom. Blumhouse's success stories include The Purge (2013) franchise, which started with a $3 million film that grossed $89 million worldwide, and Get Out (2017), a $4.5 million production that earned $255 million globally and won critical acclaim, including an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Cineverse has strategically positioned horror as a cornerstone of its content lineup, recognizing the genre’s profitability and loyal fanbase. Its ownership of Bloody Disgusting, a platform synonymous with horror fandom, underscores this commitment, providing a direct channel to engage with audiences and promote indie horror projects. Cineverse's strategy for turning Terrifier 3 into such a box office hit relied on a targeted approach that leveraged the film’s cult fanbase and grassroots marketing, making them an integral part of the distribution process.

The Universal Language of Fear

John Carpenter famously said, 'Horror is a universal language; we’re all afraid,' a sentiment echoed by Jason Blum, who has consistently highlighted its global appeal. Horror is a truly trans-cultural phenomenon, as exemplified by films like Let the Right One In (2008, Sweden), Train to Busan (2016, South Korea), and REC (2007, Spain) that resonated globally notwithstanding their language of origin. Fear is a universal emotion unbound by cultural barriers, making horror inherently localizable and impactful on a global scale.

We largely owe it to brilliant pioneering producers like Roger Corman for understanding the transnational potential of low-budget horror, introducing production models based on extremely efficient use of every available resource, such as shooting multiple films simultaneously, and strategically leveraging international distribution, becoming an inspiration for companies like Troma, Full Moon Features, Dimension Films, and more recently, Blumhouse itself.

Horror may be a niche phenomenon, but its resonance and versatility are such that it has attracted the interest of great directors not typically associated with the genre, such as Stanley Kubrick and Ingmar Bergman, who have used it as a tool to explore complex existential and social themes. Dario Argento, the Italian filmmaker famous for some masterpieces like “Deep Red” and “Suspiria”, emphasized that "horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing”: a phrase that perfectly encapsulates the superior adaptability of a genre that transitions seamlessly from extreme gore to metaphor for a disintegrating society, intertwining supernatural terror and violence with profound reflections on human nature.

Horror Meets Decentralization : A Perfect Match

From a financing, production and distribution standpoint horror, with its grassroots history and community-driven appeal, is uniquely suited to decentralized models. Blockchain platforms are reimagining traditional crowdfunding, transforming fans into active stakeholders. By leveraging smart contracts and tokenization, they reward supporters with profit shares and empower them with creative input, fostering an unprecedented level of collaboration between creators and audiences. This participative model not only democratizes funding but also allows fans to influence key creative decisions, such as plot development or casting. Each project becomes an independent platform (and each creator, a studio) with the ultimate goal of developing dynamic and infinitely evolving franchises. Much like in gaming, where player feedback and community involvement drive perpetual updates and expansions, decentralized horror projects can thrive on continuous fan input, creating an iterative and engaging creative process.

There have been several film-making experiments that successfully tested the reliability of the new models, both at the production and distribution level. Swissploitation film Mad Heidi utilized a blockchain-powered crowdfunding platform to allow fans to invest directly in its production. By leveraging blockchain, the filmmakers offered micro-investment opportunities, turning fans into stakeholders and enabling a more democratic financing model. Anthony Hayes’ Retrogression was financed through the sale of the RTGN token, a cryptocurrency created specifically for the project. The pre-sale launch raised 200 ETH (approximately $560,000 at the time), with 90% allocated to the RTGN liquidity pool on Uniswap. Token holders secured a stake in the entire franchise, exemplifying a groundbreaking approach to film financing.

Kevin Smith’s horror anthology KillRoy Was Here was released exclusively as a non-fungible token (NFT). The distribution rights were auctioned off, marking a pioneering move in film distribution by integrating blockchain technology to create unique digital ownership of the movie. Enderby Entertainment CEO Rick Dugdale, who also co-founded NFT film distribution platform Vuele, emphasized that NFTs should be looked at as “a way to build a community and fan engagement around films that are being released”. Jeremy Culver’s No Postage Necessary (2018) has been the first film released via blockchain technology with its streaming payable with cryptocurrencies on the Vevue platform. Not a horror film, but a great example of the role that blockchain can play in widening a title’s distribution prospects.

Blockchain and the Grassroots Evolution of Horror

Horror’s grassroots history aligns perfectly with decentralized aspirations. Viral marketing campaigns like The Blair Witch Project’s, with its elaborate fictional backstory, demonstrate how fans can be engaged and turned into powerful amplifiers with relatively inexpensive creative efforts, amplifying word-of-mouth marketing and building an organic buzz that traditional campaigns often struggle to achieve. Blockchain technology amplifies this dynamic, enabling fans and creators to collaborate on cinematic universes while seamlessly merging creation with promotion.

The success of Terrifier 3 underscores the critical role of a dedicated fanbase in independently financed features. Director Damien Leone openly credits the film’s achievements to its supporters, stating, “It’s the fans that made this happen, so we’re very, very grateful… we have a very dedicated fanbase.” Cineverse's Chairman and CEO, Chris McGurk, echoed that the film "shows that with the right creative team and the support of loyal fans, a quality indie film can break the mold and compete with major studio releases.” Cineverse's low-cost marketing strategy reflects the principles of decentralized engagement, where community-driven promotion, combined with traditional advertising efforts, has generated a powerful compounding effect.

As decentralized platforms gain traction, horror is uniquely positioned to lead the charge in redefining how independent films are financed, produced, and distributed—much like how The Blair Witch Project has redefined marketing strategies. The future could be one of onchain-native horror franchises that leverage the creative-financial technologies of the blockchain from the outset, creating a new virtuous circle of creative collaboration relying on the strength of committed and participative communities. Moreover, artificial intelligence holds enormous potential—not only by making previously inaccessible special effects feasible for low-budget horror but also by enhancing the automation and personalization of marketing efforts. AI influencers or mascots could maintain intelligent, ongoing interactions with fans across platforms, opening up new avenues for audience engagement.

But this is stuff for another post.

For the moment let’s assume that the next great horror story won’t just be told—it will be built, funded, and shared by the very audiences who scream for more.