My cup of hope for film might runeth over; can I share some with you?
There is more than the eye can see.
I started this post as I headed off to Cannes last week. I find the annual event a good time for me to assess where things stand.
If you are tracking the ups and downs on my optimism/pessimism meter, you might recall that I ended 2025 confident that my part of the industry was dead. No more American films for grown-ups. I still hope to get a few more such beasts made (or completed) but I do not feel as I once did, that certain kind of pleasure that comes from a feeling that it is inevitable that I will get them all made. So be it. And call that realism “rock-bottom of the pessimism scale”. I ran aground at the end of 2025. But the good part of such a scrape is that there is nowhere now to go but up. And so, yes, HOPE is on the rise. Giddyap, cowboy!
We may still be at rock bottom earnings for the industry for a bit longer, but there are many indications that good times lay ahead. As I packed my bags for the south of France, I started to do one of those “pause-and-let-me-count-the-ways” exercises I like to do to evaluate if I was more than a little delulu or kraykray. A take the temperature of where we may be now sort of thing. If I can hit twenty good things in such a contemplation, then I believe I am in a good place. And you know what? I am in a good place. And that means you may be too.
20+ Signs That There Are Better Times Ahead
Perhaps best read with this playing in background!
1. NonDē & the recognition of filmmakers’ holistic cinematic responsibility: THIS is the most-pleasing hangover from the last year. NonDē jelled in 2025. For thirty-five years, we’ve been counseling filmmakers to budget their work on a realistic anticipated financial return on their film. For twenty-five years we’ve been encouraging filmmakers to know their audience in advance. For fifteen years or longer we’ve been begging filmmakers to budget for the distribution of their film. For five years we’ve been encouraging them to build and own their audience. For three years, I’ve been urging all to build a non-dependent cinema ecosystem. It started to all really come together this last year. THAT is NonDē and it is really happening.
2. Disintermediation of Distribution / Distribution as a service: this still is the greatest disruption we will face and we still are far from prepared for it, but it is inevitable. All the other cultural industries have faced it. It will broaden the distribution options significantly and enable a true community approach to supply and demand. The proofs are already proven, but boy-oh-boy is the business slow on the uptake. It will bring a wider range of cinema, genre, audience, experience, and business. I can’t effin wait. It will create jobs and generate knowledge… maybe even some wisdom.
3. “Block the merger” action & the growing antitrust, anti-competition pushback: It has been very inspiring for me to see 5,000+ industry professionals to stand up for a level playing field. Sure, I also feel for those that have groomed to live in fear that if they bite the hands that feeds them, the crumbs they have learned to sustain themselves will be withdrawn; we all have to eat after all. Nonetheless, the forces of value extraction have now been served, and we are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Anyone who ever said that “it is inevitable” know now they were brainwashed or on the side of the oligarchs and tech bros. California is financially fortified as prepared to fight antitrust behavior and keep things fair for the makers, workers, and cinema lovers. We know we must stand up for what we believe in, and I am hopeful this next era is going to be marked precisely by that.
4. Increased recognition that we are in a system and the system is in us: This would be on the short list of what is necessary for every young pup and old hound to know deep, deep, deep in their bones. We don’t get to determine what we do any more than we get to determine what we want to do – at least not until we have had that recognition that this is the case. It is one of those things that I think actually determines whom you can work best with – as you are either in the know or you are not. But the tide is turning in our industry; what once was the minority may soon become the majority. Yay.
5. The community is going to buy Letterboxd – and not let it too get enshitified. The TechBrosCos are the ultimate value extractors. Vampires. They use the wonderous culture we create to lure customers in to their walled gardens. They turn everything in to a dopamine driver and once they get the customers hooked, watch out. Streaming could have been different, but this is what is used for. Social media could have been different, but this is what is used for. We could have improved the planet instead of destroying it. In the cinema ecosystem, many of us realized we needed a way to aggregate film lovers and let them love for the sake of thing they loved – cinema. But only the founders of Letterboxd managed to do it, and they did it by prioritizing the community. But now they risk Private Equity not just taking them over, but ruining what they built. In the happy ending of this story the community rises up and says “Hell, no! We won’t go!”. This is happening and it is very real. And know what? If it doesn’t work this time, or maybe even the next time, or the time after that, one of these days it will. We will not let them defeat us. Right?
