She reminds us it’s no longer 2015 and a funnel strategy no longer works:
What she recommends for 2026 is “a looped ecosystem continuously feeding audiences”:
She says what’s needed to accomplish this is:
Audience Discovery
Cultural Positioning
A Conversation Hub
A Conversion Engine
“In 2026, we build strategic content ecosystems and native communities, and the platforms decide who to show it to and if it’s worth showing. For filmmakers, studios, streamers and distributors, this changes how campaigns are designed from the start.”
The short documentary explores the current downturn in the Los Angeles-based film industry, questioning if Hollywood is confronting a temporary or a terminal decline.
It outlines the economic crisis…
Production Slump: Shooting days in Los Angeles dropped 16% in 2025, falling roughly 50% below the 2017 peak.
Box Office Decline: US and Canadian box office receipts totalled $8.6 billion in 2025, a significant drop from the $12 billion reached in 2018.
Labor Impact: Employment in California’s motion picture industry, which peaked in 2016, was decimated by the pandemic and the 2023 actor and writer strikes. Approximately 41,000 workers left the industry between 2022 and 2024.
Streaming Losses: Major media companies poured billions into streaming services but are now pivoting toward profitability, leading to mass layoffs and fewer project greenlights.
…and blames it on technological and cultural disruption:
Artificial Intelligence: AI is viewed as an existential threat with tools now capable of recreating voices, faces, and movements.
Creator Economy: Platforms like YouTube and TikTok are capturing younger audiences.
Consolidation: Aggressive mergers are accelerating as legacy media companies seek the scale needed to survive against tech giants.
In it she outlines her survival strategy for filmmaking in Hollywood:
“1. The job (writing pilots/screenplays)
2. The hustle (pitching)
3. The work I own (making MY shit)
Most people in this industry are already doing at least two of these and feeling like that means they’ve somehow failed. I need you to know that it’s not just okay, it’s the strategy now. Here’s what it actually looks like to live inside this moment without either pretending it’s fine or giving up.”
She goes on to explain her creative life and raison d’être — well worth reading.
Dara, like the Bloomberg doc, believe that indie films are the future, what Ted Hope and others call NonDē or “non-dependent” or “non-dependent on the studio machine”, referring to a type of filmmaking that is self-driven, micro-budget, and community-powered.
My take: ah, those were the days, eh? By the way, Hollywood is still making films, just not in L.A. right now — check out the very last credits of any movie these days to see tax-payer dollars at work in Hollywood films from: Canada, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, Georgia, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Malta, and on and on.
“InterPositive’s mission — to use emerging technology in ways that protect and expand creative choice — is deeply aligned with Netflix’s long-standing belief that innovation should serve storytellers and the creative process.”
“The InterPositive system builds an AI model based on an existing production’s dailies, then lets a filmmaker introduce that model into the postproduction process to provide the ability to do things like mix and color, relight shots, and add visual effects.”
Note that InterPositive owns a patent on technology that Ben invented called “Method, system, and computer-readable medium for training a captioner model to generate captions for video content by analyzing and predicting cinematic elements”. It describes systems designed for enhancing video content analysis and generation through cinematic element recognition and metadata utilization.
Price has not been disclosed.
My take: is this the beginning of Netflix turning into a “dream factory”? Imagine sitting down on the couch and prompting the movie you’d like to see. Or a spin-off with some of your favourite characters. Or — and I want this so much — “Yeah, this movie, but make it 90 minutes instead of two hours and forty-five minutes.”
Canadian films accounted for only $14M of $837M box office revenue, or just 1.7%.
That 1.7% doesn’t do justice to French-language films though, which garnered 13%, leaving Canadian English-language films at just 0.4%. Less than half of one percent!
(Telefilm does attempt to put a better spin on this by breaking out “independent films” from “major Hollywood productions”, but to no avail.)
Only three Canadian films made more than $1M revenue at the box office.
“The summer comedy Menteuse stood out, achieving box office revenue of over $2.6 million. The children’s films Ma belle-mère est une sorcière and Night of the Zoopocalypse round out this trio, both having generated box office revenue of over $1.1 million in Canada.”
The top ten films at the box office were all Hollywood productions.
“Of all the films screened in Canadian theatres, the feature film A Minecraft Movie, based on the popular video game, stood out with box office revenue of almost $45 million in 2025. This was followed by Jurassic World: Rebirth and Superman, which both surpassed $30 million. Apart from F1: The Movie, all the top ten titles were sequels or adaptations based on existing intellectual property.”
My take: I don’t begrudge Telefilm its $100M+ budget, but I submit that something is wrong with this picture. Either project selection is not taking the cinema-going audience in mind, or there’s not enough marketing happening, or both. If we truly want a national cinema and not just a feature film service industry for foreign producers, I can think of a few things that have to happen: a screen quota, lower budgets, a tax credit for film investors, a star system, a Canadian film media; all working together to create a meritocracy that makes movies Canadians want to watch in Canadian theatres, eh!
“A lot of people are confusing “logline” with “pitch.” That confusion is definitely costing you reads. PLOT ≠ PITCH. Something you all need to know: Nobody cares about your logline. Even when they ask for your logline, they don’t want your logline. What they want is your pitch. And a pitch is called a pitch because it’s a sales pitch. If your logline functions like a pitch, congratulations: you’ve accidentally done it right. If it reads like a synopsis, it’s dead weight.”
He wants your pitch to make people curious: “In its optimal form, a pitch is the fewest words that create a small, sharp void in someone’s mind that they feel a desperate need to fill.”
He follows up with a list of four logline/pitch templates, with great examples:
The What If (aka The Act One) A single disruption that instantly forces the question, “Okay, well, then what happens?”
Central Conflict + (Venue and/or Stakes) Two clear forces collide in a specific place and with specific consequences you can feel.
Everything Old is New Again A recognizable commercial engine, but with a protagonist swap that changes the moral temperature of the movie.
“A meets B” (but only under very specific conditions) Two movies with seemingly opposing values or tones slammed together in a way that creates tension that the audience wants to resolve.
Compare these with the logline formula Michael Anthony taught me:
When an [adjective*] [character] wants an [objective] they must overcome some [obstacle or inciting incident] — but can they succeed or face a [consequence]? (*adjective should be the quality that is tested/changes as a result of the story.)
Michael’s form tends to help you break the story whereas Franklin’s might elicit more curiosity. (Truth be told, Michael’s formula is basically Franklin’s What If model.)
My Take: always be closing! I think realizing your logline needs to pitch your project more than explain the plot actually makes it easier to create.
“In the traditional finance model, indies rely on underpaid labor, opaque accounting, and the promise of exposure that rarely materializes into real participation. Whereas in this equity model, everyone from director to PA works for the same rate (a competitive indie wage pegged to the SAG minimums) in exchange for equity. Most crews never see a budget, never understand a waterfall, and never receive a dollar after wrap. By opening the books, educating collaborators on the model itself and giving access to budgets and cap tables, we remove the suspicion that has defined so much of the industry. Transparency builds confidence, and confidence builds better work.”
My take: I like the thought behind this. Using “set time” to determine equity gets everyone in the game, however, it also devalues intangibles like a screenwriter’s years of rewrites, a cinematographer’s film school debt and an actor’s clout. To make this work, I think you’d have to assign in-kind value to these and other intangibles and add this to the Investor side. Then 60/40 to 120%, followed by 50/50 could make sense. Basically, this model has craftspeople in front of and behind the camera share 40% of all income from the first dollar, distributed by time worked, hopefully rising to 50% at some point.
