The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Julia Alexander to discuss her latest piece for Puck on why romantasy—the subgenre of fine literature dedicated to dragons and sex—has had a hard time gaining a foothold on streaming services despite burning up the book charts. We also chatted about Amazon’s advertising ambitions and how it hopes to use its supposedly profitable video division to drive business elsewhere on the site … and whether or not the company is getting so big, it might make sense for the government to force some parts of it to split off. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!

Hey everyone, so: This posted in the Takes feed over the weekend. (You can watch the video on Substack here or YouTube here.) I Just wanted to make sure this episode got into the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood feed in case you don’t subscribe to the Takes feed (though you should!) and also to give everyone a heads up that Mona Charen and I will be doing an episode of her podcast on A Man for All Seasons. You can watch that movie for free on YouTube, so long as you don’t mind ads.

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Scott Mendelson of The Outside Scoop to preview the summer movie season and address some of the hottest questions in the biz. Why did Netflix push Greta Gerwig’s Narnia movie to next year and give it a full(ish) theatrical window? What’s shaping up to be the biggest flop of the summer? Is box office health finally back on the upswing after some down years post-COVID and post-strikes? And what the heck is “Infinity Vision”? All that and more on this week’s episode. Leave your most-anticipated film in the comments!

Occasionally, someone will ask me if I think they should invest in a movie. My answer is, invariably, the same: you should only invest in movies you really believe in; you should understand that even if you invest, the movie will likely never get made because most movies never do; and you should only invest if you’re willing to lose everything you put in, because even those movies that do get made tend to show a loss.
I lead with this because today I’m talking to Jeff Annison of Legion M, a production and distribution company built on the idea that fan investments are a great way to both develop seed capital and drive enthusiasm at theaters. Legion M is not a fly-by-night company and has a number of productions under its belt, including My Dead Friend Zoe and The Man in the White Van. Jeff will be the first to tell you that investing is risky and should only be done if you’re comfortable with losing it all, though he obviously has staked his claim with Legion M and put no small amount of his own capital at risk. And they’ve certainly seen some successes with films like the Nic Cage-starring Mandy (one of my favorites of the 2010s).
We discussed how changes to investment laws in 2016 helped spur a shift in indie fundraising from crowdfunding models to models that allow individuals to earn equity in the movies they contribute to the production of. We also discussed the Legion M Film Fund, their distribution-minded arm that provides last-in, first-out money for films seeking a domestic release. And we chatted about the effort to build a consistent fan base via the cultivation of retail investors.

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Lou Diamond Phillips, who you know from … well, tons of stuff. La Bamba, Young Guns, Longmire, and last year’s best new TV show, The Chair Company. He’s on the show this week to discuss his new film, Keep Quiet, which is playing this Saturday evening at the Dallas International Film Festival and should hit theaters this summer. We talked about all sorts of stuff, but one thing I find really fascinating is Keep Quiet’s place in the burgeoning mini-genre we might think of as Native Noir: films like this, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Wind River, TV shows like Reservation Dogs, Dark Winds, and Longmire, etc. It’s an interesting moment, and Keep Quiet is a key part of it. I hope you’ll seek it out once it hits theaters … don’t worry, I’ll remind you when it’s about to happen.