[Joeboy]

Megan Ellison's had a pretty good stab at breaking into film financing. I don't think it's impossible as long as you have, say, a hundred million dollars at your disposal. If you don't, that's basically game over as that's what you need to finance a handful of decent indie films.

[apalmer]

your point is valid... however i think its going to get into the same feedback loop as regular movie studios. fundamentally even if you have 100 million to make 5 films, you really cant afford a 20 million dollar flop. As long as your a rational actor your going to start chasing hits and trying to minimize flops by 'standardizing' your films.

The fundamental problem is in my opinion we want folks with millions on the line to not act like rational actors but instead do it 'for the art'... this will happen from time to time but will not really be the norm i think.

[Joeboy]

Yeah, really the point I was trying to make (obliquely) was that the reason there aren't many new entrants to the business side of film is that it's incredibly expensive and risky, even to make a single film. Occasionally you hear of an ultra-low budget horror that earned millions despite being made for less than the cost of a house, but those are a rarity. If you're a new entrant and you can actually get a film financed, you're going to make friends in the industry very easily.