The people who write the movies, build the sets and act in the films are in guilds. Surprised there wasn’t a more direct-to-consumer avenue to explore. Maybe they could bootstrap a production and distribution guild.
At the end, it's the startup problem. Would you rather gamble all your money and get all the winnings? Or get a salary regardless of how things turn out?
I think Netflix, Amazon and Apple were sort of that for a while, with all the deals they were cutting with production companies..
But in the end it was just Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..