Moguls beware, “let them eat popcorn” may no longer be the magic words that can save you.
The hordes storming your gates today may be armed with bitcoins instead of pitchforks.
In today’s brave new world, non-fungible tokens could finally be delivering the last blow to the Hollywood studio system that dominated the film industry for a century or more. At least, that’s the hope of Matthew Lillard and Bill Whirity, who are launching a Midnite Movie Club they say will allow tokenholders to apply their clout to the whole moviemaking process.
MMC is being organized as a DAO—that stands for “decentralized autonomous organization” in which the community makes decisions about the film, from greenlighting the script through to the final production.
This includes such creative aspects as casting, costuming, props, and the design of movie posters.
The new venture’s premiere offering, to go into production this summer, will be a vampire flick titled Let Them Die. Midnite Movie Club’s initial concentration will be in similar genres, like action/adventure, fantasy, horror, and sci-fi, presumably because fans of typical dramatic offerings or biopics may not be as tech-savvy. The Midnite Movie Club NFT collection consists of 5,555 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, available for about USD$400.
In announcing their venture, Lillard and Whirity declared: “NFTs, blockchain and Web3 are the future of the internet. In the coming years, this technology will revolutionize many aspects of our daily lives and the film industry is no exception. Most people think of NFTs as just the artwork, but it is the underlying technology behind them that makes the Midnite Movie Club possible. The MMC is a private community, like a country club or a gym, and your NFT acts as your membership card. It is your key to the kingdom, so to speak, and it is how you cast your vote and help the filmmakers develop their films.”
All this is necessary and desirable, they say, because of their conviction that “the film industry is broken. Too many filmmakers are sidelined by the marketing department dictating what will make the movie sell versus what will make for the best story.”
The Midnite Movie Club is also aiming its missiles at highly touted film schools in addition to the studios via its MMC Nite School, which will include tutorials on the filmmaking process. . Said Lillard, “One of our main goals is to empower the next generation of filmmakers without the crippling cost of film school tuition.”
Whirity added, “We want to turn positive viewers into active participants and bring them along for the entire filmmaking process.’ This includes allowing the “community” to vote on filmmakers’ pitches and decide which ideas will be financed by the common purse. Whether the filmmakers will feel equally sidelined by the tyranny of the majority remains to be seen, but Whirity and Lillard are confident that a new tech-savvy generation of cinephiles will embrace the new post-studio regime.
No information was available on how MMC would respond to any allegations about ballot-stuffing or voter fraud in the election process.