There’s a version of this post where I sit back and pretend I’m a neutral observer of the film business. I’m not. I’m an actor and a writer running a production company out of Atlanta, I’m financing my first short film from donations and my own funds, and I’m self-funding and producing a feature I wrote to star in by the end of the year. So when I say the independent film world is about to take over, read that for what it is — a guy with skin in the game, who genuinely thinks the math is finally breaking our way.

But the math really is breaking our way. Let me show you what I’m seeing.

The Majors Are Getting Smaller While Claiming to Get Bigger

Paramount is buying Warner Bros. Discovery for somewhere north of $100 billion. If it closes, there will be four major U.S. film studios left. Four. Over 2,000 actors, directors, producers, and writers — including Emma Thompson, Kristen Stewart, Denis Villeneuve, Florence Pugh, and Pedro Pascal — signed an open letter opposing the deal. They’re not wrong to worry. Every past consolidation of this kind has led to the same thing: fewer movies made, fewer buyers for scripts, fewer greenlights, and layoffs in the thousands Paramount already cut around 2,000 people after the Skydance merger. WBD cut 1,800 right after it formed, and thousands more since.

Here’s the part the suits don’t say out loud. When a studio gets bigger, it gets more scared, not less. It stops making the $20-to-$50 million movie — the kind of mid-budget film that built careers for decades — and focuses exclusively on nine-figure tentpoles. Dune, Spider-Man, Avatar, Mario. Sequels, reboots, franchises. In 2025, 73% of domestic box office came from franchise films. Eight of the top ten grossers were sequels or remakes.

You know what gets left on the floor when that happens? Every original script. Every first-time director. Every weird, specific, human story that doesn’t have a pre-existing IP attached to it. Which is almost everything I want to make and almost everything I want to watch.

Where That Money and Those Movies Go

They go to the indies. They already are. Neon’s Anora swept the 2025 Oscars — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, five wins total. A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once took seven in 2023. Before that, Neon’s Parasite took four in 2020. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern. The Academy voters, who are working filmmakers themselves, are telling you where the actual movies are being made.

Mubi, which most people still think of as a streaming app, is now valued at a billion dollars and is acquiring and producing films directly. The Substance was theirs. A24 is a cultural brand at this point — they sell hoodies and candles, their trailers are cut for TikTok, and Gen Z goes to their movies the way my generation went to Tarantino. Then there’s Neon, Roadside Attractions, Bleecker Street, Vertical, Black Bear, Row K (which bought four films at TIFF last year), and 101 Studios quietly building a distribution pipeline. In 2025, a whole new wave of distributors showed up at festivals ready to write checks.

The Q1 2026 domestic box office did $1.77 billion — the strongest start since COVID. The blockbusters led, but indies were right behind them. We Bury the Dead, a Daisy Ridley zombie movie from Vertical, opened to $2.5 million on 1,172 screens. Exit 8, a Japanese-language horror from Neon, pulled $1.4 million on just 495 screens. These are not huge numbers, but they don’t need to be. These movies were made for a fraction of what a Marvel movie spends on catering.

What This Actually Means for Working Actors and Filmmakers

This is the part I care about, and probably the part you care about too.

For actors, the math is this: the majors are making fewer movies, but more movies total are being made. The middle is filling in from the bottom. Indie distributors need content. Independent producers can make a contained thriller for under a million dollars and still get theatrical distribution if it’s good. Some of the best roles of the last few years have been in movies most people hadn’t heard of six months before release — and the actors in them broke out because of those movies, not in spite of them. If you’re waiting for Marvel to call, you’re fishing in a pond with four boats on it. If you’re building relationships with indie producers and directors, you’re fishing in an ocean.

For filmmakers like me, it’s even more direct. Tax incentives are moving — Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Texas are all aggressively competing, and Georgia still has one of the best programs in the country. Fiscal sponsorship through groups like Fractured Atlas lets you raise real money as a solo producer, which is exactly what I’m doing on Legacy. AI tools are dropping post-production costs, which is a whole separate post I’ll get to eventually, but the short version is that the $30 million movie is starting to look like the $5 million movie. A SAG Short Film Agreement lets me work with union actors at rates I can afford. The infrastructure to make a real film with real people at real quality exists now in a way it did not ten years ago.

The Part Nobody Wants to Admit

It’s not going to be easy. Indies still have to fight for screens — multiplexes want the guaranteed foot traffic of a Mario sequel, not a first-time director’s thriller. Film festivals are still gatekeepers. Literary managers still mostly take meetings with people who already have meetings. And a lot of the “indie boom” is concentrated at the top, where A24 and Neon get the press while the bottom 95% of indie films still never find an audience.

But the door is open wider than it’s been at any point in my lifetime. The tools are cheaper. The buyers are more numerous. Audiences — and this is the most important part — are actively tired of the same six franchises and actively looking for something else. Gen Z is the most avid moviegoing demographic right now, and they’re showing up for David Lynch retrospectives. That tells you everything.

I started Page 4 Films in April for a reason. I’m writing features I want to star in for a reason. I’m also openly looking for other projects to produce — not just my own. If you’re a writer or director with something you believe in and you need a producer who actually understands what it takes to get a film made, my inbox is open. I picked Atlanta for a reason. None of this would have made sense as a business plan in 2010. In 2026, it’s not just plausible — it’s probably the smartest bet in the room.

The studios that consolidated will keep making fewer, more expensive movies that look more and more like each other. The rest of us will make everything else. And for the first time in a long time, “everything else” is where the audience actually wants to be.

That’s the shift. Call it indie takeover, call it the creative middle ground, call it whatever you want. I call it my five-year plan.