“What if you could make a movie that cut out studios entirely, allowing the filmmaker to do as he or she pleased?”
Steven Soderbergh’s movie Logan Lucky puts in place a system designed to end the way most visual artists work with traditional studios, much as CDBaby, MP3.com, and Apple iTunes ended the way musicians worked with the music entertainment industry.
Soderbergh’s Movie Financing System
“It’s simple, he says.”
- “You sell the foreign rights ahead of time in order to finance the cost of producing the film.”
- Then you sell “everything except the movie showing up in a movie theater”—like HBO, Netflix, VOD, television rights, airplane replays—to pay for advertising and prints of the movie.
- And, voilà, independence.
By doing it his way, Soderbergh and his creative partners get nearly half the box office money directly from the theaters.”
Check out his interview with GQ for the details.
Artificial Intelligence and Movie Financing
The GQ article is from 2017. How well has it aged? And will any of it matter in the next 12 to 24 months when almost anyone can make their own movie?
Add a few more years, and movies will likely be automated as easily as selecting a Mood List on a music streaming service like Spotify.
Future Movie Prompt: Alexa, I’ve had a difficult day. Please make me a Romantic Comedy featuring two people who fall in love in Kansas, with a happy ending.
Concept: Country Queen
MidJourney prompt:
Close-up beauty shot of a female model, cinematic lighting, contoured shading, shimmer pearly color, gauze latex, depth of field, photorealistic, 8k, –ar 16:9 –v 5.1
Modifications:
Runwayml: Expand image landscape scenery
Photoshop: Retouches
Training image for the foreground

Concept, Photography | Tom Libertiny
Model | Valerie Whitaker
Training image for the background

Photography | Tom Libertiny
Resulting images

Concept, Photography, AI Prompt Engineer, Retouches | Tom Libertiny
Image | MidJourney AI
Expanded image landscape scenery | RunwayML