Here's a dream I've had for a long time.
Buy a bunch of old properties somewhere in a burnt out area, maybe write at the edge of a once thriving city. Someplace like Wichita or Syracuse.
Create a movie factory out of there.
By \"factory\" I mean: Hire a fixed set of say 11 actors, six screenwriters, three directors. Maybe two full production crews?
Pay them all on contract. Mostly young people, fresh out of film and acting schools. Maybe some other long neglected types who deserved a shot but were too weird. No SAG-AFTRA contracts.
The deal: We give you equity in the company. We give you subsidized housing in a nice place near the studio. We give you a fixed paycheck over the course of the contract. You are basically guaranteed several feature roles a year. You have a creative team thinking of staff actors as the core cast of every film.
In exchange, you do whatever film the company casts you in. You don't work for anyone else. You don't get backends becasue you are getting equity. If we have a hit, that funds more awesome films later. Which grows the value of the company and your stake.
We are a factory. The creative team doesn't write whatever they want. They think of the place we are in, what we have, the talents of our cast and of our crew. Those are all the limitations on what we make.
We have a cinema in the local community. We do all our premiers there. The community knows there will always be a cast Q&A for every film, right there in town. We also do other weird events with the company there. It's a real part of the town.
The community also gets used all the time as backdrops, as extras, as bit parts. It becomes an institution.
The crew is fighting for leading roles, screentime, working with the castmembers they want, the kind of roles they want.
It would be really dynamic and fascinating.
I think we could reasonably crank out say 7 low budget but interesting movies like this. It would probably take maybe spending a year with writers and directors only working to make a bunch of scripts they like, and then they hire that first cast.
Then two years of grinding to get out those first 14 movies. Then the big question: Do people re-up their contract or do they take their credits and run to Hollywood? Some would, some wouldn't.
God, it would be such a pressure cooker. There would be so much drama. I love the idea.
Chatting with ChatGPT this morning, it thinks we could get the first two years off the ground in some midwestern city for like $15 million. That's a considerable bargain for cranking out 10 to 14 films. If we hire smart people, there's gonna be a hit in there somewhere. Who's in?
And for sure there's a story.
—Brady Dale
November 12, 2026