The Independents

The studio used to be a building. Now it fits in a backpack.

Over the last five years, a new generation of creators has quietly dismantled the old production pipeline and rebuilt it around themselves. No gatekeepers, no green-lights — just a camera, an audience, and a direct line to both.

The new economics

What changed wasn't the talent. It was the distribution. When the platform is the studio, the creator keeps the upside — and the risk.

"I stopped asking who would fund it and started asking who would watch it," one creator told us. "The answer turned out to be everyone."

This issue is about those people: the independents who turned an audience into an enterprise.